Like most of the breathless reporting on the Trump administration, this supposed Helsinki scoop is not as scandalous as it’s made out to be. As it turns out, this story is no more complicated than a technical error, according to the Washington Post’s Philip Bump, who noted his paper’s transcript of the press conference also excluded references to the Reuters question.
“[Our transcript] came from Bloomberg Government and ours, too, excluded the first part of the reporters question in which he begins, ‘President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election,'" he writes. “If you watch the videos, it’s pretty clear. At some point in the middle of that question, there’s a switch between the feed from the reporters and the feed from the translator. In the White House version of the video, you can hear the question being asked very faintly under the woman who is translating saying ‘president.’â€
