After spending most of his public hours defending Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday, President Donald Trump has done a surprising 180° and is now saying that he is siding with U.S. intelligence agencies on election meddling.
This is the first time that Trump has actually said he agrees with our intelligence agencies, after spending his entire presidency so far defending Russia and attacking America’s intel officials. These comments are particularly shocking after his pro-Putin comments yesterday, when Trump defended Russia in Helsinki, Finland. Trump had said:
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. So 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.”
Today, Trump is saying something completely different. But in order to justify his obvious backpedaling, he’s trying to reframe this as a “mistake by the media.” Trump is justifying his newfound confidence in the intelligence community by saying that he “misspoke” during his original statements and upon seeing a transcript, saw that he’d made a mistake. Trump defended himself:
I realize that there is a need for some clarification. In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t.’ The sentence should’ve been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.’ Sort of a double-negative,” the president continued. “I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.”
Also during this speech, Trump tried to say it was someone else besides Russia. The president said:
I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could be other people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all.”
You can watch Trump’s backpedaling speech below:
When you watch the video of yesterday’s speech below, in which Trump defends Putin from meddling accusations, does it sound like Trump was trying to call Russia out? Of course it doesn’t. That’s because Trump is lying. He meant every word of this, and is now backpedaling only because of the immense amount of pressure and criticism he is facing for his comments. Here’s Trump’s original speech:
Featured image via screen capture
