Trump’s Putin press conference walk-back is not actually a walk-back

Don’t call it a walk-back.

President Trump tried Tuesday to smooth over his disastrous performance this week in Helsinki by restating in more polite terms that he doesn’t believe the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. Senate when they say Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

It’s a neat trick, simply rewording the thing that got him into trouble in the first place, but the president is going to have to work harder to undo the damage done by his joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,’” Trump told reporters Tuesday ahead of a conference with congressional Republicans. “So just to repeat it, I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t. … Sort of a double negative.’”

He also said, “I have full faith and support for America’s great intelligence agencies, always have,” adding, “I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place.”

Hilariously enough, the president followed-up by adding, “Could be other people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all.”

Okay, no. This is not how damage control works.

First, this is just a dressed-up version of what Trump said Monday. He’s still saying he’s not sure he trusts the election interference assessment shared by U.S. intelligence agencies and the Senate. He can’t say he believes the intelligence community and claim to have faith in it, and then state in the same breath that its conclusion that Moscow acted against the U.S. in 2016 could be bogus.

Second, the president’s assertion he simply misspoke ignores the full context of what he actually said at the Helsinki presser.

Trump said Monday that the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, “came to me and some others. They said they think it’s Russia. 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, but I really do want to see the server.”

His double negative defense doesn’t address that he also 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.”

Further, Trump’s clean-up job does not address the fact that his remarks about Coats begin with him saying, “All I can do is ask the question.”

Lastly, the “walk-back” doesn’t account for the fact that the president stated outright yesterday that he believes the meddling narrative is a scam cooked up by sore-loser Democrats.

“The whole concept of that came up perhaps a little before, but came out as a reason why the Democrats lost an election, which, frankly, they should have been able to win because the electoral college is much more advantageous for Democrats, as you know, than it is to Republicans,” the president said.

Trump’s Helsinki problems go well beyond the difference between “would” and “wouldn’t.” The president can try to play at historical revisionism, and perhaps his clarification will fly with the normal MAGA sycophants, but the rest of us remember as far back as … yesterday.

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