Trump-Putin meeting Trump plays semantics on Russian meddling The president appeared Wednesday to walk back his walk-backs on Kremlin interference in the 2016 election.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he was tripped up by a double negative. On Wednesday, the White House claimed he was simply declining to respond when he replied “no” to a reporter’s question about whether Russia is still targeting America’s democratic government.

Trump’s position on Russian interference in America’s elections has devolved into a game of semantics, with Trump loudly casting doubt on the assessment of his own intelligence agencies only to half-heartedly backtrack when his comments draw forceful condemnation, including from members of his own party.


For the third day in a row, Trump and his top aides spent Wednesday clarifying the president’s remarks on Russia, attempting to breathe new meaning into comments that Trump made not in secretive closed-door meetings, but on national television or on Twitter for all to see.

During a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump was asked by a reporter whether Russia was continuing to target U.S. elections. He looked at the reporter and said “no,” adding that the United States, in his estimation, has been tougher on Russia than any of his predecessors.

That assessment would contradict the U.S. intelligence community, including Trump’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, who has said Russia continues to target the United States.

But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters later Wednesday afternoon that Trump had in fact not said anything of the sort. “The president said thank you very much and was saying no to answering questions,” Sanders told incredulous reporters in the White House briefing room, adding later, “I talked to the president. He wasn’t answering that question.”

The reporter who asked the question, ABC News White House correspondent Cecilia Vega, tweeted later Wednesday, “Yes, he was looking directly at me when he spoke. Yes, I believe he heard me clearly.”

Getting a lot of questions about my exchange with @realDonaldTrump today.

Yes, he was looking directly at me when he spoke.

Yes, I believe he heard me clearly. He answered two of my questions.

Here’s the full exchange: pic.twitter.com/F3QmDSFzpT — Cecilia Vega (@CeciliaVega) July 18, 2018

In effect, the White House is asking Americans to choose whom they believe: the president, or their own lying eyes.

Trump has for months danced around directly and forcefully condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin for meddling in the 2016 presidential election. And while he has said he accepts intelligence conclusions that Russia is to blame for the hack of the Democratic National Committee and other incursions, he has also repeatedly held out the possibility that other entities could be responsible.

It played out the same way on Tuesday during Trump’s tightly choreographed mea culpa. Reading from a script, Trump claimed he meant to say there’s no reason to believe it “wouldn’t” have been Russia that meddled in the U.S. election, blaming the confusion on a “double negative.” But Trump threw in an ad-libbed line that appeared to undercut his statement. “Could be other people also,” he said.

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In an interview with CBS News that aired Wednesday evening, Trump stressed that he agreed with U.S. intelligence officials that Russia meddled in the 2016 election — adding that he holds Putin responsible.

“He’s in charge of the country just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country,” he said. “So, certainly, as the leader of the country, you’d have to hold him responsible.”

Speaking of Putin, the president told anchor Jeff Glor: “I don't want to get into whether or not he's lying. I can only say that I do have confidence in our intelligence agencies as currently constituted. I think that Dan Coats is excellent. … I think we have excellent people in the agencies. And when they tell me something, it means a lot.“

“He‘s a great guy,” Trump said of Coats. “He's a great patriot. He loves his country. And he's only going to say what he truly believes.“

But on Wednesday morning, Trump had taken a more defiant posture, insisting that his meeting with Putin would prove to be a great success “in the long run.”

“While the NATO meeting in Brussels was an acknowledged triumph, with billions of dollars more being put up by member countries at a faster pace, the meeting with Russia may prove to be, in the long run, an even greater success. Many positive things will come out of that meeting” Trump tweeted.

“Russia has agreed to help with North Korea, where relationships with us are very good and the process is moving along. There is no rush, the sanctions remain! Big benefits and exciting future for North Korea at end of process!”

The president also insisted that, contrary to the barrage of criticism he has faced over the last 48 hours, many in the “higher ends” of the U.S. intelligence community thought highly of his performance at a bilateral press conference with Putin, where he publicly sided with the Russian president over his own intelligence agencies.

Those who have been critical of him, the president said, are “haters” upset that he has a warm relationship with Putin, a former KGB agent who the U.S. intelligence community has concluded with “high confidence” ordered the 2016 cyberattacks targeting the U.S. election process.

“So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki,” Trump wrote on Twitter early Wednesday morning. “Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match. Big results will come!”

“Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with President Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome!” Trump added later, echoing language Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) used recently to label critics of the president.

Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with President Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2018

At the same cabinet meeting where he appeared to suggest Russia is no longer digitally attacking the U.S., Trump returned to the argument that no president in history has been as tough on Russia as he has, pointing to sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department, the two West Coast Russian embassies the State Department has ordered closed, and the dozens of Russian diplomats expelled.

"We are doing very well, probably as well as anybody has ever done with Russia, and there’s been no president ever as tough as I have been on Russia," he told reporters. "All you have to do is look at the numbers, look at what we’ve done, look at sanctions, look at ambassadors not there, look at, unfortunately, what happened in Syria recently. I think President Putin knows that better than anybody, certainly better than the media."

Trump’s defense follows a whirlwind few days in which he found himself perplexed by the severe blowback to his remarks in Helsinki.

He was initially reluctant to walk back his comments, but senior administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and chief of staff John Kelly encouraged him to “clarify” his remarks, according to a person familiar with the issue, prompting his unusual statement in the Cabinet Room on Tuesday.

At the White House and among the president’s outside advisers, Trump’s Tuesday statement was received with mixed reviews. One person close to the president worried it made him look weak and said his explanation was ham-fisted, while another said it was necessary given the outcry over his Helsinki news conference, which bothered even Trump’s most ardent defenders.

The mood in the White House on Tuesday was decidedly dark. After the White House Office of Management emailed staff about a routine internet outage, staffers turned to gallows humor, joking that Russia was behind it, according to an administration official.

Still, Trump’s confidants remain confused about exactly why the president insists on subtly questioning the intelligence community and maintaining such a close relationship with Russia. One person close to the president said his best explanation is that Trump has a deep-seated fear of being seen as an illegitimate president and he worries that fully endorsing the assessment that Russia interfered in the election will lend credence to claims that Hillary Clinton should have won.

While Trump’s opening months in office have been regularly punctuated with controversy, the criticism he has faced in the wake of his meeting with Putin has been especially fierce. The bilateral summit in Helsinki was seen by many as overly warm and absent the type of confrontation that many have argued was merited by Russia’s recent bad behavior on the world stage.

Though Trump claimed Wednesday that his performance at Monday’s meeting had been a hit within the intelligence community, his apparent willingness to accept Putin’s denial that Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 race prompted blowback from Coats.

“We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security,” Coats wrote in a statement earlier this week.

That evaluation was echoed on Wednesday night by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who said that Russia was still working to “sow divisiveness” in the U.S.

“The Intelligence community’s assessment has not changed. My view has not changed, which is that Russia attempted to interfere with the last election and that it continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day,” Wray said in an interview at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Perhaps further evidence that Trump’s news conference performance was poorly received came Tuesday, when the president took the rare step — for him — of admitting a mistake when he told reporters that he had misspoken at Monday’s event. When he said, “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia, Trump explained, he had meant to say “wouldn’t,” as in “I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia.”

Defenders of the president, usually numerous among Republican ranks, have been few and far in between in the wake of Trump’s Helsinki summit, with GOP lawmakers – including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – venting emotions ranging from frustration to outrage over Trump’s remarks.

But counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway appeared Wednesday on “Fox & Friends,” the morning news program the president is known to prefer, where she parroted Trump’s defiance, blaming the media for its emphasis on the Kremlin’s election meddling and the Obama administration for the state of U.S.-Russia relations.

“When the media talk about the Supreme Court, they only talk about abortion. When they talk about Russia and U.S., they only talk about election meddling. And yet, we have faith in the American people, who is our ultimate audience, to listen to everything this president is saying,” Conway said Wednesday.

“This nonsense that you shouldn’t even meet with the leader of the Kremlin, where were the media when other presidents did exactly that?” she said. “And it’s really ridiculous to not acknowledge that it is failures of the last administration.”

And Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who is close to Trump and was harshly critical of his performance in Helsinki, credited the president for making Tuesday’s correction. Like Conway, Gingrich was also eager to cast blame on the Obama administration, a frequent deflection tactic of the White House and its allies.

“This was a very important moment for this president. If he had not fixed this, if he had not had that talk in the Roosevelt Room, if he had not gone on to reinforce the American intelligence system, I think we would be in a much bigger mess right now,” Gingrich said. “I’m really delighted that he took a serious look at it. He hates to correct himself. That’s not who he is. But I think he did the right thing, and I think he did it well.”

Eleanor Mueller, Quint Forgey and Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.