Trump Dances And Republicans Play The Same Old Refrain

Nobody Who Actually Could Do Something Moves To Do Anything Substantive In The Wake Of Trump’s “Clarification” Of The Putin Meeting Where He Praised The Russian Leader And Trashed His Own Country…Instead, Republican Rebukes From Just A Day Ago Turn Into Talk About “Moving Forward”

Let’s get a couple of things straight off the bat:

• Trump never actually used the word “misspoke” in describing what happened during his news conference with Putin. If you listen to his uncomfortable and excessively busy explanation, Trump comes very close to making it sound like he was misquoted. Because he said the wrong word:

“It should’ve been obvious. I thought it would be obvious. But I would like to clarify in case it wasn’t. In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t’. The sentence should’ve been: ‘I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t, or why it wouldn’t be Russia.”

What Trump actually said at the news conference was:

“My people came to me — [Intelligence Chief] Dan Coats came to me and some others — they said…