■ President Donald Trump tweets, makes phone calls as GOP tries to craft an anti-impeachment message.

Party wants more cohesive public relations on impeachment

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s fight against impeachment began with an 8 a.m. call to “Fox and Friends” on Friday.

Trump declared that under President Barack Obama, “at the highest levels of government there was spying on my campaign” and in an implicit admission that he expects the House to impeach him, Trump offered, “Frankly, I want a trial.”

During rambling remarks that lasted 57 minutes, Trump also made a number of highly personal remarks about foes and friends.

He called House Judiciary Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., “a sick puppy,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “totally incompetent” and argued that the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was “no angel” and didn’t want to display his picture in the embassy.

Trump even slammed one of his most loyal aides, White House counselor and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.

“Kellyanne is great but she’s married to a total whack job,” Trump said, a reference to George Conway, an attorney and frequent critic of the president’s on Twitter. Then Trump seemed to blame Conway for her husband’s behavior. “She must have done some bad things to him, because that guy’s crazy,” Trump said.

The White House communications response on impeachment is no different than its usual response to any issue, GOP strategist and Harvard Institute of Policy senior fellow Alice Stewart told the Review-Journal.

“The White House can send out messaging and talking points and surrogates, but that doesn’t mean that Trump’s not going to follow up with a contradictory tweet or call into a news show and say something off message,” she said.

While few in Washington expect impeachment to lead to a Senate conviction that would remove Trump from office, Washington Republicans would like to see a more cohesive public relations strategy. Instead, the message has been scattershot.

It wasn’t until earlier this month that the administration tapped two high-profile individuals — Pam Bondi and Tony Sayegh — to man an impeachment “war room.”

Bondi made her first appearance for the team on “CBS This Morning” Wednesday. The team leader with legal chops mistakenly said U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland was ambassador to Ukraine.

Stewart credited Sayegh with polishing the messaging that helped pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.