WORLD Trump’s backflip on intel remarks

BLISTERED by bipartisan condemnation of his embrace of a longtime US enemy, President Donald Trump strained on Tuesday to “clarify” his public undermining of American intelligence agencies, saying he simply misspoke when he said he saw no reason to believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 US election.

Rebuked as never before by his own party, including a stern pushback from usually reserved Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Mr Trump sought to end 27 hours of recrimination by delivering a rare admission of error.

“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’,” Mr Trump said of the comments he had made standing alongside Vladimir Putin on Monday’s summit stage in Helsinki.

That didn’t explain why Mr Trump, who had tweeted a half- dozen times and sat for two television interviews since the Putin news conference, waited so long to correct his remarks. And the scripted cleanup pertained only to the least defensible of his comments.

He didn’t reverse other statements in which he gave clear credence to Mr Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful” denial of Russian involvement, raised doubts about his own intelligence agencies’ conclusions and advanced discredited conspiracy theories about election meddling.

He also accused past Amer- ican leaders, rather than Russia’s destabilising actions in the US and around the world, for the souring of relations between two countries.

And he did not address his other problematic statements during a week- long European tour, in which he sent the NATO alliance into emergency session and assailed British Prime Minister Theresa May as she was hosting him for an official visit.

“I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place,” Mr Trump conceded on Tuesday.

But even then he made a point of adding: “It could be other people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all.”

Moments earlier, Mr McConnell felt the need to reassure America’s allies in Europe with whom Mr Trump clashed during his trip.

With no ifs, ands or buts, the Republican leader declared: “The European countries are our friends, and the Russians are not.”