FILE - In this July 24, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump waves to the crowd after speaking at the 2017 National Scout Jamboree in Glen Jean, W.Va. The Boy Scouts are denying a claim by President Donald Trump that the head of the youth organization called the president to praise his politically aggressive speech to the Scouts’ national jamboree. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
FILE - In this July 24, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump waves to the crowd after speaking at the 2017 National Scout Jamboree in Glen Jean, W.Va. The Boy Scouts are denying a claim by President Donald Trump that the head of the youth organization called the president to praise his politically aggressive speech to the Scouts’ national jamboree. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) Credit: Carolyn Kaster

New York — Faced with a firm denial from the Boy Scouts, the White House on Wednesday corrected President Donald Trump’s claim in an interview that the head of the youth group called him to heap praise on a politically aggressive speech Trump delivered at the Scouts’ national jamboree.

After the Boy Scouts issued a statement saying no such call happened, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed their take but said “multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership” approached Trump in person after the speech and “offered quite powerful compliments.”

Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Wednesday, “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them.”

“We are unaware of any such call,” the Boy Scouts responded in a statement. It specified that neither Boy Scout President Randall Stephenson nor Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh placed such a call.

Sanders explained the discrepancy on Wednesday by saying Trump misspoke when he described the conversations as calls.

“The conversations took place,” she added. “They just simply didn’t take place over a phone call.”

There was no immediate word from the Boy Scouts as to whether Surbaugh was among those congratulating Trump in person. Stephenson did not attend the speech.

The White House also had to back off another Trump claim made Monday about an alleged phone call from Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who Trump claimed called him to praise his immigration policies.

Email exchanges with the Boy Scouts of America head office made clear that fallout from the speech, and the president’s latest claim, placed the BSA in an awkward position — seeking to show its long-standing respect for the office of the presidency and avoid a confrontation with Trump while making clear that its top leaders had not called him to praise the speech.