(CNN) President Donald Trump defused the tension building around a closely watched meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein slated for Thursday, suggesting that the No. 2 at the Justice Department may not lose his job after all.

"My preference would be to keep him," Trump said at a news conference in New York Wednesday when asked if he planned to fire Rosenstein. "I would certainly prefer not doing it."

He went on to indicate that he may postpone the meeting in order to avoid "competing" with his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's high-stakes hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday.

"I don't want to do anything that gets in the way," Trump said.

But a potential delay or wholesale cancellation of the Rosenstein meeting goes beyond competing with Kavanaugh. It could be seen as a sign that Trump has opted to follow the a chorus of advice -- from his lawyers to Fox News' Sean Hannity -- not to oust Rosenstein, the man who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

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