Conservative columnist: Trump would not have won in 2016 without Russia’s help

Conservative columnist Max Boot explained in a special interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Thursday that without Russia's electoral interference in 2016, Donald Trump would never have won the presidency.

Rather than simple speculation, Boot had statistics to back up his claim that he initially made in a Washington Post column published earlier in the week.

"Fewer than 80,000 votes in three states" decided Trump's win, Boot said, noting that "a lot of things certainly contributed to the outcome." 

"I'm not saying Russia was the only thing that contributed to Trump's victory, but it was a significant factor," he said. "You have to look at how extensive the Russian campaign was. It wasn't just the social media hitting 126 million people on Facebook alone — it was also the hacking of voter rolls."

"The most significant part was stealing Democratic e-mails and releasing them through Wikileaks," Boot continued. "In the last month of the campaign, Donald Trump mentioned Wikileaks 164 times, more than five times a day. He said, 'boy, I love Wikileaks.' He said, 'Wikileaks has really done a job on her, hasn't it?'"

Trump "was making use of these Wikileaks revelations, which fed into his own campaign narrative and knocked Hillary Clinton off.

"Now trump will have you believe that had no affect on the outcome," Boot concluded, "and that just beggars belief."

Watch below, via CNN: