Donald Trump sought to partially reverse course on Tuesday in the face of furious, bipartisan criticism of his public undermining of US intelligence agencies during a press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.



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The US president sought to bring closure after more than 24 hours of bitter recrimination by saying he had simply misspoken when he said in Finland that he saw no reason to believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 US election.

“The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t, or why it wouldn’t be Russia,’” instead of “why it would”, Trump said. “So you can put that in,” he added.



Even then, Trump could not resist muddying the waters further. Moments after telling reporters in the Roosevelt room of the White House that he accepted the assessment of US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election, he again cast doubt on who he thought was responsible.

“Let me be totally clear in saying that … I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion,” Trump said, reading from a prepared script. He then added: “It could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.”



It was not clear why Trump, who had tweeted half a dozen times and sat for two television interviews since the Putin news conference, waited so long to correct his remarks. Moreover, his scripted cleanup pertained only to the least defensible of his comments.

He did not reverse other statements in which he gave clear credence to Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful” denial of Russian involvement, raised doubts about his own intelligence agencies’ conclusions and advanced discredited conspiracy theories about election meddling.

He also accused past American leaders, rather than Russia’s destabilising actions in the US and around the world, for the souring of relations between two countries. And he did not address his other problematic statements during a week-long Europe tour, in which he sent the Nato alliance into emergency session and assailed the British prime minister, Theresa May, as she was hosting him for an official visit.

At one point during his remarks on Tuesday, the room was plunged into darkness when the TV lights switched off, prompting Trump to joke: “Whoops, they just turned off the lights. That must be the intelligence agencies.”

Play Video 0:27 Lights go out on Trump during Russia statement: 'Must be the intelligence agencies!' – video

Throughout Tuesday Republicans had struggled to defend the president on Capitol Hill. The House speaker, Paul Ryan, told reporters: “They did interfere in our elections. It’s really clear. There should be no doubt about that. Russia is trying to undermine democracy itself.



“I understand the desire and the need to have good relations. That’s perfectly reasonable. But Russia is a menacing government that does not share our interests and it does not share our values.”

Even the usually reserved Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, pushed back, telling reporters: “The European countries are our friends, and the Russians are not. The Russians need to understand there are a lot of us who really understand what happened in 2016 and it really better not happen again in 2018.”

The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said Trump was trying to “squirm away” from his comments alongside Putin. “It’s 24 hours too late and in the wrong place,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, said ‘It feels like the dam is breaking,’ but was ‘not sure’ whether the summit was a turning point for US politics. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Concrete legal or political action, however, was conspicuous by its absence.

Asked if he agreed with the former CIA director John Brennan’s characterization of the president’s actions as “treasonous”, Ryan said: “I do not.”

In Helsinki, Trump recorded two interviews with supportive Fox News hosts. Sean Hannity’s interview went out on Monday night. In excerpts of the Tucker Carlson interview publicised by Fox before its broadcast on Tuesday night, Trump lashed out at Brennan, who led the CIA under Barack Obama.

“I think Brennan is a very bad guy and if you look at it a lot of things happened under his watch,” Trump said. “I think he’s a very bad person.”

He also said the FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, former FBI director James Comey and former deputy director Andrew McCabe, all targets of Republican fire over the Russia investigation, were “bad people, and they’re being exposed for what they are”.

Democratic leaders escalated their criticism of Trump and insisted any response from Republicans would be insufficient without an attempt to hold him accountable. Schumer said the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and other members of the national security team who travelled to Finland should testify before Congress.

“The debasement of American interests before a foreign adversary demands a response,” the New Yorker said on the Senate floor. “Our Republican colleagues cannot just go, ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk.’ They must act if they want to help America.”

Schumer’s request was denied by John Cornyn, the second-ranking Senate Republican, who said: “There have been a lot of hearings.”

Cornyn told reporters he thought new sanctions might pass, saying: “We could find common ground to turn the screws on Russia.”



McConnell said there was a “possibility” for the Senate to take up bipartisan legislation that would levy further sanctions if Russia meddled in future elections. The bill, sponsored by Marco Rubio of Florida and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, would require the implementation of penalties within 10 days if the director of national intelligence determined interference took place.



McConnell was also pressed on whether Republicans had faith in Trump’s approach to Nato and Russia. “I’m not here to critique anyone else,” he said. “I’m here to speak for myself.”

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Neither Ryan nor McConnell joined calls for Congress to pass bipartisan legislation aimed at protecting special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference and links between Trump aides and Moscow. From the podium in Helsinki, Trump repeatedly denied collusion.

“I’ve been clear from day one,” Ryan said. “[Mueller] should be allowed to finish his investigation and carry out his work. Nothing’s changed.”

Some Republicans did concede it was time to send a clear message to Trump. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, told reporters one appropriate course of action would be to pass legislation limiting presidential authority on trade tariffs. A measure approved last week was entirely symbolic.

“It feels like the dam is breaking,” Corker said. But when asked whether the Trump-Putin summit marked an actual turning point in US politics, he said he was “not sure”.

“Things change around here so rapidly,” Corker said. “This has become like a reality show on a daily basis.”