Trump back-pedals on his Putin comments amidst outrage in US

AMERICAN President Donald Trump has sought to “clarify” his public undermining of US intelligence agencies, saying he had misspoken when he said he saw no reason to believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 US election.

“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 in a rare admission of error.

His comment came — amid rising rebuke by his own party — about 27 hours after his original, widely reported statement, which he made at a summit on Monday 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,” Mr Trump said yesterday.

But he added: “It could be other people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all.”

Moments earlier, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell issued a public reassurance to US allies in Nato and Europe with whom Mr Trump clashed during his Europe trip last week.

“The European countries are our friends, and the Russians are not,” Mr McConnell said.

Mr Trump maintained his summit with Mr Putin went “even better” than his meeting with Nato allies.

He said his Nato meeting was “great” but he “had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia. Sadly, it is not being reported that way — the fake news is going crazy!”

In fact, the reaction in America was immediate and visceral, among fellow Republicans as well as usual Trump critics.

“Shameful”, “disgraceful” and “weak” were a few of the comments.

Mr Trump had said on Monday: “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

His remarks, siding with a foe on foreign soil over his own government, were a stark illustration of Mr Trump’s willingness to upend decades of US foreign policy and rattle Western allies in service of his political concerns.