White House: Trump's relationships with GOP leaders 'are fine'

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that the relationships between President Donald Trump and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill “are fine.”

Her insistence that the president remains on good terms with congressional leaders from his own party came just hours after Trump took yet another shot on Twitter at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, writing “The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that, after hearing Repeal & Replace for 7 years, he failed! That should NEVER have happened!”


He also dinged McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan for reportedly rebuffing his request to attach a debt ceiling increase to a veterans bill.

“Look, I think the relationships are fine. Certainly there are going to be some policy differences. But there are also a lot of shared goals and that's what we're focused on,” Sanders said at her Thursday briefing, the first since Trump’s return from a working vacation earlier this month. “We're disappointed that Obamacare, they failed to get it repealed and replaced, but at the same time, President Trump has worked with leader McConnell to reach out to other members and to work on those shared goals and we're going continue to do that when the senate comes back from recess.”

Sanders was also asked about some blunt criticisms from Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who said last week that Trump “has not demonstrated that he understands what has made this nation great and what it is today” and “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful."

The press secretary hit back, saying, “I think that's a ridiculous and outrageous claim and doesn't dignify a response from this podium.”

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With members of Congress away from Washington, Trump and McConnell have exchanged heated rhetoric, with the president complaining regularly online about the majority leader’s inability to shepherd through the Senate legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. McConnell, for his part, said Trump’s inexperience as a politician led him to have “excessive expectations” about what could be accomplished in Congress.

Asked by reporters earlier this month if McConnell should step down from his position as majority leader, Trump said the longtime Kentucky senator’s job should depend on how successful he is with the White House’s agenda moving forward.

"I'll tell you what, if he doesn't get repeal and replace done, and if he doesn't get taxes done, meaning cuts and reform, and if he doesn't get a very easy one to get done, infrastructure, he doesn't get them done, then you can ask me that question," Trump said earlier this month, telling a reporter seeking clarification that, "that means ask me that question. Let's hope he gets it done."

