Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state under George W. Bush, was skeptical on Tuesday of giving too much credit to Russian interference impacting the legitimacy of the presidential election last November.
“I trust the people who voted in Wisconsin, Texas, Alabama and California to have voted on the basis of who they thought was best going to represent their interests,” Rice told ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday. “And so I’m not going to question the legitimacy of their vote because Vladimir Putin tried to interfere in the election.
“That’s just the step that I don’t think we should take. Let’s trust our fellow citizens to have been smart enough to vote for the people they thought they ought to be voting for.”
While discussing Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rice reinforced that the Russians have a long history of attempting to interfere in elections and this election is not new.
“He has been trying to interfere in our election and everybody else’s for a very long time. What cyber allows him to do is to do it more efficiently and more quickly. But let’s not deceive ourselves that the Russians haven’t tried these tricks before. They have,” Rice said.
The former Bush national security advisor warned against being “intimidated by Putin” and cautioned against letting him play “psychological games” regarding the election.
“Secretary Clinton questioned the legitimacy of his election in 2012. Now he’s saying, ‘I’m going to question the legitimacy of your election by hacking into it’ and so forth,” Rice told ABC. “So, don’t let him get the satisfaction of thinking that we don’t believe our own elections to be legitimate.”