Donald Trump: 'I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m President, and you’re not'

Donald Trump has defended some of the wild claims he has made in his short political career amid questions over his credibility, saying, “I guess I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m President, and you’re not.”

The interview with Time magazine was a rare moment of media access to Mr Trump for a publication that is not considered right-leaning.

Instead of squarely addressing Time’s question regarding the reputation of the White House and his relationship with the intelligence community, Mr Trump was evasive and would only say repeatedly that he “inherited a mess”.

According to Mr Trump the “mess” includes the situations in North Korea and the Middle East, inaccurate national employment statistics, and trade.

“I inherited a mess with jobs, despite the statistics, you know, my statistics are even better, but they are not the real statistics because you have millions of people that can’t get a job, OK,” Mr Trump said.

There has been no evidence to suggest the statistics issued by the Department of Labor are incorrect.

FBI director James Comey gave explosive testimony in front of Congress on 20 March, stating that his agency had no information to verify Mr Trump’s accusations on Twitter that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in New York during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Mr Trump’s response to the question of whether he believes Mr Comey was typical of his rhetoric with the members of the press.

“I know you are going to write a bad article because you always do…[but] wiretap data used in inquiry of Trump aides. OK... Front page, January 20th. Now in their second editions, they took it all down under the internet,” Mr Trump said referring to The New York Times articles on the subject.

He did not elaborate or clarify further and instead pivoted to blame “leakers” in the government – possibly in his own administration – that leaked information on Former Director of National Intelligence Michael Flynn and Mr Trump’s conversations with Mexico and Australia.

When asked if he was worried if the claims he is making about wiretapping, statistics, and being wrong on other issues would hurt his “credibility”, Mr Trump said: “Name what’s wrong! I mean, honestly.”