Reuters/Reuters
- President Donald Trump has a “blind spot” when it comes to dealing with Russia, Senator Mitt Romney said Sunday, after Trump shifted the blame for the SolarWinds hack from Russia to China.
- Trump said “it may be China” that’s responsible for the massive attack on US companies and government agencies, without citing evidence. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday that Russia was to blame.
- Romney told NBC News Sunday he was “disappointed” with Trump’s remark.
- “I think we’ve come to recognize that the president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia,” he said.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Sen. Mitt Romney said Sunday that President Donald Trump has a “blind spot” when it comes to Russia, after Trump appeared to shift the blame for the massive SolarWinds hack from Russia to China.
The White House was preparing to release a statement on Friday accusing Russia of the SolarWinds cyberattack when officials were told to stand down, the Associated Press reported Saturday. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday that Russia was to blame for the attack.
Trump commented publicly on the hack for the first time on Saturday, tweeting that “it may be China” that’s responsible, without citing evidence. “Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of…discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!),” Trump wrote.
The hack may have left thousands of companies and US government agencies at risk of having data stolen or being spied on.
Romney, a Republican senator, said in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday he was “disappointed” with Trump’s comment.
"I think we've come to recognize that the president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia," he said.
"The reality here is that the experts, the people who really understand how our systems work and how computers work and software and so forth, the thousands upon thousands at the CIA and the NSA and the Department of Defense, have determined that this came from Russia."
"This is an extraordinarily damaging invasion, and it went on for a long, long time," Romney said.
The hack started as early as March and went unnoticed for months, according to Microsoft and the cybersecurity firm FireEye.
Experts say it could take years to discover the extent of the attack and what data, if any, was stolen.
"[Trump] doesn't want to recognise Russia as the problem they are and the extraordinarily bad actor they are on the world stage because it reflects poorly on him," Romney added.
Pompeo said Friday on the "Mark Levin Show" that the US "can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity."
Trump has been accused of going soft on Russia throughout his presidency.
When sources in the Taliban confirmed to Insider in July that Russia pays extremists in Afghanistan to attack US soldiers, it was revealed that Trump had taken no action.
The President was also skeptical about the evidence from US intelligence agencies that Russia was responsible for trying to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.
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