Blame it on that pesky double negative.
After 27 hours of near-universal condemnation, President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday he simply misspoke in Helsinki when he said, “I don’t see any reason why it would” be Russia that interfered in the U.S. election.
“The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.’ Sort of a double negative,” Trump said.
But even as Trump said he accepted U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusions that Russia was behind the election hacking, he added, as he has before: “It could be other people also. A lot of people out there.”
So the world was left to wonder: Was he really tripped up by a double-negative or was that clarification really a cleanup operation?
Even if it was a mere grammatical glitch, Trump made plenty of other comments in the same Helsinki news conference that gave Russia the benefit of the doubt.
He declined to say whether he believed the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered over Putin’s denials. And he blamed the poor state of relations between the two superpowers on foolishness by both countries.
As for the accusation of Russian election meddling, Trump said: “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.”
That last sentence was what he corrected Tuesday.
The “would,” he said, should have been “wouldn’t.”
With that, Trump declared the contretemps over, insisting, “I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.”
(AP)
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4 Responses
Biggest lie ever by this disgraceful coward! It doesn’t make sense in the context and he made many other comments supporting putin over the U.S. If this would be true, why did they have to have a big meeting about it without mentioning it for over 24 hours? He looked like a hostage reading from his paper.
“I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.”
The liar in chief should learn how to speak English.
Looking at what Trump actually said, he didn’t even question the veracity of “intelligence” reports about Russian meddling, but merely question why Putin would have been trying to help Clinton – which is a reasonable question given Trump’s support for a strong national defense.
Akuperma- you need to look again, anytime he says he accepts the intelligence findings, he always adds but it could’ve been someone else! That is NOT the assessment of the intelligence agencies, just his which contradicts his “acceptance”. Putin said at the news conference openly that he wanted trump to win, what are you talking about with Hillary!?