AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Since being elected president, Donald Trump has weighed in daily on topics from jobs to Obamacare to foreign policy, but usually he's done it using 140 characters or less via Twitter. Today, Trump held his first formal press conference as president-elect, and it was chock full of news. NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson was there, even got to ask a question. She joins us now from New York. Hey there, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: So I want to talk first about the reports that Trump and President Obama were briefed by the intelligence community on unverified allegations. They concern Trump and some of his staffers and whether they colluded with the Russian government and that Russia had developed compromising information about him before the election. Trump denied these claims.
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DONALD TRUMP: It's all fake news. It's phony stuff. It didn't happen. And it was gotten by opponents of ours, as you know because you reported it and so did many of the other people. It was a group of opponents that got together, sick people, and they put that crap together.
CORNISH: Even before today, we knew this was the response from the campaign, right, Mara?
LIASSON: So no surprise, right? But he did acknowledge today that he had been briefed about this. He didn't respond to a question asking whether he'd done anything in Russia that might have given Russia the material to blackmail him, but he also did make some news.
For the very first time, he acknowledged that the Russians did hack the DNC. And then when he was asked about the second conclusion of the intelligence community, which is that Russia hacked in order to help Trump, he said this.
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TRUMP: If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That's called an asset, not a liability.
LIASSON: So more praise for Vladimir Putin from Donald Trump. He said he respects Putin for calling the reports fake. He also said when he's president, the Russians will respect the U.S. more. He said Putin shouldn't have hacked, but he won't be hacking the U.S. anymore.
He was asked whether he would keep the sanctions in place that President Obama has put to punish the Russians. He wouldn't answer that question directly. I actually asked him about that. He only said he didn't think Obama went too far with the sanctions.
CORNISH: Another long-running issue he addressed - Trump detailed his plan to avoid conflicts of interest when in office. He's turning over his business to his adult sons. Tell us more about what he had to say there.
LIASSON: Well, he won't be divesting. He won't be creating a blind trust. He will be having an ethics adviser to work with his sons on domestic deals. He said there will be no new foreign deals. He said also he has no business deals or loans with Russia at all. When asked why not release his tax returns to prove that, he refused again. He said the only people who care about his tax returns are the press.
CORNISH: Of course there is this movement afoot to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Did Trump weigh in on that?
LIASSON: He certainly did. And this has been a big question for the Republicans on the Hill - how to repeal and replace Obamacare, whether to do it at the same time or not. Today Trump said he wants to repeal and replace the health care law simultaneously.
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TRUMP: But will most likely be on the same day or the same week but probably the same day, could be the same hour.
LIASSON: Could be the same hour - he said as soon as his Health and Human Services secretary is confirmed, they'll file a plan to replace Obamacare. He didn't give any specifics about it or say what elements he wants kept. He just said it would be less expensive and far better - sounds very easy. But Republicans have really been struggling with this.
CORNISH: Now, this is the first time he's done a press conference since about July. How different was this Trump than the one that people used to see in those kind of free-wheeling press conferences during the campaign?
LIASSON: Not different at all. It was a pretty chaotic press conference. It had a circus-like atmosphere. He was attacking the press, attacking his old opponents. He called BuzzFeed, the news organization that printed that unverified account, a failing pile of garbage. He refused to call on a CNN reporter who's also reported on this dossier, calling CNN fake news. He had a cheering section of staff standing there.
So this was the same Trump we saw during the campaign, and it doesn't seem like there will be a much different style for a President Trump. He's someone who keeps score, and he leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
CORNISH: That's NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Thanks so much.
LIASSON: Thank you.