President Trump said Friday he “just doesn’t have the time to speak” to conservative firebrand Ann Coulter, who has been sharply critical of his decision to sign a bipartisan spending deal while declaring a national emergency to fund a southern border wall.
At a Rose Garden press conference announcing Trump’s emergency declaration, NBC News White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell asked the president about the influence conservative media figures such as Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity had on his decisionmaking process.
{mosads}“Ann Coulter, I don’t know her. I hardly know her. I haven’t spoken to her in way over a year,” Trump replied. “But the press loves saying, ‘Ann Coulter.’
“Probably if I did speak to her, she’d be very nice. I just don’t have the time to speak to her. I would speak to her. I have nothing against her,” he continued.
“In fact, I like her for one reason. When they asked her right at the beginning, ‘Who’s going to win the election?’ She said, ‘Donald Trump.’ And the two people that asked her that question smiled. They said, ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’ Nope. Donald Trump. So I like her.”
“But she’s off the reservation,” Trump concluded. “But anybody that knows her understands that. But I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t follow her. I don’t talk to her.”
Coulter, the author of 2016’s “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!” has railed against the bipartisan spending deal that passed Congress this week, and against Trump’s plans for a national emergency declaration.
Trump stopped following Coulter on Twitter in December after she declared she would no longer support his reelection if no progress has been made on the border wall by 2020.
Trump now follows just 45 people and entities on Twitter, including Fox News hosts Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham; administration members Vice President Pence, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders; and family members including first lady Melania Trump, senior adviser and daughter Ivanka Trump and eldest son Donald Trump Jr.
Trump praised both Hannity and Limbaugh on Friday while underscoring they “don’t decide policy.”
“Sean Hannity has been a terrific, terrific supporter of what I do,” the president said. “Not of me. If I changed my views, he wouldn’t be with me.
“Rush Limbaugh, I think he’s a great guy. He can speak for three hours without [taking] a phone call. He’s got one of the biggest audiences in the history of the world. I mean, this guy’s unbelievable, [but] they don’t decide policy.”