Obama: I Told Putin to ‘Cut It Out’

President Barack Obama on Friday said that he told Russian President Vladimir Putin to “cut it out” with regard to his country’s alleged hacking of U.S. institutions in advance of the presidential election. “In early September when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out and there were going to be some serious consequences if he didn’t,” Obama said Friday at his year-end press conference, adding that “we did not see further tampering of the election process” after he talked with Putin. “But the leaks through WikiLeaks had already occurred.” Obama concluded by saying that he believes he handled it “the way it should’ve been handled.”

Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.