January 24, 2019 | Festival Boca
In July 2017, after President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he picked up the phone in Air Force One and called David Sanger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times national security correspondent.
Most of the conversation was off the record. But, as Sanger related to CNN earlier this month, this part was not:
“‘Vladimir Putin told me,’ [Trump] said, ‘that it couldn’t have been the Russians who hacked into the DNC because they’re so good at cyber that they wouldn’t have been caught.’ And he said he was really impressed by that argument…”
Sanger replied to Trump that, “you know, you’ve seen the intelligence reports, and the intelligence reports all indicate that not only was Putin aware of it, Putin ordered it. That’s what US intelligence concluded.”
In response, Trump said, “how could I possibly believe it? That came from [FBI Director James] Comey, from [CIA Director John] Brennan, and [Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, they’re all political hacks.”
After recounting this conversation, Sanger concluded to CNN: “He essentially sided with a Putin explanation that would cast into doubt whether or not the Russians actually did this.”
his is but the latest turn in David Sanger’s long and illustrious career as a New York Times correspondent. He is one of the nation’s most lauded and lucid analysts of geopolitics, globalization and cyber power. A National Security and Political Contributor for CNN, Sanger’s articulate style has made him a frequent guest on CBS This Morning and many PBS shows.
Sanger’s newest book, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age, is a riveting and incisive look into how cyberwarfare is influencing elections, threatening national security, and bringing us to the brink of global war. And it is this timely book that he is coming to talk about at Festival Boca.
David Sanger will speak as part of Festival Boca’s Authors & Ideas series, on March 6 at 7 pm, at the Cultural Arts Center. Reserve your seat for this important talk here, or reserve an All Authors Pass, which gets you into all six presentations, from Doris Kearns Goodwin to the Global Health Panel, to Robert Pinsky and Jeffrey Rosen.