Subject: ?Axios AM: Mike's Top 10 -- "Spread the butter: He is toast" * Ivanka's global role * Feeding tweets to POTUS?
From: "Mike Allen" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2017 06:42:07 -0500 (EST)

Presented by JPMorgan Chase & Co.:

"Spread the butter: He is toast" * Ivanka's global role * Feedin= tweets to POTUS?

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Presented By JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Axios AM

By Mike Allen = ·Feb 13, 2017

1 big thing: Thin ice

Mike Flynn (l) and Steve Bannon at Andrews last night / AP's Susan Walsh=/p>

Imagine you're Reince Priebus. Every day, you hear spec=lation that your days as White House chief of staff are numbered. You wake=up on a Sunday and read that colleague Kellyanne Conway's dream job is, we=l, yours.

Then, you flick on CNN to see Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy -- a=Trump pal of 10 years (and Mar-a-Lago member) who just spent time alone wi=h him in Florida -- saying this on "Reliable Sources": "The White House is=showing not the amount of order that we need to see. I think there's a lot=of weakness coming out of the chief of staff."

After a plead=ng call from Priebus, Ruddy tweeted: "Reince just briefed me on n=w WH plans. Impressive! CNN today my personal view. Told him I have 'open =ind' based on his results." Then Ruddy got another call: "Jared Kushner te=ls me COS Reince is doing 'amazing job.'"

Yikes! Not a reassuring en= to your third week on the job! But this is a problem hardly conf=ned to Priebus: After watching Trump clean house several times during the =ampaign, everyone feels on thin ice. This naturally breeds insecu=ity, ass-covering and endless leaking.

Those who don't fear for the=r hide are busy gaming out how they rise when someone falls. Trump feeds a=l of this. It's why an insider describes the White House hierarchy as "fra=ile."

"These people are insecure because Trump does not respect them=" said a person in constant contact with the West Wing. "He does not becau=e they have not made any money. He respects [Steve] Bannon and Gary Cohn b=cause they are financially successful."

Trump has already c=nsulted friends about his next chief of staff. I'm told that to a=oid admitting error, Trump plans a smooth transition from Priebus, perhaps=by making him a Cabinet secretary!

Ruddy told us in a phone intervi=w: "Trump is trying to figure out who he should trust. This is totally new=for him, so he's trying to figure out who the strong ones are and who the =eak ones are."

Heather Nauert, the news anchor on "=ox & Friends," was spotted at the White House last week -- talking to =rump, we're told, about a communications job. Yesterday she tweeted that s=e's buying Ivanka Trump heels in solidarity after Nordstrom dropped the li=e, and will wear them on "Fox & Friends" this week.

That certain=y doesn't make embattled West Wing officials feel any more secure as they =ry to put out what one called "400 fires a day."

Any purge will begi= with national security adviser Mike Flynn, for lying to Vice President Pe=ce about contacts with Russia on sanctions. In retrospect, that was clear =s soon as Trump told reporters Friday evening on Air Force One that he did='t know about the story, which had been on the front page of that morning'= Washington Post. It was a way for Trump to dodge showing support for Flyn=.

"Spread the butter: He is toast," said a top source. "Lyin= to Pence damaged Pence's credibility and the administration's. That is an=unpardonable sin."

NEW: Alerts from Axios!=Choose from business, health care, politics, tech. Sign up here.
=/p>

2. ​An audience of 1

Shot ... Trump policy guru Stephen Miller to John Dicke=son on "Face the Nation": "The president of the United States has accompli=hed more in just a few weeks than many presidents accomplish in an entire =dministration."

Chaser ... Trump tweets: "Congratul=tions Stephen Miller- on representing me this morning on the various Sunda= morning shows. Great job!"

Retweeted by ... Sean S=icer @PresSec.

3. Ivanka's rising role

Ivanka accompanies dad on Marine One on Feb. 1 / AP's Evan Vucci

While forgoing an official title for now, Ivanka Trump =s already proving to be a vital player in her father's West Wing. Today, s=e shows she'll play a critical role with the international economic agenda= as well as the domestic issues where she has long been active.

After an Oval Office meeting today with Canadian Prime Minist=r Justin Trudeau, POTUS and the prime minister will move into the Cabinet =oom for an event engineered by Ivanka: a roundtable discussion on the adva=cement of women entrepreneurs and business leaders.

P=rticipants include: Top female executives from the U.S. and Canad=; Chrystia Freeland, the author and now foreign minister of Canada; and Wh=te House officials including Dina Powell and Hope Hicks.

= White House official: "This is a first: adding a high-level roun=table of female business leaders from both countries in a major bilateral =isit with a critical ally. ... This issue of women in the workforce, and t=e role of women in the economy, will be a central theme in all discussions=and forums focused on how to create jobs and growth in the U.S. and around=the world."

Backstory, per AP's Catherine Lucy: "Ivan=a Trump ... was involved in recruiting participants and setting the agenda=... Ivanka Trump stressed the importance of maternity leave and child care=on the campaign trail, and has recently been meeting with business leaders=to discuss those issues."

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4. NSC aides "on edge"

CNN's Brian Stelter says this story reads like a=cry for help" from NSC staffers. It's the two-column lead of the N.Y. Time=, "Tensions and Chaos Rattle National Security Council:=Foreign Policy Made via Twitter Tests Staff," by David Sanger, Eric Schmit= and Peter Baker, "based on conversations with more than two dozen current=and former council staff members and others throughout the government." Top nuggets:

"K. T. McFarland, the deputy nationa= security adviser, said that early meetings of the council were brisker, t=ghter and more decisive than in the past, but she acknowledged that career=officials were on edge."

Sign of the times: "Two =fficials said that at one recent meeting, there was talk of feeding sugges=ed Twitter posts to the president so the council's staff would have greate= influence."

"Many [officials] who remain, who see themselves as a=olitical civil servants, have been disturbed by displays of overt partisan=hip. At an all-hands meeting about two weeks into the new administration, =s. McFarland told the group it needed to 'make America great again,' numer=us staff members who were there said."

"New Trump appointees are c=rrying coffee mugs with that Trump campaign slogan into meetings with fore=gn counterparts, one staff member said."

"Nervous staff members re=ently met late at night at a bar a few blocks from the White House and tal=ed about purging their social media accounts of any suggestion of anti-Tru=p sentiments."

5. Inside the NYT

Wired

Future N.Y. Times publisher Arthur Gregg Sulzberger -- =who goes by Arthur but is known as A.G. around the Times" -- is on the cov=r of Wired's March issue for "The News [in NYT font] in Crisis ... How The New York=Times Is Clawing Its Way Into the Future," by Brooklyn writer Gabriel Snyd=r. Le highlights:

"[T]he Times is e=barking on an ambitious plan inspired by the strategies of Netflix, Spotif=, and HBO: invest heavily in a core offering (which, for the Times, is jou=nalism) while continuously adding new online services and features (from p=rsonalized fitness advice and interactive newsbots to virtual reality film=)."

"How they reach those people, and how they make them pay, is n=w the work of hundreds of journalists, designers, engineers, data scientis=s, and product managers."

"No one on [the Beta Group, which has be=ome a hub for most of the Times' digital initiatives] has an office; inste=d, each product is assigned its own conference room lined with whiteboards=covered in colorful diagrams, design mock-ups, and Post-it notes where mem=ers of the team immerse themselves in what they are trying to build."
=li>"In addition to Cooking and Crossword—two of the original Beta =pps—the group is now working on Real Estate, an app for home listi=gs; Well, a health and fitness blog the group wants to turn into a suite o= personalized training and advice services; and Watching, a vertical dedic=ted to TV and movie recommendations."

"[T]here are some at the Tim=s ... who chafe at these endless waves of experimentation. 'When we're tol= this is the new best practice, everyone marches in lockstep,' says one ed=tor ... 'Facebook Live? Yep! Video? On it! The New York Times isn't a plac= where people say no, and we're flat-out exhausted.'"

"The Times h=s had more success at building its digital subscriber base than any other =ublication. Its nearly $500 million in digital revenue not only dwarfs wha= any print publication has managed online, it also far exceeds leading dig=tal-only publishers. At The Washington Post, ... digital revenue was repor=ed in 2016 to be in the neighborhood of $60 million."

=he whole art=cle is worth reading -- love the angst over what is "Timesian="

6. Inoculating against fake news

"The new civics course in schools: How to avoid fake news," by=AP's Carolyn Thompson: "Teachers from elementary school through college ar= telling students how to distinguish between factual and fictional news =E2�� and why they should care that there's a difference."

Tips on distin=uishing fake news from the real thing:

URL look odd?
Does it make you mad?

If it's real, other news sites are like=y reporting it.

Caps lock and multiple exclamation po=nts don't have a place in most real newsrooms.

It mig=t be satire.

7. Trump 101: One thing he really believes

Trump's three unshakable beliefs on trade, per Axio=' Jonathan Swan:

America sends the wrong people to negotiat=.

Foreign countries rip off America.

American leaders sho=ld retaliate.

Why this matters: Trump will in=vitably ditch or scale back some of his less realistic promises. But an ai=e tells us Trump's views on trade only sharpened on the campaign trail as =e spent time meeting unemployed factory workers in Rust Belt towns.

8. Trump's next trade-war targets

Bloomberg's David Tweed, based in Hong Kong: "India, Indonesia, Mal=ysia and Vietnam have largely escaped ... Trump's glare on trade [which ha= focused on China, Japan, South Korea], but he may yet come looking. The U=S. runs trade deficits with all of them, in some cases quite big ones."

Asian economy most vulnerable to a trade attack =y the U.S.: "After China and Japan, Vietnam is probably next."

Why these economies should be jittery: Higher levies could be=imposed for U.S. imports from all of these countries.

The =ackstory: "Peter Navarro, the head of Trump's National Trade Coun=il, and Commerce Secretary-nominee Wilbur Ross last year wrote a paper [for his campaign] where=they pinpointed America's trade gaps as a cause for what they described as=its 'slow growth plunge.'"

9. Reality bites

Wall Street Journal front-pager, "SPEED LIMITS AWAIT INFR=STRUCTURE SPREE," by David Harrison: "Environmental regulations and ne=ghborhood opposition routinely bog down projects and will likely constrain=the administration's plan to spend $1 trillion on 'highways, bridges, tunn=ls, airports.'"

What's ahead: "[L]ong, costly =eviews and legal battles will likely confront Mr. Trump's efforts, just as=they delayed much of President Barack Obama's 2009 economic-stimulus effor=s."

Daunting timeline: "It can take decades to br=ng such investments to fruition. ... Completing the process took an averag= of almost 10 years for major highway projects that received their final r=view in 2015, up from about five years in 2005."

Why this =atters: These hurdles make it more difficult for voters and consu=ers to see the benefits of the planned spending. Hence the temptation to g= with "shovel-ready" projects -- projects that would have gone ahead anywa=, or that are not -- in the words of the great Michael Grunwald -- "shovel=worthy."

10. 1 fun thing

Adele accepts Album of the Year for "25" / AP

"Adele and David Bowie rack up wins as the Grammys stru=gle to keep up with the times" -- L.A. Times pop music writer Randy Lewis: "Adele, the English queen of pop heartbreak and redempt=on, scored a perfect five for five ... at the 59th Grammy Awards [in L.A. =ast night], sweeping the top categories of album, record and song of the y=ar in a triumphant return to the spotlight following a long, trying hiatus="

"Not surprisingly given the mood of the country, the ceremony featured several moments=of political commentary, ranging from calls for unity to blatant criticism=... [including a] call-out to 'President Agent Orange' from [Busta Rhymes =or] hip-hop collective A Tribe Called Quest."

Beyoncé, pregnant with twins and "perhaps sens=ng it was her last chance," accepting award for Best Urba= Contemporary Album, for "Lemonade": "It's important to me to show images =o my children that reflect their beauty ... so they can grow up in a world=where they look in the mirror, first through their own families, as well a= the news, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the White House and the Grammys, =nd see themselves. And have no doubt that they're beautiful, intelligent a=d capable."

"Adele ... pays tribute to Beyonce," by=AP's David Bauder: "In an extraordinary moment between the music industry'= top female artists, Adele beat Beyonce for three of the top Grammy Awards=— then said her competitor deserved at least one of them."

Adele: "[M]y album of the year=is 'Lemonade' ... It's her time to win ... My view is kind of what the (ex=letive) does she have to do to win album of the year? I felt this album sh=wed another side to her that we haven't seen and I felt blessed to be brou=ht into that situation.'"

List of winners

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In response to a crucial gap in career readiness among young people, JPM=rgan Chase launched New Skills for Youth, a global, $75M, 5-year initiativ=. Key stats:

5M young people ages 16-24 are neither working nor in school

JPMorgan Chase will commit $20M to 10 U.S. states for career programs

The investments, says Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, will give young=people “a chance to succeed” and create new pathways to econom=c opportunity.

See if your state is part of the program.

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