US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump says he meant the opposite when he said in Helsinki that he doesn’t see why Russia would have interfered in the 2016 US elections.
Back at the White House today, the president told reporters that he said he meant he doesn’t see why Russia “wouldn’t” be responsible.
He also said he accepts the American intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election, but he denied that his campaign had colluded in the effort.
“The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t, or why it wouldn’t be Russia” instead of “why it would,” Trump said, in a rare admission of error by the bombastic US leader.
His comment came — amid rising rebuke by his own party — about 27 hours after his original, widely reported statement, which he made yesterday at a summit in Helsinki standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place,” Trump said today. But he added, “It could be other people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all.”
Trump spoke after returning to the US to nearly universal condemnation of his performance at Russian President Vladmir Putin’s side in Helsinki. Putin said he wanted Trump to win the race against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
In Helsinki, Trump delivered no condemnation of Russia’s interference and refused to say he believes American intelligence agencies over Russia’s denials of meddling.
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