What has that got to do with it? There’s no rule saying you can’t be polite to people while you’re debating them. Until Trump, it was expected that you would.
I was remembering this incident with Merkel at the G7 summit:
As of now only one person voted “misspoke.” That person obviously didn’t see Trump’s original remarks, or doesn’t understand English, or is Donald Trump.
The thing is that a real President would never have asked Putin the question in the first place. He would have demanded Putin stop, and hinted at retaliation if Putin failed to stop. The Russian cyberattacks are matters of fact and the plainness of that fact should simply be the official American position.
“Diplomacy” does not mean “sucking dick.” Sometimes you have to be blunt. When Kennedy met Khruschev in Vienna, that was not on the surface any different from Trump meeting Putin. Two leaders of rival nations met to talk. The different is that Kennedy was there to represent the USA. When Khruschev refused to be reasonable about Berlin, Kennedy said “Then, Mr. Chairman, there will be war.” You have to be tough sometimes.
Kennedy did not threaten war because he wanted war. He threatened it because if he did not, the Soviets would have assumed the West didn’t have the nads, and would have taken what they wanted until there WAS war. Trump’s grovelling to Putin will now embolden the Russians. The US midterm elections will be attacked ferociously. Hacking and cyberattacks will flourish. Social media will be flooded with Russian disinformation. Other Western countries will be attacked in the same way.
God, yes. But Trump has gutted the diplomatic corps both intentionally and through attrition as skilled career professionals leave the State Department because they see the writing on the wall.
Trump wants to pretend that he’s a real tough guy, but Trump’s version of being tough is to stiff a drywall contractor and then threaten to sue with his army of lawyers if the guy complains. That and calling people names on Twitter. Putin’s not impressed by that. To Putin, Trump is just another soft, aging, obsequious oligarch with a trophy wife and Putin already has tons of those guys under his thumb. Trump was outclassed by a mile from the start and it’s professional malpractice that his staff even let him go through with the meeting.
We’re up to two votes for “misspoke”. Would either of those voters like to reveal themselves?
I am watching Anderson Cooper. The chyron is “We’ll leave the gaslight on for you, part 7”. I have no problem at all believing that Russia has some seriously bad kompromat on him.
He is backpedaling. This misspoke stuff is nonsense. Still he is doing an extraordinary job as President. If an establishment approved President of any party said the same words, NPR and CNN, etc would have seen his words for what they were: ho hum formalities. Instead, they need to pounce on him for something, anything: god forbid the sheeple stop being useful idiots an start thinking about the issues with some semblence of logic and reason.
I wised I’d posted this, so hard! 
I’m not really sure I can call it backpedalling, either, because that implies he changed what he said. Instead, he just rephrased the statement in other terms. He is definitely lying about having misspoke, though.
Trump often toggles back and forth, on the trade question, between 'but it’s not X [foreign country]‘s fault, it’s the fault of weak and stupid previous American leaders’ but then shortly after saying things which do seem to blame the foreign countries/leaders. He’s used both rhetorical tacks when speaking to adoring crowds, tweeting, and in press conferences at home or abroad. Although it doesn’t seem he’s used the second tack much in proximity to Xi, only sometimes in proximity to allied leaders.
It doesn’t really apply either way with Putin since there’s such a limited trading relationship. Which is another possible way to understand Trump’s attitude toward Putin and Russia besides
-‘kompromat’ (I don’t buy it based on evidence so far)
-willing Agent Orange (same)
-Trump’s vanity about the 2016 election, can’t separate in his mind (for long) the fact of Russian meddling v the claim he only won because of Russian meddling. (definitely a big part of it)
-general affinity for ‘strong men’ (another part of it)
The other difference is trade. IMO Trump has no real policy views besides ‘what will bring adulation to Trump’ on most issues. But trade is one of the exceptions. I think he really believes trade agreements heretofore have worked against US interests, and has been saying that for decades, where his views on most other things have been all over the place (eg. in favor of nationalized health care at one point, or at least allowed his ghost writers to say he was, etc). Trump makes and has always made simplistic arguments in favor of his position on trade, and I don’t personally much buy the trade-skeptic view as a practical policy at this point* even from people who make better arguments. The point is that Trump’s view of ‘foes’ based on trade is long standing. He mutes personal criticism of Xi more than say Merkel or Trudeau because of his affinity for ‘strong’, and views those refined Western leaders as ‘weak’. But with Putin and Russia there is no real basis for conflict based on trade, because there’s so little trade (especially with US sanctions Trump might not like but hasn’t been able to change).
Anyway obviously Trump back pedaled on the ‘would’/‘wouldn’t’ thing. Maybe I didn’t read the thread carefully enough to see, but I wonder the explanation of the couple of votes saying Trump actually meant at the time to say ‘I don’t a reason why it wouldn’t be Russia’. Those people must have misspoken in their answer to the question. 
*I think it has a little more validity on a hindsight basis, but lots of ‘toothpaste already out of the tube’ aspects to it. Maybe so swiftly embracing China as part of the world trading community was a mistake, but it’s done. I don’t see much prospect now of reversing the damage to various US industries, communities etc with protectionism as opposed to not having opened as much to China in the first place. And it’s strategically foolish to make trade a multi-front ‘war’ against allies at the same time.
The number for Trump backpedaling has multiplied by 3.5… but the number for Trump misspeaking has gone up by 100%!!! Obviously, 100 is much bigger than 3.5, so clearly the Red Wave against Fake News is rising!!! #MAGA
Other. The art of the deal is to tell people whatever will get your deal done. “Lying,” not “backpedaling.”
Apparently, the Republicans who are satisfied with his “clarification” haven’t really thought through what that means. (Big surprise there.) If he indeed meant to say "I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be [Russia who interfered], then he believes that they must have had pretty good reasons for doing so that no one else would. It’s a fact that Putin hates Hillary and Putin said during the meeting that he wanted Trump to win. So Trump is admitting that Russia and only Russia had reasons to interfere and that they did so to help him get elected.
I honestly believe that he said what he initially said thinking that he wouldn’t get any significant backlash from it. He learned early on how easy it was to undermine his opponents and he’s been laying the groundwork for his statements for a long time, so he never expected the reaction he got. He’s been undermining the FBI and intelligence agencies from day one, this was the logical endpoint for him.
Imagine his surprise when the reactions he got were not anything close to what he expected them to be. The formula had always worked before. Now he’s trapped into walking it back, and he doesn’t know how to do that because he never has before, so he keeps trying to work the angle by throwing in some caveats so he can later declare that the formula still works.
The same among us see it for what it is from the start. He only needs to fool the insane.
He didn’t misspeak because he has said basically the same thing many times since his election.
For some people, no.
QED