Trump takes to Twitter to hit back at ‘haters’ in wake of Putin talks
Taking to Twitter yesterday, President Donald Trump defended his much-criticised performance at the Helsinki summit, promising “big results” from better relations with Russia and hitting back at “haters.”
Trump made no mention of his having walked back on comments that called into question US intelligence findings of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Those comments, delivered alongside Russian president Vladimir Putin at a summit press conference on Monday, had prompted blistering, bipartisan criticism at home.
“So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki,” Trump tweeted.
He added: “We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match.”
In a follow-up tweet, Trump wrote that Russia has agreed to help in delicate negotiations with North Korea. But he gave no details on how and when that would happen.
“Big benefits and exciting future for North Korea at end of process!” he wrote.
Amid bipartisan condemnation of his embrace of a longtime US enemy, Trump sought to end 27 hours of recrimination by delivering a rare admission of error on Tuesday. He backed away from his public undermining of American intelligence agencies, saying he misspoke 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,” Trump said on Tuesday of the comments he had made standing alongside Putin on the summit stage in Helsinki.
That didn’t explain why 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 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.
Trump also accused past American 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 Europe tour, in which he sent the Nato alliance into emergency session and assailed Theresa May as she was hosting him for an official visit.