Trump ‘misspoke’ on Russia meddling
President clarifies remarks that set off firestorm of criticism in US
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday made a complete reversal of his so-called Russiafriendly comments in a bid to control damage after his talks in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin set off a firestorm across the United States.
In a joint press conference on Monday with Putin in the Finnish Presidential Palace following their first face-toface summit, Trump, when asked about Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, told reporters that “I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be”.
The words came three days after the US Justice Department announced indictments of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking into Democratic Party emails.
Back home, both Republicans and Democrats expressed their outrage at Trump’s comment, with some calling him “treasonous”.
Under the mounting pressure, Trump said in the White House on Tuesday that he misspoke at the summit. “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’.” he said.
“Let me be totally clear in saying that … I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place,” said Trump, reading from a prepared script.
But he quickly added: “It could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.”
Prominent Republican leaders have distanced themselves from Trump for what they see as his cozying up to Putin instead of confronting him.
US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that Russia was not a friend of the US and warned against a repeat of the 2016 election meddling.
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said Trump is trying to “squirm” away from his comments about Russian interference in the 2016 election. He told reporters on Tuesday that Trump’s clarification is “24 hours too late and in the wrong place”.
Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, defended Trump, calling critics “mistaken” and saying that the US also has picked sides in other countries’ elections.
Damage control
Analysts believe that Trump’s reversal was mostly a response to the unexpected pressure, especially from his supporters.
“I presume that President Trump attempted to revise his remarks at the press conference because of the firestorm of controversy that has ensued since his meeting with President Putin. Even prominent Republicans spoke out strongly against Trump’s behavior in Helsinki,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as special assistant to the president and senior director for European Affairs at the National Security Council in the Obama administration.
Kupchan described the overhanging animosity toward Russia in the US, in particular on Capitol Hill, as a legacy of the Cold War. But he believes that the Russia’s role in Ukraine, Syria and the alleged meddling of the US election has added to the skepticism.
“Trump’s effort to cozy up to Putin continues to raise troubling questions about his motivations,” he said.
“He knows that he screwed up on his original statement and he’s trying his best to do damage control so that he can make sure that his supporters and his party don’t abandon him,” said Jon Taylor, a professor of political science at the University of St Thomas in Houston, Texas.
Jonathan Pollack, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Trump’s visit to Europe has done enormous damage to the US’ reputation abroad.
“He presumably believes that his words and his actions advance his own political agenda, but there is no way to defend or justify his conduct,” Pollack said.