According a previously unpublished transcript obtained by POLITICO, President Trump claimed that in the wake of his controversial speech to the Boy Scouts on July 24, the “head of the Boy Scouts” called him to praise the speech as the best they’d ever heard.
“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,” Trump said. “So there was — there was no mix.”
But as The Washington Post points out, the Scouts have no idea what Trump is talking about.
“We are not aware of any call from national BSA leadership to the White House,” a source close to the Scouts said. WaPo‘s Aaron Blake clarified that the Scouts may be denying the claim only after the PR nightmare Trump’s speech produced, but since an official statement from the Scouts rebuked Trump just a day after his speech, the President’s claim doesn’t seem to square with reality. Shocker.
On July 27, the Scouts published a more extensive rebuke of the speech.
“I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree,”Boy Scouts of America chief scout executive Michael Surbaugh said. “That was never our intent.”
On July 24, Trump traveled to West Virginia to address the annual Boy Scout Jamboree and gave the crowd a recap on his manic obsessions with everything from the current political drama, his election results, and “record-setting” crowd sizes.
According to Blake, Trump has a long history of either inflating or imagining some of the praise he receives:
The most telling example, to my mind: He claimed a few months ago that a top House Democrat, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), told him, “You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country.” As I wrote back then, there is simply no way that Cummings said this, and indeed Cummings said he told Trump that he *could* be a great president if he represented all Americans.
But it was clear immediately after the speech that Trump had ventured into some pretty dicey territory. And given his track record on this kind of thing, it doesn’t take much imagination to conclude that Trump himself imagined it.
Watch the speech below:
Featured image via screen grab
