President Donald Trump on Friday offered words of praise and support for a disgraced former staffer who resigned earlier this week over allegations of domestic abuse.
“We wish him well. He worked very hard,” Trump said. “He did a good job while he was in the White House… He also, as you probably know, he says he’s innocent, and I think you have to remember that.”
Trump’s comments come at the end of a week that has been a PR nightmare for the White House, after it was reported that former staff secretary Rob Porter had been accused of abusing his two former wives—and that top officials had known of the allegations for months. His first wife, Colbie Holdneress, came forward with a picture of herself from 2005 sporting a black eye. (Porter strongly denies his ex-wives’ accounts, calling them “outrageous allegations” and “vile claims” in a Wednesday statement. According to the Washington Post, Porter told acquaintances that he and Holdneress had been arguing over a vase, and she was “somehow hit with the vase.”)
The White House spent most of the week equivocating about the controversy: Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly on Tuesday called Porter “a man of true integrity and honor” and “a friend, a confidante, and a trusted professional”; one day later, he issued another statement saying he was “shocked by the new allegations,” that “there is no place for domestic violence in our society,” and that he had accepted Porter’s resignation. It was also not immediately clear whether or when Porter would resign: on Wednesday, press secretary Sarah Sanders said that Porter was “going to be leaving the White House” but that he would “stay on to ensure that there’s a smooth transition moving forward”; by Thursday morning, Porter was gone.
It was a mess from start to finish, so much so that deputy press secretary Raj Shah finally issued a rare mea culpa on Thursday: “I think it’s fair to say that we all could have done better over the last few days in dealing with this situation.”
That new messaging strategy appears to have been lost on the president, however.
“Obviously a tough time for him,” Trump told reporters Friday. “He said very strongly yesterday he’s innocent.”
