WASHINGTON – During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, spoke about the president’s rally in Green Bay and Russian efforts to interfere in our elections.

Excerpts of his interview are below, and video can be found here.

Green Bay rally

“I was in that rally yesterday. It was a venue filled … with people who love this country and who – quite honestly, their support for President Trump is actually growing. That's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing an economy grow by 3.2 percent. I'm seeing business investment averaging over the last nine quarters over 6 percent, when in the last two years of President Obama it was 0.6 percent. Ten times greater business investment – that's going to drive our economy for years to come. So, again, I'm looking at the results of this administration, and I also think about what we could have accomplished had this witch hunt not been occurring for the last two years.”

Attempted Russian interference in elections

“I was one of the people briefed by the Obama administration when we were told about Russian interference. That was back in September 2016. The whole [message] of that briefing, in a secure situation, was, ‘We have this covered. We want you to go out as members of Congress and say the election results will be legitimate.’ That’s what they wanted us to say, but then the wrong person got elected.”

“I am every bit as concerned about Russian interference as any Democrat senator. I’m chairman of the [Senate Foreign Relations Committee] European subcommittee. I have seen the attempted coup in Montenegro. So it didn't surprise me at all they were interfering in our election. Social media is the primary cause – that's hard to really police. But in terms of changing vote totals, [it is] almost impossible because we have local control of elections.”

“Let's not blow this thing out of proportion. Let's be vigilant. Let’s be concerned about it. But let’s not blow it out of proportion either.”

###