Sarah Huckabee Sanders Says Trump Helped Son With Controversial Statement

WASHINGTON, DC — Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that President Trump helped his son Donald Trump Jr. draft a statement on his controversial meeting with a Russian lawyer, despite previous statements from the White House contradicting this account.

Sanders was asked at the daily press briefing about a Washington Post report that Trump dictated his son's misleading statement about a campaign meeting with a Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was said to be coming with help from the Russian government. Sanders said the president weighed in on the statement, "as any father would" but did not "dictate" it. She also said that everything in the statement was true, and she dismissed assertions that the statement was misleading.

However, the statement had to be updated multiple times after its initial draft as New York Times reporters discovered more undisclosed information about the meeting. Initially, the president's lawyer had said that Trump was not involved in the crafting of the statement. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Watch: Trump: 'Weighed In As Any Father Would'

Sanders said the press should be more concerned about connections between the Democrats and foreign powers than any claims of "collusion" between Russia and the Trump campaign.

When she was asked why the president hadn't yet signed a bill that levied sanctions, she said he will, and the bill is simply going through a process of legal review.

On the topic of North Korea, Sanders said the president is keeping all his options open. She would not directly say if the president was considering, as Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested, a series of military strikes on the country. She said the administration's goal is to stop the nuclear program, the missiles and the aggression coming from the Asian country.

Sanders said that the president was joking when he said at a speech in Long Island that police officers should treat suspects roughly. She did not directly answer questions about whether the president would apologize for those comments, and she suggested the press was overreacting to these comments.

The briefing came as Republicans continue to debate how to move forward on health care reform. After multiple bills failed on the Senate floor and several other legislative priorities hanging over Congress, the options for pushing legislation forward are shrinking. Frank Thorp of NBC News reported that Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson will meet with the White House Tuesday to discuss health care.

The White House also continues to cope with rapid-fire staffing changes, with new Chief of Staff John Kelly coming on and Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci leaving on Monday.

Watch a live stream of the briefing here:

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