Axios

President Donald Trump, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, and their son Barron, wave from Air Force One, before departure at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on Friday, March 17, 2017, en route to Palm Beach, Fla.

Grassroots conservatives are getting emails from Corey Lewandowski asking them to donate to his super-PAC. In the fundraising email, Lewandowski tells potential donors that he "agreed to become chairman of Great America Agenda to help President Trump 'drain the swamp' and get America moving again."

The background: Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager, runs a lobbying firm Avenue Strategies with former Trump aide Barry Bennett. Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Joshua Green wrote a feature on their business and noted they were "taking the highly unusual step for a lobbying firm of creating a pro-Trump super-PAC ... that they'll fund with their own money." Axios has asked Lewandowski whether that was a mistake or whether he changed his funding plans.

Draining the swamp: When Green asked Lewandowski whether his lobbying work conflicted with Trump's "drain the swamp" message, he rejected the premise. "I think what Donald Trump said was, Washington lobbyists have used their special access to the detriment of the American people," Lewandowski told Green. "Our goal here is to help companies grow and expand, which falls directly in line with the goals of this administration."

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara investigating Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price when he was fired by Donald Trump, according to ProPublica. Bharara was reportedly overseeing an investigation into stock trades worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that Price made while serving in Congress.

Recall, the Trump team originally asked Bharara to stay in his role even as the new administration came in, but then last week asked him to resign along with 45 other U.S. attorneys. He declined, and was fired.

Why it matters: Watch for Democrats to demand investigations — and see if Republicans take them up on it. Keep your eye on Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley.

Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, said that she and Robby Mook had a plan in place for when Clinton or Trump won. This morning, at the National Review Institute's Ideas Summit in Washington, D.C., she told the story about what happened behind-the-scenes on election night:

President Trump pushed German Chancellor Angela Merkel very hard on the subject of NATO during their closed doors meeting today, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the events.

Trump said Germany has accumulated an immense lack of investment over many years, according to one of our sources, telling Merkel the U.S. feels taken advantage of for spending so much on defense while its allies have benefited without their own degrees of contribution.

Germany only spends 1.19% of its GDP on defense, far below NATO's 2% requirement. The U.S., meanwhile, spends 3.61% of GDP on its military.

With the cringeworthy non-handshakes out of the way, President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel got down to business at a joint press conference. The presser got more than a little awkward, too. The two leaders might as well have been in different rooms, as they barely addressed one another.

And to cap it off, when asked about wiretapping, Trump told Merkel that "at least we have something in common," referencing reports that the NSA wiretapped Merkel under the Obama administration.

A laptop holding Trump Tower floor plans, information about Hillary Clinton's email investigation, and other information about national security was stolen Thursday from a Secret Service agent, as the NY Daily News first reported. The thief reportedly took the laptop from the agent's vehicle when it was parked outside her home.

Secret Service Director of Communications Cathy Milhoan said she can "confirm" the criminal act and added that "Secret Service issued laptops contain multiple layers of security including full disk encryption and are not permitted to contain classified information." Another Secret Service representative told Axios they were still "trying to gather all the facts."

Why it matters: The agent told investigators the information could threaten national security.

House Democrats had a meeting today with DHS Secretary John Kelly over concerns of mass deportations of illegal immigrants, per Politico. Afterward, Dems called the meeting "very military" and "damn frustrating." Some Kelly quotes to judge for yourself…

• "Give me a break."
• "I'm the best thing that happened to DACA."
• "Everything will remain on the table."
• "If you don't like the law we are enforcing, and I don't like many of them, please, please, please change the law."

The Zionist Organization of America, an influential conservative pro-Israel group, is forcefully defending the reputation of Trump security advisor Sebastian Gorka. The news outlet Forward accused Gorka of having sworn allegiance to Vitézi Rend, a Hungarian nationalist group linked to Nazis. Gorka has denied the charge.

"Dr. Gorka is a proud American patriot and fighter against radical Islamic terrorism, and a faithful friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people," said ZoA's president Morton Klein in a statement.Why this matters: Klein is among the most influential figures on the conservative side of America's pro-Israel community. He's previously defended Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon against charges of anti-Semitism and his words carry weight on the right.

Earlier reports indicated that Sean Spicer and national security advisor H.R. McMaster had apologized to the United Kingdom for Spicer's statement that British intelligence played a part in the alleged wiretapping of Trump Tower.

Now, the White House says there was no apology. Instead, it actually "defended Spicer's mention of wiretapping" after fielding complaints from across the pond, per the NYT's Julie Davis.

A senior administration official on Spicer, via the NYT: "He didn't apologize, no way, no how."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has arrived at the White House, where she was greeted by President Trump. The two world leaders will be in and out of meetings this afternoon, before giving a joint press conference at 1:20 p.m.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is among the tech leaders meeting Friday with President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Axios has learned. They'll discuss worker training. And IBM will announce plans to:

• Open 20 more of its P-TECH schools, which let students get a combined high school degree and associate degree in science and technology in as little as four and a half years. There are already 62 of the schools in six U.S. states and Australia. The 20 new schools are all slated to be in the U.S.
• Hire 2,000 U.S. military veterans over the next four years and expand a program that trains and certifies veterans in the use of the type of IBM software often used by law enforcement, cybersecurity and national security agencies.

Why it matters: Rometty has been on Trump's business advisory committee, defending her engagement with Trump as the best way for the company to advance its positions. Announcing plans to hire veterans could generate further approval from a president eager to show he is creating U.S. jobs.

Huffington Post's Highline has a feature on Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the father-daughter billionaire part-owners of Breitbart and key funders of the Trump campaign, that focuses on their attempts to influence the 2016 race using their data firm, Cambridge Analytica. Some choice tidbits…

• Summing up the Mercers' worldview: They want to destroy the GOP establishment — and have a particular distaste for John McCain, who once accused Robert's firm of avoiding billions in taxes. Robert on meeting Republican heavyweights: "I don't know any of your fancy friends, and I haven't got any interest in knowing them."
• Trump's consequential move to drop Paul Manafort as his campaign manager and bring Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon on board was implemented four days after Rebekah Mercer pitched him the idea.
• Rebekah's desired Trump administration: Bannon for chief of staff, Sessions for attorney general, Flynn as national security, and anybody but Mitt Romney as secretary of state.
• But not everyone thinks highly of them. One of HuffPost's sources said about Robert, "None of us ever thought he would get his views out, because he only talked to his cats." And another on Rebekah: "She's just like a series of amoeba cells."

Almost 40% of all U.S. universities have had a decrease this year in international student applications, particularly those from the Middle East, according to a survey released this week by the Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. And prospective international students have already expressed concern for anti-Muslim attitudes — attributed to the "Trump effect," the New York Times reported.

$$: International students bring more than $32 billion a year into the U.S. economy, according to NYT.

Big Picture: There is still a steady rise in the number of international students coming to the U.S — more than one million of them last year. Some schools have seen an increase in international students, like NYU and USC.

The White House has promised to stop repeating a claim that Britain's Government Communications Headquarters helped Obama wiretap Trump Tower, per the BBC. In a press briefing earlier this week, WH Press Secretary Sean Spicer quoted Andrew Napolitano, the Fox News analyst:

"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ."

The claims prompted a sharp rebuke from GCHQ — which described the claims as "utterly ridiculous" and "nonsense." And Susan Rice, National Security Adviser for former president Barack Obama, tweeted: "The cost of falsely blaming our closest ally for something this consequential cannot be overstated."

Note: The Senate intelligence committee announced yesterday that there are "no indications" of wiretapping before or after the November election.

J. D. Vance, author of "Hillbilly Elegy," explains why he's moving back home, to Columbus, Ohio:

• "For two years, I'd lived in Silicon Valley, surrounded by other highly educated transplants with seemingly perfect lives. It's jarring to live in a world where every person feels his life will only get better when you came from a world where many rightfully believe that things have become worse."
• "My wife and I worry about the quality of local public schools, and whether she (a San Diego native) could stand the unpredictable weather. But there were practical reasons to move: I'm founding an organization to combat Ohio's opioid epidemic. We chose Columbus because I travel a lot, and I need to be centrally located in the state and close to an airport."

What he doesn't say: Friends speculate he may run for office.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that it may be necessary to take pre-emptive military action against North Korea if the threat of their nuclear weapons program gets to a point "that we believe requires action," reports the AP.

Tillerson is in South Korea today. His response when asked if the U.S. would use military force against the North:

All of the options are on the table ... but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threatens South Korean forces or our own forces, that would be met with [an] appropriate response...

Top CEOs have a new First Customer. With President Trump taking a hands-on approach to negotiations, here are five tips for surviving and thriving — based on conversations with executives, aides and friends who have battled Trump in private and found some success.