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| Donald Trump |
In a very awkwardly delivered statement, Donald Trump (reading from prepared remarks) attempted to walk back some of his disastrous comments made in Helsinki yesterday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Calling his Helsinki summit with Putin the “most successful visit” about “the most pressing issues facing humanity,” Trump falsely claimed that the U.S. relationship with Russia is now “substantially better” after the summit.
The Trumpster also asserted that he has faith in the U.S. intelligence establishment’s conclusion that Russia interfered, and then swerved back into the underbrush saying it could also be somebody else.
“I have a full faith in our intelligence agencies. Always have. I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling took place (though) it could be other people also.”
And just for good measure, or out of habit, he threw in another "There was no collusion at all."
Trump tried to explain that at the summit he 'misspoke' and said “I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia” rather than “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.”
Here's the word salad explanation: “The sentence should have been ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia,’ sort of a double negative. So you can put that in and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself. I have on numerous occasions noted our intelligence findings that Russians attempted to interfere in our elections.”
Watch below.
To be clear, Trump still seemed to waffle in his acceptance of U.S. intelligence: "I accept our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could be other people also. A lot of people out there." (via ABC) pic.twitter.com/Gp4hzEbZBc— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 17, 2018
Donald just fixed everything by retroactively amending the transcript of his televised statement about election meddling to read, “I don’t see any reason why it WOULDN’T be Russia,” instead of "WOULD be Russia." He also clarified that he likes to grab women by their puppies.— Randy Rainbow (@RandyRainbow) July 17, 2018
The would-wouldn't defense is preposterous. Trump undermined IC's Russia assessment multiple times yesterday, citing Putin's "strong" denial, raising DNC server conspiracy theory. In fact, he has expressed same doubts for >2yrs. A missing contraction is a grammatical red herring.— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) July 17, 2018
Trump didn't misspeak. But if he did, wouldn't he have corrected himself earlier? Wouldn't one of his press secretaries have urgently issued a statement? Wouldn't Dan Coats have said as much? Instead, none of that happened. Officials were speechless.— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 17, 2018
And for the Game of Thrones fans:
— Greg Hogben (@MyDaughtersArmy) July 17, 2018
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