Republicans still scrambling to clean up Trump's stunning admission: report

House Republicans are working to contain the political fallout from two remarkable statements by President Donald Trump.

The 79-year-old president declared last month that he doesn't care about the midterms and that Americans' economic hardships are of no concern to him, setting off weeks of damage control that fell Tuesday on National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), reported Axios.

"President Trump cares deeply," Hudson told Axios AM. "The world is safer because of what President Trump has done in Iran. That was the context. The context wasn't that he doesn't care what people are going through."

"You know, he and I have conversations all the time about it," Hudson added. "He cares deeply about what people are going through."

However, the president was hardly ambiguous when he said during a Cabinet meeting that Iran was wrong to think he would back down from the conflict because of domestic political pressure. "They thought they were going to out-wait me. 'We'll out-wait him, he's got the midterms.' I don't care about the midterms," Trump said.

Days earlier, he made a separate declaration about the economic strain the Iran war has placed on American households. "I don't think about Americans' financial situation," Trump said. "I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon."

The twin admissions landed at a precarious moment for the party. Polling from AtlasIntel last month found Democrats leading the generic House ballot 55 percent to 40 percent — a 15-point gap – and Democrats also led Republicans on every major economic issue tested, including cost of living and the broader economy.

Hudson also blamed Democrats for the state-by-state redistricting battle set off by Trump demanding GOP-led states redraw congressional maps mid-cycle.

"I think we can all agree redistricting is a little out of hand," he said. "It's been a wild west. It's a game the Democrats have been playing the entire decade. I think it's about time Republicans got in the game. For the Democrats to accuse us of doing something that they've been doing for a decade, you know, makes me chuckle."