Subject: ?Axios AM: Mike's Top 10 — No good days — Will Trump go left? — The staff's stuff — Ballpark boom
From: "Mike Allen" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2017 09:23:09 -0400 (EDT)

Presented by Bank of America:

No good days — Will Trump go left? — The staff's stuff =E2�� Covering Trump — Ballpark boom

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Presented By Bank of America

Axios AM

By Mike Allen = ·Apr 01, 2017

Happy Saturday, and welcome to April �=94 a harmonic convergence of April Fool's Day, and the day of the week whe= President Trump is most likely to fire off a believe-it-or-not tweet.=Will POTUS prank us?

1 big thing: No good days

Vice President Pence tries to stop Trump from leaving, after he neglecte= to sign executive orders on trade in the Oval yesterday. That's National =rade Council adviser Peter Navarro at left / AP's Andrew Harnik

It's Day 72 of President Trump, and he hasn't had a goo= day since his address to Congress. That was over a month ago, on Feb. 28.=/p>
Many Republicans who were giving him the benefit of=the doubt are beginning to despair. Astonishingly, almost all his wounds a=e self-inflicted.

"This is becoming The Gang That =ouldn't Shoot Straight," said an outside adviser to the West Wing. "It's s=arting to remind people of the Carter administration."

The M=r-a-Lago summit with China's President Xi next week is a chance t= look statesmanlike. But D.C. looks bleak, with the Russia brouhaha robbin= Trump of potentially triumphant moments like this week's announcement of =is Energy Independence Policy, and the creation of a Commission on Combati=g Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.

Week 10 was=the second disastrous week in a row, following the health-care implosion.<=r>

Dav=d Gergen told CNN's Anderson Cooper: "We've ... never, ever h=d a president in the first hundred days whose White House is so embroiled =n controversies that are increasingly suspicious. ... [T]he Flynn =tory says there is a fire."

​2. Will Trump go left?

Of all the dramas inside the White House, none touches =n intensity and consequence the growing belief that moderate, cosmopolitan= former Democrats are hijacking the America First boss.

the daily flow of two kinds of highly orchestrate= stories:

The first are leaks about how Jared=Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Gary Cohn, the central players in the centrist c=bal, are opposed to controversial policies championed by the America First=gang, led by Steve Bannon. Hence, all the glowing stories about Jared's ca=m demeanor and growing influence and Ivanka'a focus on women issues.
<=i>The second are the endless string of anonymous staffers=smack-talking the other side in the media. Cue this morning's Politico sto=y, "Kushner's privileged status stokes resentment in White Ho=se." It can be summed up with one sentence: "[P]eople ... say Kushner can =e a shrewd self promoter, knowing how to take credit — and shirk b=ame — whenever it suits him."

Sound smart: Trump remains torn, but most believe family bonds bind too tight to b=eak. It's no coincidence that in the past week alone, these four things ha=pened:

Ivanka took official White House role=

Jared expanded his portfolio to basically includ= the entire government.

Reince Priebus' deputy r=signed.

Trump started calling more Democrats.
Maggie Habmerman tweeted yesterday ... " The NY w=ng vs national wing matters less as chronic infighting and more as a ... d=ath battle over who can move the president in a game of inches."

3. Picking up the pieces

AP's Andrew Harnik

Vice President Pence retrieves a folder from the Oval O=fice desk after POTUS departed with a thumbs-up following remarks about si=ning two executive orders on trade — but apparently forgetting to =ign them.

As Trump walked out, CBS' Major Garrett a=ked him about Flynn and immunity. Video shows Pence touching Trump's back =o stop him, and conferring for a split second. But the president seemed to=signal Pence to bring him the folder, and didn't return.

Fro= the pool report by the Financial Times' Sam Fleming: "A WH offic=al says they were signed subsequently." (43-second video)

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4. Most important word of the week

Spicer yesterday / Reuters' Jonathan Ernst

"Nope."

— Sean Spicer, at yesterday's briefing, =hen asked: "General Flynn's attorney said that his client has a 'story to =ell.' Is the White House concerned that General Flynn has damaging informa=ion about the President, his aides, his associates about what occurred dur=ng the campaign with respect to Russia?"

Maggie Haberman tweeted: "This =s the most SNL yet of these briefings."

5. The staff's stuff

Headlines from financial disclosures from White House s=aff, released last night:

At-a-glance=strong> for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump ... Gary Cohn ... Stev= Bannon ... Kellyanne Conway ... Don McGahn ... Boris Epshteyn ... Reince =riebus ... Julia Hahn ... Peter Navarro ... Jason Greenblatt ... Keith Kel=ogg ... Makan Delrahim.

"Ivank= Trump and Jared Kushner worth at least $240 million."
"Bannon's =ade Millions in Shaping Right-Wing Thought."

=Trump advisers richer=/a> than previous White House officials."

Links to the forms.

Includes two Bannon inter=iews ... "Bannon, Trump's architect of anti-globalist policies, g=t rich as a global capitalist."

6. Covering Trump

"Broken Windows," by Barry Blitt, on cover of next week's New Yorker

Worth the click ... Axios' award-winning Stef Kight, "<= href="http://link.axios.com/click/9291930.40010/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYXhpb3M=Y29tL3RoZS1iZXN0LW9mLXRydW1wLW1hZ2F6aW5lLWNvdmVycy0yMzM4MTUwMjk1Lmh0bWw_dX=tX3NvdXJjZT1uZXdzbGV0dGVyJnV0bV9tZWRpdW09ZW1haWwmdXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPW5ld3NsZ=R0ZXJfYXhpb3NhbQ/5871993924c17c54d77a8b8cBf126dd1d" target="_blank">5 wa=s to make a winning Trump magazine cover," including "put 'im with Put=n" and "supernatural face manipulation." See 'em all.

New Yorker "Cover Story" ... "I see that the wo=d 'duffer' is defined as 'a person inexperienced at something, especially =t playing golf,'" Barry Blitt says, about his cover for the upcoming issue= "That's the word that comes to mind as I watch President Trump plowing on= drive after another through the glass windows of American politics."

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

7. What they're saying

Dan Balz "The Take" co=umn, for Sunday's WashPost:: "[T]he investigations are months and=months away from completion. And what is now known has not only deeply com=romised the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into the Russia a=fair, but also raised questions that White House officials seem unable or =nwilling to answer — but which investigators will eventually have =o answer."

"[T]he cascade of qu=stions for the White House are important and legitimate. Having c=eated this new front in the expanding controversy, the president and his a=des will now be forced to endure continued and justifiable scrutiny over w=at they have done to add to the mystery."

"Mistakes, He's Ma=e a Few Too Many" — Peggy Noonan column in Wall Street =ournal: "[O]ur country is stressed to the point of fracture culturally, ec=nomically, politically, spiritually. We find it hard to hold together on a=peaceful day, never mind a violent one. And so right now we must institute=as much good feeling and cooperation in Washington as we can. The nation l=ngs for examples of constructiveness and capability. We've got to keep the=long view in mind."

"There's to= much gravitational pull to the president's accumulated mistakes.=... Crisis reveals the character, the essential nature of a White House. S=venty days in, that is my worry."

The WashPost's two-column lead story, <= style="margin-left: 20px;">Shot ... "Trump aides have =xpressed growing frustration at their inability to gain control of Washing=on's narrative."

Chaser ... "In many ways, the first weeks of the Trump White House have resemble= a chaotic tech start-up. ... [E]each new crisis and mishap ... has been v=ewed as a learning opportunity."

8. Futurecast: "Out of road"

From Financial Times Magazine, "[D]riverless vehicles =nd the end of the trucker: New self-driving technology threatens an Americ=n way of life," by Leslie Hook:

All =ver Silicon Valley, one start-up after another is making a simila= bet. Not all of them are trying to take human drivers out of the truck co=pletely, ... but everyone agrees this will be the outcome of their technol=gies in the long run. Investors are pouring in. ...

For trucking start-ups, a turning p=int came last August, when Uber announced it was buying a six-month-old st=rt-up, Otto, for a price tag of more than $600m in equity. After that, oth=r trucking start-ups found it much easier to raise money. ...

"[Y]ou have a much more pe=fect system, because you don't have humans making mistakes." This kind of =hinking is setting Silicon Valley up for a clash with the rest of the coun=ry, where those "humans making mistakes" represent millions of jobs under =hreat from automation.

9. Worthy of your time

Adam Ferguson (@AFergusonPhoto) / The New York Times

Sobering narrative, arresting images, cool tech (a group photo t=at lets you hover to read an individual story) ... In Sunday's N.=. Times, a special section on the migrant crisis in landlocked Niger, in t=e hump of Africa, "The Road to Nowhere," by Dion=e Secrecy, West Africa bureau chief:

More than 130,000 people have amassed along this desert =ighway outside Diffa, Niger — National Route 1. They now call its =arren, sandy shoulders home.All of them have been chased from their villag=s by Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group that kidnaps and kills indisc=iminately in a campaign of violence that has lasted eight years. The New Y=rk Times spent weeks documenting the stories of people living along this r=ad, interviewing more than 100 residents. ...

Fewer than half of the 137,000 children e=timated to be living in the region are in school. ... Unicef has set up 27=small schools along the road. In one, students from Niger, whose national =anguage is French, are being taught in English.

10. 1 fun thing

"Let Me Pay! I Have 29 Credit Cards= Millennials hoard plastic to rack up rewards points" �=94 Wall Street Journal A-Hed by Rob Copeland (online: "If You Have 29 Cred=t Cards, You're Probably a Millennial"): "

Rewards fanatics are one reason new credit-card sign-ups in the thi=d quarter of last year were 14% higher than in the year-earlier period ...=Some cardholders move on to a fresh card as soon as they charge enough to =arn their sign-up bonus on one.

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