McCain, who many amusingly suggest is the posterchild for term limits, has long been a foe of Trump, even refusing to vote for him on November 8, 2016.
On Thursday, during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain called the purported attempts to sway the election "an unprecedented attack on our democracy.”
The following day, highly-anticipated declassified US intelligence report that aimed to prove claims of Russian meddling fell flat. An annex to the report that contained factual material included to provide evidence that the RT television channel influenced the American public had, in fact, been compiled in December 2012, just after the reelection of Barack Obama. As Trump was not a politician at the time of the examples cited in the report, if Russia was swinging votes at the time of the examples, the only beneficiary of the coverage was the now-outgoing president of the United States, who won a landslide victory over Republican Mitt Romney.
Trump also met with intelligence officials for a briefing on the issue earlier in the day, issuing a statement immediately afterward stating that “there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines."
Republican Senator Ted Cruz and other allies of Trump have maintained that the push against Russia is an attempt by the Democratic Party to save face by blaming anyone but themselves for their loss.
Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to sanctions by the Obama administration by saying that he will not retaliate, and instead will determine further steps in restoring ties with the United States, depending on the policy of the President-elect.
