Supporters say Trump looks to the positive
reports that Tillerson once called Trump a “moron,” Trump told reporters that they have “a very good relationship.”
► Trump continues to say that the United States is the highesttaxed nation in the world, even though that is not the case.
“Some people say it differently, they say we’re the highest developed nation taxed in the world,” Trump told Scripps last week. “A lot of people know exactly what I’m talking about, and in many cases they think I’m right when I say the highest. As far as I’m concerned, I think we’re really essentially the highest, but if you want to add the ‘developed nation,’ you can say that, too.”
To Trump supporters, it is the critics and reporters who are distorting reality, taking Trump’s statements out of context or putting them in a false light.
TRUMP IS ‘NOT SCRIPTED’
“You can say that the president is positive and the media is negative, always focusing on the negative side of things,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.
She said Trump is “candid,” and his style is one of the reasons he defeated Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential election: “People want somebody who is real, who is authentic, and who is not scripted.”
Clinton received 2.9 million more votes than Trump but lost the Electoral College.
One result of Trump’s rhetoric: Diametrically different accounts of a single event, as happened in stories about phone calls to families of soldiers killed in battle.
A member of Congress from Florida who overheard one of Trump’s calls said he patronized the widow by saying her slain soldier “knew what he signed up for”; Trump responded that he “didn’t say what that congresswoman said; didn’t say it at all.”
Trump has said “I think I’ve called every family of someone who’s died,” but the families of several slain soldiers said they have not heard from the president.
John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, on Thursday confirmed Trump’s comments but criticized Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Democrat, for publicizing them.
LUNCH WITH MITCH
The different political universes were on full display with last week’s White House meeting between Trump and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
Afterward, Trump brought McConnell before reporters in an impromptu Rose Garden news conference, telling reporters they have a great relationship — never mind that they and their aides have sniped at each other for months over the lack of a health care bill and other setbacks.
Also never mind that former White House strategist Steve Bannon plans to back primary challengers to Senate Republicans he believes have been insufficiently pro-Trump.
In the view of Trump, however, “maybe with the exception of a few — and that is a very small few — I have a fantastic relationship with the people in the Senate, and with the people in Congress.”
A week before, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told The New York Times that Trump’s recklessness threatens “World War III” and added that he isn’t the only Republican to feel this way.
“Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here,” Corker told the Times, adding: “Of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”
Also at the McConnell news conference, Trump said he was “very honored” that James Lee Witt, the Federal Emergency Management Agency head under President Clinton, “gave us an Aplus” on hurricane recovery.
On Twitter, Witt said his grade applied only to Texas and Florida.
To his supporters, Trump accentuates the positive.
Former Trump campaign communications director Jason Miller called the president a master of media communications, and “many detractors have been frustrated that President Trump is beating them at their own game.”
Hemmer said Trump “has shown ... that his statements are not rooted in reality.
Instead, she said, Trump uses rhetoric designed to make himself look good: “I don’t think there is an overarching strategy, other than to avoid taking blame for failures and to shore up his ‘I alone can fix it’ argument.”