Trump backtracks on Russia comments

US President Donald Trump has sought to “clarify” his public undermining of American intelligence agencies, saying he had mis-spoken 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 frenzied Europe trip last week.

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

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

He said his Nato meeting was “great” but he added that 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!”