Russia doesn’t own him, the voters do
Jul 18, 2018, 6:01 AM | Updated: 9:50 am
(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
It turns out the president said the exact opposite of what he meant to say when he was asked that question about Russian meddling Monday.
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“President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be,” President Trump said Monday.
But as he explained on Tuesday:
“I said the word ‘would,’ instead of wouldn’t. The sentence should have been: I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t, or why it wouldn’t be Russia.”
OK. Mistakes happen.
And I can hear some of you say, “don’t cut him any slack Dave, he is obviously desperate to prove he was legitimately elected.”
But I say he was legitimately elected. Russians may have spread wild stories about Hillary Clinton, but no Russian grabbed the hand of an American voter and yanked it over to the Trump column.
Voters had to believe those stories for them to be effective, and if they believed a bogus story, that’s on them, not Trump. Trump is governing just as he said he would — as in without a script. That’s what his supporters like about him.
So Russia doesn’t own him. His voters own him. He legitimately won the right to push his policies as far as he can for four years.
Therefore I say, let’s just move on. It was a mistake and he corrected it.
Just like when Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, make that wall twice as high!” and then clarified himself the next day. Which I realize didn’t happen.