Warner: I give Trump 24 hours before he sides with Putin again

Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Tuesday dismissed President Trump’s walkback of his comments during a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Warner told CNN that he didn’t believe Trump, who said that he “misspoke” Monday when he said he saw no reason why it “would be Russia” who interfered with the U.S. presidential election in 2016, siding with Putin’s version over his own intelligence agencies.

{mosads}“My feeling is this has a strange resemblance to the president’s comments after he was so offensive to the disturbances in Charlottesville that he equated the neo-Nazis with the protesters,” Warner said, referring to the president’s defense of “good people” on “both sides” of the violence caused by white nationalists in Virginia last year.

“He then walked back those comments a couple of days later for about 12 hours before he got on another Fox TV show or tweeted again,” the Virginia Democrat added.

“So, I give these comments about 24 hours before he once again slams the investigation, before he once again sided with authoritarians like Vladimir Putin.”

The president said Tuesday at the White House that he meant to say that he saw no reason why it “wouldn’t” have been Russia who interfered with the 2016 election.

Trump’s initial remarks Monday spurred a flurry of critical reactions from Republicans and Democrats, with some of the latter reacting to the press conference with calls for impeachment.

The president has frequently denied that his campaign colluded with Russia in any way during the 2016 race and repeated that view on Tuesday at the White House.

“I have felt very strongly that while Russia’s actions had no impact at all on the outcome of the election, let me be totally clear in saying … that I accept our American intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place,” the president said, sitting in front of notes with the handwritten addition of “no collusion.”