Rick Santelli vs. 'Meet the Press' Panel, Andrea Mitchell: "On Election Night, I Never Saw You So Unhappy"

On Sunday's 'Meet The Press' roundtable about Russia's effort to influence the 2016 election, CNBC financial correspondent Rick Santelli zinged corporate cousin Andrea Mitchell of NBC, saying she obviously took sides in the 2016 election, and when Trump won, he had never seen her so unhappy.





RICK SANTELLI, CNBC: You know, if Hillary didn't have her email problem, and we didn't go back to 2009 and see whether it was Lindsey Graham or John McCain make a bigger issue out of all the hacking that was going on, when Target gets hacked, I don't hear people saying, "Hey, was it Kohl's, was it Wal-Mart?" It doesn't matter. There was a hack, you deal with it.



I think that what's going on here is really so politically driven. It doesn't matter who did what when. Working with Russia, we worked with Iran. Are they our friends? You have to take each situation uniquely. Listen, the president-elect has a boatload of issues. I agree with the pull of his ego. But I think that the media in general is just being quite unfair here.



CHUCK TODD: Wait, why is the media an issue?



RICK SANTELLI: Why is the media an issue?



CHUCK TODD: This is the intelligence community.



RICK SANTELLI: Okay, it's intelligence. Where was all of this when the D.N.C. was hacked in June? See, this wasn't made an issue. Because it would have put the emails and Hillary's server right in the middle in the thick of it. That's why this went under the radar screen. This is all tied together.



ANDREA MITCHELL: Hillary's server--



DONNA EDWARDS: Wait. We have to not conflate the Hillary emails with the--



RICK SANTELLI: Why wasn't this investigated long ago?



DONNA EDWARDS: Let me finish. With the Russian interference in this election. I don't agree with Kellyanne Conway. I actually do think that the Russians got what they wanted. They interfered, they are creating this chaos, we are two weeks outside of an inauguration. And we have chaos around what happened during an election process. So I think that there was success.



And I think the president-elect needs to not just move from accepting that there was an attempt, but to really going after the Russians because here it's the election, the next time it's another election. Maybe it's the Republicans. Maybe it's our economic system. And we have to treat this seriously. And the president-elect needs to get out of campaign mode and get into governing.



DAVID BROOKS: Putin is a guy who murders journalists, who's destroyed the democratic process in his own country, and now suddenly he feels the freedom to try to do that in our country. I don't know-- It's not normal statecraft.



RICK SANTELLI: --to see Russia is happy because Trump won on election night, I never saw you so unhappy. You picked sides, everybody picked sides.



CHUCK TODD: Who picked sides?



ANDREA MITCHELL: That's not true, Rick.



CHUCK TODD: Who picked sides, Rick?



ANDREA MITCHELL: It's just not true.



DONNA EDWARDS: It really is not. And this is actually--



ANDREA MITCHELL: Let's get back to the facts here.



DONNA EDWARDS: This is about the Russians interfering with our election --



RICK SANTELLI: Here are the facts. We've been seeing entities-- we were hacking Merkel's phone. Everybody does it.



ANDREA MITCHELL: Rick, here's the difference. We do it, they do it. What this-- What made this different is that the Russians weaponized it by transferring it through intermediaries to WikiLeaks. They dumped it out. We do it and hold it. They do it and hold it. This is the first time--



RICK SANTELLI: How long has Wikileaks been out?



ANDREA MITCHELL: Let me finish my sentence. WikiLeaks was out from the end of the summer and it was being investigated.



RICK SANTELLI: So where were these headlines then? Because--



ANDREA MITCHELL: There was plenty of--



RICK SANTELLI: --this would-- everybody--



ANDREA MITCHELL: Whoa whoa whoa. There were plenty of headlines. There was no proof of who did it.



RICK SANTELLI: People in charge of intelligence are political as well here.



DONNA EDWARDS: --what happened here is that the intelligence gathering that normally takes place was operationalized by the Russians to interfere with our elections was that, I mean, we look at the report --



ANDREA MITCHELL: They did it in Ukraine. They're doing it in Germany now.



DONNA EDWARDS: They're doing it in Germany right now. This is really serious. And we're not going to get over it by just saying, "Everybody does it."



CHUCK TODD: All right.



RICK SANTELLI: Right, we should be solving the problem instead of making it a political hot potato. When we see the Cuban missiles on the island picture, Trump needs to see it, the four networks need to see it.



ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, I went to the hearing. And I think--



RICK SANTELLI: Oh, the hearings. You know what? There's hearings on everything, they're kabuki theater.



ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, Rick, if you had been there, you would have seen something very different. Chuck--



CHUCK TODD: I'm going to pause this conversation. We will come back. But when I come back, I'm first going to have a conversation with the outgoing secretary of Defense Ash Carter. He joins me here. I'll ask him what could the United States do to retaliate against Russia.