Speaking at the White House to attorneys general from around the country, Mr. Trump was asked by Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania, about the wave of attacks and how the federal government could work with state governments to confront the violence. 
 
 “First, he said the acts were reprehensible,” Mr. Shapiro, a Democrat who was elected to the post in November, said while recounting Mr. Trump’s response. “Second he said: ‘And you’ve got to be careful, it could be the reverse. This could be the reverse, trying to make people look bad.’ ” 
 
 The comments echoed the Twitter post of an adviser, Anthony Scaramucci, who suggested that Democrats were behind threats to Jewish community centers. 
 
 During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump was questioned for his seemingly reluctant denunciation of David Duke, the former Klansman who backed him, and for the onslaught of anti-Semitic hate from supporters on social media. At a news conference this month, Mr. Trump suggested that people who were holding up anti-Semitic signs at rallies were doing so to make him look bad. 
 
 “Some of it is written by our opponents,” Mr. Trump said at the time. “You do know that. Do you understand that?” 
 
 Approximately 100 tombstones were toppled at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia this week, the second such attack in the city in the last month. Synagogues, community centers and cemeteries around the country have been targeted this year. 
 
 Democrats condemned Mr. Trump’s remarks on Tuesday and called for an apology. 
 
 “For millennia, Jews have not only endured unthinkable violence, but the subsequent denial of that violence,” said Eric Walker, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. “For the president of the United States to insinuate that threats to Jewish community centers are illegitimate is truly beyond the pale.” 
 
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 The Anti-Defamation League, which combats anti-Semitism, said it was “astonished” by Mr. Trump’s sentiments and called on him to clarify his remarks. 
 
 Mr. Shapiro, speaking on the sidelines of the attorneys general conference, said that he was not entirely sure of what to make of Mr. Trump’s comments. 
 
 “I was a little surprised by it, and others were, too, Republicans and Democrats,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The question I asked was a genuine one and one of great concern to people in my state.” 
 
 Mr. Trump told the attorneys general that he planned to discuss the issue during his address to Congress on Tuesday night. 
 
 Trump: ‘I think I’ve done great things’ 
 
 Mr. Trump gave his presidency an A so far in an interview broadcast Tuesday morning, but he added that he would only give himself a C for communicating how great he has been. 
 
 Appearing on “Fox and Friends,” which he has called one of his favorite shows, Mr. Trump blamed former President Barack Obama for organizing opposition against him, called Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, “incompetent” and gently criticized his own press secretary for how he has handled leaks. 
 
 The interview, shown just hours before Mr. Trump was to deliver his first address to a joint session of Congress, set the stage for a day when he will have perhaps the biggest audience available to him for the rest of his first year in office. He highlighted his plans to increase military spending, tighten borders and replace Mr. Obama’s health care program, and he boasted that he had already brought back jobs to America. 
 
 “I think I’ve done great things, but I don’t think I have — I and my people — I don’t think we’ve explained it well enough to the American public,” he said. “I think I get an A in terms of what I’ve actually done, but in terms of messaging, I’d give myself a C or a C-plus.” 
 
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 He acknowledged that he did not have the support of a majority of Americans in polls, but he said those who do back him were more intense. “The love is great,” he said. “And I saw a poll where I was at 45 or 46 percent, but one of the things they said is that the level of enthusiasm for me is as strong as they’ve ever seen.” 
 
 Mr. Trump rejected criticism by Ms. Pelosi, who said that for all the sound and fury, the president had not actually accomplished much in his first month in office. “I’ve been watching Nancy’s tape, and so I think she’s incompetent, actually,” Mr. Trump said. 
 
 Asked by the Fox hosts if he thought Mr. Obama was responsible for some of the protests against his policies, Mr. Trump agreed but brushed it off. “I think he is behind it,” he said. “I also think it’s politics,” adding, “And look, I have a very thick skin.” 
 
 Mr. Trump, who has railed against leaks, said some of them had probably come from holdovers from the Obama administration. But he said his press secretary, Sean Spicer, was wrong to have brought a group of staff members into his office and inspect their cellphones in the presence of White House lawyers. 
 
 “Sean Spicer is a fine human being; he’s a fine person,” Mr. Trump said. “I would have done it differently. I would have gone one-on-one with different people.” He added: “I would have handled it differently than Sean. But Sean handles it his way, and I’m O.K. with it.” 
 
 Engel pledges: No handshake for Trump 
 
 Photo 
 
 For almost three decades, Representative Eliot L. Engel, a New York Democrat, has stood along the aisle of the House chamber for every presidential address to Congress, waiting to shake the president’s hand. 
 
 But on Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump will become the first president since 1989 to not receive a greeting from Mr. Engel. 
 
 As curious reporters mused whether Mr. Engel would repeat his annual ritual of claiming his seat long before the address begins, the lawmaker bypassed the prime empty aisle seat and a chance to shake hands with his fellow New Yorker. 
 
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 Among other disagreements that factored into his decision to skip the handshake, Mr. Engel said, were Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election and his attacks on the news media. 
 
 “The president needs to work with all people,” Mr. Engel said. “And therefore I will listen to what he has to say today, but I will not greet him and shake his hand.” 
 
 Mr. Engel, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, has been among Mr. Trump’s most vocal critics in the House, pressing for further investigations into the administration’s ties to Russia. In January Mr. Engel introduced legislation that would punish any foreign entity found to have intervened in a federal election. 
 
 Some Democrats planned to make a statement with their wardrobe as well: A group of female members planned to wear white, the color of the suffragist movement, in a signal to Mr. Trump on women’s rights. 
 
 Representative Lois Frankel of Florida, the chairwoman of the Democratic Women’s Working Group, said on Twitter that the choice of attire symbolized “a pledge to protect women’s health, fair pay, paid leave & more!” 
 
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 On crime and punishment 
 
 Based on the preview that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, gave reporters on Monday, Mr. Trump is expected to hark back to his “law and order” theme by promising more aggressive federal policing of gun crimes, drugs and other areas in response to a rise in violent crime in some big cities. 
 
 Crime is near historic lows nationwide and remains far below levels seen in the 1970s and ‘80s. 
 
 But Mr. Sessions, a former senator and prosecutor who was an important campaign adviser to Mr. Trump, told reporters he was worried that the increase in violence in some major cities, like Chicago and Baltimore, was “not a blip” and could signal “a longer-term trend.” Mr. Sessions gave speech of his own on that topic Tuesday morning to the National Association of Attorneys General in Washington. 
 
 Mr. Sessions said he wanted to let local police officers know “that they’re being supported” in Washington, and he suggested that morale was lagging in some departments because of a lack of federal leadership. 
 
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 The buck stops where? 
 
 Mr. Trump will also be trying to affirm his role as commander in chief. 
 
 In the Fox interview, Mr. Trump described a raid in Yemen that left an American commando and a number of civilians dead as something that generals “wanted to do” and that was planned before he took office, drawing charges that he was deflecting responsibility for a mission he approved. 
 
 Mr. Trump was asked to respond to William Owens, father of Chief Petty Officer William Owens, 36, the Navy SEAL member who was killed in the Jan. 29 raid. Mr. Owens told The Miami Herald that he refused to meet with the president when his son’s body was returned home, and asked why the new administration had rushed into a “stupid mission.” 
 
 “Well, this was a mission that was started before I got here,” Mr. Trump said. “This was something that was, you know, just, they wanted to do. They came to see me, they explained what they wanted to do, the generals.” 
 
 Moments later, he reiterated that “this was something that they were looking at for a long time doing.” 
 
 His statement drew sharp responses from critics who said he was defying a long tradition of commanders shouldering responsibility for what happens under them. 
 
 “He’s the opposite of a `buck stops here’ president,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “Trump has a predilection for always blaming somebody else for what goes wrong.” 
 
 Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger who served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration, wrote on Twitter that in the Trump worldview, “Trump is responsible for all the victories, his team for all the defeats.” 
 
 Though he spoke of the Yemen mission not as his own, but as a project of “the generals,” Mr. Trump boasted, “My generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe.” In fact, the military command consists almost entirely of people who were in their posts before he took office. 
 
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 Democrats’ guests send anti-Trump message 
 
 Muslims. Immigrants. A recent detainee. 
 
 Officially, the Democratic rebuttal to Mr. Trump’s speech will come from Steven L. Beshear, the former governor of Kentucky, who will defend the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 But inside the House chamber where Mr. Trump will speak, Democrats plan to assemble a cadre of human symbols, bringing as guests several people imperiled by the president’s policies. Eschewing wide-scale boycotts of the speech — a feature of Mr. Trump’s inaugural address — members of Congress have used their invitations as another form of protest. 
 
 Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is bringing an Iraqi refugee who settled in the state in 2010 and is now an American citizen. Representative Nydia M. Velázquez of New York invited Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who worked as a translator for American forces in Iraq and was detained last month at Kennedy International Airport under the Trump administration’s travel ban. Other guests include undocumented immigrants who were protected from deportation under Mr. Obama, an Iranian graduate student and the founder of the Syrian Community Network. ||||| "It's not venting either,” President Donald Trump says. | Getty Trump: There's 'no method' to my tweeting 
 
 President Donald Trump said Monday that there is “no method” to the way in which he uses Twitter, his preferred social media platform with which he often seeks to end-around the media by communicating directly to his millions of followers. 
 
 “No method, really. It's just -- it's not venting either,” Trump said when asked about his Twitter habits during an interview on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” that aired Tuesday and was taped a day earlier. 
 
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 “It does allow me to go around dishonest media. I don't have to go around you folks. I don't have to go around a lot of the media. But I do have to go around some media,” Trump continued, offering a compliment to the Fox News program that has delivered almost unfailingly positive coverage of his administration. “I have so many millions of people, it allows me to give a message without necessarily having to go through people where I'm giving them a message and they're putting it down differently from what I mean.” 
 
 While Trump has successfully parlayed his social media habits into greater visibility and reporter-free communication with his supporters, they have also kicked off firestorms with what sometimes appear to be knee-jerk reactions. Seeking to avoid the latter, prominent Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others, have publicly suggested that Trump tone down his tweeting. 
 
 Democrats, too, have called on the president to quit conducting so much of his messaging in 140 character chunks. But Trump seemed unconcerned by their admonitions, telling “Fox & Friends” that Twitter is an essential tool for him. 
 
 “Well, most of the people that want me to stop it are the enemies, I'll be honest with you. The enemies would like me to stop it,” he said. “If I felt the media were honest, all of it, or most of it, I wouldn't do it. But it is a modern-day form of communication, especially when you have, you know, tens of millions of people like I have.” 
 
 Authors: ||||| President Trump said in an exclusive interview Tuesday that his address to Congress this evening will focus on the central planks of his campaign – the military, the border, jobs and health care – and he took responsibility for any communications miscues that have blunted the effectiveness of his message in the early days of the administration. 
 
 Trump, in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” specifically cited his immigration policy, and said that perhaps the rollout of his plan to keep out and remove criminal illegals hadn’t been communicated effectively. 
 
 “And maybe that’s my fault,” Trump said. 
 
 He later awarded himself a grade of a “C” or “C-plus” on communicating, straightforwardly saying, “My messaging isn’t good.” He clarified that he would give himself an "A" for achievement and "A-plus" for effort. 
 
 VIDEO: TRUMP REFLECTS ON FIRST MONTH IN OFFICE 
 
 Trump added on immigration: “We’re getting the bad ones out, the bad people, gang people, drug lords, in some cases, murderers,” echoing the campaign rhetoric that dominated speeches from Day 1 of his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination. 
 
 “I’m much tougher in getting the bad guys out,” Trump said, contrasting himself with former President Barack Obama. “He was much less focused on that.” 
 
 On health care, Trump said the yet-to-be released replacement for ObamaCare is “really terrific” and “inclusive,” and he said Congress is right not to be hasty in repealing the current law. 
 
 “I think we have a great plan and I think Congress is absolutely taking a lot of blame, but it’s not their fault,” Trump said. “I’ve only been here for – what is this my fifth week?” 
 
 VIDEO: TRUMP GIVES 'FOX & FRIENDS' A TOUR OF THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 As the president plans to boost the military, Trump’s proposed $54 billion increase in defense spending is coming largely from cuts to the State Department and Environmental Protection Agency. He suggested Tuesday that foreign aid would be a target of the cuts. 
 
 “We’re going to do things having to do with other countries because we’re treated very, very unfairly,” Trump said. “…We’re taking care of their military and we’re not being reimbursed. They’re wealthy countries.” 
 
 Trump pledged to use his “Art of the Deal” expertise to drive down costs, as well. 
 
 “I am going to get involved in negotiating,” Trump said. “We have many planes and boats and ships … we’re spending too much money individually on.” He said the U.S. would “get a lot more product for our buck.” 
 
 Trump also said some of the monetary increases would “come from a revved up economy” and pointed to the numerous manufacturers and car makers – such as Carrier, GM and Ford – that have announced investments in U.S.-based factories and jobs since he was elected. Previously, Trump said, “they were fleeing this country.” Meanwhile, a bullish stock market has created “trillions of dollars in value.” 
 
 Part of Trump’s plan to add jobs had been stalled by the amount of time it took for the Senate to confirm Scott Pruitt, now the EPA administrator. When Pruitt “gets going” it’s going to mean “thousands and millions of jobs,” Trump said. 
 
 “We have hundreds and hundreds of massive deals that are tied up in environmental protection,” he said. 
 
 Though he pledged to give the U.S. “the greatest military we’ve ever had by the time I finish,” Trump spoke somberly about the Jan. 29 special operations mission in Yemen that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL. Sen. John McCain – a frequent Trump foil – had criticized the daring raid, saying he would “not describe any operation that results in the loss of American life as a success.” Trump said McCain’s remarks were “inappropriate.” 
 
 “I feel badly when a young man dies and John McCain says, ‘That was a failed mission,’” he said. 
 
 Trump also ramped up his war with the press, questioning whether many journalists are simply making up the stories he’s infamously derided as “fake news.” 
 
 “I believe that sometimes they don’t have sources,” Trump said. “I believe that a lot of the sources are made up. I believe a lot of the sources are pure fiction. They just pull it out of thin air.” 
 
 The White House has been plagued by a deluge of leaks leading to a series of politically embarrassing stories, and it was reported that Press Secretary Sean Spicer, in an attempt to stem the flow, called a meeting with dozens of aides and searched their electronic devices. While Trump is eager to find the source – or sources – of the leaks, he disagreed with Spicer’s controversial methodology. 
 
 “Sean Spicer is a fine human being. He’s a fine person. I would have done it differently,” Trump said. “I would have done it one-on-one.” 
 
 He added: “Sean handles it his way and I’m okay with it.” 
 
 Trump said the administration had “sort of ideas” who had been leaking information. 
 
 “We have people from other campaigns, we have people from [previous] governments,” Trump said. 
 

– On Monday night, President Trump hyped his upcoming Fox & Friends interview, and Tuesday morning he delivered—his first self-administered report card. In his sit-down with the Fox crew, which Politico notes was taped Monday afternoon, Trump awarded himself an A for achievement and an A-plus for effort so far, though he conceded that "results are more important." And there's one big area where he sees need for improvement. "In terms of messaging, I'd give myself a C or a C-plus," he noted, adding, "My messaging isn't good." To illustrate, he brought up his immigration initiative to keep out undocumented immigrants with criminal records, noting the failure of his administration to effectively communicate the purpose of the plan and acknowledging "maybe that's my fault," per Fox News. Keeping on the topic of communication, Trump believes some of the leaks in his administration likely come from Obama stragglers in the White House, the New York Times reports, though he said he doesn't agree with his own press secretary's spot-check of staffers' cellphones to remedy the issue. He called Sean Spicer "a fine human being," but said he "would have done it differently" and met with people individually instead. The president also addressed his penchant for tweeting, per Politico. He said there's "no method" to how he works up his 140 or so characters, nor is it "venting." Instead, he revealed, he uses Twitter to streamline the messaging he acknowledges still needs work, noting tweets allow him to circumvent "dishonest media" (which he interjected didn't mean Fox). "Most of the people that want me to stop [tweeting] are the enemies, I'll be honest with you," he said.