President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday morning in New York is holding his first full news conference since winning the 2016 presidential election.
In his opening remarks, Trump said he’ll be the “greatest jobs producer that god ever created. I’m very proud of what we’ve done, and we haven’t even gotten there yet,” referring to his upcoming inauguration on Jan. 20.
“We have a movement. It’s a movement like the world has never seen before. It was a beautiful scene on Nov. 8 as those states started to pour in,” Trump said of election day. “Those states are going to have a lot of jobs and a lot of security.”
Shortly before Trump took the stage, his incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, told reporters that news reports that surfaced Tuesday night about Russia potentially spying on the president-elect were “outrageous and highly irresponsible . shameful and disgraceful.”
Vice-president elect Mike Pence then took to the podium in New York to call the reports “fake news” before introducing Trump.
The last time Trump held a news conference, he was plunging into a heated general election campaign with Hillary Clinton and suggested Russia could help dig up some of his rival’s emails.
Nearly six months and a presidential campaign victory later, Trump will finally step before reporters again Wednesday to face questions about what role he believes Russia played in the election year hacking of Democratic groups — interference the intelligence community says was intended to help the Republican defeat Clinton.
Trump is criticizing U. S. intelligence agencies over the leak of an unsubstantiated report that Russia had compromising personal and financial information on him .
Trump tweeted Wednesday that “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
The tweet was part of an early morning Trump firestorm denouncing the reports, in which he said he has “nothing” to do with Russia. Various news outlets reported late Tuesday that U. S. intelligence officials briefed Trump last week on the unverified information Russia was said to have on him.
Trump insisted that the media reports were “very unfair” and payback for defeating other Republican presidential hopefuls and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“I win an election easily, a great “movement” is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!”
The Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee says he received sensitive information last year and turned it over to the FBI, an apparent reference to news that President-elect Donald Trump was told by intelligence officials about an unsubstantiated report that Russia had compromising personal and financial information about him.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona said in a statement Wednesday that he examined the contents of the material, was unable to make a judgment about the accuracy and delivered the information to the director of the FBI, James Comey.
McCain said: “That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.”
The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says allegations that Russia has collected damaging personal and financial information on Donald Trump “shakes our democracy to its very core” and should be investigated by Congress.
In a brief interview, New York Rep. Eliot Engel says if the unsubstantiated charges that the Russians have compromising material on the president-elect are true, “It’s a scary thing to have Putin in the driver’s seat.”
Trump and a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin have denied the allegations.
Engel says Trump needs to “come clean.” He says simply denying the charges is insufficient and says Trump must “tell us everything he knows.”
A U. S. official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that intelligence officials told Trump last week about the unproven report.
