In recent months, the long-standing feud between ultimate political outsider Donald Trump and ultimate political insider Mitch McConnell has escalated from a petty interparty spat to a serious issue that threatens to permanently hobble the G.O.P. agenda. Trump’s demands routinely irk McConnell, who once suggested that Trump doesn’t understand the legislative process. In return, the president hasn't shied away from criticizing McConnell’s repeated failure to pass significant legislation, frequently calling out the Senate leader on Twitter. At one point, reports emerged that the two men had not spoken in weeks, fueling a narrative of an increasingly fractured party.

Looking to counteract that narrative, on Monday Trump and McConnell held one of the administration's most passive-aggressive press conferences to date. Standing together in the Rose Garden after a well-publicized luncheon meeting in the White House, Trump and McConnell told a gaggle of reporters that they like each other, they share the same agenda, and of course, of course they talk to each other all the time. “We’ve been friends for a long time. We are probably now—despite what we read—we’re probably now, I think, at least as far as I’m concerned, closer than ever before,” Trump said. “And the relationship is very good. We’re fighting for the same thing.” At one point he called McConnell “outstanding” and insisted that they’d known each other for decades: “We’ve been friends for a long time—long before my world of politics.”

The president added that McConnell could vouch for how well he got along with the rest of Congress, too. “Mitch will tell you: I have a fantastic relationship with the people in the Senate, and in the Congress, our House of Representatives,” he said, though he spent much of last week feuding with Senator Bob Corker. “I have a great relationship with political people. I’m friends with most of them, I don’t think anybody could have much of a higher percentage, but I like and respect most of them, and I think they like and respect me.”

McConnell echoed the president, telling the press in a tone that, for him, was passionate: “Contrary to what some of you have reported, the president and I are completely together in regards to moving this agenda forward.” He, too, said that he and Trump had been “friends and acquaintances for a long time,” while wearing what Politico described as a “neutral facial expression.” He maintained that expression while Trump talked about how he “liked the concept of bipartisan” but believed that the Democrats, whom he sides with when convenient, “are doing nothing but obstructing.”

But a specter loomed between the two men as they spoke: that of Steve Bannon, Breitbart News chairman and wannabe populist kingmaker, who is actively plotting to undermine McConnell by ousting his establishment-friendly allies in the upcoming midterm primaries. (Bannon has been known to describe McConnell as a stand-in for corruption in Washington.) When asked to respond to Bannon's recent declaration of “war“ on all 2018 Senate incumbents, McConnell dew a parallel to 2010 and 2012, when the Tea Party attempted to primary hard-line congressional candidates and failed miserably. “My goal as the leader of the Republican party in the Senate is to keep us in the majority. The way you do that is not complicated: you have to nominate people who will win,” he said, seeming to rebuke Bannon’s scorched-earth approach. “Our operating approach will be to support our incumbents, and in open seats, to nominate people who can actually win in November.”

Trump, meanwhile, seemed caught between “his Steve”—whose war he reportedly “encouraged“—and the guy whose friendship he was in the process of parading before the press. “Steve will do what Steve will do,” he said, adding that Bannon is “very committed to getting things passed.” But Trump also said he would try to “talk [Bannon] out” of backing some of his firebrand candidates, a concession that might've been motivated as much by embarrassment as loyalty to McConnell—Trump reportedly seethed after the candidate he endorsed at McConnell’s urging lost to Bannon-backed Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate primary.

In a final symbolic gesture, Trump grabbed McConnell’s hand as they turned to leave the podium together—as friends are wont to do.