FOXA Fox Corporation

By Michael C. Bender 

One day after his budget team promised dollar-for-dollar cuts to offset a request for more military spending, President Donald Trump said Tuesday the additional money he is seeking for the defense budget would be paid for by a surge in tax collections sparked by the improving economy.

"The money is going to come from a revved-up economy," Mr. Trump said on Fox and Friends when asked where he would find the budget cuts. "I mean, you look at the kind of numbers we're doing, we were probably GDP of a little more than 1%. And if I can get that up to three, maybe more, we have a whole different ballgame."

His words were the latest example of the president offering a conflicting point of view from a member of his cabinet. On Monday, his director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, said nondefense agencies were being asked to find cuts to offset the boost to defense.

"It's the largest proposed reduction since the early years of the Reagan administration," Mr. Mulvaney told reporters. "The bottom line is this, the president's going to protect the country and do exactly what every American family's had to do over the past couple of years, and that's to prioritize spending."

In the interview, Mr. Trump said he would use his primetime speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday to talk about his proposal to increase military spending, his push for more border security and his plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.

"All I can do is speak from the heart, and say what I want to do," Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump gave himself an "A" for effort and achievements, but a "C or C+" for messaging after about six weeks on the job. "I don't think we've explained it well enough to the American public," he said. "Maybe I change it during the speech."

Asked about more than 600 administration jobs that remain vacant, mostly because he hasn't made the appointments, Mr. Trump said he doesn't want to fill most of the positions.

"A lot of those jobs I don't want to appoint because they're unnecessary to have. We have so many people in government," Mr. Trump said. "Many of those jobs I don't want to fill."

Mr. Trump said he understood why Bill Owens, the father of Ryan Owens, the Navy SEAL killed during a raid in Yemen in January, was upset and wouldn't want to meet with him. "What's worse? There's nothing worse," Mr. Trump said. "But again, this was something that they were looking at for a long time doing. And according to General [Jim] Mattis [the defense secretary], it was a very successful mission. They got tremendous amounts of information."

Mr. Trump also said that former President Barack Obama was responsible for the protests being organized around the country. "I think President Obama is behind it," Mr. Trump said, adding that his supporters were probably responsible for leaks in his administration. "But I also understand that's politics."

Representatives for Mr. Obama didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump criticized House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi for saying he had "done nothing" in office in his first month. "She's incompetent actually," Mr. Trump said. "I've done just about more than anybody in the first four weeks."

Mrs. Pelosi's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Asked about a report in Politico that his press secretary, Sean Spicer, recently had his team's cellphones inspected over concerns about leaks, Mr. Trump said that he would have taken a different approach.

"Sean Spicer is a fine human being, he's a fine person -- I would have done it differently," he said. "I would have gone one-on-one with different people. And we don't have a major leak process here. We have a major leak process in government. I would have handled it differently than Sean, but Sean handles it his way and I'm OK with it."

Asked if the White House identified a leak, the president said, "We have sort of ideas."

Mr. Spicer was asked on Monday if there was an internal review for leaks. "Not that I'm aware of," he said.

Mr. Trump also explained his decision to skip the annual fundraising dinner for the White House Correspondents' Association by saying it was inappropriate given his feud of with the media over "fake news."

"I just thought, in the light of the fact of fake news, and all of the other things that we're talking about now, I thought it would be inappropriate," he said. "That doesn't mean I'm not going to do it next year."

Fox parent 21st Century Fox and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.

Write to Michael C. Bender at Mike.Bender@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 28, 2017 08:52 ET (13:52 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.