Although Trump has expressed skepticism that Russia was behind the election hacking, Clapper indicated the agencies he leads would not back down in their assessment, even if that threatens a prolonged crisis of confidence with their next commander in chief.
But will Americans trust the information coming from those agencies? Despite Trump's doubts, it looks like most will:
Trump has criticized U.S. intelligence findings, even citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's contention that Russia did not provide him with hacked Democratic emails.
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But in new tweets early Thursday, he backed away and blamed the "dishonest media" for portraying him as agreeing with Assange, whose organization has been under criminal investigation for its role in classified information leaks. "The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!" Trump wrote.
In fact, Trump has been skeptical to the point of dismissive about the certainty of the assessment of Russian hacking, bringing up past failures, specifically intelligence reporting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the war there.
Trump has derided the intelligence community on Twitter, his comments widely reported by The Associated Press and other news organizations.
Clapper said Thursday, "I think there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers — to include policymaker No. 1 — should always have for intelligence, but I think there's a difference between skepticism and disparagement."
