Boy Scouts say top leaders didn’t call Trump to praise speech

NEW YORK Faced with a firm denial from the Boy Scouts, the White House on Wednesday corrected President Donald Trump’s claim in an interview that the head of the youth group called him to heap praise on a politically aggressive speech Trump delivered at the Scouts’ national jamboree.

After the Boy Scouts issued a statement saying no such call happened, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed their take but said “multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership” approached Trump in person after the speech and “offered quite powerful compliments.”

Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Wednesday, “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them.”

“We are unaware of any such call,” the Boy Scouts responded in a statement. It specified that neither Boy Scout President Randall Stephenson nor Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh placed such a call.

Sanders explained the discrepancy Wednesday by saying Trump misspoke when he described the conversations as calls.

“The conversations took place,” she added. “They just simply didn’t take place over a phone call.”

There was no immediate word from the Boy Scouts as to whether Surbaugh was among those congratulating Trump in person. Stephenson did not attend the speech.

The White House also had to back off another Trump claim made Monday about an alleged phone call from Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who Trump claimed called him to praise his immigration policies.

Sanders said the topic did come up, but in a conversation between the two leaders at a recent summit in Germany.