President Trump invites 'well behaved' kids into Oval Office for 'Take Your Child To Work Day'

Hours after a free-wheeling and often meandering phone interview in which he angrily railed against various 'fake news' media outlets, President Donald Trump played host to several children of members of the press corps as part of the White House's 'Take Your Child To Work Day' festivities.

"Honestly, the children ask me better questions, if you want to know the truth," Trump joked to the group of kids in the Rose Garden Thursday afternoon. "Your parents are being very nice right now, I can't believe it! Because they don't want to embarrass themselves in front of you."

The more than two dozen children clamored for Trump to sign their White House access passes before he eventually invited the group along with several reporters into the Oval Office.

When a reporter asked whether the president had any comment on Dr. Ronny Jackson, who announced his withdrawal as the nominee for Veterans' Affairs secretary earlier in the morning, Trump gave a short answer.

"He's a great man, and he got treated very, very unfairly. He got treated really unfairly," Trump said. "And he's a hell of a man."

It's not the first time the president has entertained a reporters' question during a 'Take Your Child to Work Day' event. Last year an ABC News reporter asked the president how he planned to pay for the GOP's planned massive tax cut as the president greeted children in the Rose Garden, to which the president replied, "The growth is going to pay for it."

Once inside the Oval Office, the president played tour guide for the kids and complimented their reporter parents for not using the occasion to press him to answer further questions on various news of day topics.

"Do you know they say this is the most important office anywhere in the world, right?" Trump said. "And your parents are behaving very nicely for a change."

Earlier, press secretary Sarah Sanders held an off-camera mock White House press briefing with the kids seated in their parents' assigned chairs where they asked multiple questions.

After fielding questions on subjects like fired FBI director James Comey and Jackson, Sanders quipped, "I thought I was doing some easy stuff, your parents must have made some plants!"