On Thursday, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez scorched President Donald Trump on CNN for his complete abandonment of his role as the nation's protector in the face of cyber warfare from Russia.
"What we saw in the 2016 election, a foreign adversary — and not just any foreign adversary, our fiercest foreign adversary — attempted to interfere with our election, to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton," Perez told "New Day" host Alisyn Camerota, noting that then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz at the time asked then RNC chairman Reince Priebus to make a mutual agreement to refrain from using stolen data.
"Then you see the reporting in yesterday's news about the former Homeland Security secretary, who expressed concerns about this happening again, and was told, 'you can't say that in front of Donald Trump,'" Perez continued.
"We are at war right now," said Perez. "It is a cyber war. Unfortunately, because our commander in chief is compromised, the federal government is asleep at the switch, and that is why the DNC and others at the Democratic Party ecosystem are working tirelessly to protect our data ... we can't expect help from this administration."
"If someone calls you and tells you, 'I'm gonna rob a bank,' your response should be, 'I'm calling the authorities,'" said Perez. "When the Russians called Donald Trump and said, 'I've got dirt on Hillary Clinton,' they should have called the authorities. Instead they said, 'tell us what you've got.' That's not right. And what we're saying is, we need to restore the basic institutions of our democracy."
Watch below:
