Subject: Axios AM: Mike's Top 10 -- Tech to escalate face-off with Trump * "Replace" becomes "repair" * New Yorker, Vanity Fair nix correspondents' weekend
From: "Mike Allen" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2017 06:40:08 -0500 (EST)

Presented by Walmart:

Tech to escalate face-off with Trump * "Replace" becomes "repair" * New =orker, Vanity Fair nix correspondents' weekend

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Presented By Walmart

Axios AM

By Mike Allen = ·Feb 03, 2017

1 big thing: What a week

Greg Ruben / Axios

May you live in interesting times ...

A 2=-year-old who created disappearing messages for kids filed for an=IPO that could top $20 BILLION , despite losing $500 million last year. Th=s was days after Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel agreed to invest $2 billion in =oogle's "cloud," which until a few years ago was something that blocked th= sun, but now houses our digital secrets and creates vast riches for tech =itans.

Thanks in part to this money cloud, Google =nocked off Apple as the world's most valuable brand. Elon Musk, who builds=private rocket ships and mass-consumer electric cars for the rich, agreed =o keep his meeting with Donald Trump this morning, so he can push for, amo=g other things, making "humanity a multi-planet civilization."

Oh, and CNBC says Bill Gates may becom= the world's first trillionaire.

Meanwhile, the sector where all=of the companies reside seemed ready for war with Trump over restricting t=e foreign-born talent that helped bring them to life and property.

=n the other coast, President Trump, at the National Prayer Breakfast, lite=ally prayed for a former action movie hero who now stars in "The Apprentic=," the reality show our president created AND still technically produces. =/p>
Trump's remarks took on separation of church and state: "I will get =id of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment [banning political endorse=ents by churches] and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely a=d without fear of retribution. I will do that -- remember."

Perhaps =rump's quote of the week: "The world is in trouble, but we're going to str=ighten it out. OK? That's what I do. I fix things. We're going to straight=n it out."

Soon after, Nancy Pelosi, the voice of House=Democrats, called Trump's top strategist, Steve Bannon (on the cover of th= new TIME as possibly "the second most powerful man in the world"), a "whi=e supremacist." And Trump, two weeks after threatening NATO and China, one=week after threatening foreign visitors from select Muslim-majority nation=, and one day after threatening Mexico and Australia, prepared a new threa= to Iran in the form of renewed sanctions.

As New York Time=man Jonathan Martin so often says: Ya can't make it up!

Happy Friday ....

2. Driving the day

I'm told that Homeland Security Security Secretary John=Kelly now will join Trump's awkward 10 a.m. meeting with CEOs, several of =hom lead workforces who are overwhelmingly opposed to him. The addition of=Kelly is an effort by the White House to show it's paying attention to cri=icism of its migrant restrictions. But executives tell us they want soften=ng, not just listening.

Organizers expect the meeting in the State Dining Room will be less confrontational now that Uber CEO=Travis Kalanick won't be there. Under inside and outside pressure, Kalanic= yesterday announced he was quitting the President's Strategic and Policy =orum, led by Blackston'e's Stephen A. Schwarzman.

Uber CEO's letter to employees, via Axios' David McCabe, =ho posts : "Earlier today I spoke briefly with the President about=the immigration executive order ... Joining the group was not meant to be =n endorsement of the President or his agenda but unfortunately it has been=misinterpreted to be exactly that."

Today's conversation will be closed to reporters. The White House schedule says the pool=will be brought in for pictures at the top (look for Trump to say a few wo=ds), and that's it. Vice President Pence will join.

3. Rising confrontation

Only major changes are going to defuse this collision b=tween the new White House and the new economy. A sweeping WashPost front-pager led by Silicon Valley co=respondent Elizabeth Dworkin points to "[r]ising alarm along the West Coas='s tech archipelago from Silicon Valley to Seattle."

The Pos= reports that tech companies "are preparing themselves for a high=stakes confrontation with the president." Three juicy points:

A new letter warning of the economic risks
"Some tech=companies are now considering whether to move jobs out of the Uni=ed States to places with more relaxed immigration policies, such as Vancou=er, B.C., and Dublin, which have made clear they would welcome an influx o= U.S.-based immigrant technology workers."

Read this parag=aph: "A little more than half of U.S. start-ups that are estimate= to be worth more than $1 billion were founded by immigrants, according to=the National Foundation for American Policy, an Arlington think tank. ... =atya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, is an immigrant from India= Google co-founder Sergey Brin is a refugee from the former Soviet Union; =nd Omid Kordestani, Twitter's executive chairman, was born in Iran. Apple =o-founder Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant."

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4. Hill crawl

Trump's flurry of executive orders is partly a hedge ag=inst slow action or headwinds on the Hill. This calendar, prepared by Hous= Republican leadership staff and leaked to me by a lobbyist, shows the slo= ahead.

The biggest sign of lowered expectations i= the new GOP lingo about "repairing" instead of "replacing" Obamacare. Two=pieces this morning capture the new reality:

N.Y. Time= front-pager, "Sprint to Repea= the Health Law Slows to a Crawl": "An aspirational deadline of Jan. 27 fo= repeal legislation has come and gone. ...

"With unity elusive, GOP talks more of repairing health law" --=AP: "House Speaker Paul Ryan ... has been saying Republ=cans want to 'rescue' the health system and Thursday embraced all of the c=mpeting phraseology, saying, 'The best way to repair a health care system =s to repeal and replace Obamacare.'"

=/a>

5. Beyond the bubble

"At least he's DOING something. Washington never DOES a=ything."

Rock-solid support from Trump's base is li=ely to keep his national numbers from collapsing even as he weathers withe=ing coverage on the coasts. Newspapers, trying to make up for their pre-el=ction blind spots, are sending reporters to obscure datelines to talk to T=ump voters, and three front-pagers in three days tell an identical story: =/p>

Seattle Times today, "Supporters: Trump is jus=
doing what he promised": "They don't get the hubbub. He
won. And he's doing exactly what
he said he would do."

WashPost yesterday, "Trump backers like his ear=y moves," from Accident, Md.: "Critics are unfairly exaggerating the e=fect of Trump's executive orders and complaining without giving him a fair=chance, supporters say, just as critics blew some of his comments and joke= out of proportion during the campaign."

Boston Globe on Wednesday, "Trump voters say clamor clouds one fact: He deliv=rs": "This was what they voted for."

=img width="32" height="32" style="border: none" target="_blank" sr=="https://static.axios.com/img-email/twitter-circle.png" alt="Tweet th=s Story">

6. Trump v. Dodd-Frank

In a move that White House economic adviser Gary Cohn c=lls "a table setter for a bunch of stuff that is coming," Trump today will=sign an executive order to scale back the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul la= "in a sweeping plan to dismantle much of the regulatory system put in pla=e after the financial crisis," per the Wall Street Journal's lead story.

Cohn's case: "Americans are going to have b=tter choices and Americans are going to have better products because we're=not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dolla=s of regulatory costs every year ... The banks are going to be able to pri=e product more efficiently and more effectively to consumers."

What's next: "Cohn said the actions ... pave the way for addi=ional orders that would affect the postcrisis Financial Stability Oversigh= Council, the mechanism for winding down a giant faltering financial compa=y, and the way the government supervises ... systemically important financ=al institutions."

The fight: "The changes ... are=sure to face a fight from consumer groups and Democrats, who say postcrisi= regulations are protecting average borrowers and investors ... while maki=g ... bailouts less likely.

The risk for Trump: H=s "campaign was successful in swaths of the Midwest where homeowners were =it hardest by the housing crash sparked by the financial crisis."

7. Connecting the dots

Nikki Haley at Security Council / AP

The N.Y. Times explains a disruptive foreign-policy day=by leading the paper with "Trump Reverts to Pillars Of Obama Poli=ies Abroad: A Contrast With Campaign Vows on Israeli Settlements, Ukra=ne and Iran," by Mark Landler Peter Baker and David Sanger: The t=ree-act play:

Tougher on Israel: "In=the most startling shift, the White House issued an unexpected statement a=pealing to the Israeli government not to expand the construction of Jewish=settlements beyond their current borders in East Jerusalem and the West Ba=k."

"On Iran, the administration is preparing eco=omic sanctions similar to those the Obama administration imposed just over=a year ago."

"Trump made warmer relations with Russia the centerpiece of his foreign policy during the campaign= [but his ] United Nations ambassador, [Nikki] Haley, sounded [in her firs= remarks to an open session of the U.N. Security Council] a lot like her p=edecessor, Samantha Power.

What Haley said: "We do want to better our relations with Russia ... However, the di=e situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condem=ation of Russian actions."

8. Inside Snapchat

Filing to go public, Snapchat's parent, Snap Inc., says=it plans to raise $3 billion. Axios' Dan Primack and Kia Kokalitcheva explain: "This may=be just a placeholder figure that changes later" -- could raise much more.=The key numbers:

158 million =aily average users and 2.5 billion snaps per day. More than 60% of users c=eate snaps each day.

$514 million net loss on aro=nd $404 million in revenue last year, compared to a $373 million net loss =n $59 million in revenue in 2015.

Co-founders Ev=n Spiegel and Bobby Murphy each hold just under 22% of the company's Class=A shares, and 2% of its Class B stock.

Spiegel currently makes $500,000 in annual salary, but that will drop to just $1 at t=e time of IPO (plus, of course, a possible $1 million annual bonus).
<=ul>
The L.A. Times points out this is=expected to be "the biggest initial public offering ever for a Los Angeles=[area] company and one of the highest valued in U.S. history."

9. D.C. gossip

With Trump's "running war with the media," as he calls =t, the White House Correspondents' Association, which will hold its annua= dinner April 29, was already in a tricky position. And now ...

"New Yorker and Vanity Fair Pul= Out of Correspondents Dinner Parties," by N.Y. Times Michael Grynbaum and Katie Rogers: "T=e New Yorker is canceling the kickoff party that it usually holds at the W=Hotel ... Vanity Fair is pulling out of co-sponsoring the dinner's most ex=lusive after-party ... Vanity Fair's co-sponsor, Bloomberg L.P., is procee=ing with its plans for the party, but no final decision has been made on t=e event."

WHCA President Jeff Mason, of Reuters, wr=te members yesterday: "This year, as we do every year, we will celebrate t=e First Amendment and the role an independent press plays in a healthy rep=blic. We will also reward some of the finest political reporting of the pa=t year while using our scholarship program to highlight and support up-and=coming journalists who are the future of our profession."

"In the meantime, the WHCA will pursue its core mission of advo=ating for journalists' ability to ask questions of government officials, p=sh for transparency from the presidency, and help Americans hold the power=ul to account."

=/a>

10. 1 fun thing

Super Bowls are known for blowouts, but Vegas and sport= pundits see Sunday's Brady Bowl in Houston as being close:

Sports Illustrated picks New England Patriots over Atlanta F=lcons, 35-30.

ESPN The Magazine says Pats have a 55.6= chance of winning -- and projects a 1.8-point margin.

Nat= Silver's FiveThirtyEight gives New England a bigger edge -- a 61= chance of winning.

In USA Today's special Super =owl 51 magazine, four of seven sportswriters go Brady.

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A manufacturing renewal

The United States was built on a legacy of hard work, and that tradition=of commitment and fortitude is what spurred the rise of our manufacturing =ndustry. Walmart wants to renew that once-thriving industry by supporting =ocal companies. That’s why they are committing an additional $250 b=llion to U.S.-made products—an investment that is estimated to creat= over 1 million jobs by 2023.* .

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