RT (Russia Today) has an interesting take on what might have occurred. This is an excerpt from an article about whether Putin answered in the positive as to whether he helped Trump win the election or not:
Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?” Mason asked.
“Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the US-Russia relationship back to normal,” was Putin’s response, as provided by the translator.
Harlow took the repetition to mean agreement on both questions, and she insisted on replaying the clip after Lotter said he wasn’t sure, and that Putin might have been answering just the first part.
While the translator most certainly said that, Putin did not. His full answer, accurately translated from Russian, was, “Yes, I wanted him to win, because he talked about the need to normalize US-Russia relations.”
The Russian president notably did not address Mason’s second question at all. US reporters could have nitpicked that non-answer and used their favorite “he did not deny it” argument - just as they had with Putin’s dismissal of claims that Russia had “dirt” on Trump. Harlow, however, went a step further and argued that Putin actually agreed with Mason and admitted he ordered Russian officials to help Trump win.
Yet just a few minutes earlier, Putin had explained that the Russian public began to have sympathies towards candidate Trump because he spoke of the need to restore US-Russia relations.