US President Donald Trump has gone back on his earlier remarks in Finland about Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, a day after he ignited a nationwide and bipartisan furor by siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Addressing reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump claimed that he had misspoken during a joint press conference with Putin in the Finnish capital of Helsinki, and meant the opposite of what he said there.
“He just said it’s not Russia,” the US president had said in Helsinki, repeating Putin’s denials of interference in the vote. “I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
Conceding an extraordinary syntactical slip, Trump said during a brief appearance at the White House that the comments needed “some clarification” after his close allies called on him to change course.
“I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,’” Trump told reporters, reading from a prepared…