Trump defends congresswoman who says he betrayed immigrants, turns on her when Miami Republicans reject her ad.

…(cont) They sent me up to the third floor for what I actually wanted. Wrong floor. The clerk up there sent me back down to two, and on two a woman behind the glass was reading her lunch and had more of it — the president got asked about that ad on Friday the 18th, right at the White House, and he told reporters he disagreed with the congresswoman's criticism, that his record on the border was very strong, and that he was sticking with her anyway. Supporting the reelection, this woman said, more or less word for word, off whatever she was reading.

Nobody on two could do what I needed either, so they walked me across to the annex, and the fellow at the annex window had the Sunday shows recapped before I even asked — the congresswoman went on television that Sunday, the 20th, and told the host she'd had a very good conversation with the president. Very courteous, she said he'd been. Very receptive.

At the annex they didn't have my form. The fellow there walked me down to records anyway, and records had a clipping up on the corkboard — one of the race-rater services had moved her seat, on Tuesday the 22nd, from likely Republican to lean Republican, about a week after that ad. Somebody in the office had circled the word "lean" in pen.

By the time I got back outside I still didn't have what I came for. That happens more than it should. But I want to put two of those dates side by side, because I wrote both of them down, in two different offices, off two different people, and neither one contradicts the other, which is the trouble. Friday the 18th: the president is sticking with her. The following Saturday: the president is sharing around criticism of her, after a report that Republicans in her own Miami area had come out against the very ad that started this. Eight days, door to door.

Here's what I kept turning over on the drive home, past the toll plaza where the arm comes down whether you're ready for it or not. The light goes green while you're already committed to the lane — you're past the point where backing the car up does any good — and it's only afterward, at the booth, that anybody finds out if the account underneath it is still good. Nobody tells you at the moment you go through. They tell you after.

The paper this morning has the rest of it — the president amplifying criticism of the congresswoman now instead of standing against it, and at least one Republican on the record calling that a mistake.

Which is the part I'd ask about, if I could find anybody left in that building. Excuse me — before you go — was it her position that changed somewhere between the 18th and that Saturday, or was it what the Republicans down in Miami decided to do with her ad?