Democrats trying to blame defeat on 'outside factors', says Putin

London [UK], Dec. 24 (ANI): Russian President Vladimir Putin attacking the outgoing Obama administration said that the Democratic Party is trying to blame its failure in the U.S. election on outside factors, adding he always knew that Donald Trump would win. "The Democratic Party and the US administration are trying to chalk their own failures up to outside factors. They lost everywhere, and are looking for outside factors to blame. It is not very dignified," the Guardian quoted Putin as saying during his annual conference. "Nobody believed he'd (Trump) win. Except us, of course. We always believed," he added. The Russian President also dismissed all accusations of Moscow's interference in the U.S. election, insisting that U.S. claims were due to the Democrats being sore losers. Before the vote, the U.S. administration had accused Russia of hacking the Democrats' servers, and this month it was reported that the Central Investigating Agency (CIA) believed that Russia had intervened with the specific goal of helping Trump, who has dismissed the claims as implausible. Putin declined to comment on Barack Obama's claim that he had personally asked Putin to put a stop to hacking efforts and added that more important than who did the hacking were the revelations contained in them about the Democratic party, but "instead of apologising to their voters they started shouting about who organised the attacks". Asked about recent comments by Obama that "Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave" over poll findings that 37 percent of Republican voters admitted to being fans of Putin, the president said it was a sign that the two countries were close. (ANI)