This editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail sums up the situation:
Unlike so many other commentators commenting on U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments in Helsinki regarding his unquestionably somewhat full-throated tepid support for his current country’s intelligence services, we refuse to not jump to any inconclusive conclusions and are willing to see every side of the story from his standpoint alone.
It’s simply very difficult not to see that Mr. Trump obviously wasn’t saying what he didn’t mean when he misspoke correctly in Helsinki to the effect that he didn’t see any reason why it would be Russia that carried out Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election campaign – an election the President handily didn’t lose because he got the majority of the unpopular vote, we remind you.
Not even the least unsmart person couldn’t have seen that what Mr. Trump meant was that he did see a reason why it wouldn’t have been Russia that perpetrated Russian interference in the election he didn’t not win, but that he didn’t really want to not go there, what with the democratically elected president of Russia not right next to him, and instead being stuck beside Vladimir Putin, the very dictator who is definitely not pulling the puppet strings that are not attached to his body.
To his millions of very, very few naysayers, we point out that Mr. Trump completely clarified his thoughts pretty good the next day when he recited in a totally non-unspontaneous way the words, “I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there. Uh, there was no collusion!"
What could impossibly be unclearer? Can we not now drop this frivolous matter of critical importance and let Mr. Trump get on with the job he was barely elected to do; that is, of putting ironic quotation marks around such words as “presidential," “truth," “fact” and “ally”? Wouldn’t that be better for every single one of us who is currently the President of the United States? As he himself might put it, we don’t see any reason why it would be.