President-elect Donald Trump Friday slammed CNN and NBC News for its coverage of the Moscow hacking issue, saying on Twitter that "the Russians are playing" the news organizations "for such fools" and that they "don't have a clue."
Here's Trump's tweet:
Trump's post followed an earlier one Friday in which he praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for not expelling American diplomats in retaliation for President Barack Obama's sanctions on Thursday in response to the breach at the Democratic National Committee and other party operatives.
The later post also came as CNN's Jim Sciutto interviewed former Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, who once served as a Trump surrogate, on Putin's response.
Sciutto challenged Hoekstra's assertions that U.S. intelligence agencies have hacked other world leaders.
"Quite a throw-away line there, Congressman Hoekstra," the CNN anchor said. "I'm an American and I listen to that, I hear that a foreign actor hacked into political organizations in the U.S. — and they strategically leaked it out during an election campaign.
"Whether that's Republican or Democrat or any other party, that sounds serious.
"Are you saying, 'Heck it's another part of the Wild West in cyberspace and we as a country should let that pass?" Sciutto asked.
"I'm not saying we should let it pass," Hoekstra responded.
He then referenced former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who stole government secrets and later gave them to Russia in exchange for political asylum.
"Snowden clearly demonstrated that the United States hacked into [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel and that we were listening to her conversations," Hoekstra said.
In addition, The Washington Post reported Friday that Russia slammed CNN and the Obama administration for falsely reporting that it was closing an American school in Moscow in response to Obama's sanctions.
"U.S. officials 'anonymously informed' their media that Russia closed the Anglo-American School in Moscow as a retaliatory measure," Maria Zakharova of the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday on Facebook, the Post reports.
"That’s a lie. "Apparently, the White House has completely lost its senses and began inventing sanctions against its own children," he said.
CNN was one of the first news organizations to report the school's closure:
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