BRIANNA KEILER (CO-HOST): Let's turn to Russia now because this is something that Donald Trump is now acknowledging, that there was this meddling in the election, Ron, but when he finally acknowledges that there was Russian meddling, he is blaming President Obama, blaming the Obama administration, talking to Democrats. There is criticism of the Obama administration on this, but is this where the focus should be?
RON BROWNSTEIN: I mean this is just head spinning. First of all, to say that -- the president to say that he just learned that President Obama knew about this -- the intelligence committee put out a joint statement in October before the election pointing to Russian meddling in the election and the intrusion into the [former Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta and DNC emails. I mean it is not hard to imagine candidate Trump's reaction --
KEILER: And a definitive report in January, we should say as well, a long definitive intelligence report.
CHRIS CUOMO (CO-HOST): And he's been getting briefings. For months and months about this. It's not new, you're right, Ron.
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah and you can -- right and you can say that President Obama should have done more. Certainly there are many people on both sides of the aisle, who in kind of looking back would say that. But to say they did nothing is not exactly right either. Because certainly all the reporting is he talked directly to [Russian President] President [Vladimir] Putin I believe at the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] meeting and focused -- they were focused primarily on the question of interference in the actual election tally, the voter registration and those kinds of questions. That would seem to be their principle focus. And let's not forget that all this reporting also shows that at the critical moment in September of 2016, when they went to the Congress and were looking for a bipartisan kind of commitment to have a robust response, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, basically threw cold water on it and said he didn't even believe -- was not convinced by the underlying evidence. So the idea that Obama was feckless alone and faced no political constraints, much less than what he might have faced from candidate Trump, I think is revisionist history of the highest order.
