President-elect Donald Trump questioned nearly four decades of US policy on 'Fox News Sunday'. Credit:AP The President-elect said the intelligence community was split on whether Russia or other governments were behind leaked emails involving Hillary Clinton before the election, and that Democratic legislators were trying to use information from private CIA briefings to discredit his victory. He blamed Democrats for putting out the media reports and said he did not believe they came from the Central Intelligence Agency. "Nobody really knows, and hacking is very interesting," Mr Trump said in his first appearance on a Sunday talk show since the election. "Once they hack, if you don't catch them in the act you're not going to catch them. They have no idea if it's Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed some place. I mean, they (intelligence agencies) have no idea.

President-elect Donald Trump being interviewed at Trump Tower in New York. Credit:AP "Personally, it could be Russia. It ... I don't really think it is, but who knows? I don't know either. They don't know and I don't know." The view appears to put him at odds with American intelligence agencies and several leading legislators. Rex Tillerson is Donald Trump's pick for US Secretary of State. Credit:AP The former Republican presidential contender John McCain urged Mr Trump to accept that Russia had interfered in the election.

"The facts are there," he said on CBS's Face the Nation. Senator McCain had earlier joined with Democrat senators Chuck Schumer and Jack Reed, and Republican Lindsey Graham to issue a statement calling for a bipartisan Congressional investigation into the hacking. Senators alarmed about hacking Four senators on Sunday issued a joint statement to raise alarm about the reported Russian interference in the US electoral process. A secret CIA assessment of available evidence concluded that Russia intervened in the election to help Mr Trump to victory. The report said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks.

US President Barack Obama has since ordered an official review of foreign involvement in the election. In their joint statement senators Schumer, Reed, McCain and Graham said "foreign adversaries" had "for years ... directed cyber attacks at America's physical, economic, and military infrastructure, while stealing our intellectual property." "Now our democratic institutions have been targeted," they said. "Recent reports of Russian interference in our election should alarm every American. "We are committed to working in this bipartisan manner, and we will seek to unify our colleagues around the goal of investigating and stopping the grave threats that cyber attacks conducted by foreign governments pose to our national security." Climate change

In the wide-ranging interview with Wallace, Mr Trump also said "nobody really knows" whether climate change is real and that he is "studying" whether the United States should withdraw from the global warming agreement struck in Paris a year ago. Mr Trump said he was "very open-minded" about whether climate change was under way, but had serious concerns about how Mr Obama's efforts to cut carbon emissions had affected America's global competitiveness. "I'm still open-minded. Nobody really knows," Mr Trump said. "Look, I'm somebody that gets it, and nobody really knows. It's not something that's so hard and fast. I do know this: other countries are eating our lunch." During the presidential campaign, Mr Trump referred to climate change as a "hoax" perpetrated by the Chinese, a comment he later described as a joke. He also mocked the idea of global warming during a town hall debate in New Hampshire. During Sunday's interview, Mr Trump said he needed to balance any environmental regulation against the fact that manufacturers and other businesses in China and elsewhere are able to operate without the kind of restrictions faced by their US competitors.

"If you look at what – I could name country after country. You look at what's happening in Mexico, where ... plants are being built, and they don't wait 10 years to get an approval to build a plant, OK?" he said. "They build it like the following day or the following week. We can't let all of these permits that take forever to get stop our jobs." The New York businessman made the same critique of the Environmental Protection Agency, to which he has nominated Oklahoma Attorney-General Scott Pruitt – a climate change sceptic – as the head. At the urging of his daughter, Ivanka, Mr Trump has met in the past week with former vice-president Al Gore and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, both environmental activists. US 'not bound by' one China policy Mr Trump also questioned whether the United States was bound by its longstanding position that Taiwan is part of "one China" and he brushed aside Beijing's concerns about his decision to accept a phone call from Taiwan's president.

"I fully understand the 'one China policy,' but I don't know why we have to be bound by a 'one China policy' unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade," Mr Trump said. In the Fox interview, Mr Trump criticised China over its policies on issues such as currency, the South China Sea and North Korea, and said it was not up to Beijing to decide whether he should take a call from Taiwan's leader. "I don't want China dictating to me and this was a call put into me," Mr Trump said. "It was a very nice call. Short. And why should some other nation be able to say I can't take a call? "I think it actually would've been very disrespectful, to be honest with you, not taking it." 'He does massive deals in Russia'

Mr Trump also discussed his appointments to the cabinet, which he said were not aimed at tearing down Mr Obama's legacy on issues such as the environment. He expressed his desire to prevent former government officials from making money in the private sector on the policies they implemented or contracts they approved while working for federal agencies. Mr Trump said he was "very, very close" to naming his secretary of state, though he declined to say whether he would select Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has emerged as the front-runner and whom Mr Trump called "a world-class player". "To me, a great advantage is he knows many of the players, and he knows them well," Mr Trump said. Loading

"He does massive deals in Russia. He does massive deals for the company – not for himself – for the company." Bloomberg, Reuters, AAP