WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — As he sought to get his struggling administration back on track during a weekend trip to Florida, President Trump held another rousing campaign-style rally and made plans to interview potential candidates to serve as national security adviser.
‘‘I want to be among my friends and among the people,’’ Trump told a cheering crowd packed into an airport hangar, praising his ‘‘truly great movement.’’
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Saturday that Trump would interview retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, his acting adviser; John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations; Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster; and Lieutenant General Robert Caslen, the superintendent of the US Military Academy at West Point.
Trump might talk with a few others as well at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Spicer said. Trump is also planning to speak with several foreign leaders Sunday, and will hold a health care strategy meeting.
Trump is working to replace ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn. The president’s first choice — retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward — turned down the offer.
The president also held a rally Saturday afternoon at the Orlando Melbourne International Airport in Melbourne, Fla. The rally gave Trump an opportunity to recapture the energy of his upstart campaign and to connect with his supporters.
He told his cheering supporters that he wanted to speak to them without the filter of the ‘‘fake news.’’ And he accused the ‘‘dishonest media’’ of publishing one false story after another as his administration gets underway.
Trump said that when the media lie to the people, he will ‘‘never, ever let them get away with it.’’
First lady Melania Trump introduced her husband at the rally, reciting the Lord’s Prayer before offering her own pledge to act in the best interest of all Americans as she pursues initiatives she says will affect women and children around the world.
Big rowdy rallies were the hallmark of Trump’s presidential campaign. He continued to do them, although with smaller crowds, throughout the early part of the transition, during what he called a ‘‘thank you’’ tour.
During the rally, the president welcomed a supporter, Gene Huber, to the podium and invited to speak to the crowd.
Another supporter who attended the rally at the airport said she wishes that some in the media wouldn’t be ‘‘so mean’’ to him, especially during news conferences.
Cheryl Hall, 60, a disabled veteran from Claremont, Fla., was a Trump campaign worker during the election. She said she is not bothered by Trump’s remarks about the media, though she knows some do tell the truth.
The president on Saturday morning continued his Twitter attacks against the news media. ‘‘Don’t believe the main stream (fake news) media,’’ he said. “The White House is running very well. I inherited a mess and am in the process of fixing it.’’
As Trump considers candidates for national security adviser, he is presiding over a government in which the upper echelons are still sparsely populated.
Six of the 15 statutory Cabinet secretaries are still awaiting Senate confirmation as Democrats nearly uniformly oppose almost all of the president’s choices. Even some of the Cabinet secretaries who are in place are lacking key assistants.
The State Department that has no deputy secretary or Trump-appointed undersecretaries or assistant secretaries. Neither do the Treasury Department, the Education Department, or any of the other Cabinet departments. Only three of the 15 have even named a nominee for deputy secretary.
Finding a new national security adviser has proved challenging for the president. He had also expressed interest in former CIA director David Petraeus, but Spicer said Petraeus was no longer under consideration.
Petraeus, a retired four-star general, resigned as CIA director in 2012 and pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information relating to documents he had provided to his biographer, with whom he was having an affair.
Flynn resigned at Trump’s request Monday after revelations that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about discussing sanctions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States during the transition. Trump said in a news conference Thursday that he was disappointed by how Flynn had treated Pence, but did not believe Flynn had done anything wrong by having the conversations.
Trump has fallen behind the pace of his last three predecessors in naming senior officials who require Senate confirmation and in securing their confirmations, The New York Times reported, citing data compiled by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.
Whereas President Obama had nominated 40 senior officials by Feb. 11, 2009, Trump had named 34 of them as of Friday. Obama had 24 confirmed at that point, while Trump has 14.
