"I'm doing so winning good that I will take a golf vacation..."

Trump gives his own performance a Trump-sized endorsement

The president called an impromptu Rose Garden press conference to sell reporters and the public on his job performance.

By JOSH DAWSEY

Friends say President Donald Trump has grown frustrated that his greatness is not widely understood, that his critics are fierce and on TV every morning, that his poll numbers are both low and “fake,” and that his White House is caricatured as adrift.

So on Monday, the consummate salesman — who has spent his life selling his business acumen, golf courses, sexual prowess, luxury properties and, above all, his last name — gave the Trump White House a Trump-sized dose of brand enhancement.

With both the Roosevelt Room and the Rose Garden as backdrops, he mixed facts and mirage, praise and perfidy in two head-spinning, sometimes contradictory performances designed to convince supporters and detractors alike that everything’s terrific, moving ahead of schedule and getting even better. His opponents were cast as misguided, deluded or even unpatriotic.

It was the latest instance of Trump bypassing his own communications staff to speak directly to the press, and the public, after weeks of blistering criticism and as White House aides struggle with the increasing possibility that they may end the year without accomplishing any of their grand legislative goals.

The president first convened his Cabinet for a discursive soliloquy on issues domestic and foreign. They sat stone-faced as he held forth, meandering from topic to topic.

He then abruptly canceled the daily briefing by press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, instead summoning reporters already gathered in the briefing room to the Rose Garden for an impromptu 40-minute news conference, where he faced a frenzy of shouted questions and seemed to want to answer even more.

Trump told Cabinet members and reporters that there’s plenty wrong in America, and it’s variously the fault of Democrats, insurance companies, NFL players, Republicans in Congress, Hillary Clinton, former presidents and drug-dealing Mexicans. Trump said he understood why former White House strategist Steve Bannon wanted to torch Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans for not getting health care or other legislation through.

What is going well, he said, has been his doing. Much of the self-praise seemed designed to rebut or pre-empt criticisms.

The Wall Street Journal likes his judges, he told the Cabinet, referencing an editorial — but later seemed unclear about how the blue slip process, which lets home-state senators have their say on judicial nominations, works. He has privately fumed that not enough judges have been confirmed and told associates that he planned to push McConnell to move faster on nominations.

He bragged in the Rose Garden that James Lee Witt, a Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator under President Bill Clinton, gave his performance on hurricanes an “A-plus” — including Puerto Rico. “I’ve always had a lot of respect for him,” Trump said of Witt. Several Trump aides said they’d never heard of Witt before Monday’s remarks.

Trump has been stung by the consistent and widespread negative attention his administration has gotten for its lackluster response to the devastation in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, and he has grown frustrated by the continued criticisms.

He heaped lavish praise on his own performance and ideas. “It will be the largest tax cut in history,” he said of a plan that’s still vague, has uncertain chances of passing and has sparked discord in his own administration.

Health care will be “terrific,” he said, even though he’s been unable to pass a bill and has struggled to understand the particulars. He praised himself as brave for ripping away the health care subsidies that are key to the insurance market.

He has privately fumed that he hates the criticism that he is taking health care away from poor people, and tells aides that he regrets agreeing to move a health care agenda first before infrastructure or anything else.

“I don’t think so,” when asked whether it should be called “Trumpcare.”

He asserted that his administration is making historic progress on opioids, even as some of his own aides don’t understand why Trump has promised a plan to declare it a national emergency — and hasn’t. “We’ll have a big event next week,” he said.

Asked about criticisms that he’s only trying to unravel President Barack Obama’s record — the premise of a New York Times article last week that made the president angry, according to several aides and advisers — he interrupted the questioner to say that there has been “a lot of praise” as well.

“A lot of people agreed with what I did,” he said of his decision to decertify the Iran nuclear deal Obama negotiated, a step short of tearing it up. His move, while winning praise from Republicans and Israel, has confused some of his own aides and brought derision from much of the world.

He took on Democrats as “total obstructionists,” even as he later said several would vote for his proposals and work with him on health care.

Trump pushed back on consistent reports of discord among his Cabinet members. “There are those that are saying it’s one of the finest group of people ever assembled as a candidate,” he said of his Cabinet, though Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was recently quoted by NBC as having told others that the president is a “moron.” Tillerson has not explicitly denied those reports.

The president, as he often is, was sometimes loose with the facts or uncertain of the details.

Faced with a question about not calling or writing to families of soldiers killed two weeks ago overseas, he deflected by saying other presidents didn’t do either one — and that he often did both. The letters, he said, were going out Monday evening, and he planned to call once time had passed.

Questioned by incredulous White House reporters, who noted that other presidents had made those calls, Trump said he was told otherwise by unidentified officials — and demurred. “I don’t know if he did,” Trump said.

“To say president obama (or past presidents) didn’t call the family members of soldiers KIA - he’s a deranged animal,” Alyssa Mastromonaco, a top Obama aide, wrote on Twitter.

He called the United States the highest-taxed country in the world, a favorite claim.

Some of it was contradictory, but Trump didn’t seem to care. He hauled McConnell to the Rose Garden to convince the world that they’re actually friends, then bragged that he had legislative plans he hadn’t even yet shared with the Senate majority leader, who stood by looking alternately amused and bemused.

Trump has repeatedly complained about McConnell privately, though aides to both men say they both know they need to have a more positive relationship and have spoken repeatedly in recent weeks. The relationship is improving, these people say.

“We’re probably now closer than ever before,” he said of McConnell. “My relationship with this gentleman is outstanding.”

Two hours earlier, Trump fielded a question about whether he supports the slash-and-burn campaign Bannon is threatening to wage in 2018 against incumbent Senate Republicans backed by McConnell. With Elaine Chao, his transportation secretary and McConnell’s wife, smiling at the table, Trump said Bannon was his friend and that he understood the impulse to agitate against the establishment.

Senate Republicans, Trump said, had let him down and hurt his agenda.

“I’m not going to blame myself, I’ll be honest,” the president said.