President Trump defended the white nationalists who protested in Charlottesville on Tuesday, saying they included “some very fine people,” while expressing sympathy for their demonstration against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It was a strikingly different message from the prepared statement he had delivered on Monday, and a reversion to his initial response over the weekend.
Speaking in the lobby of Trump Tower at what had been billed as a statement on infrastructure, a combative Trump defended his slowness to condemn white nationalists and neo-Nazis after the melee in central Virginia, which ended in the death of one woman and injuries to dozens of others, and compared the tearing down of Confederate monuments to the hypothetical removal of monuments to the Founding Fathers. He also said that counter-protesters deserve an equal amount of blame for the violence.
“What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right?” Trump said. “Do they have any semblance of guilt?”
“I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me,” he said.
“You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists,” Trump said. “The press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
“You also had some very fine people on both sides,” he said.
The “Unite the Right” rally that sparked the violence in Charlottesville featured several leading names in the white-nationalist alt-right movement, and also attracted people displaying Nazi symbols. As they walked down the street, the white-nationalist protesters chanted “blood and soil,” the English translation of a Nazi slogan. One of the men seen marching with the fascist group American Vanguard, James A. Fields, is charged with deliberately ramming a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old counter-protester Heather Heyer.
Trump on Tuesday made an explicit comparison between Confederate generals and Founding Fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. “Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said. “This week, it is Robert E. Lee. And I notice that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
The substance of Trump’s unscripted remarks hewed more closely to his initial reaction to Charlottesville on Saturday, when he blamed “many sides” for what happened. On Monday, after two days of relentless criticism, Trump gave a stronger statement, saying “racism is evil” and specifically condemning white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, and neo-Nazis. Speaking to reporters shortly afterward, white nationalist Richard Spencer told reporters he didn’t see Trump’s remarks as a condemnation of his movement.
Tuesday’s appearance made it even clearer that those words had been forced on the president. Throughout his campaign, he was reluctant to disavow the white nationalists who have formed a vocal segment of his supporters. Asked if he had spoken to Heyer’s family in the days since her death, Trump said “we will be reaching out.”
Trump also addressed swirling rumors about the status of his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who has come in for another round of speculation this week that his job may be in danger. Trump is reportedly angry about the recent book Devil’s Bargain, by the Bloomberg Businessweek writer Joshua Green, which portrays Bannon as the key reason for Trump’s election victory.
The president defended Bannon as having been unfairly attacked as a racist in the press, but declined to say if he still has confidence in him.
“I like Mr. Bannon, he is a friend of mine,” Trump said. “But Mr. Bannon came on very late. You know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that. I like him. He is a good man. He is not a racist, I can tell you that. He is a good person. He actually gets very unfair press in that regard. We’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon. But he is a good person, and I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly.”
The remarks echo what Trump told the New York Post earlier this year during a similar moment of uncertainty about Bannon’s position. “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump told the Post in April.
President Trump’s argument Tuesday that left wing groups were just as violent as the white supremacists who staged a demonstration in Charlottesville set off a firestorm of criticism from members of his own party – and raised questions about his personal views of racial tensions in the country.
Just one day after Trump sought to tamp down on controversy by condemning white supremacists for their role in racially motivated clashes in the Virginia city, the president appeared to return to his highly criticized initial response that many sides were to blame for the weekend violence.
“What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, alt-right?” Trump told reporters in a chaotic impromptu press conference at Trump Tower. “Do they have any semblance of guilt? What about the fact they came charging with clubs in their hands?”
Trump said he couldn’t make a condemnation of hate groups earlier because he didn’t “know all the facts” about an alleged white nationalist who crashed a car into a crowd of protesters, killing one person and wounded 19 others.
“I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct,” Trump said from Trump Tower in New York, after an event that was intended to be devoted to a new infrastructure executive order.
Trump has been especially quick to denounce previous terrorist attacks, including those taking place overseas. Yet he was notably reticent to pinpoint the blame for one on Saturday that involved white supremacists – a point his critics on both sides of the aisle continued to hammer.
“We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. added: “There is only one side to be on when a white supremacist mob brutalizes and murders in America.”
Several lawmakers were dismayed the president appeared to equate white supremacists with their opponents. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., tweeted: “Blaming ‘both sides’ for #Charlottesville?! No. Back to relativism when dealing with KKK, Nazi sympathizers, white supremacists? Just no.”
Another Republican, Rep. Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania, said Trump “must stop the moral equivalency! AGAIN.”
Over the weekend, Trump faced heavy criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for chiding “many sides” for their role in the violence in Charlottesville on Saturday, a statement many regarded as tepid toward racists.
A full two days later, on Monday, Trump at the White House directly condemned the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and announced the Justice Department would open up a civil rights investigation into the driver of the car that killed Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer.
Yet on Tuesday, amid questions about whether Trump meant the words behind his most recent scripted statement, the president called his initial response “fine” and blamed the press for being dishonest in its coverage.
“There was no way of making a correct statement that early,” he said at one point. “I had to see the facts. Unlike a lot of reporters – I didn’t know (prominent white supremacist) David Duke was there. I wanted to see the facts.”
For his part, former KKK leader Duke tweeted a thank you to the president after his statement Tuesday – for condemning “the leftist terrorists” in Black Lives Matter and Antifa.
Trump also said “not all of those people” who attended the demonstration were not racist or neo-Nazi, but only wanted to protest the city’s plans to remove the Robert E. Lee statue.
That statement also drew catcalls from Republicans. “If you’re showing up to a Klan rally, you’re probably a racist or a bigot,” said Rep. Will Hurd, R-Tex., said on CNN.
And Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tweeted that “the organizers of events” that led to the Charlottesville terror attack “are 100% to blame.”
The white supremacists, Rubio tweeted, are “adherents of an evil ideology which argues certain people are inferior because of race, ethnicity or nation of origin…. When (there’s an) entire movement built on anger and hatred towards people different than you, it justifies and ultimately leads to violence against them.”
Rubio offered a direct message to Trump: “Mr. President, you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame… (they) will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win. We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected.”
The president was slated to only discuss infrastructure during his appearances, but took questions from reporters for more than 15 minutes, most of them about Charlottesville. Some aides looked dismayed as he answered more questions.
During a rollicking, impromptu news conference in which Trump and reporters frequently argued and interrupted each other, the president also:
Questioned moves by local government to remove Confederate statues and monuments from public places
Trump openly wondered whether tributes to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are at risk because they were slave owners. “You really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” Trump said. On the other hand, Trump said local governments are free to make their own decisions on these issues.
Refused to say whether he thought the “alt-left” were as bad as the white supremacists who organized a demonstration in defense of the Robert E. Lee statue
“You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent,” Trump said. While Trump said he condemned neo-Nazis, he said “not all of those people” at the rally were neo-Nazis or white supremacists “by any stretch.”
The Anti-Defamation League disputed Trump’s comments, tweeting that “comparisons between white supremacists & counter protesters are beyond the pale.”
Distanced himself from chief strategist Steve Bannon, whose role has been in the spotlight after the Charlottesville violence
Trump cast the former chief executive of his 2016 campaign as a late-comer to his cadre of advisers and expressed uncertainty about his fate at the White House. “Mr. Bannon came on very late,” Trump told reporters. “I like him, he’s a good man, he is not a racist, I can tell you that. But we’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon.”
Refused to answer a question on why self-proclaimed Nazis say they support him
“They don’t,” Trump responded.
Said he had a plan to the nation’s racial divide
That plan involves creating more – and better – jobs.
“If you are still defending Donald Trump at this point, you are not a good person,” tweeted Jill Biden, the wife of former Vice President Joe Biden.
The news conference capped a day in which Trump returned to his residence in the gold-leaf comfort of Trump Tower for the first time since he took office in January – but it hasn’t been a particularly joyful homecoming.
Amid rush hour, after the rain, protestors returned to Fifth Avenue with bullhorns and placards in hand to protest Trump’s views of race, immigration, and other issues. “New York hates you,” read one sign. Police placed a protest area about a block-and-a-half from Trump Tower.
Trump huddled with staff and signed an executive order on infrastructure Tuesday – at a podium affixed with the presidential seal in front of the elevator bank – that did little to change the conversation.
The infrastructure announcement – intended to streamline the permitting process for infrastructure projects – is part of Trump’s ongoing effort to try and toll back federal regulations that he says undermine economic development. Many of the targeted regulations involve environmental restrictions.
Yet even as Trump heralded the order as a way to promote jobs, business leaders within his circle appeared to be more focused on the president’s response to Charlottesville.
So far, five senior leaders from president’s business council have stepped down amid criticism that Trump was too slow to directly condemn violence involving white supremacists.
After his press conference, another member of his council – Richard Trumka, president of the The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations – announced he would step down. “I cannot sit on a council for a President that tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism; I resign, effective immediately,” tweeted Trumka.
Activists are continuing to pressure remaining members to follow suit.
“No adviser committed to the bipartisan American traditions of government can possibly believe he or she is being effective at this point,” tweeted Lawrence Summers, a former high-level economic adviser to Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Yet Trump has done little to stem the controversy. Hours after making a formal statement Monday denouncing those who perpetuate racially-motivated attacks, Trump returned Monday night to a usual line of criticism: the press. “Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied…truly bad people!”
Trump stirred up more Twitter trouble after that. In the leadup to his press conference Tuesday, he retweeted a prominent figure from the alt-right who pushed the “Pizzagate” and Seth Rich conspiracy theories, who questioned why there was no similar outrage over violence in Chicago.
He tweeted then retweeted and deleted a post that included the cartoon of a train – the “Trump train” running over a CNN reporter, an image that drew criticism in the wake of the deadly car ramming incident in Virginia.
Steady rain in midtown Manhattan kept away many protesters Tuesday – as did a heavy security perimeter that included a line of white sanitation trucks parked along Fifth Avenue, flanking the entrance to Trump Tower.
Trump is expected to return to his 17-day working vacation at his golf club in Beminster, N.J., on Wednesday.
Donald Trump backtracked against his statement a day ago and defended violent white supremacists, arguing people on the left, called the “alt-left”, are just as violent.
First, no-one uses the term “alt-left” except super-right-wing nutjobs like Sean Hannity and Richard Spencer, as a slur against everyone who isn’t their type of conservative.
(See: http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2016/11/14/why-are-media-struggling-to-accept-trump-win-inside-trump-strategy-to-defeat.html)
Second, standing up to intolerance is not intolerance.
While there was a handful of a “anti-fascists” which use violent tactics were in attendance, most of the protesters at Charlottsville were peaceful protesters. The hours of videos at the rally absolutely proves this.
When the white supremacists arrived they were carrying shields, clubs, knives, and military-grade guns, and marched in military maneuvers as if they practiced for violent encounters.
Also, white supremacists killed a woman and critically injured over a dozen more when a car drove into a crowd of counter-protesters.
President Donald Trump and CNN’s Jim Acosta briefly sparred Monday in the White House.
After the president signed a memo regarding China’s alleged theft of American intellectual property, Acosta asked Trump why he didn’t condemn hate groups over the weekend.
“They’ve been condemned. They have been condemned,” Trump replied.
“And why are we not having a press conference today? You said on Friday we would have a press conference?” Acosta asked.
“We just had a press conference,” Trump said.
“Can we ask you some more questions?” Acosta wondered.
“It doesn’t bother me at all, but you know I like real news, not fake news,” Trump remarked. “You’re fake news.”
Trump said there was a press conference earlier, there was no press conference.
Media
Pres. Trump on why he did not denounce hate groups in initial comments on Charlottesville attack: "They have been condemned." pic.twitter.com/RCDU2sLizF
A senior White House official’s suggestion that the bomb attack on a mosque in the US state of Minnesota could have been staged has sparked derision on social media.
Sebastian Gorka, a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump, told MSNBC on Tuesday that some recent hate crimes were fake.
He failed to give examples to back his allegations.
The comments led to criticism of the official, who has ties to far-right activists in Hungary and was sacked from a consultancy role by the FBI over his anti-Islam rhetoric, according to US outlet, the Daily Beast.
When asked by anchors whether the White House would be commenting on the Minnesota bombing that took place in the early hours on Saturday, Gorka said it would but only after an investigation into who was behind the attack.
“There’s a great rule, all initial reports are false, you have to check them, you have to find out who the perpetrators are,” said Gorka.
“We’ve had a series of crimes committed, alleged hate crimes by right-wing individuals, in the last six months, which turned out to be actually propagated by the left.”
“People fake hate crimes in the last six months with some regularity. I think it’s wise to find out what exactly is going on before you make statements,” he added.
The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which documents hate crimes, noted 1,863 incidents between Trump’s election in November 2016 and April 2017.
In May, two men were killed by a white supremacist in Oregon when they tried to stop him abusing two Muslim girls on a bus.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) noted a 91 percent rise in anti-Muslim hate crime since the start of the year.
The comments by the Trump official on MSNBC prompted criticism online.
Amid growing anxiety about North Korea’s nuclear weapon capabilities, President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday that one of the first things he did on assuming the presidency was to “modernize” the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….
But there’s no evidence that the president has upgraded the nation’s nuclear arsenal in his mere seven months in office.
What’s more, because of how Congress works, any changes the president could have made to the nuclear arsenal could not take effect before next year anyway. In fact, the arsenal Trump is boasting about is the one maintained by President Barack Obama.
Let’s break it down and review the facts.
Trump ordered a rebuilding of the American military and assessing its readiness on January 27th, a week into office. In that order, Trump called for a “Nuclear Posture Review,” an analysis designed to help the new administration understand its existing arsenal and how it meets strategic needs.
Neither have any direct effect on the nuclear arsenal that the nation has today.
“Under the Constitution, Congress controls nuclear modernization as part of its power to organize, equip, and fund of our armed forces. President Trump’s requests related to nuclear weapons modernization have not yet passed Congress, and nothing he has done would even begin to take effect until 2018,” said Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, in an email.
“The only thing he has done so far is sign a presidential memorandum requiring a nuclear posture review, but the review is nowhere near complete,” he added.
Col. Jack Jacobs, an NBC News military analyst and Medal of Honor recipient, likened the president’s order to Obama’s efforts to close the prison Guantanamo Bay, which were ultimately unsuccessful.
“In order to make something happen, Congress has to approve it and approve an authorization bill that authorizes the expenditure of the money and, separately, an appropriations bill that directs the government to write the check for it,” he said. “Neither one of those things have occurred.”
Obama undertook gradual upgrades to the nuclear arsenal and he supported a $1 trillion process for modernization last year. Trump has requested a huge uptick in nuclear spending — a 11 percent increase over the current year’s appropriation. But for now those plans are simply that.
President Trump on Monday launched a renewed attack on Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), calling him “a phony Vietnam con artist” on Twitter after the senator appeared on television.
Trump’s tweets came after Blumenthal voiced support on CNN for continuing the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election and expressed concern about the Justice Department’s increased focus on rooting out administration officials who leak information damaging to Trump.
“Politicizing the Department of Justice for personal ends, I think, is a disservice to the law, and it’s also potentially a violation of the spirit of the First Amendment,” Blumenthal said, suggesting that the department was “weaponizing” laws against leaking sensitive information.
“Never in U.S.history has anyone lied or defrauded voters like Senator Richard Blumenthal,” Trump wrote on Twitter shortly afterward. “He told stories about his Vietnam battles and … conquests, how brave he was, and it was all a lie. He cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness like a child.”
Interesting to watch Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut talking about hoax Russian collusion when he was a phony Vietnam con artist!
Trump was referencing a 2010 controversy over Blumenthal’s military service. During his Senate campaign, Blumenthal came under sharp criticism for repeated remarks over the years that he had “served” in Vietnam, even though he did his full Marine service in the United States.
Blumenthal was granted several deferments between 1965 and 1970 and then joined the Marine Corps Reserve but did not serve in Vietnam. He later said he misspoke and intended to say that he was in the Marine Reserve during the Vietnam conflict.
Blumenthal responded to Trump on Twitter later Monday morning, writing, “Mr. President: Your bullying hasn’t worked before and it won’t work now. No one is above the law.”
Mr. President: Your bullying hasn't worked before and it won't work now. No one is above the law.
In an interview later Monday on CNN, Blumenthal said Trump’s tweets reinforce the need for legislation he is pushing that would prevent the president from firing Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel looking into allegations of Russian meddling in the election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
Trump’s tweets appeared to overstate what had happened with Blumenthal. NBC News said its analysis found no evidence that Blumenthal had bragged about his Vietnam battles nor that he had cried about the controversy during his 2010 campaign:
“No and no,” a Blumenthal spokesman told NBC on Monday when asked whether the senator had bragged or cried.
Trump returned to the issue later Monday, offering a suggestion to Blumenthal in an afternoon tweet: “I think Senator Bluementhal should take a nice long vacation in Vietnam, where he lied about his service, so he can at least say he was there.”
Trump has attacked Blumenthal on the same issue on past occasions.
In February, Trump pointed to the episode in trying to undermine Blumenthal’s credibility after he publicly shared that Trump’s then-Supreme Court nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, had told him that he found Trump’s attacks on the federal judiciary “disheartening” and “demoralizing.” Gorsuch later acknowledged having those concerns.
President Donald Trump is staunchly proud of his use of social media.
The 45th president of the United States has defended his habit of tweeting about policy changes and using the platform to throw barbs at foreign rivals as being “modern-day presidential.” Trump, who has more than 35 million Twitter followers, has said the medium allows him direct access with the American people without having to pass through the prism of what he dubs the “fake news media.”
But perhaps Trump is not the Twitter expert he claims to be. In his haste to share a positive message from a purported supporter on Saturday, he appears to have retweeted a bot, or at the least, a fake account. More than a day later, the message is still up on the president’s timeline.
The account retweeted by the president used the handle @protrump45 and was run under the name Nicole Mincey. As of Monday, the account has been suspended. A Twitter spokesperson told Newsweek: “We do not comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.” Twitter regularly suspends fake accounts or accounts that have been hacked.
The original tweet showed an image of the president emblazoned with the message “Trump fights for us.” The user had shared the image in a reply to Trump that read “Trump working hard for the American people….thanks,” followed by emojis of a heart and the U.S. flag.
Soon after Trump had shared @protrump45’s tweet late on Saturday, other users began to suspect something was awry. A Twitter user with the handle @Rschooley, linked to American screenwriter Bob Schooley, posted a thread that appeared to show that @Protrump45 was a bot account created to share pro-Trump messages. @Protrump45 regularly tweeted messages criticizing the “fake news” of outlets such as CNN or The Washington Post—both of which have been criticized by Trump in the past—and appeared to use a stock image as its profile photo.
Eliot Higgins, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, said the Twitter user appeared to be running an advertising campaign linked to a site selling pro-Trump merchandise.
All signs point to Trump thanking an advertising campaign using fake Trump supporter accounts to sell Trump #ProTrump45 brand clothes. pic.twitter.com/PsLlEVoz3A
After Trump retweeted the message, the user @Protrump45 changed its handle to @AlexandriaM0ra. The account also removed the name Nicole Mincey, replacing it with a single period before it was suspended.
The account was linked to a website, protrump45.com, which sells merchandise associated with the Trump campaign, such as T-shirts and hoodies carrying messages like “Make America Great Again!” or “Deplorable Lives Matter.” The website also has a blog consisting of a collection of posts celebrating Trump’s actions as president and decrying the mainstream media’s coverage of him. Many of the posts are written by users with Twitter handles—such as @bryant4trump, @kendra_manii and @mtsaintmarys—that have been suspended by the social media site.
A June 22 blog post says that protrump45.com was created by Nicole Mincey, described as “an african american trump supporter…from Camden NJ and humble beginnings.” Mincey is described as an “ex democrat who switched to republicanism due to the failures of the obama administration.”
It is not clear yet whether the @Protrump45 account was run by a bot or a real person using it to promote the merchandise. According to Heavy.com, the account was originally created under the name of a New Jersey college student who said her identity had been stolen. The student told Heavy.com that her real name and Facebook account had been used to set up pro-Trump sites and social media accounts under the persona of Nicole Mincey.
A press release announcing the unveiling of ProTrump45 appeared on media networking site Digital Journal on July 4, listing Nicole Mincey as the media contact. Newsweek called the listed contact number and left a message and emailed the listed address, but received no replies.
A significant proportion of Trump’s social media following is thought to be bots and fake accounts used to promote the president’s agenda. A Newsweek investigation in May found that of the 31 million accounts following Trump at the time, 49 percent (or more than 15 million) were fake.
Cybersecurity experts warned of an uptick in Russia propaganda accounts and fake profiles on social media well in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Pro-Trump bots and fake accounts are extremely active and have regularly targeted articles published by media outlets, dubbing them fake news while seeking to defend Trump against attacks.
The president regularly uses Twitter to engage with followers and share favorable coverage of his administration. But after jumping into the rabbit hole associated with @Protrump45, Trump may wish he wasn’t so “modern-day presidential.”
President Donald Trump boasted about his election victory, pressured his Mexican counterpart to remain quiet about a border wall and called New Hampshire a “drug-infested den” in a phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, according to a transcript of the conversation revealed on Thursday by The Washington Post.
The transcript of Trump’s conversation with Mexico’s leader was one of two phone calls revealed on Thursday, which provide a rare glimpse into the private conversations of a new US president testing his negotiating powers on foreign counterparts.
The January 27 phone call with Peña Nieto came seven days after Trump entered office. In it, he focused mainly on issues of trade and immigration, with contentious moments coming in his insistence that Mexico will eventually pay for a wall along with US southern border. Peña Nieto has insisted publicly his country will not pay for the wall’s construction, but Trump demanded he cease making that claim.
“You cannot say that to the press,” Trump said on the phone call. “The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances.”
A day later, Trump carried out a phone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, which grew sour when Trump rejected an agreement to take in refugees. The transcript shows Trump growing progressively more agitated, eventually telling his Australian counterpart the call was the most irksome of the day.
“I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day,” Trump told Turnbull. “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.”
Trump later ended the phone call abruptly.
The two conversations show a President still working through the complicated nature of bilateral US relationships, often suggesting to his counterparts that he had campaign promises to fulfill in his early days in the White House.
Trump ran for office promising to build a Mexican-funded wall along the southern border. But since taking office, Trump has said that the US will pay for initial construction, with reimbursement from Mexico coming later.
In his conversation with Peña Nieto, Trump said he was willing to say publicly that he and Mexican authorities would continue to negotiate over the wall’s payment, which he said “means it will come out in the wash and that is OK.”
But he maintained his insistence that Peña Nieto remain quiet about the issue.
“You cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall,” he said. “I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about.”
Asked to comment on the transcripts, Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said only that he “can’t confirm or deny the authenticity of allegedly leaked classified documents.”
But the article concluded by suggesting that the president was at fault for the premium hikes because he had threatened to withhold payments from insurers.
The Journal reported that insurers are concerned about Trump’s threat to halt payments to the industry that in turn help bring down costs, as well as whether Republicans will continue to enforce the individual mandate to buy insurance.
According to the Journal, one insurer in Montana linked the bulk of its proposed 23 percent increase to those two concerns.
Has President Trump told you about the time the head of the Boy Scouts called to say his was the best speech ever delivered to the more than century-old organization? What about when the president of Mexico picked up the telephone to let him know that his tough enforcement efforts at the border were paying off handsomely?
The anecdotes, both of which Mr. Trump told over the last week, were similar in that they appeared to be efforts to showcase broad support for the president when his White House has been mired in turmoil. But they also had another thing in common, the White House conceded on Wednesday: Neither was true.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, confirmed at her daily briefing what the Boy Scouts and the Mexican government had already asserted publicly, which is that neither phone call that Mr. Trump referred to had occurred.
The stories were not fabrications, Ms. Sanders insisted. “Multiple members of the Boy Scouts leadership” had praised Mr. Trump’s speech in Glen Jean, W.Va., after he finished last week, she said. And Mr. Trump and President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico had discussed border enforcement last month on the sideline of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, she added. “I wouldn’t say it was a lie — that’s a pretty bold accusation,” Ms. Sanders said. “The conversations took place, they just simply didn’t take place over a phone call, they happened in person.”
The nonexistent phone calls added to questions about Mr. Trump’s credibility and that of his White House, already in doubt given shifting explanations on matters large and small, including the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration and his involvement in drafting a statement about why his son Donald J. Trump Jr. had met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer during the campaign. The calls appeared to be the latest evidence that the president, who prefers impromptu storytelling to a fact-checked script, is willing to shade or even manufacture events to suit his preferred narrative — even when the story is easily disprovable and of little consequence.
“He’s been lying his whole life, almost reflexively, and it’s almost as if he finds it more satisfying and easier than to speak with precision,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who later wrote a biography of Mr. Trump, “The Truth About Trump.” “When he was a kid, he lied about whether he hit a home run or not, and when he was a young man, he lied about how tall Trump Tower is — how many floors it is and the actual floors in feet — and he lied about which beautiful women were interested in him.”
Mr. Trump has written about how he bends the truth when it suits his purposes, asserting in his 1987 book “The Art of the Deal” that “a little hyperbole never hurts.”
“People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular,” Mr. Trump wrote then. “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”
The major difference now, Mr. D’Antonio said, is that as president Mr. Trump is fact-checked assiduously.
Mr. Trump’s latest tangle with the truth began on Monday, when he said at a cabinet meeting that Mr. Peña Nieto had been on the phone to him. “Even the president of Mexico called me,” Mr. Trump said, touting his success in cracking down on illegal immigration. “They said their southern border — very few people are coming because they know they’re not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment.”
The Mexican government said on Wednesday that no such telephone call took place. In a statement, Mexico’s secretary of foreign relations said Mr. Peña Nieto told Mr. Trump during the Group of 20 summit meeting that deportations of Mexicans from the United States had fallen 31 percent over the first six months of the year, compared with the same period in 2016.
On Tuesday, it was the Boy Scouts’ turn: A leaked transcript of an interview the president had with The Wall Street Journal quoted him saying that the head of the Boy Scouts had called him full of praise for a highly political speech Mr. Trump had delivered at the National Scout Jamboree.
“I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful,” Mr. Trump told The Journal. On Wednesday, the Boy Scouts of America said it was not aware of any call from its leadership to Mr. Trump. In a statement, the organization said that an earlier statement from Michael Surbaugh, the organization’s chief, apologizing to scouts for Mr. Trump’s speech, “speaks for itself.” Mr. Surbaugh had expressed regret to those who were “offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree.’’
It is hardly unprecedented for a president to use a story to inspire or motivate, or to embellish a yarn for the sake of punctuating a poignant message. President Lyndon B. Johnson was a frequent and animated storyteller, and Ronald Reagan was so partial to a heart-tugging anecdote that his tales sometimes aroused suspicion that they had come from a movie in which he had starred rather than real life.
For his first inaugural address — the first to be delivered from the West side of the Capitol facing Arlington National Cemetery — Mr. Reagan wanted to recount the story of a World War I soldier, buried in Arlington, who had written in his journal about his pledge to give everything for his country and died in battle the next day. The only trouble, his speechwriter told him, was that the fallen soldier was buried in his hometown, not at Arlington, according to H. W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas and biographer of Mr. Reagan.
But the president, enamored of the story, left it in his speech, and said the soldier was buried “under one such marker,” leaving his actual resting place vague. The White House later conceded that the man in question was not under a marker at Arlington.
