This is simply to give Trump a pass that a child wouldn’t deserve. He’s a grown man who is protecting Russia. He spoke with intention initially, he knew what he was saying. He knew what the words meant. He threw the DOJ under the bus to protect himself and Russia. Consciously.
There’s one in every cloud. Er, crowd.
This is not to give him a pass. It’s not “Oh, it’s okay because he doesn’t know what he is saying”, it’s “He doesn’t know what he is saying, so pretty much disregard anything he says. It’s all just crap”
I told my little boy yesterday that, as he was away with school for a few days, I wouldn’t take his sister to see Incredibles 2 until he came back.
This morning, just before he goes I told him that I misspoke and meant to say that I wouldn’t *not *take her.
He didn’t buy it and he’s a child.
He read a hostage video statement and could not contain himself by adding “it could have been other people” to it. I voted “other” because it was forced upon him and he didn’t mean one word he said. He showed his real character in Helsinki, this was just a hope that changing one word gets him off the hook.
If that were the only statement he made at the news conference, then it could be a slip of the tongue.
Trouble was, he said many more things that indicated he didn’t think Putin was behind it.
Backpedaling. To me the only other possible explanation would be a Freudian Slip of some kind.
Yeah, that’s my take. Plus, this isn’t the first time he’s said something similar.
I think it’s very obvious he’s backpedaling. I think he knows there’s meddling, but I don’t think he wants to accuse Putin to his face, with accompanying footage. I also don’t think he expected Republicans to criticize him so hard.
He’s full of shit. You can tell he’s full of shit during his “clarification” and the entire GOP is craven for using it as cover.
There are accounts that he learned of the negative reaction on AF1 on his way back. He thought it went well and I think was quite surprised at the criticism, particularly from his pet toadie Hannity. He was like a toddler who pooped on the floor and points to it proudly and is surprised when he gets a spanking.
Mainly just the ones who aren’t running for re-election, and have the liberty to speak the truth. The rest are keeping their heads down, waiting to be told he’s become a serious liability and has to go, but not saying it themselves.
As for Trump, truth and lying are meaningless words to him. He genuinely does not know or care as long as he thinks he’s “winning”.
I will never buy the assertion that Trump doesn’t know when he’s lying.
It’s beyond obvious that he was backpedaling, and I don’t think this is a serious question.
That said, I don’t think the initial statement was as depicted by many posters here either. You have to consider the following:
[ul]
[li]Trump tends to be very non-confrontational when in the presence of actual people even when he might be trashing them out of their presence. (E.g. he tends to say nice things about relations with Europe when in the physical presence of European leaders.)[/li][li]Trump views the entire Russia spying issue almost entirely in the context of being a challenge to the legitimacy of his historic landslide victory, and is thus emotionally hostile to acknowledging it as a serious issue.[/li][li]Trump is an idiot who does not understand the implications of things he says and how they will be perceived by more intelligent people (and by extension, by the public at large).[/li][/ul]
IMO it’s a mistake to look any further than the above. He was asked about the issue with Putin standing right there, and he blurted out something that seemed to his semi-coherent mind to make some sort of sense, would not embarrass Putin, and was in line with his feelings.
It’s been reported that Trump was initially very pleased with his performance and had a huge epiphany when he found out how it went over. This was not some sort of big strategic move here.
After almost two years, hasn’t it become painfully obvious who and what this man is?
There’s another major factor: Trump has gotten used to having his supporters believe anything he says and takes it for granted.
Turns out he’s pretty sure “many people at the higher ends of intelligence” loved his press conference performance. :rolleyes:
He won’t even accuse Putin from thousands of miles away! Sitting in the White House yesterday, he read his script saying that he totally believes his intelligence teams’ assertions that Russia/Putin did it, and then felt compelled to add “or it could have been other people.”
It was neither.
It was a desperate figleaf for the Republicans in Congress. And it wasn’t his idea. His babysitters made him do it after changing his diapers.
Many people at the higher ends of intelligence believe he’s the greatest president since Benjamin Franklin. IOW, just standard Trump jive.
Another major factor: Trump is a coward and would rather trash America than say something negative about Putin while he’s four feet away.
Supposedly, Trump gave Rosenstein the green light to announce the Russian indictments before the meeting (Rosenstein offered to wait until Monday) because Trump thought it would strengthen his hand. Holy shit, Trump got rolled so hard in that meeting that it boggles the mind to think what a “weak hand” would have looked like. We’d probably be annexed by now. I guess he did get that great offer from Putin to help investigate the twelve indicted Russians – on the condition that Russia could also investigate any suspicious Americans.