Trump now says he accepts U.S. findings on meddling.
WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Tuesday that he had misspoken a day earlier in Helsinki when he appeared to take the word of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the conclusion of his own intelligence agencies on Russian election meddling in 2016. On Tuesday, Trump said he “accepts” those findings.
Trump said the misunderstanding arose from his use of a “double negative.”
“The sentence should have been ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia,’ sort of a double negative,” he said. “So you can put that in and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself. I have on numerous occasions noted our intelligence findings that Russians attempted to interfere in our elections.”
Trump had been criticized even by many in his own party for rejecting the assessments of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement. In walking back those remarks on Tuesday, Trump said he reviewed the transcript from the joint news conference on Monday and he “realized that there is a need for clarification.”
Trump emerged from talks with Putin on Monday and publicly challenged the conclusion of his own intelligence agencies about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and said the Russian president was “extremely strong and powerful in his denial.” Trump also said that he saw no reason why Russia would have been behind the election hacking.
“My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia,” Trump said, referring to the director of national intelligence. “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.”
On Tuesday, Trump said, “In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t.’”
The president also said, “I have full faith in our intelligence agencies.”