There are a few things at play here - 1) the media will always pounce on the worst possible meaning of a quote by a politician they are at odds with (Fox did the same thing with Obama) and 2) Trump does himself no favors with his speaking style. He has major trouble articulating anything more complex than build the wall or lock her up. He clearly gets flustered very easily when in a setting that is even remotely adversarial. He is much more comfortable surrounded by like minded people at his rallies or on Twitter, where he has full control of the situation. Get him answering questions or commenting on something outside of his comfort zone and he quickly gets confused and combines a bunch of subjects into a single comment. The (liberal) media feasts on this and most people are too lazy to look at the bigger picture so they believe what they are told.
