It’s rare for Donald Trump to acknowledge he’s made a tactical error, and even rarer for him to attempt to clean up his mess. Yet after the president told George Stephanopoulos that he would happily accept opposition research provided by a foreign government—and probably wouldn’t report it to the FBI—he’s making a concerted effort to control the fallout.

On Friday, Trump ratcheted up his defense to a friendly audience. “First of all, I don’t think anybody would present me with anything bad because they know how much I love this country,” he said on a morning call to Fox & Friends. “Of course, you have to look at it, because if you don’t look at it you’re not going to know if it’s bad—how are you going to know if it’s bad? But of course, you give it to the FBI or report to the attorney general or somebody like that.”

Whether that spin can explain away the words that tumbled out of Trump’s mouth to a stunned Stephanopoulos remains to be seen. “There’s nothing wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country...I think I’d wanna hear it. It’s not an interference,” he said earlier this week. When asked whether he’d give said information to the FBI, as Director Christopher Wray recommended, Trump shrugged. “This is somebody that said, ‘We have information on your opponent.’ ‘Oh, let me call the FBI.’ Give me a break. Life doesn’t work that way.”

It was a particularly poor choice of words given Trump’s infamous airtime request to Russia to unearth Hillary Clinton’s emails: “Russia, if you’re listening…” For many Democrats, the comments represented a similar invitation. As such, members of the caucus renewed their calls for impeachment with gusto. Even Senator Lindsey Graham, a loyal Trump acolyte if ever there was one, put out a statement suggesting that maybe Trump had erred. “I believe that it should be practice for all public officials who are contacted by a foreign government with an offer of assistance to their campaign—either directly or indirectly—to inform the FBI and reject the offer,” he said. Graham told the Hill he’d had to explain in a phone call that accepting intelligence from foreign officials is illegal. “What the president is saying is, ‘I didn’t say I’d take it,’” said Graham, recounting the call. “I said, ‘Well, Mr. President, here’s what the law is. You’ll have a conversation with somebody that’s pulling for you or wants to help you, you can say, ‘No you can’t, you’re not an American citizen.’”

Other congressional Republicans are doing their level best to deflect. In an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Thursday night, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell turned the blame on Democrats. “They just can't let it go, Laura,” he said of Dems’ supposed obsession with foreign election interference. “The fundamental point is that they are trying to keep the 2016 election alive and the investigation alive when the American people have heard enough.”

But McConnell must know it’s a lame excuse. And Trump’s comments to Fox indicate that, between Graham’s public statements and his White House aides’ private advice, the president has some inkling he messed up. Indeed, his remarks to Stephanopoulos could very well haunt his reelection bid, especially if the government Trump declined to single out—Russia, say—offers him a leg-up once again.

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