President Trump said he was ready to apologize for retweeting anti-Muslim videos from a far right British group and reiterated that he was not a racist, in an interview with Good Morning Britain on Friday.

Piers Morgan, the presenter, pushed him about the November retweet of three videos by Britain First that caused outrage in Britain and a rare rebuke by Prime Minister Theresa May.

Trump said he was unaware of the group’s politics and that the tweets showed his concern over the threat of radical Islam.

“If you are telling me they’re horrible people, horrible, racist people, I would certainly apologize if you’d like me to do that,” he said, according to a report on the interview by the British ITV broadcaster.

Morgan described the group, which presents itself as a political party but is widely seen as an extremist group targeting Muslims, as “racist.” Trump denied any knowledge of the group when he shared three videos from Jayda Francen, its deputy leader.

“Of course I didn’t know that. I know nothing about them and I know nothing about them today other than I read a little bit,” Trump said. “I don’t know who they are. I know nothing about them so I wouldn’t be doing that.”

He added that “I am often the least racist person that anybody is going to meet.”

After Trump retweeted the videos, Frayden expressed joy over the move, tweeting “God Bless You Trump!” and noting he had 44 million followers. She had been convicted of religiously aggravated harassment in November 2016 after abusing a woman wearing a hijab and was arrested a year later for a speech made in Belfast that used “threatening, abusive, insulting words.”

[Trump retweets inflammatory and unverified anti-Muslim videos]

The videos showed alleged violent acts carried out by Muslims, including one of a boy on crutches being beat up by a Muslim migrant that was proved to be misleading.

A statement from the British prime minister’s office later called it “wrong” to share such materials that promote “hateful narratives.”

Morgan, the interviewer, himself weighed in on the controversy at the time, tweeting: “Good morning, Mr President @realDonaldTrump — what the hell are you doing retweeting a bunch of unverified videos by Britain First, a bunch of disgustingly racist far-right extremists? Please STOP this madness undo your retweets.”

The interview came while Trump was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he took the opportunity praise his relations with Britain and May.

“I can tell you I have a very good relationship with your prime minister,” Trump said, according to Reuters. “She’s been doing a very good job. We actually have a very good relationship, although a lot of people think we don’t.”

He added that the United States would come to the defense of Britain if needed.

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President Trump sought the firing of Robert S. Mueller III last June, shortly after the special counsel took over the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he backed off only after White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn threatened to resign over the move.

The extraordinary showdown was confirmed by two people familiar with the episode, which was first reported by the New York Times.

McGahn did not deliver his resignation threat directly to Trump but was serious about his threat to leave, according to a person familiar with the episode.

Trump denied the report Friday when asked about it during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Fake news, folks. Fake news,” Trump told reporters.

The president’s effort to fire the special counsel came in the weeks after Mueller’s appointment last May to lead the probe into whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russian attempts to tilt the election. Mueller was tapped for the role by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey.

The special counsel probe has quickly expanded to include an exploration of whether Trump has attempted to obstruct the ongoing investigation — a line of inquiry that could now include the president’s threats to fire Mueller himself.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, declined to comment. McGahn did not respond to requests for comment.

A White House spokesman referred questions to Ty Cobb, the attorney coordinating the administration’s response to the Russia investigations, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment. John Dowd, an attorney for the president, declined to comment.

Democrats late Thursday renewed their calls for Congress to pass legislation to protect Mueller and future special counsels from being fired by the president. At least two such bills have been introduced in recent months by members of both parties.

Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own investigation of Russian interference, said in a statement that “firing the Special Counsel is a red line that the President cannot cross. Any attempt to remove the Special Counsel, pardon key witnesses, or otherwise interfere in the investigation, would be a gross abuse of power, and all members of Congress, from both parties, have a responsibility to our Constitution and to our country to make that clear immediately.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a former state attorney general, described Trump’s attempt to oust Mueller as “remarkable and stunning,” adding in an interview, “it shows the need immediately to protect the special counsel.”

Republican Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.) said in an interview that McGahn “prevented an Archibald Cox moment,” referring to the special prosecutor ordered fired by President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate investigation.

“I believe now that this revelation has been made public, that there will be increasing pressure to protect Mueller,” Dent added.

Trump was initially calm when Mueller was appointed, surprising White House aides, according to a senior administration official.

But in the weeks that followed, the president spoke with a number of friends and advisers who convinced him that Mueller would dig through his private finances and look beyond questions of collusion with Russians. They warned that the probe could last years and would ruin his first term in office.

At the time, Trump’s legal team was urging him to take an aggressive posture toward the special counsel and was compiling arguments about why Mueller could not be impartial. Among the points cited: an allegation that Mueller had gotten into a dispute over membership fees before he resigned from a Trump-owned golf course in Northern Virginia in 2011.

The dispute was hardly a dispute at all. According to a person familiar with the matter, Mueller had sent a letter requesting a dues refund in accordance with normal club practice and never heard back.

[Trump team seeks to control, block Mueller’s Russia investigation]

Trump’s ire at Mueller rose to such a level that then-White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon and then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus grew “incredibly concerned” that he was going to fire Mueller and sought to enlist others to intervene with the president, according to a Trump adviser who requested anonymity to describe private conversations.

Both of the men were deeply worried about the possibility and discussed how to keep him from making such a move, this person said.

Priebus and Bannon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In one meeting with other advisers, Bannon raised the concern that if Trump fired Mueller it could trigger a challenge to his presidency based on the 25th Amendment, which lays out the process of who succeeds a president in case of incapacitation.

Despite internal objections, Trump decided to assert that Mueller had unacceptable conflicts of interest and moved to remove him from his position, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

In response, McGahn said he would not remain at the White House if Trump went through with the move, according to a senior administration official.

The president, in turn, backed off.

Since then, Trump brought in a new legal team that has counseled cooperation with Mueller. He has continued to fume about the investigation, even as his lawyers have publicly pledged to work with the special counsel. On Thursday, Dowd released a memo outlining the administration’s commitment to transparency, noting that more than 20 White House officials have voluntarily given interviews.

But the revelation that Trump tried to fire Mueller could be a critical piece of evidence for the special counsel as he tries to build an obstruction case, said white-collar criminal defense attorney Jacob Frenkel, who previously worked in the Office of Independent Counsel.

“In the jigsaw puzzle of circumstantial evidence of criminal intent, these are more pieces that Mueller certainly would use,” Frenkel said. “You build it around the timing.”

The president’s attorneys will probably try to argue that Trump was merely responding to current events, without intending to impede anything, Frenkel added.

“The defense would be this was merely an emotional response that’s reflective of the frustration about the ongoing investigation and its distraction from the ability to govern,” he said.

Robert Costa, Ed O’Keefe, Philip Rucker, Sean Sullivan and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.

President Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington last month. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

President Trump said for the first time Wednesday that he is open to a path to citizenship for some younger undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers” in an immigration deal being negotiated by Congress, a potential breakthrough in the stalled talks.

In an impromptu discussion with reporters, Trump emphasized that his support of a citizenship path for about 690,000 immigrants would be contingent on securing $25 billion for a wall on the southwest border with Mexico and $5 billion for additional border upgrades. The president also is expected to continue his push to curb legal immigration as part of a deal.

But his remarks signaled what could prove to be a major shift for a president who ran a campaign with a hard line on immigration and last week rejected a bipartisan Senate proposal that included citizenship.

White House aides said the president would release a complete “framework” on Monday. The aides said that plan probably would grant immediate provisional legal status to those immigrants covered by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that he terminated in the fall. That group would then be eligible to pursue full citizenship over 10 to 12 years.

“We’re going to morph into it,” Trump said of citizenship. “It’s going to happen — over a period of 10 to 12 years. If somebody’s done a great job and worked hard, it keeps the incentive to do a great job. … I think it’s a nice thing to have the incentive, after a period of years, of being able to become a citizen.”

Lawmakers face a Feb. 8 deadline for a must-pass spending bill to keep the government open, but Democrats and some Republicans have said they will not support a long-term deal that does not address the future of the DACA program. The impasse over immigration led to a brief, partial government shutdown this week before lawmakers agreed Monday to a three-week funding extension.

Congress members have expressed exasperation that Trump has not clearly articulated his demands and vacillated over the past several weeks, at times signaling he was open to a deal but then reversing himself after speaking with aides or immigration hard-liners. A senior White House official said the framework would give lawmakers a clearer set of guidelines to help break the impasse.

“This president is committed to fixing this damn problem,” a senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told reporters at a background briefing. “What we were hearing constantly from [Capitol] Hill is … ‘Look, I’m not going to put my neck out and support something unless I know the president will sign it.'”

Yet Trump has reneged on previous statements about the dreamers, who have lived in the country illegally since they were children. Their moniker comes from the DREAM Act, bipartisan legislation first proposed in 2001 that would provide citizenship to the group under certain conditions. It has never passed Congress.

During his campaign, Trump promised to end DACA, which offered two-year work permits to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, on his first day in office. But after he was sworn in last year, Trump did not act, instead assuring dreamers that he would work out a deal to protect them. After Texas and several other states threatened to sue the Trump administration over the program, Trump announced in September he would terminate DACA but granted lawmakers six months to work out a solution before the bulk of work permits begin to expire March 5.

During the discussion with reporters, Trump joked to Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that he hoped to have a deal by the time he got back from a two-day trip to Davos, Switzerland, for an economic forum. Kelly, who initially was scheduled to travel with the White House delegation, will remain in Washington to keep negotiating with Congress on immigration.

White House officials said Trump’s proposal for citizenship would be limited to the 690,000 who were enrolled in DACA when he terminated the program. However, Democrats and some Republicans have pushed to extend legal protections to a far larger group of dreamers – up to 1.7 million under the latest version of the DREAM Act.

Many of those who were eligible for DACA never applied, which immigrant rights advocates attributed to fears of registering with the government and costs associated with applying. White House officials said it would be left to Congress to negotiate over expanding protections beyond the DACA recipients. In all, there are an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country unlawfully.

[In debate on ‘dreamers,’ an unresolved question: How many should benefit?]

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who drafted the bipartisan immigration plan along with Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) that Trump rejected last week, welcomed Trump’s statement Wednesday as a sign of “presidential leadership on immigration.”

“President Trump’s support for a pathway to citizenship will help us get strong border security measures as we work to modernize a broken immigration system,” Graham said in a statement. “With this strong statement by President Trump, I have never felt better about our chances of finding a solution on immigration.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an immigration hawk whom Trump has consulted during the negotiations, said on Twitter that a path to citizenship for dreamers “must be done responsibly, guaranteeing a secure lawful border ending chain migration, to mitigate the negative side effects of codifying DACA.”

Democrats said they had not been consulted about what the White House plans to release on Monday, according to senior aides.

The White House announcement on immigration came as 35 senators gathered late Wednesday to figure out how the chamber will proceed on its immigration debate. Meeting in the hearing room for the Senate Armed Services Committee, the group of Democrats and Republicans asked Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Durbin to serve as a clearinghouse and sort out the parameters and timetable for the debate. Both senators are the deputy leaders of their respective parties and sit on a judiciary subcommittee on immigration policy.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who co-chaired meetings before and during the three-day government shutdown in an attempt to end the impasse, will continue hosting meetings on the subject in the coming days, according to Graham.

“We have created a process for input. The goal is to create an output that’s good for America,” Graham said in an earlier statement.

Earlier Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the new White House immigration plan “represents a compromise that members of both parties can support. We encourage the Senate to bring it to the floor.”

Late last year, the administration sent a long list of immigration principles that lacked specifics. Trump said during a meeting with a large group of lawmakers at the White House two weeks ago that he would sign whatever plan Congress sent him.

A bipartisan group in the Senate led by Durbin and Graham presented a proposal to Trump last week that attempted to address his concerns. It included $1.6 billion for a wall and offered a path to citizenship for dreamers. Trump has rejected that plan. The president also rejected a last-minute offer from Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who reportedly offered $25 billion for border security and the wall.

On Tuesday, Schumer confirmed that he had  pulled his proposal on Sunday during the shutdown. “We’re going to have to start on a new basis, and the wall offer’s off the table,” he told reporters.

The announcement came as Schumer is facing backlash from some Democrats and immigrant rights groups for how he has handled negotiations with Trump.

[Schumer has rescinded offer to Trump on border wall funding]

If the lawmakers fail to agree on a spending plan by Feb. 8, the government could shut down again.

“We’ve taken into account all of the conversations that we’ve had, both at the presidential and the staff level, and tried to incorporate that into what we think addresses all of the different things that we’ve heard from the various stakeholders throughout the last several months,” Sanders said.

“After decades of inaction by Congress, it’s time we work together to solve this issue once and for all,” she added. “The American people deserve no less.”

Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.