"I spoke with Lee Zeldin and he thinks he's going to be cutting 65 or so percent of the people from environmental," Trump said.

The president also said EPA has found "a lot of people that didn't exist" at the agency, but did not elaborate.

A White House spokeswoman said the 65% figure referred to expected spending cuts at the agency, rather than staffing levels, a comment that was amplified by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “We don't need to be spending all that money that went through the EPA last year,