Trump, recalling DNC hack, boasts of his election win to cyber experts

President Donald Trump took a moment at his meeting with cybersecurity experts on Tuesday to brag about winning the November election.

Trump got on the subject of the election during the meeting in the White House when he noted that his administration should support private organizations as they seek to defend against cyberattacks, and then cited the Democratic National Committee as an example. Hackers who intelligence officials say were Russians trying to help elect Trump infiltrated the DNC’s email system last summer. Thousands of private emails were eventually published on the website WikiLeaks.


Trump made a point to say that the Republican National Committee, however, was not successfully infiltrated, despite initially being targeted.

“Despite having spent hundreds and hundreds more millions of dollars more money than we did, the Democratic National Committee was hacked successfully, very successfully, and terribly, frankly, and the Republican National Committee was not hacked, meaning it was hacked but they failed,” Trump said.

“It was reported, I believe by Reince and other people, that it was hacked, but we had a very strong defense system against hacking,” Trump continued, before addressing the experts and going on an election-related tangent.

“So despite spending a lot less money than the Democrats — and in all fairness winning, people don't say that, we spent a lot less money, admiral, and we won. That's good, right? Isn’t that a good thing, when you can spend less and win?”

“But we were also very successful in our defense against hacking,” he concluded, returning to the subject of cybersecurity.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, the former RNC chairman, has denied reports that the RNC was hacked during the election. FBI Director Jim Comey said earlier this month, though, that intelligence officials have found evidence that the alleged Russian hackers did penetrate old RNC email domains and state-level Republican organizations.