Barry Soper: America brought to its knees

COMMENT: The American chest beating was deafening.

A presidential missing contraction had both Republican and Democrat lawmakers in a flap.

America had been brought to its knees, Donald Trump had put the country last in his public appearance with the devil incarnate, the Russian bear Vladimir Putin.

He'd certainly made America grate again when he stood, bowing and scraping alongside Putin in Helsinki saying his Russian counterpart was very strong in his denial that he or his country interfered with the American presidential election in 2016.

So impressive was he, and so unimpressive was the US intelligence agencies who'd established the case, that The Don said he "couldn't see why the Russians would have" interfered.

The American political establishment went into convulsions. Their great country had been brought to its knees but if Trump is to be believed, he was blissfully unaware of what all the fuss was about.

The mood was so dark when he arrived back in Washington he called for a transcript of what he'd said in the Finnish capital.

With a gasp of breath he realised what he'd done, he'd missed the contraction and had meant to say he couldn't see why the Russians "wouldn't" have interfered given all the evidence that had been presented.

He summoned the media into the Oval Office and seemed to blame them for what he'd said.

The President said he thought it'd be obvious "but I'd like to clarify it just in case it wasn't".

Forget the sentiment he'd expressed about Putin being a man of his word in the lead-up to the offending sentence, it was just a minor slip-up.

But in correcting the contraction he appeared to get into an argument with himself.

He now accepts the finest US intelligence gathering machine on earth found the Russians interfered with the election, but then in the next breath said it could have been other people "there are a lot of other people out there".

This President daily stumbles from one offensive, unguarded outburst to the next, as evidenced in Europe and the UK last week.

Don't forget North Korea's hermit leader Kim Jong Un's "very honourable", and the Philippines' President, the tyrant Rodrigo Duterte's doing an "unbelievable job".

They are just a couple of other mind numbing examples of the tongue getting ahead of the brain.

But what was the rooting for Putin stuff all about?

Long time Russian analyst, retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, says Trump's a slave of Putin, he's scared of him, he's a perfect target for blackmail.

The same sentiment has been expressed by many others who ask again why hasn't he, like other Presidents, made public his tax declarations, suggesting business collusion with the Kremlin?