Category Archives: Donald Trump

Ever since President Donald Trump took office, the main question on the minds of investors has been, will the market optimism his election inspired prove justified by economic activity, or did the rally simply set stocks up for a bigger fall? According to a Goldman Sachs analysis of corporate commentary, its a little of both.

Management teams were mixed in their assessment of whether a much-discussed rekindling of animal spirits since the election has led to a tangible increase in demand, the investment bank wrote in its quarterly Beige Book, which examines the earnings transcripts of companies in the S&P 500 for trends.

Most management teams recognized an improvement in sentiment and growth expectations, but many said they have not yet seen evidence that improving sentiment is translating into increased business activity.

See also: Trumps animal spirits are ahead of reality, says 17-time winner of forecasting contest

While the Trump Era has been accompanied by some positive economic data, including a labor market that continues to hover near full employment, other indicators have suggested economic activity remains tepid. First-quarter GDP came in at its slowest pace in three years.

Goldmans report examined transcripts from several companies conference calls, including those from firms that havent seen notable improvement despite the uptick in sentiment. One of these was American Express Co. AXP, -0.55% which said that as we look at our results, its hard for us to see anything thats suggestive of a material uptick in consumer confidence or consumer or commercial spending.

Certainly, we are as hopeful as anyone that there, in fact, is stronger economic growth to come in the future. I just cant say I see any evidence of it right now in our results, said Jeffrey Campbell, the companys chief financial officer, in an April 19 conference call.

Trumps election sparked an extended rally in stocks that lifted the S&P 500 SPX, -0.15% nearly 12% and took major indexes to repeated records. Those gains primarily came as investors bet that the economic policies Trump was expected to advocate forand presumably pass, given the Republican Party also controlled majorities in the House and Senatewould accelerate economic growth and boost corporate profits.

Initiatives to roll back regulations were particularly desired, but according to Goldman, corporate management teams see little progress on this front, while remaining optimistic.

Managers hoped for widespread deregulation and improved regulatory clarity, but uncertainty remains high, the Goldman report said. A large number of transcripts referenced management enthusiasm about a potential easing of regulatory burdens. However, only a few firms pointed to examples where such a change in ideology or enforcement is already taking place.

In January, Trump signed an executive order requiring the elimination of two rules for every new regulation created. However, investors continue to await more concrete details on key issues like tax reform, which has been delayed multiple times, and health care. While a health care reform bill passed the Houseafter an earlier attempt failedits prospects in the Senate were less clear.

One of the firms that was optimistic on the regulatory front was AT&T Inc. T, +0.13% where Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson told analysts on an April 26 conference call that there was clearly a return to a lighter touch pro-growth regulatory philosophy. He added, We think this is incredibly positive for our country and that it could catalyze the economic growth all of us have been looking for.

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Is Donald Trump boosting the economy? Goldman finds mixed signals - MarketWatch

The lawyers who wrote a letter saying President Trump had no significant business ties to Russia work for a law firm that has extensive ties to Russia and received a Russia Law Firm of the Year award in 2016.

Sheri Dillon and William Nelson, tax partners at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, which has served as tax counsel to Trump and the Trump Organization since 2005, wrote a letter in March released by the White House on Friday stating that a review of the last 10 years of Trumps tax returns do not reflect ties to Russia with a few exceptions.

In 2016, however, Chambers & Partners, a London-based legal research publication, named the firm Russia Law Firm of the Year at its annual awards dinner. The firm celebrated the prestigious honor in a press release on its website, noting that the award is the latest honor for the high-profile work performed by the lawyers in Morgan Lewis Moscow office.

According to the firms website, its Moscow office includes more than 40 lawyers and staff who are well known in the Russian market, and have a deep familiarity with the local legislation, practices, and key players. The firm boasts of being particularly adept at advising clients on sanction matters."

Following the release of the letter, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) noted the firms connection to Russia, calling it unreal."

Asked if there could be other business ties between Trump and Russian partners, Sheri Dillon told ABC News that the letter speaks for itself.

As for the firms presence in Russia, a firm spokesperson said that no lawyers from Morgan Lewis have handling any business dealings for Mr. Trump in Russia.

Dillon has never been to Russia and does no work there, the spokesperson said.

Jack Blum, a Washington tax lawyer who is an expert on white-collar financial crime and international tax evasion, called the Dillon letter meaningless.

Blum told ABC News that real estate projects, in particular, can be structured with partners and subsidiaries so that it would be easy to shield the identity of all involved. Trumps tax returns would not show where all the money came from to finance these projects, he said.

Theres no substance to it. The letter is just another puff of smoke, Blum said. It has no meaning at all. Its just another way to not answer the question.

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Donald Trump's tax law firm has 'deep' ties to Russia - ABC News

WikiLeaks is offering $100,000 for the alleged Comey tapes the recordings that Donald Trump has hinted he might have of his January dinner with now-fired FBI Director James Comey.

If any such tapes exist, the problem is that, because of suspected collusion between WikiLeaks and the Kremlin, the tapes may never be heard at least not on this side of the Atlantic.

WikiLeaks made its offer on its Twitter site Friday after Trump warned in a tweet that Comey had better hope that the president didnt have tapes of their dinner meeting.

Critics saw the taunt as a threat to Comey to keep his mouth shut about what was discussed. The president has said Comey told him at the dinner that he was not under investigation as part of the FBI probe into possible links between the Kremlin and Trump campaign associates. But Comeys colleagues told The New York Times instead that Trump pressed Comey at the dinner for a loyalty pledge to the presidentand that Comey refused.

Besides offering a hefty reward, the WikiLeaks tweet also encourages supporters to up the ante by making contributions via bitcoin to a posted address.

Several Twitter replies dismissed the existence of such recordings, characterizing them as empty threats by a president worried about what Comey himself might have to say about the meeting. But Trump has had a long history of secretly recording meetings in his business, associates told The Washington Post. And on Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer refused to denythat Trump may have recorded his conversation with Comey.

WikiLeaks was a major player during the presidential campaign, releasing emails from the Democratic National Committeeand Hillary Clintonaides, as well as Clintons Wall Street speech transcripts, but it was resoundingly silent about the Republican Party or Trump. The U.S. intelligence community determined that the WikiLeaks emails were provided by Russian hackers working for the Kremlinand that the emails were intended to help Trump win the election.

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WikiLeaks Offering $100000 For Donald Trump's 'Comey Tapes' - HuffPost

AlterNet

Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the ... AlterNet Donald Trump's business partners have included Russian oligarchs and convicted mobsters, which could make the president guilty of criminal racketeering charges. That's one of the eyebrow-raising takeaways from a 45-minute Dutch documentary that aired ... and more »

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Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the ... - AlterNet

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In an interview with pro-globalist Economist magazine, Trump was asked: Do you want to curb legal immigration? Trump responded by saying he prefers merit-based immigration of skilled people. The interviewer pressed him again on the scale of legal immigration, asking [are you] not looking to reduce the numbers?

No, no, no, no, we want people coming in legally. No, very strongly, Trump replied, as two of his economic advisors sat beside him top economic staffer Gary Cohn, and Steve Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury.

Trump also backed proposals to keep importing temporary contract workers for the agricultural sector, even though the cheap labor will retard farmers emerging interest in buying new machinery,such as robot apple-pickers and robot cow-milkers.Trump told the Economist:

We also want farm workers to be able to come in. You know, were going to have work visas for the farm workers. If you look, you know we have a lot of people coming through the border, theyre great people and they work on the farms and then they go back home. We like those people a lot and we want them to continue to come in.

Immigration reform advocates are not surprised at Trumps back-sliding, but they are confident that Trumpsdependence on his blue-collar base in the 2020 election is pressuring him to stick with his campaign promises, amid constant elite pressure for more legal immigration.

The president was unambiguous in his [2016] campaign one of the things he said was that he would support reductions in immigration, said Ira Mehlman, communications director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. If he is backing off, we will fight to remind him that he did make this commitment during the campaign and we intended to hold him to it, he told Breitbart.

Anyone following Trumps primary campaign could have predicted this he repeatedly justified guestworker visas of various kinds and stressed the big beautiful door that would be built into his wall, wrote Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Both the anti-borders crowd and some starry-eyed immigration hawks mistook Trumps commitment to enforcement (which seems genuine) to mean he was also skeptical of the overall level of immigration, he said, adding that the next generation of populist GOP leaders such as Sen. Tom Cotton understandsthe many harms caused by mass immigration.

But Trumps backsliding isnt a done deal. Former President Barack Obama also backed off many of his promises, even while he was urging his supporters to publiccly protest his actions and to push back the lobbies that were blocking his agenda. Obama also adopted a gradualist stop-and-go political strategy which helped the GOP establishment ignore his gradual progress towards his big-government goals, and he achieved many goals for his supporters via little-noticed court decisions and agency regulations by allied appointees.

With constant pressure by Trumps supporters, Trump will be more willing and better able to ignore or overcome establishment opposition and gradually get his agenda implemented stage-by-stage.

In August 2015, Trump issued his very popular immigration planto raise wages by reducing legal and illegal immigration:

The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, andmakes it difficult for poor and working class Americans including immigrantsthemselves and their children to earn a middle class wage Every year, we voluntarily admitanother [1] million new immigrants, [plus 1 million] guest workers, refugees, and dependents,growing our existing all-time historic record population of 42 millionimmigrants. We need to control the admission of new low-earning workers inorder to: help wages grow, get teenagers back to work, aid minorities rise into themiddle class, help schools and communities falling behind, and to ensure ourimmigrant members of the national family become part of the American dream.

Requirement to hire American workers first. Too many [contract worker] visas, like the H-1B, have no such requirement. In the year 2015, with 92 million Americansoutside the workforce and incomes collapsing, we need companies to hire from thedomestic pool of unemployed. Petitions for workers should be mailed to theunemployment office, not USCIS.

Immigration moderation. Before any new green cards are issued to foreignworkers abroad, there will be a pause where employers will have to hire from thedomestic pool of unemployed immigrant and native workers. This will helpreverse womens plummeting workplace participation rate, grow wages, and allowrecord immigration levels to subside to more moderate historical averages.

Trump repeated those commitments in many subsequent speeches. For example, in March 2016,Trump called for a two-year pause in legal immigration, saying I think for a period of a year to two years we have to look back and we have to see, just to answer the second part of your question, where we are, where we stand, whats going on Id say a minimum of one year, maybe two years.

In his January 2017 inauguration speech, he described the theme of his administration as Buy American, Hire American.

Some polls showthat promise is extremely popular. For example, a November 2016 poll by Ipsos showed that only 12 percent of respondents strongly opposed plans to change the legal immigration system to limit legal immigration. Four times as many, or 57 percent, back reductions in legal immigration, while 13 percent did not take a position.

To a large extent, Trump has followed through on those promises. He has revived enforcement of immigration law, slashed the inflow of illegal immigrants, and he is pushing a popular merit-based reform that would likely reduce the inflow of unskilled legal immigrants. Trumps merit-based reform is also backed by some GOP legislators who want to increase Americans productivity, not just the number of American consumers.

But Trump is under constant pressure from business leaders including some of his advisors who have a huge incentive to boost legal immigration, no matter the cost to ordinary Americans.

In strictly economic terms, legal immigration is far more important than over-the-border illegal immigration, because it is far larger and has far greater impact on employees, companies, and investors, wages, housing prices, profits and stock prices. In fact, multiple economists including economists at Goldman Sachs say government should try to boost the size of the economy by importing more consumers and workers.

Federal immigration policy adds roughly 1 millionlegal people, workers, consumers and renters per year to the economy. This annual inflow is further expanded by the immigrants children, which now combine to create a population of roughly 63 millionconsumers and workers not counting roughly 21 million illegals and their U.S. children.

That means roughly one-quarter of the nations consumers have been imported into the 330 million-strong economy via legal or illegal immigration.

This legal inflow includes some very skilled workers and some people who become very successful entrepreneurs, but it also dumps a lot of unskilled workers into the country just as a new generation of technology is expected to eliminate many types of jobs. It also annuallyshifts $500 billion from employees to employers and Wall Street, and it forces state and local government to provide $60 billionin taxes to businesses via routine aid for immigrants, and it pushes millions of marginal U.S. workers out of the labor force andinto poverty, crime andopioid addiction.

High immigration also reduces employers need to recruit disengaged Americans, to build new facilities in high-unemployment areas, or tobuy productivity-boosting machineryor to demand that local schools rebuild high school vocational training departments for the millions of youth who dont gain much from four-year colleges.

The resulting poverty and civic conflicts increase ballot-box support for Democrats, ensuring that more states especially high-immigration California are dominated by the Democratic Partys big-government policies.

Under Obama, the annual inflow of legal immigrants was roughly twice the inflow of illegals. Roughly 550,000 illegals arrived in 2016, but fewer are expected in 2017, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Whenever the inflow of extra immigrant customers is threatened by public opposition, business groups say their companies and investors will be damaged.

For example, in July 2016, a Wall Street firm tried to help Hillary Clinton by declaring that Trumps opposition to illegal immigration would hurt companies and investors by forcing them to pay higher wages, and by reducing the cost of housing.

As the immigrants leave, the already tight labor market will get tighter, pushing up labor costs as employers struggle to fill the open job positions, the report declared. Mr. Trumps immigration policies will thus result in potentially severe labor shortages, and higher labor costs, the critical report promised.The formal unemployment rate would immediately drop by a third, from 5 percent in 2016 to 3.5 percent in 2017, the report predicts. Housing prices would drop by almost 4 percent in 2018 and 2019, says the Moodys report, which did not admit that higher wages and lower housing prices are popular throughout America.

Reduced immigration would result in slower labor force growth and therefore slower growth in potential GDP, or annual economic activity, according to a 2017 report by Goldman Sachs.

Similarly,Jamie Dimon, thechairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, recently called for an amnesty for illegals and a potentially huge increase in white-collar immigration to help stimulate the economy. I hope eventually we have proper immigration. Good people who have paid their taxes and havent broken the law, get them into citizenship at the back of the line [and] if people get educated here, and theyre foreign nationals, get them a green card, he said.

In the same interview, Dimon portrayed himself as concerned about the economic condition of ordinary Americans, saying:

Middle-class wages havent gone up. One is, lower-class wages havent gone up enough to create a living wage. One is, people losing jobs, more to automation than anything else. Theres some more terrible numbers men, age 25 to 55, the labor-force participation rate is down 10%. Thats unbelievable. There are 35,000 dying of opioids every year. Seventy percent of kids age 17 to 24 cant get into the US military because of health or education. Obesity, diabetes, reading and writing. Is that the society we wanted? No. We should be working on these things, acknowledge the flaws we have, and come up with solutions. Not Democrat. Not Republican. Not knee-jerk.

But the 2016 election showed that Trump and centrist Americans recognize that higher immigration means reduced wages, more unemployment, more drug addition, higher housing prices and longer commutes. That is how Trump won the 2016 election in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and why his on-again, off-again, pro-American immigration policy is at the core of his impending 2020 race.

Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com

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Donald Trump Backslides on Campaign Promise To Curb Legal Immigration - Breitbart News

New York Times

James Comey, Donald Trump, San Antonio Spurs: Your Friday ... New York Times Here's what you need to know at the end of the day. and more »

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James Comey, Donald Trump, San Antonio Spurs: Your Friday ... - New York Times

TRUMP: We have to prime the pump.

ECONOMIST: It's very Keynesian.

TRUMP: We're the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?

TRUMP: Yeah, have you heard it?

ECONOMIST: Yes.

TRUMP: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven't heard it. I mean, I just...I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It's what you have to do.

Trump, quite clearly, believes he came up with the phrase "prime the pump." Or at least that he is the first person to use it in regards the potential kick-starting effect of tax cuts on an economy.

A simple slip of the tongue by Trump? I don't think so.

Here's the thing with Trump: He is someone who has always created his own version of events and reality. One of his tried and true tactics as a businessman was, no matter the outcome of a deal, to declare victory and move on. He would aim to win the next day's press story -- knowing that for lots of people not paying close attention that would be all they would hear.

And he didn't stop doing it once he became a candidate for president. He would simply say things -- Muslims were celebrating on the roofs in northern New Jersey after 9/11, Ted Cruz's father might have been involved in JFK's assassination (or maybe he wasn't!), all the polls showed him beating Hillary Clinton -- that weren't factually true but seemed right to him. His gut -- the much-ballyhooed origin of most of Trump's political instincts -- told him this stuff was right, so who were fact checkers and biased media types to tell him -- or his supporters -- differently?

Trump kept building his own world once in the White House. He would have won the popular vote except for the 3 to 5 million votes cast by undocumented immigrants. His inauguration crowd was the biggest ever. His first 100 days were among the most successful of any president ever. And so on and on and on.

It didn't matter that all of these things were provably false. What mattered (and matters) is that Trump believed them. That made them truth to him.

Which brings us back to him inventing the phrase "prime the pump." Of course he didn't do that. But Trump came up with it in relation to his tax reform plan -- raising the deficit in the near term via tax cuts in the belief they will "prime the pump" for future economic growth -- so he, naturally, believed he was the first one to think it up.

That takes some significant self-regard. But also a sense that if you say it, it must be new and true. And Donald Trump believes that whatever he says is, by definition, new and true.

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Donald Trump thinks he invented the phrase 'priming the pump.' That's telling. - CNN

Ithas been more than 36 hours since President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey, and the tick-tock, leaks and diatribes about it have not abated. The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has devoured all of them, and has reached a pretty simple conclusion: Donald Trump does not understand how the federal government works.

Julian Sanchez gets at this pointin Just Security:

Much has been made of Trumps willingness to flout longstanding political norms, but whats less often observed is that this appears to be as much a function of ignorance as brazenness. That is, its not just that hes decided he can get away with breaking the rules which thus far he has but that he routinely seemsto do so unwittingly, unaware of what the rulesare. Many have expressed incredulity that the White House truly believed it could take this step without provoking a political firestorm; I find it all too plausible. As a result, theyve been caught unprepared, without any credible story that would give members of his own party cover to defend the move with a straight face.

To be sure, Trump has the constitutional authority to fire Comey. I agree with Reasons Jacob Sullum that this is not a constitutional crisis. And other smart reporters like Politicos Jack Shafer or my colleague Dave Weigel do not even think this is a political crisis.

The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus explains how FBI Director James Comey's firing is a big deal, yet not quite "Nixonian." (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

But Spoiler Alerts throws its lot in with colleague Alyssa Rosenberg, who shrewdly observed that, Trump doesnt seem to recognize the difference between an ephemeral victory and a substantive one. Sure, Trump has forced out Comey, and thats not nothing for him. In the process, however, he has weakened his influence with two competing sources of authority: the Senate and the FBI.

GOP control over the Senate is razor thin, as a vote today made clear:

Something very unusual happened in the U.S. Senate today: a vote scheduled by the majority leader failed. The legislation would have repealed an Obama-era rule designed to prevent methane emissions from leaking out of drilling operations on public lands. Brought up under the Congressional Review Act, the resolution only needed 50 votes to pass the Senate, after already passing the House along party lines. But it failed 49-51

In the C-SPAN video of the vote, McCain can be seen in heated discussion with John Cornyn, R-Texas, the number two man in the Senate leadership, along with John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and an unidentified senator with his back to the camera. After yelling at them for close to a minute, McCain goes over to the Senate clerks and gives a thumbs down to record his vote. He then storms out of the chamber, as Cornyn raises his arms in mild protest.

McCain has a reputation for being a little, shall we say, vindictive. Its not out of the question at all that he would torpedo this vote, regardless of his ideological preferences, because of a fit of pique about the FBI director he admires getting unceremoniously dumped.

Nor is this a case of just one vote, or just one GOP senator. Because the GOPs margin is so small, it only takes a few recalcitrant GOP senators to gum up the works. And the gumming up has already started:

Is it possible that GOP senators will fall back into line? Sure, its possible, if Trump was a normal politician. But I find it hard to envision Trump sweet-talking McCain into a more compliant attitude. And this will inevitably affect Trumps ability to replace Comey with a more pliant FBI director.

As for the FBI, voracious news readers might have noticed a fewstories over the past day on how the rank and file are taking the news. The answer appears to be not well. Consider this story from The Daily Beasts Jana Winter and Betsy Woodruff:

Everyone feels like there has been a death in the family, said one counterterrorism agent.

Were basically sitting shiva, said another agent, referring to the Jewish mourning period just after a funeral.

At least a dozen agents posted photos on their private Facebook pages of themselves with Comey (or just of Comey). Some made those their temporary profile picture a gesture agents usually reserve for when a colleague dies in the line of duty.

And then theres this from the Posts 30-source Comeypalooza story:

Within the Justice Department and the FBI, the firing of Comey has left raw anger, and some fear, according to multiple officials. Thomas OConnor, the president of the FBI Agents Association, called Comeys firing a gut punch. We didnt see it coming, and we dont think Director Comey did anything that would lead to this.

Many employees said they were furious about the firing, saying the circumstances of his dismissal did more damage to the FBIs independence than anything Comey did in his three-plus years in the job.

One intelligence official who works on Russian espionage matters said they were more determined than ever to pursue such cases. Another said Comeys firing and the subsequent comments from the White House are attacks that wont soon be forgotten. Trump had essentially declared war on a lot of people at the FBI, one official said. I think there will be a concerted effort to respond over time in kind.

So Trump has gotten rid of his immediate obstacle Comey but has created even more obstacles in the process. I might be a small-town political scientist, but it seems like this is not the best way to achieve political success.

In fairness to Trump, he might be able to weather this latest own-goal. Each leak from the FBI will potentially erode the prestige of that institution. And Republicans really, really want to pass conservative legislation, which they can do now that a Republican is president.

But as Kori Schake so eloquently notes at Foreign Policy, the costs of legislative quiescence to Trumps more controversial moves might be high.

Republicans in Congress ought perhaps also to wonder whether continued support for the president might ensure this really will be the only time in a generation Americans will entrust Republicans with both the legislature and executive branch. The White House is evidently banking on public indifference.

For any of this to matter after next week,Trumps unpopularitywill have to start infecting the poll numbers ofGOP members of Congress. If that happens, however and it might then the Trump administrations latest short-term political move will lead to its long-term political ruination.

Or, to put it more simply: when your most stalwart defender is Sebastian Gorka, you are probably losing the argument.

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What Donald Trump doesn't understand about the federal government - Washington Post

New York Times

Donald Trump, 'Brexit,' Snapchat: Your Thursday Briefing New York Times A photographer from TASS, Russia's official news agency, captured President Trump's meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, second from left, in the Oval Office on Wednesday. American news outlets were denied access. Credit Alexander ... The Russians are in the building! Donald Trump meets with Putin's officials hours after firing FBI chiefStuff.co.nz Donald Trump hosts Russian envoy at White House day after firing FBI boss James ComeyGlobalnews.ca Trump's Comey chaos will delight RussiansSky News all 701 news articles »

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Donald Trump, 'Brexit,' Snapchat: Your Thursday Briefing - New York Times

TIME

Donald Trump After Hours TIME In a few minutes, President Donald Trump will release a new set of tweets, flooding social-media accounts with his unique brand of digital smelling saltswords that will jolt his supporters and provoke his adversaries. Nearly a dozen senior aides ... Trump gets 2 ice cream scoops at White House dinners everyone else gets 1Business Insider all 4 news articles »

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Donald Trump After Hours - TIME