US President Donald Trump had to take a U-turn over his statement supporting Russian claims of non-involvement in US 2016 elections meddling. Over a media storm, he was forced to realize that he did a mistake and the US intelligence was right.
Republican as well as Democrat politicians in the United States along with the intelligence officials, on Monday, criticized Trump’s utter failure to challenge his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over election interference. The called his responses at a joint news conference in Finland as “shameful” and “disgraceful”.
On Tuesday, Trump spoke at the White House and resented for misspeaking in Helsinki when he addressed reporters a day earlier while adding that he accepts the intelligence community’s claim that Russia was responsible in US 2016 election meddling which won him with a majority.
“I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,’” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.’”
But along with that Trump tried maintaining that Russia’s attempt to influence the elections had no impact on the end result, which won him the Presidency and defeated Democrat rival Hillary Clinton and also denied that his campaign had colluded in the effort.
Earlier to that, in the Finnish capital, Trump had outrightly refused to believe US intelligence agencies over Russia’s denials of meddling in the 2016 elections and did not condemn Moscow’s interference.
According to a journalist, Kimberly Halkett, reporting from the White House, said that Trump “was sticking to the script” in his comments made by him on Tuesday – a very rare occurrence.
“He was almost reading this [statement]; very much an example of a White House in damage control mode, where the communications team has worked very hard to parse the statement of the president in Helsinki and try to turn it into something other than what many people believe they witnessed – and that was a president standing apart from his intelligence agencies and the conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 US election,” said Halkett.
The Trump’s performance at the Helsinki news conference sparked a political firestorm that engulfed the US administration and spread to his fellow Republicans, and all along that it eclipsed most of the frequent controversies that have come up during the president’s turbulent 18 months in office.
The Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats took the issue directly with the president who had appointed him and said that the US spy agencies have given a clear and fact-based assessment that Moscow interfered in the US presidential race two years ago.
According to the senior Republican senator, John McCain, Trump’s seeming acceptance of Putin’s denial was sort of a historical “low point” for the US presidency.
The Democrats left no stone unturned in using much harsher language which also included accusations of “treason”.
“For the president of the US to side with President Putin against American law enforcement, American defense officials, and American intelligence agencies is thoughtless, dangerous, and weak,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer said.
Democratic California Representative Jimmy Gomez charged: “To side with Putin over US intelligence is disgusting; to fail to defend the US is on the verge of treason.”
Other lawmakers said that they were in search of remedies against Russia in Congress.
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