9 Quotes From Obama's Last 2016 Press Conference: Read President On Trump, Russia Hacks [VIDEO]

A few months ago, President Barack Obama probably never envisioned his last news conference of 2016 to be like Friday's. Nonetheless, he spent most of his final media briefing of the year Friday talking about his successor, President-elect Donald Trump, as well as hacks on the Democratic National Committee the intelligence community recently determined was carried out by Russia to influence the presidential election.

Heading into Friday, Obama had affirmed that the U.S. would retaliate after what the CIA had determined were hacks carried out by Russia aimed at effecting the presidential election in Trump's favor.

"I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections ... we need to take action," Obama said Thursday in an interview with NPR. "And we will — at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be."

Russia has denied involvement, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov saying, "They need to either stop talking about this or finally present some sort of proof." Trump, whose administration does have a number of ties with Russia, has questioned the CIA's assessment that the country was attempting to influence the election. The New York Times reported Thursday, citing people who have been briefed on the conversations, that Trump believes "there are people in the C.I.A. who are out to get him and are working to delegitimize his presidency."

Obama talked at length Friday about the hacks, Trump and the civil war in Syria, which has grown incredibly blood as the city of Aleppo has fallen to government forces (International Business Times has live updates here).

Listed below are 9 quotes from Obama at the press conference.

1. On Aleppo and the Syrian civil war, blaming the violence on Syrian President Bashar Assad​ and his allies, Russia and Iran

"The Assad regime cannot slaughter its way to legitimacy."

2. On Trump and the hacks

"My hope is the president elect is going to be similarly concerned that we don’t have foreign influence in our election process."

3. On confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin about the hack of the DNC

"So in early September when I saw president Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn't happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out and there were going to be serious consequences if he didn't. And in fact we did not see further tampering of the election process."

4. On the media's coverage of WikiLeaks, which Obama described as constant

"You guys wrote about it every day. Every single leak... including John Podesta's risotto recipe."

5. On if the hacks on the DNC affected the election

"I am going to let all the political pundits in this town talk about what happened in the election."

6. Obama addressed his conversations with the president-elect, noting he had tried to stress the importance of maintaining stability of the presidency and institutions of government

"He has listened, I can't say that he will end up implementing but the conversations themselves have been cordial as opposed to defensive."

7. On the conflict in Syria and U.S. involvement

"I cannot claim that we have been successful ... That's something ... I have to go to bed with every night."

8. On if the administration will declassify information proving Russia was behind the hacks on the DNC

"We will provide evidence that we can safely provide that does not compromise sources and methods. But ill be honest with you when you're talking about cyber security a lot of it is classified... the way we catch folks is knowing certain things about them they may not want us to know."

9. Addressing Republicans who are praising, or not condemning, Putin

"Reagan would roll over in his grave."