Axelrod: Trump defenders ‘wind up looking like a liar or a fool’

Democratic strategist David Axelrod said that President Trump’s willingness to contradict the statements and accounts of White House officials has opened his staff up to intense scrutiny, arguing it undermines their credibility in the public eye.

“The most hazardous duty in Washington these days is that of Trump surrogate because the president constantly undercuts the statements of his own people,” Axelrod, who served as a senior adviser to President Obama, told The New York Times.

“You wind up looking like a liar or a fool, neither of which is particularly attractive,” he said.

Trump’s communications team has scurried in recent days to explain the president’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. Almost immediately after news broke of the termination on Tuesday, accounts surfaced that appeared to contradict the narrative emerging from the White House.

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In a series of documents and statements released in the wake of Comey’s ouster, the White House asserted that Trump made his decision based on the recommendations of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein. 

That narrative was repeated by White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Vice President Pence on Wednesday.

But Trump undercut that account in a sweeping interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Thursday, saying that the decision to fire Comey was his own and that he would have done it “regardless” of the Justice Department’s recommendation.

Those comments forced Sanders and White House press secretary Sean Spicer into a position of having to explain the discrepancies in the White House’s narrative and how much they actually knew about the unfolding situation.