Before heading to the first of a series of D-Day commemorations on Wednesday, President Donald Trump used a television interview with a friendly journalist to try to clean up a couple of messes he had made, partially walking back his criticism of the American-born Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, and attempting to get out of a jam involving U.S.-British trade.
But even as he prepared for one of the ceremonial highlights of his five-day foreign trip, the president continued to focus on his domestic opposition, tweeting insults at the Senate's Democratic leader and Bette Midler, the actress and frequent Trump critic.
The walk-backs came in an interview with "Good Morning Britain" host Piers Morgan, which was conducted Tuesday and aired across Britain on Wednesday morning. The 54-year old Morgan has been a friend of the president since his appearances on Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" show in 2008, which played a major role in boosting his career.
Trump told Morgan that he did not mean to insult Markle when he referred to her in another interview days ago as "nasty." The comment cast a pall over Trump's visit and generated immense media coverage in the U.S. and Britain, where Markle, the wife of Prince Harry, draws huge amounts of attention.
Trump had first tried to deny ever having made the remark, tweeting on Sunday that "I never called Meghan Markle 'nasty.' Made up by the Fake News Media." Unfortunately for that approach, the British tabloid the Sun, which conducted the interview, had a recording of him, which it released.
With Morgan, Trump tried a different tack, saying that he was speaking specifically about a comment Markle made about him during the 2016 campaign, not about her as an individual.
"She was nasty to me," he said. "And that's OK for her to be nasty, it's not good for me to be nasty to her, and I wasn't."
Markle did not attend Monday's state banquet in Trump's honor or any other ceremonial events around his visit, but the president told Morgan that he spoke with her husband, the prince, who "couldn't have been nicer."
Morgan also helped Trump step out of another mess involving whether a future trade deal between the U.S. and Britain would allow American companies access to the U.K.'s National Health Service.
"I don't see it being on the table," Trump said, reversing what he had said at a news conference Tuesday with Prime Minister Theresa May where he seemed not to understand the question.
"Somebody asked me a question today, and I say everything is up for negotiation, because everything is," he continued. "But I don't see that as being, that's something that I would not consider part of trade. That's not trade."
The flap over the health service was a reminder that despite Trump's breezy assertion that a trade deal between Britain and the U.S. could be negotiated in a matter of weeks, such agreements are never easy.
As he headed to Portsmouth on the English Channel to mark the 75th anniversary of the launch of the D-day landing that turned the tide of World War II, the president turned to Twitter to air a series of grievances against the media and other perceived enemies.
First he attacked Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) as "a creep." Schumer, a frequent sparring partner, had attracted Trump's ire for predicting that the president would back down on his threat to impose escalating tariffs on Mexico.
Mexico's foreign minister is scheduled to meet Wednesday at the White House with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, and many Senate Republicans also expect _ and hope _ that Trump will use those talks as an excuse to back away from the tariff threat, which the Republican lawmakers oppose.
The Republican leadership wants to find a way for Trump to back away gracefully; Schumer wants to make the climb down visible.
Hours later, presumably after catching a few hours of sleep, Trump also went after the leading Democratic presidential hopeful, former Vice President Joe Biden.
"Plagiarism charge against Sleepy Joe Biden on his ridiculous Climate Change Plan is a big problem, but the Corrupt Media will save him," Trump wrote, referring to an incident Tuesday in which the initial release of Biden's plan to combat global warming lacked footnotes to some sources.
"His other problem is that he is drawing flies, not people, to his Rallies. Nobody is showing up, I mean nobody. You can't win without people!" Trump wrote.
The president is notoriously sensitive about crowd sizes, sometimes exaggerating the size of his own. On Wednesday, he was doing the opposite, claiming _ falsely _ that protests, which drew tens of thousands of people into the London streets around Parliament on Tuesday, were a fabrication of a biased media.
"I kept hearing that there would be 'massive' rallies against me in the UK, but it was quite the opposite," he wrote. "The big crowds, which the Corrupt Media hates to show, were those that gathered in support of the USA and me. They were big & enthusiastic as opposed to the organized flops!"
The anti-Trump demonstrations this week were smaller than the huge gatherings that protested his previous visit to London, but they greatly outnumbered any pro-Trump crowds in the city. Trump is overwhelmingly unpopular in Britain in general, and London in particular.
How much of the protests Trump's staff allowed him to see is unknown. He traveled even short distances in London by helicopter and had little interaction with Britons other than the royal family and government officials. White House officials have seldom scheduled Trump to visit any major cities, in the U.S. or elsewhere, shielding him from places where he might encounter opposition crowds.
Trump also renewed his feud with Midler.
The actress and frequent critic of the president had tweeted a quote wrongly attributed to him, which she later deleted. Trump went on the attack.
"Washed up psycho @BetteMidler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make 'your great president' look really bad," Trump tweeted, around 1 a.m. local time.. "She got caught, just like the Fake News Media gets caught. A sick scammer!"
A few hours later, he was heading to Portsmouth. From there, Trump is scheduled to travel to Ireland, where he plans to spend two nights at his golf resort in Doonbeg. He is scheduled to hold an hourlong meeting with Irish Taosieach Leo Varadkar at the Shannon Airport upon arrival Wednesday afternoon.
On Thursday, he is scheduled to travel from Ireland back across the Channel to Normandy to participate in a ceremony at the American cemetery above Omaha Beach to mark the 75th anniversary of D-day.
