Boy Scouts chief says he expected a fiery Trump speech

NEW YORK (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America anticipated President Donald Trump would spark controversy with a politically tinged speech at its national jamboree in West Virginia but felt obliged to invite him out of respect for his office, its leader said Wednesday in his first public comments on the furor over Trump’s remarks.

“If I suggested I was surprised by the president’s comments, I would be disingenuous,” Boy Scouts of America president Randall Stephenson, who’s also CEO of AT&T, said in a phone call with The Associated Press.

Other U.S. presidents have addressed past jamborees with speeches steering clear of partisan politics. To the dismay of many parents and former scouts, Trump, a Republican, promoted his political agenda and assailed his enemies in his speech Monday evening, inducing some of the more than 30,000 scouts in attendance to boo at the mention of Barack Obama, his Democratic predecessor.

Stephenson noted that every U.S. president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been invited to address the jamboree and said the Boy Scouts leadership gave “a lot of thought about Donald Trump coming to speak.”

“Anyone knows his speeches get highly political — we anticipated that this could be the case,” Stephenson said. “Do I wish the president hadn’t gone there and hadn’t been political? Of course.”

Hoping to minimize friction, the Boy Scouts of America, which is based in Irving, Texas, issued what Stephenson called “stringent guidelines” to adult staff members for how the audience should react to the speech.

Stephenson, who was not in attendance at Trump’s speech, said the guidance wasn’t followed impeccably.

“There were some areas where perhaps they were not in compliance with what we instructed,” he said. “There’s probably criticism that could be leveled.”