"Let me begin by saying that, once again, I have full faith in America's intelligence agencies," he said. Illustration: Matt Golding Then the press conference descended into darkness ... literally. The lights had gone out. "Maybe that's the intelligence agencies," joked Trump. "That was strange." He continued: "I have felt very strongly that while Russia's actions had no impact at all on the outcome of the election, let me be totally clear - and I have said this many times - that I accept our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place."

Trump said he thought he had communicated this clearly at the joint press conference only to find out that others had a slightly different interpretation. "What is going on? What's the big deal?" Trump apparently asked his staff when he saw that people were acting as if he'd strangled a puppy on live TV. Bemused, he reviewed a clip of the press conference and - aha! - there it was. The source of the confusion. US President Donald Trump in Helsinki. Credit:AP "I thought it would be obvious, but I would like to clarify, just in case it wasn't," Trump told the gathered media. "At a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word 'would' instead of 'wouldn't'."

Trump was referring to a much-quoted line from the press conference in which he said: "I have President Putin; he just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be." What he had meant to say was: "I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia." This was, he explained, "sort of a double negative"; the presidential equivalent of the Rolling Stones singing "I can't get no satisfaction" or Al Jolson saying "You ain't heard nothin' yet, folks." Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to US President Donald Trump Credit:AP The mind immediately wondered how other pivotal moments in history could have been affected by a similar slip. Winston Churchill declaring "We won't fight them on the beaches" for instance, or Martin Luther King jnr announcing he didn't have a dream today.

A politician "misspeaking", of course, is nothing new. Richard Nixon's press secretary Ron Ziegler popularised the phrase: “The president misspoke himself” to explain his gaffes. Hillary Clinton said she misspoke when she said she came under sniper fire in Bosnia; so did Mitt Romney when explaining why he said, "I'm not concerned about the very poor." Loading Having corrected the record, Trump breezily told reporters: "You can put that in, and I think that probably clarified things pretty good by itself." Accepting this interpretation would, it's worth noting, require ignoring pretty much everything else that happened in the Helsinki press conference. Including the fact that, when invited to, Trump declined to say he believed his intelligence agencies over Putin. Or that he had said he has confidence in "both parties" when assessing who was telling the truth. This raises the possibility that Trump, burnt by the hostile reaction to his performance, was simply engaging in a desperate attempt at damage control. To cosy up to Putin one day then, the next, to insist he did no such thing. A transparent bid to shift the blame from his own actions to a biased media twisting his words out of context.