By WPRO News and the Associated Press
New England’s members of Congress continue to weigh in on President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin after Trump walked back some of his remarks.
On Tuesday, Trump tried to “clarify” his public undermining of American intelligence agencies, saying he had misspoken when he said he saw no reason to believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
“The sentence should have been, ’I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t, or why it wouldn’t be Russia’ instead of “’why it would,’” Trump said, in a rare admission of error by the bombastic U.S. leader. His comment came — amid rising rebuke by his own party — about 27 hours after his original, widely reported statement, which he made at a Monday summit in Helsinki standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place,” Trump said Tuesday. But he added, as he usually does, “It could be other people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all.”
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed said Wednesday thatTrump’s claim that he misspoke is “completely implausible.”
“He says something which is, in his mind, exactly what he thinks and a few moments later or a few days later when he runs into some difficulty, he claims it was made up by someone else or he didn’t mean it,” Reed told WPRO’s Gene Valicenti.
Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy also wasn’t buying Trump’s assertions of misspeaking.
“He walked back the walkback in the next sentence,” he said on CNN.
Kennedy wants Trump’s translator brought before lawmakers, subpoenaed about what was said during Trump’s one on one meeting with Putin.
“We need to understand what happened in that meeting. With all due respect to the President, I’m not so sure I trust, given his actions over the course of the past 36 hours, exactly what he’s going to say to be forthcoming to the American public,” Kennedy said.
