By Jake Glover

President-elect Donald Trump has dismissed recent allegations that individuals with connections to Russia attempted to interfere with the presidential election.

These allegations are a result of a secret CIA assessment in early December. This assessment revealed information that individuals with ties to Russia provided the website WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee in an effort to undermine the Democrats and help Trump win the presidency.

In an interview with Fox News on Dec. 11, Trump dismissed these allegations.

“It’s just another excuse,” Trump said in the interview. “I don’t believe it. Every week it’s another excuse.  We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.”

Trump has been criticized by his opposers for not taking the allegations seriously enough.

“The fact that our future administration is not addressing this as a possible real event is scary,” said senior John Thornton, “Even if it’s not true, it’s something that should be investigated.”

On Jan. 5, President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in response to the alleged attacks.

“I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election.” Obama said in a statement Thursday. “These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior.”

Even within his own party, some Republicans disagree with Trump over the severity of the situation. Senator John McCain and former CIA director James Woolsey, the latter being an adviser to Trump on national security, have both spoke out about and acknowledged the alleged Russian hacks and meddling in the election.

The Left is overreacting, seeming to believe that Russia single-handedly decided our election, and Trump should take the possibility a little more serious. It’s pretty annoying how Trump is saying it’s just “an excuse” when CIA evidence suggests otherwise, but then again, he did use a similar excuse when he was falling behind in the polls. Trump is being way too dismissive. However, Trump is meeting with CIA officials to discuss the issue, and hopefully he will make a more well-informed statement after the fact.
After a heated and controversial election, our nation remains strongly divided on this issue among many others. Trump needs to increase his mandate if we wants to be successful over the next four years, and the way he has handled this issue among several others after the election are in no way helping him. I hope we can become more united as a country. I hope Trump makes America great again. But at this rate, regardless of which side you’re on, the bitter divisions in our country make it pretty clear we’re not on a path toward greatness.