Subject: Axios AM: Mike's Top 10 — Trump's war room — The first Facebook president — Why we lie — Ford's new CEO on speedy decisions
From: "Mike Allen" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 May 2017 06:49:10 -0400 (EDT)

Presented by JPMorgan Chase & Co.:

Trump's war room — The first Facebook president — Why we=lie — Ford's new CEO on speedy decisions

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Presented By JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Axios AM

By Mike Allen = ·May 23, 2017

1 big thing: Trump's war room

Trump visits the Western Wall, in Jerusalem yesterday / AP's Evan Vucci<=p>

Day 124 ... White House officials tell me they're geari=g up for months, and likely years, of Russia defense. Trump and his inner =ircle are belatedly scrambling to install war-room-like mechanisms designe= to prevent the drama and threat from consuming the entire West Wing, and =erailing everything else.

Trump aides have studied precedent=, including the Reagan White House's handling of Iran-Contra and =resident Clinton's scandal machinery.

The West Wing

Trump aides recognize the Russia defense will be essentially permanent, and are fin=lly planning structures to reflect that.

A key takeaway from past administrations is to designate one office or official to =andle all the legal and communications issues, so there's a consistent res=onse and everyone else isn't constantly sucked in.

In "Trump looking at outs=de counsel for Russia probe," the WashPost's Bob Costa and As=ley Parker report: "[A]ttorneys who have spoken to the White House and who=are seen as the finalists are Marc E. Kasowitz; Robert J. Giuffra Jr.; Rei= H. Weingarten; and Theodore B. Olson."

"Two =ther attorneys who were originally viewed as contenders but have =ince drifted away from the mix ... are Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. ... and A.B= Culvahouse Jr."

"Kasowitz, who has =nown Trump for decades, is expected to take a leading role."

Separately, Trump "personally reached out to two o= his former campaign aides — his first campaign manager, Corey Lew=ndowski, and his deputy campaign manager, David Bossie — to sound =hem out about working with the administration as crisis managers," per Politico's Eliana Johnson and Josh Dawsey.

Wha= could go wrong? One Trump ally said the list of legal eagles is =ncouraging: "These guys know how to fight a war."

Be sm=rt: Both Republican and Democratic lawyers tell me the legal "Tea= of Rivals" could replicate some of the West Wing's dysfunction, forcing l=wyers who are used to being in charge to compete for Trump's ear.

2. Trump in the Holy Land

Trump's limo, "The Beast," sits outside the Presidential Palace during a=meeting today with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank C=ty of Bethlehem / AP's Evan Vucci

Breaking ... "Trump plays up Middle East peace hop=s after talks with Palestinian president," by Reuters' Jeff Mason in B=thlehem, West Bank: Trump said "he believed both sides were committed to a= historic deal, but he offered no concrete proposals on how to get there."=/p>

Trump: "I am committed to trying to achieve a =eace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians and I intend to d= everything I can to help them achieve that goal."

"The la=t talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, led by former U.S.=secretary of state John Kerry, broke down in April 2014 after around a yea= of largely fruitless discussion."

Trip "peppered with=symbolism" ... Wall Street Journal fro=t page, at fold, "Trump, Netanyahu Unite on Iran," by Carol Lee and Ro=y Jones in Jerusalem: "Trump is focusing on pressing Israeli and Palestini=n leaders to negotiate in good faith. White House officials say leaders fr=m both sides have agreed in principle to direct talks, though it is unclea= whether or when those would begin."

Back at the ranch ... <=strong>WashPost lead story<=a>, "President asked intelligence chiefs to deny collusion": "Trump made s=parate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and=to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency. .=. Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both de=med to be inappropriate."

Flynn=takes the Fifth with Senate Intelligence Committee. N.Y. Times notes: "His decision ... pu=s him at risk of being held in contempt of Congress, which can also result=in a criminal charge."

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3. "Taxpayer-first" budget out at 11 a.m.

Thought bubble from Axios' Jonathan Swan and David Nather:

Takeaway from briefing by White =ouse budget director Mick Mulvaney: The Trump administration wants to rede=ine what "compassion" means. Mulvaney says it should no longer be measured=based on how many programs are in effect or how many people are receiving =he benefit. He wants "compassion" to be broadened to include whether the g=vernment is ripping off taxpayers.

The budget balances in 10 years, but relies on some very sketchy assumptions.
Safety-net programs cut significantly: No Social Se=urity (retirement payments) or Medicare cuts. But many will argue that cut= to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) would break his promise no= to cut SS.

Massive cuts to non-defense discreti=nary spending. Hardest hit: EPA (31.4% o=f budget in first year), State (-29.1%), Ag (-20.5%), Labor (-19.8%), HHS =-16.2%).

Boosts: military ... border security ...=vets ... paid parental leave ($19 billion over 10 years).

=a href="http://link.axios.com/click/9677996.33290/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYXhpb3=uY29tL3RydW1wLWJ1ZGdldC1kZWVwLXNwZW5kaW5nLWN1dHMtMjQxODA5MTA4Ny5odG1sP3V0b=9zb3VyY2U9bmV3c2xldHRlciZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsJnV0bV9jYW1wYWlnbj1uZXdzbGV0=GVyX2F4aW9zYW0/5871993924c17c54d77a8b8cC1818063f" target="_blank">All th= deets.

P.S. "Trump Proposes Selling Off Half =he U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve," by Bloomberg's Catherine Traywick and Jenn=fer Dlouhy: "Trump's first complete budget proposal ... would raise $500 m=llion in fiscal year 2018 by draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and=as much $16.6 billion in oil sales over the next decade."

4. Trump slams "evil losers" for concert carnage

People speak to fans outside Manchester Arena / Photo by Press Associati=n's Peter Byrne, via AP

Pr=sident Trump in Bethlehem, West Bank, on the suicide attack o= a concert in Manchester, England, that killed 22 (including children) and=injured about 50: "So many young beautiful innocent people living and enjo=ing their lives, murdered by evil losers in life.

"I won't call them 'monsters,' because they wo=ld like that term. They would think that's a great name. I will c=ll them, from now on, 'losers," because that's what they are. They're lose=s, and we'll have more of them. But they're losers, just remember that." <=p>
BBC latest: Prime Minister Theresa May calls it a

"=he blast happened in the foyer [of Manchester Arena] ... at the e=d of a concert by US singer Ariana Grande. Police said the lone male attac=er, who died in the blast, detonated a homemade bomb."

"It=may not have been at the level of complexity seen in Paris in 201=, ... but it will still have required planning. ... The explosion happened=shortly after Ariana Grande left the stage as concert-goers began heading =o the exits."

Ariana Grande tweets: "broken. fro= the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don't have words."

5. Axios interview: Ford's new CEO

Jim Hackett (left), newly named Ford Motor Company CEO, speaks with Bill=Ford Jr., executive chairman, in Dearborn, Mich. / AP's Paul Sancya

Jim Hackett, who yesterday was named Ford Motor Company president and CEO, told me in=a phone interview that he hopes to transform the carmaker in part through = ferocious focus on competitive technologies like self-driving cars, where=Detroit has been losing to Silicon Valley.

Hackett: "All-emergent technologies go through a lot of phases, and so we've g=t a huge opportunity there and are very optimistic about it. It would be w=ong for anybody to believe that there's a leader that's got a guarantee th=re."

On culture, Hackett stresses "servant leader=hip": "We care about our people. We care about what they're going through =ore than we do ourselves, and you really have to live that."

Why he was picked: A key reason for the choice of Hackett, who =ucceeds the retiring Mark Fields, is that he was the first head of Ford's =a href="http://link.axios.com/click/9677996.33290/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRpYS5mb3=kLmNvbS9jb250ZW50L2ZvcmRtZWRpYS9mbmEvdXMvZW4vbmV3cy8yMDE2LzAzLzExL2ZvcmQtc=1hcnQtbW9iaWxpdHktbGxjLWVzdGFibGlzaGVkLS1qaW0taGFja2V0dC1uYW1lZC1jaGFpcm1h=i5odG1sP3V0bV9zb3VyY2U9bmV3c2xldHRlciZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsJnV0bV9jYW1wYWl=bj1uZXdzbGV0dGVyX2F4aW9zYW0/5871993924c17c54d77a8b8cB6374e438" target="_=lank">Smart Mobility subsidiary, which is designed to compete like a s=artup.

A book he recommends: "Creative Confidence," by Tom and David Kelley.

=xecutive Chairman Bill Ford, Hackett's boss, told me in the same =nterview that with "all the competitors that are coming into our space," <=trong>quicker decision-making is one of the biggest changes he wa=ts for the mammoth company: "The clock speed just keeps getting faster and=faster."

6. Article of the day

One of the best postmortems yet on the secret-sauce ele=ents of Trump's upset victory ... From the June 8 issue o= The New York Review of Books, "How He Used Facebook to W=n," by Sue Halpern, a regular contributor to The Review =nd a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury:

The big idea= "Trump is our first Facebook president. His team figured out how=to use all the marketing tools of Facebook, as well as Google, the two big=est advertising platforms in the world, to successfully sell a candidate t=at the majority of Americans did not want."

"They understo=d that some numbers matter more than others — in this cas= the number of angry, largely rural, disenfranchised potential Trump voter= — and that Facebook, especially, offered effective methods for pu=suing and capturing them."

Why it matters: "While=this is clearly the future of campaigns, ... it also appears to be Trump's=approach to governing."

How they did it: "In the =arly phase of the primaries, [Trump campaign digital director Brad] Parsca=e launched Trump's digital operation by buying $2 million in Facebook ads =E2�� his entire budget at the time. He then uploaded all known Trump s=pporters into the Facebook advertising platform and, using a Facebook tool=called Custom Audiences from Customer Lists, matched actual supporters wit= their virtual doppelgangers and then ... parsed them by race, ethnicity, =ender, location."

"[T]he Trump campaign used Face=ook's vast reach, relatively low cost, and rapid turnaround to test tens o= thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of different campaign ads."=/li>
The takeaway: "What our Facebook pre=ident has discovered is that it actually pays only to please some of the p=ople some of the time."

The whole article, which includes a look at the online chorus that "sent a river of pro-Tru=p and anti-Clinton messages coursing into cyberspace, giving the Trump cam=aign a continually self-reinforcing narrative," is worthy of your time.
If you worked on the campaign and have critiques =f the article (points that were missed, or assertions that are mythology),=just hit "reply" on this email, or drop me a line at [email-masked].

7. "We lie if honesty won't work"

National Geographic cover story=/strong>, "Why We Lie ... scheming and dishonesty are part of what makes u= human," by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee:

"Our capacity for =ishonesty is as fundamental to us as our need to trust others, wh=ch ironically makes us terrible at detecting lies. Being deceitful is wove= into our very fabric, so much so that it would be truthful to say that to=lie is human."

"Researchers speculate that lying =s a behavior arose not long after the emergence of language. The ability t= manipulate others without using physical force likely conferred a= advantage in the competition for resources and mates, akin to th= evolution of deceptive strategies in the animal kingdom, such as camoufla=e."

Why it matters: "[O]ur proclivity for deceivi=g others, and our vulnerability to being deceived, are especially conseque=tial in the age of social media. Our ability as a society to separate trut= from lies is under unprecedented threat."

8. Top-eds

David Leonardt in N.Y. Times, "The Senate's Healt= Care Strategy: Shhh!" (online: "It's Time to Worry about Health Care in t=e Senate"): Senators "shouldn't be tinkering around the edges of a bill th=t would hurt the middle class and the poor, the sick and elderly, children=and the disabled. They won't get credit for making it marginally less crue=."

Monica Lewinsky,<=strong> "an anti-cyberbullying advocate and a contributing editor at Vanit= Fair," in N.Y. Times, "Roger Ailes's Dream Was My Nightmare": Just as tel=vision news was devolving into a modern coliseum, the internet came along =nd compounded this culture of shame and vitriol."

"Trump's house of betray=l" ... Michael Gerson, top Bush 43 adviser, in WashPost, "The=leaks aren't making us safer": "Public officials should not respond to the=fraying of democratic norms by further unraveling them. ... [T]he proper r=sponse ... is not to leak but to resign."

9. For your radar

Carrier Corp., Trump's Exhibit A for corporate patrioti=m, released a timeline for eliminating 632 jobs at the company's Indianapo=is factory — work that will be outsourced to Mexico, AP reports:

"C=mpany officials said in a letter released [yesterday] that 338 jo=s would be cut by July 20. Another 290 will be out of work by Dec. 22. ...=The company is also closing a sister plant in Huntington."

<=span>"United Steelworkers Local 1999 Vice President Rober= James says it's 'cold' to put people out of work just days before Christm=s."

Why it matters: "Trump made the plight of 1,4=0 Carrier workers a major campaign theme. Under pressure from Trump, Carri=r announced last November that it would keep some operations in Indianapol=s, sparing about 800 workers."

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10. 1 stat for the road

From Harvard Crimson's "Graduating Class of 2017 by the numbers":

"While two-thirds of seniors surveyed =dentify as liberal, they appeared to have become more liberal and more pol=tically polarized during their time at Harvard.

"When surveyed as freshmen, 15 percent the member= of the Class of 2017 identified as conservative. ... Now, just nine perce=t of seniors surveyed identify as conservative. Two percent of seniors sur=eyed identified as 'very conservative.'"

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