Fiona Hill

I mean, they kept trying to push against this.

No, they did not elect Donald Trump.

Americans elected Donald Trump, and, you know, the Electoral College was a key part.

Vladimir Putin didn't make that up.

You know, and basically, I also remember, you know, one point the Russian ambassador, you know, talking to me about when we were doing the standard, you know, here we are, we're lodging our complaint about the interference.

You know, he basically said, well, we didn't, you know, kind of invent Comey.

And, you know, basically the, you know, the decision to reopen, you know, Hillary Clinton's emails was,

Or, you know, kind of Anthony Weiner and, you know, kind of his, you know, emails on his computer.

And I was like, yeah, he's right.

I mean, you know, there were plenty of things in our own system that created chaos and tipped the election.

Not, you know, kind of what the Russians did.

But, you know, it's obviously easier to blame the Russians and blame yourself when, you know, things are kind of... Or those random forces and those random factors.

Because people couldn't understand what had happened.

In 2016, there was no hanging chads like 2000, where there was, you know, kind of a technical problem that actually, you know, ended with the intervention of the Supreme Court.

There was, you know, pure and simple, the Electoral College at work, and a candidate that nobody'd expected.

including the Republicans in the primaries, you know, to end up getting kind of elected or put forward in a different 2016, suddenly becoming the president.

And they needed a meta explanation.

It was much better to say Vladimir Putin had done it.

And Vladimir Putin and, you know, the Kremlin guys were like, oh my God, yeah, fantastic.

Champagne corks popping.