"The notion here is that we do not understand the consequences of what's going on," Sam Clovis said. Trump co-chair on Crimea: He was 'thinking about something else'

Donald Trump’s campaign co-chairman offered up an alternate explanation for the Republican nominee’s recent comments about the geopolitical situation between Russia and Crimea: He “was thinking about something else” when he said that Vladimir Putin would not invade Ukraine.

“I think, you know, I’ve run for office and I would — the phenomena I thought of when I was listening to the interview, Mr. Trump was thinking about something else and he answered the question when he was thinking about something else,” Sam Clovis told MSNBC, adding, “I’m not trying to offer an excuse. But I will say, this is the — this is — the circumstance sometimes that, that — that happens. I think what was really at the heart of this.”


Trump himself sought to clarify the comments earlier Monday, tweeting that he meant that Putin would not be in Ukraine if Trump were president. During the same interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump reiterated that he would look into recognizing Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, which is contrary to standing United States policy, claiming that people in Crimea preferred being a part of Russia to being part of Ukraine.

“The notion here is that we do not understand the consequences of what’s going on,” Clovis said. “So rather than making a rash statement, or a statement that would put us in a position of where we would probably have to sit there and walk it back at some point, I think it’s much better to say that we’re going to look at the circumstances, find out what the ground truth is, and then think about the consequences of actions.”

Clovis continued, suggesting that Trump was being more prudent with his answer than other politicians who “are more inclined to give you a sound bite than they are to think through the actual consequences of decisions that have to be made.”

“This is true, whether we’re fighting radical Islam or we’re dealing with a traditional challenger, like Russia or China,” Clovis said. “Those are the things that we really have to take a much more realistic, pragmatic, and … rather, frankly, a more cautious approach so that we can figure out what ground truth is before we decide to go out here and write checks that we can’t cash.”