Compliments no lie, spokeswoman says
WASHINGTON — Fake news or fib?
Two phone calls described by President Trump that didn’t actually happen represent the latest chapter in a longrunning series of disputes revolving around the president’s rocky relationship with facts.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders found herself explaining Wednesday that compliments Trump had described receiving in phone calls from the Mexican president and the Boy Scouts did happen — just not on the phone.
“I wouldn’t say it was a lie. That’s a pretty bold accusation,” she told reporters. “The conversations took place, they just simply didn’t take place over a phone call . ... He had them in person.”
The non-calls weren’t earth-shattering news. But they fit a pattern that also involves weightier issues and that has raised larger questions about Trump’s credibility six months into his presidency.
After Donald Trump Jr. put out a statement, later shown to be misleading, about his meeting with a Russian lawyer in 2016, the president’s outside lawyer was categorical that the president had no role in drafting the statement. But when the Washington Post later reported that the president had dictated the statement for his son, Sanders acknowledged that Trump had “weighed in” on his son’s statement “as any father would based on the limited information that he had.”
Sanders also responded to questions about a statement from the Mexican government denying what Trump described as a recent phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Trump said this week that Peña Nieto had called him to praise his immigration policies.
Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts denied the head of the youth organization called Trump to shower praise on his politically aggressive speech to its national jamboree.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal last week: “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.”