(CNN) President Donald Trump had one clear mission when he spoke to the press Tuesday afternoon before meeting with a handful of congressional Republicans: Clean up the damage he did on Monday when he broke with the intelligence community by suggesting that Russia might not have been behind the 2016 election interference and arguing that there was blame on both sides of the matter.

"I have a full faith and support for America's great intelligence agencies," Trump said, reading slowly from a page of written remarks -- a major break from his usual freewheeling style in these sorts of situations. Then, Trump added this: "I accept our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place -- could be other people also."

Focus on the five words at the end there: "Could be other people also."

Those five words not only totally undermine what Trump was trying to do with his post-Helsinki summit comments but also run afoul of the intelligence community's 2017 report on Russian interference in the election. That report, which carried the unanimous endorsement of the entire US intelligence community, said that Russia interfered in the election with the express goal of helping Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton. Nowhere else in the IC report is there a mention of another country being even possibly responsible for the broad and deep election-meddling effort focused on the 2016 campaign.

What those five words reveal is that Trump is still not at all convinced that Russia was the one who interfered in the 2016 election -- or, at a minimum, that Russia acted alone. Which means that in purposely trying to fix the mess he made by suggesting he didn't totally believe his own intelligence community, Trump made the point that he doesn't totally believe his own intelligence community.

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