Obama urges Trump to take foreign election impact seriously

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama suggested strongly on Friday that Russia’s Vladimir Putin knew about the email hackings that roiled the U.S. presidential race, and he urged his successor, Republican Donald Trump, to back a bipartisan investigation into the matter.

“Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin,” Obama said in his year-end news conference. The president said he had warned Putin there would be serious consequences if he did not “cut it out,” though Obama did not specify the extent or timing of any U.S. retaliation.

Obama also expressed bewilderment over Republican lawmakers and voters alike who now say they approve of Putin, declaring, “Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave.”

Democrat Hillary Clinton has even more directly cited Russian interference. She said Thursday night, “Vladimir Putin himself directed the covert cyberattacks against our electoral system, against our democracy, apparently because he has a personal beef against me.”

Obama did not publicly support that theory Friday. He did, however, chide the media for what he called an “obsession” with the flood of hacked Democratic emails that were made public during the election’s final stretch.

U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump have heightened the already tense relationship between Washington and Moscow. Separately, Obama has blamed Russia for standing in the way of international efforts to stop the civil war in Syria, where government forces have beaten back rebels in their stronghold of Aleppo.

Obama said he feels “responsible” for some of the suffering in Syria, but he defended his decision to avoid significant military action there. He said that while military options short of invasion were tempting, it was “impossible to do this on the cheap.”

Still, he pinned the bulk of the blame on Russia, as well as Iran, for propping up Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“This blood and these atrocities are on their hands,” he said as he addressed reporters from the White House briefing room shortly before leaving on his annual Christmas vacation to Hawaii. The news conference lasted about an hour and a half, longer than usual.

The president is ending his eighth year in office with his own popularity on the rise, though Trump’s election is expected to unwind many of Obama’s policies.