Trump, however, was not interested in holding the Russians accountable. He was focused on forging a better friendship with Putin during their tête-à-tête in Helsinki. “He’s not my enemy, and hopefully, someday, maybe he’ll be a friend. It could happen,” Trump said. When a Washington Post reporter asked him if he intended to confront Putin on election interference, Trump mocked the very suggestion—“your favorite question about meddling”—and said he expected Putin to deny it yet again. Earlier, when the CBS anchor Jeff Glor asked Trump during a one-on-one interview whether he would ask Putin to extradite the twelve indicted Russian agents, Trump replied that he “hadn’t thought” of doing so.
On July 16, Trump and Putin spent two hours meeting alone, joined only by their interpreters, inside Finland’s neoclassical Presidential Palace along Helsinki’s glistening waterfront. Unlike in most foreign leader meetings, there was no note taker to compile an official record of what was said or what promises were made. What came next was historically unprecedented. As he held forth with Putin for a forty-six-minute joint news conference, Trump refused to endorse the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russian government had tried to sabotage the U.S. election to help him win. In fact, he said he took the word of Putin over the collective assessment of his own intelligence agencies. Trump demurred when Jonathan Lemire of the Associated Press asked, “Would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin—would you denounce what happened in 2016? And would you warn him to never do it again?”
“All I can do is ask the question,” Trump replied. Referring to his director of national intelligence, the president continued, “My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others and said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
Trump then raised a series of questions about Hillary Clinton’s emails before adding, “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”
Inside Mueller’s office, the prosecutors investigating Russian election interference watched the televised coverage with a mixture of concern and grim resignation. Intelligence operators had determined Putin had ordered the interference. The prosecutors also knew Trump had repeatedly been provided evidence of it.
Trump’s performance in Helsinki sparked horror among the national security establishment in Washington. He thought he had come across as strong, but an hour into his flight home Trump’s mood darkened as he watched cable news on a satellite feed and was shown printouts of statements from fellow Republicans condemning his comments. Even for some of the president’s Republican allies, Helsinki was an out-of-body experience. Coats effectively rebuked his boss, saying that the intelligence assessment of Russia’s “ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy” was clear and had been presented to Trump in an unvarnished fashion.
Senator John McCain did not mince words in his statement: “Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.” The Arizona Republican senator added, “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”
Suddenly the word “treason” became part of the public debate about Trump. The former CIA director John Brennan called Trump’s comments “nothing short of treasonous.” A dam had broken.
After consulting with Sanders and other aides in his private cabin aboard Air Force One, Trump issued a tweet trying to seal the leak in the dam: “I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people.” But the uproar continued. Even such reliable boosters as the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich—whose wife, Callista, served as Trump’s ambassador to the Vatican—and Brian Kilmeade, a Fox & Friends host, said Trump made an error and should correct his statement. Back at the White House, Trump confided in friends that he did not understand what the big fuss was about. He thought the summit had been an undeniable success. But for the president’s aides, a haphazard scramble was under way to blunt the global fallout from Helsinki. This would be a week of corrections and clarifications.
At about 8:30 in the morning on July 17, Trump called counselor Kellyanne Conway, who was at her West Wing desk, and told her to meet him in the private dining room off the Oval Office. The president was upset. He had been watching brutal cable television analysis about his “I don’t see any reason why it would be” comment.
“That isn’t what I said,” Trump told Conway.
“It is what you said,” Conway told him.
“I didn’t say that,” the president insisted. “Why would I say that?”
“That’s a great question,” Conway said. “Why did you say that?”
Trump had written down what he meant to say in Helsinki: “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” He handed Conway the piece of paper. “I meant to say this,” he told her. “Here, go out and tell everybody that this is what I meant to say.”
“No,” Conway said. “I think you should do that. . . .
“You need to clear that up right away,” she added. “That’s not just a difference of three letters. That’s a difference of intent.”
Vice President Pence, newly installed communications chief Bill Shine, Kelly, Bolton, Miller, and Sanders soon came into the room to huddle around and help Trump draft a statement to deliver that afternoon clarifying his Helsinki remarks and addressing the concerns of his intelligence chiefs. Speaking from the Cabinet Room, a day after facing Putin, Trump claimed that when he said “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia, he meant to say, “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” This, the president explained, was “sort of a double negative.”
But on July 18, at a cabinet meeting, Cecilia Vega of ABC News asked Trump whether he believed the Russians were still targeting the United States. The president responded with just one word, “No,” once again contradicting his own intelligence chiefs and his own correction. Sanders later told reporters Trump was not answering Vega’s question. “He was saying, ‘No,’ he’s not taking questions.” But it was too late.
The next day, July 19, Trump gave Bolton an order: schedule a second summit with Putin and invite the Russian president to visit him in Washington. Bolton sprang into action to make an overture to the Kremlin, and by afternoon the White House announced that planning was under way for a fall visit. The Putin trip would not end up happening. At this very moment, Coats, the director of national intelligence, was speaking at the Aspen Security Forum. The intelligence chief acknowledged that he wished Trump had made a different statement in Helsinki and that he ought not to have met with Putin alone. Coats also spoke forcefully about the continuing and “undeniable” threat of Russia’s interference in America’s elections.