Donald Trump recorded a statement on Tuesday afternoon to “clarify” his press conference with Vladimir Putin. In a rambling, listless, low-energy speech that wandered across NATO (“I have helped the NATO alliance greatly”) and his visit with Queen Elizabeth (“The queen is absolutely a terrific person”) Trump eventually seemed to remember that he was there to talk about his nothing-short-of-treason performance in Helsinki, in which he gave into Putin on every point while disavowing US intelligence.
After a fumbling build up, Trump’s entire “clarification”—the entire clarification—came down to a change of one word.
Trump: I said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t.” The sentence should have been “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be Russia.” Sort of a double negative. So, you can put that in, and I think that probably clarifies things.
Except, of course, that change doesn’t change anything. Read with “would” the sentence is an ambiguous dismissal of Russian involvement and a slap in the face for US intelligence. Read with “wouldn’t” it is still an ambiguous dismissal of Russian involvement and a slap in the face for US intelligence. Trump then repeated this three times. None of which made it any clearer.
Trump also tossed in a claim that President Obama didn’t think Russian meddling was a big deal “Until I got elected. But it was a little too late.” Which seems … almost like a confession. Trump went on to accuse Obama and members of his administration of “making a lot of money” from their appearance on news programs. Trump then rambled through the two standard statements on any Russia-related statement: That there was no affect on the results, and there was “no collusion,” something that Trump said “The House has come out strongly on” along with “a lot of people.” A lot of people who Trump did not name.
After a two hour meeting with Putin, and a 45 minute press conference in which Trump set fire to every aspect of US policy and credibility, Trump believes that he can fix it by changing one word. One word that didn’t even change the meaning of one sentence.
Throughout the statement Trump appeared weak, confused, distracted and … like perhaps he hadn’t had the best Executive Time overnight. But he did insist on how great it would be if we could “get along” with Russia. Though he did not say why.