Maggie HabermanVerified account

Missed this in tweeting from the call - the president railed again about the Atlantic piece about him and John Kelly and his son's graveside and said, "I saw a commercial on it yesterday, I blew my stack."

Reminder that we reported many months ago that Trump was losing patience with Fauci >https://twitter.com/maggienyt/status/1318210553815437312 …

Stepien now introducing Brock McCleary, who appears to now be doing polling for the Trump campaign.

"I love my team, I'm happy with my team, I love Meadows, he's phenomenal," Trump says. Then back to talking about our story. "These are sick people."

"Don't feel sorry for me, don't say, 'How the hell does he do it?'" Trump says of his schedule.

"My people are doing a great job," says Trump, who also said if asked two weeks ago he might not have said he was going to win (he said two weeks ago he was going to win).

"If there's a reporter on, you can have it just the way I said it, I couldn't care less," Trump says.

Trump says every time Fauci goes on TV it's a "bomb," but it's a "bigger bomb if you fire him."

"People are tired of covid," the president said. "People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots... Fauci's a nice guy, he's been here for 500 years...wonderful sage telling us..."

The president tells staff on call the Wall Street Journal is "working on an important piece."

Now Trump says his relationship with Meadows is good. In private, the president has been railing about Meadows. On the call, he says, "I love Mark Meadows." Denies he's thinking of getting rid of him after election day.

Read the story @alexburnsNYT and I wrote for today's paper > https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/us/politics/trump-2020-campaign.html …

Stepien began the call by mentioning a series of metrics and sounding committed to the plan they’re trying to execute in final two weeks.

Potus unhappy about @alexburnsNYT and my story today, says his supporters “don’t give a shit” about the Times.