The White House has been forced to row back on claims by President Donald Trump that he received personal telephone calls praising his immigration policies and a speech he made to the Scouts.

Mr Trump claimed top Boy Scout leaders called him to laud a politically aggressive speech he gave to the Scouts' national jamboree.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders clarified there were no such calls, but said "multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership" approached the US President in person after the speech and "offered quite powerful compliments".

In an interview in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Mr Trump said: "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."

But in a statement, the Boy Scouts responded: "We are unaware of any such call."


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Ms Huckabee Sanders was also forced to concede that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto did not call Mr Trump to praise his immigration policies.

The topic did come up, but only in a conversation the two leaders held on the fringes of the G20 summit in Germany, she added.

On Monday, Mr Trump claimed that Mr Pena Nieto had called him to offer his compliments on a reduction in border crossings.

But Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said that Mr Pena Nieto was remarking on how the deportations of Mexicans from the US had fallen by 31% between January and June when compared with 2016.