President Trump made a peculiar claim about cybersecurity Monday while slamming recently suspended C-SPAN political editor Steve Scully: Computer hacking supposedly doesn’t happen.
Speaking at a campaign event in Prescott, Arizona, Mr. Trump played down the prevalence of cybersecurity breaches while blasting Mr. Scully for lying about being the victim of one.
“You know, I’ve never known a person that said he got hacked that got hacked. Nobody gets hacked,” said Mr. Trump.
“To get hacked you need somebody with 197 IQ, and he needs about 15 percent of your password. It doesn’t happen,” Mr. Trump added.
Hacking requires neither high intellect nor part of a password, and it occurs more commonly than Mr. Trump claimed.
Indeed, Mr. Trump previously said his personal Twitter account was “seriously hacked” in 2013, and his hotel chain has suffered at least two data breaches in recent years as well.
Twitter also experienced a security breach in July that resulted in dozens of high-profile accounts being hijacked at no fault of the affected users.
More recently, the Trump administration announced criminal charges earlier Monday against six Russians accused of hacking “thousands of U.S. and international corporations, organizations and political campaigns and parties,” among other victims.
C-SPAN suspended Mr. Scully last week after he admitted lying about recently claiming that his Twitter account was hacked.
Mr. Scully was originally set to moderate the second presidential debate between Mr. Trump and Democratic rival Joseph R. Biden that was scheduled for last week but never happened.
The president had criticized Mr. Scully before the debate was canceled, causing the would-be moderator to ask former White House aide Anthony Scaramucci for advice on social media.
“@Scaramucci should I respond to Trump,” Mr. Scully asked on Twitter. He then claimed his Twitter account had been hacked before later admitting he was responsible for the tweet.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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