Story highlights The Senate Majority Leader has had tense relationship with Donald Trump

After the Senate failed to pass health care, Trump criticized Mitch McConnell

(CNN) President Donald Trump said Monday he feels "closer than ever before" to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a man he's publicly criticized for his handling of the GOP agenda and on whom the President is relying for getting a legislative accomplishment in the first year of his term.

"We have been friends for a long time," Trump said from the White House Rose Garden with the Kentucky Republican at his side. "We are probably now, despite what we read, we are probably now, I think, at least as far as I am concerned, we are closer than ever before and the relationship is very good. We are fighting for the same thing, we are fighting for lower taxes, big tax cuts, the biggest tax cuts in the history of our nation. We are fighting for tax reform as part of that."

Trump's comments followed a lunch meeting with McConnell, and come after the President's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has pledged to wage a war on the Republican establishment and cited the Senate majority leader by name.

Trump said that he would try to talk Bannon out of declaring war on "some" of his primary targets saying, "I'm going to see if we can talk him out of that, because I think they're great people."

McConnell responded to Bannon's criticism by citing past Republican primary challengers who failed to make it into the Senate and stressing his relationship to Trump.