text_1: "Activities by foreign governments had ""absolutely no effect on the outcome of this election."
text_2: "After meeting with senior intelligence officials about the details of a soon-to-be-released report on alleged Russian hacking, Trump said that activities by foreign governments had ""absolutely no effect on the outcome of this election."" Trump can use the intelligence report to bolster this assertion only in one limited way -- that Russia did not succeed in tampering with vote counts (though it appears to have tried). On the broader issue of whether Russia had any impact on the outcome of the election, the report specifically noted that it didn’t address this issue, and Clapper in his Senate testimony didn’t either. Saying there was no Russian ballot-tampering is not the same thing as saying there was no Russian influence on the election. Political scientists say it’s impossible to move beyond informed speculation about whether there was a Russian impact on the election’s outcome -- or, importantly, whether there wasn’t an impact. Trump’s formulation, echoed by later statements by those in his camp, offers a definitive, broad-brush conclusion that isn’t proven by the evidence, and really can’t be."