When he became the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney was more familiar with the media’s critical portrayal of President Trump the family man than the first dad himself.

That changed on one of his first trips with Trump, and it was another eye-opening case of how the media was dead wrong.

President Donald Trump walks with First Lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, right, on the south lawn of the White House as they head to Marine One for a trip to Florida, Friday, Jan. 17, 2020. Steve Helber/AP

“The first trip I went with him," he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “I bet he called his son [Barron] three times, four times on the trip.”

He added, “People forget that Barron’s only 13 years old. We don’t think that about him because the kid’s a giant, like 6-foot-4, 6-foot-5.”

Mulvaney, who has since become the envoy to Northern Ireland, explained: “The president is just a really caring father, and you don’t see that. The press would never show you that because it doesn’t fit that image of him, that the press wants him to be a terrible monster. But he feels about his children the same way everybody else does.”