What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to get a mulligan.

More than a full day after he publicly sided (more than once) with Vladimir Putin against the entire U.S. intelligence community's confirmation that Russia had tampered with the 2016 election, Trump tried to undo some of the damage by changing a single word of the 46-minute press conference. Specifically, that instead of what he did say—

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. My people came to me -- Dan Coats came to me and some others -- they 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 actually meant to say

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. My people came to me -- Dan Coats came to me and some others -- they 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 wouldn't be.

There wasn't much evidence that anyone's mind was changed, not least because Trump has been making exactly that defense of Putin since before the election. An angry Trump staffer—possibly one of the briefers who had tried unsuccessfully to overwhelm Trump with evidence of Russia's wrongdoing right before the summit—put it this way: "I think he was more truthful yesterday than today and is capitulating to an angry caucus."

There was also a lack of the usual Trump showmanship in the announcement. Trump had a script prepared, which he read in a subdued (or as he might say, "low energy") fashion with his arms folded. Trump had personally edited the script in black marker: he crossed out a reference to bringing "anyone involved in that meddling to justice," and added a reminder to himself to insist that there had been "NO COLUSION [sic]."

Probably the biggest tell, in a day that didn't really need them, was that Trump (ad-libbing away from the script his staff had given him) immediately fell back into language that let Putin off the hook. Trump read aloud, "I accept our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place," but then, without pausing to draw breath, added, "Could be other people also. A lot of people out there."

This has been Trump's standard fall-back position when pressed on Russia's attack: that even if Russia attacked our democratic elections, it's not important because anyone--for example, "somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds"—might have done it.

To go along with Trump's new version of events, the White House also released a document today titled "President Donald J. Trump is Protecting Our Elections and Standing Up to Russia’s Malign Activities." It incorrectly lists as a Trump administration action Congressionally-imposed sanctions on Russia that Trump fought at every turn against implementing.

In reality, Trump had been promising to end those sanctions since 2015 when, at an NRA convention speech, he unexpectedly took a question from a Russian audience member and in his answer said that there was no need for U.S. sanctions against the Putin regime for its occupation of Crimea. The person asking the question was Mariia Butina, who was indicted today on conspiracy charges. Butina used a fake gun-rights organization as a front to forge secret relationships with American politicians so that Russia could secretly influence them.

Why is this a problem?

• Lies are bad, but lies this obvious are insulting.

• Presidents don't really get to take credit for the normal functioning of the government, especially if they had to be forced to take part in it.