President Donald Trump on Tuesday attempted to walk back his public support of Vladimir Putin’s denials of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, by correcting one word he from his press conference on Monday.
“In a key sentence in my remarks said the word would instead of wouldn’t,” he said. “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t or why it wouldn’t be Russia.’ … Sort of a double negative. So you can put that in, and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.”
Trump said he realized he need to clarify that word choice after reading through the transcript of the press conference, which he requested because he couldn’t figure out why the media was being so critical.
“I came back and I said, ‘What is going on? What’s the big deal?'” he said. “I thought it would be obvious, but I would just like to clarify just in case it wasn’t.”
Trump admits he had a slip of the tongue: "In a key sentence in my remarks said the word would instead of wouldn't. The sentence should have been, 'I don't see any reason why I wouldn't or why it wouldn't be Russia.'" pic.twitter.com/AHYZtqYRA1
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 17, 2018
The rare correction from Trump comes one day after his joint presser with Putin, where he blamed both the U.S. and Russia for a deterioration of relations between the two countries and appeared to embrace Putin’s denial that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
