19 July 2018 10:25 am
President Trump has called his Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin a ‘huge success’ just hours after saying that he misspoke when he said he saw no reason to believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 US election.
A defiant Trump tweeted Tuesday night that the ‘meeting between President Putin and myself was a great success, except in the Fake News Media!’
It came just hours after he spoke directly to cameras on Tuesday afternoon in an effort to blunt criticism of a press conference with Putin at which he let the Russian president off the hook for election interference.
Glancing at a printed statement that he had marked up with hand-written edits throughout his remarks, Trump said he accepts his intelligence community’s assessment that Russia meddled in the election - although it could be other people also - and said he meant to say yesterday that he had no reason to doubt the professionals within his administration.
‘I accept our intelligence community conclusion that Russian meddling in the 2016 election took place,’ Trump said. ‘Could be other people also, a lot of people out there,’ he added. ‘There’s no collusion at all.’
Trump said he was surprised by the firestorm that awaited him when he arrived on Monday in Washington and realized he needed to ‘clear up’ his comments after reviewing the transcript of his presser with Putin. The president said that he has the ‘greatest respect’ for his intelligence chiefs.
‘The sentence should have been, I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia,’ Trump said. ‘So you can put that in. I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.’
- Daily Mail,18 June 2018