President Trump called it “bothersome” that the special counsel now overseeing the Russia probe was “good friends” with fired FBI Director James B. Comey, and said he hinted at having tapes of his private conversations — apparently falsely — to try to influence Comey's eventual testimony.

The president made his remarks during an interview that aired Friday morning on “Fox & Friends," but was recorded on Thursday just hours after he tweeted that he did not, in fact, have tapes. Trump said that floating the possibility they did exist might have forced Comey "to tell what actually took place at the events."

“When he found out that, I, you know, that there may be tapes out there, whether it’s governmental tapes or anything else, and who knows, I think his story may have changed,” Trump said. “My story didn’t change. My story was always a straight story.”

Get ready for a drama-filled week of mock hand-wringing, political jockeying and backroom brinkmanship as the Senate GOP healthcare plan heads toward a hoped-for vote next week.

No sooner did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveil the long-awaited Obamacare overhaul Thursday than Republican senators started openly negotiating what it would take to win their votes.

Within just a few hours, four key conservative senators — Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky -- jointly announced they could not possibly vote for the bill as is, unless it more fully guts the Affordable Care Act.

Senate Republicans unveiled a draft bill on Thursday to roll back the Affordable Care Act, including a drastic reduction in federal healthcare spending that threatens to leave millions more Americans uninsured, drive up costs for poor consumers and further destabilize the nation’s health insurance markets.

The legislative outline, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s team wrote largely behind closed doors, hews closely to the Obamacare repeal bill passed last month by House Republicans, though it includes important differences. The House version was first celebrated by President Trump in a White House Rose Garden ceremony, though he later criticized the bill as “mean.”

Like the House bill, the Senate plan would eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes over the next decade, with large benefits for the wealthiest Americans. And like the House bill, it would pay for those cuts by dramatically reducing federal money for Medicaid, likely forcing states to make deep cuts in their healthcare programs for the poor. Trump promised during his campaign not to reduce Medicaid.

Dozens of disabled men and women were arrested after participating in a "die-in" protest outside of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office at the Capitol.

The demonstration, organized by the national disability group ADAPT, was staged in response to the Senate GOP's healthcare plan, which proposes drastic cuts to Medicaid. It's the primary source of funding for services that allow the disabled to live at home, sparing them from institutionalization.

Capitol Police say they arrested 43 people. According to spokesperson Eva Malecki, "many of the demonstrators, as part of their protest activities, removed themselves from their wheelchairs and lay themselves on the floor, obstructing passage through the hallway and into nearby offices."

President Trump chose the day that secretive Senate Republicans released their much-anticipated healthcare bill to finally end some suspense of his own making: No, he hasn't been surreptitiously recording conversations in the White House.

In Twitter messages posted just before a scheduled White House news briefing Thursday, the president did not entirely rule out the possibility that recordings of his private conversations — with fired FBI Director James B. Comey or anyone else — exist.

But, he wrote, "I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings."

A North Carolina man who fired an assault rifle inside a District of Columbia restaurant during his investigation of a conspiracy theory dubbed “Pizzagate” has been sentenced to four years in prison. 

Edgar Maddison Welch was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Washington. His attorney had asked that he be sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison. Prosecutors asked for 4 1/2 years. 

Welch pleaded guilty in March and acknowledged that he entered the Comet Ping Pong restaurant Dec. 4 with an AR-15 assault weapon and a revolver. He said he drove to the restaurant from North Carolina to investigate an unfounded conspiracy theory about Democrats harboring child sex slaves at the pizza restaurant. 

Protesters outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office were removed from the area Thursday morning after staging a "die-in" on Capitol Hill.

The protesters staged the action in opposition to the Senate's version of the Affordable Care Act repeal plan unveiled Thursday. McConnell is hoping to push the measure through the Senate next week. 

Again using Twitter, President Trump on Thursday addressed the controversial questions of whether there were tapes of his conversations with fired FBI Director James B. Comey. 

The president fired Comey in May and then tweeted that the lawman, who was overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election and possible contacts between Trump's campaign and Russian officials, "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press."

At Comey's recent hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the former FBI chief said he hoped there were tapes, and gave his consent to release any that might exist. 

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday dismissed calls from some in her party who say it's time for her to step aside.

A handful of Democrats have publicly said that after losing four special elections since January, especially a race in the Atlanta suburbs earlier this week, and failing to regain the majority in the House in the last four national elections, their party needs new leadership in the House. Others have privately said Pelosi weighs down Democrats and could prevent the party from retaking the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

In her weekly news conference, the San Francisco lawmaker called herself a “master legislator” and a “strategic, politically astute leader” who can raise a lot of money and has experience winning a majority in Congress.

President Trump's first public reaction to the Senate's draft healthcare bill was to call it the starting point for more discussion.

"A little negotiation, but it's going to be very good," the president told reporters at an unrelated White House event in the East Room on Thursday, when asked if it had "enough heart."

Trump said at a rally in Iowa Wednesday night that he wanted a "plan with heart." To that end, he said he'd encouraged congressional Republicans to "add some money to it," without specifying the purpose of such spending or the amount.