One of the most explosive exchanges from the Trump-Putin press conference is missing from the White House transcript. But why? @UriLF reports: https://t.co/mYmFx7XTWC
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) July 17, 2018
Understanding what Putin said depends on what you watch or where you look. If you watch the video of the news conference provided by the Russian government, or by news outlets such as PBS and the Associated Press, you will hear the Reuters reporter Jeff Mason ask a bombshell of a question: “President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”
Putin then responds with a bombshell of an answer, according to the English translation of his remarks that was broadcast during the press conference: “Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.”
In preparation for a public statement meant to mitigate the damage his news conference with Vladimir Putin, the Washington Post reports that President Trump “brought four pages of handwritten notes to a meeting with congressional leaders and in his own distinctive scrawl, he added notes to the prepared comments. And in several instances, he struck out things he planned to skip.”
Photos of the pages taken by a photographer at the meeting show that Trump struck out a line about bringing “anyone involved in that meddling to justice.”
