The Trump's held the annual Easter Egg Roll this morning, telling the kids:
"We will be stronger and bigger and better as a nation than ever before. We're right on track. You see what's happening and we're right on track," he added, "I've seen those kids, and they're highly, highly competitive."
Social moments:
1. Melania giving Trump a nudge when he forgot to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem.
President Trump made a strategic miscalculation by telling China's President Xi that he'll get a better trade deal if he helps out on North Korea, says Richard McGregor, an authority on Chinese internal politics. (McGregor wrote the seminal book "The Party," which Trump has reportedly said is his favorite on China.)
McGregor told Axios:
"For Trump to have a modicum of credibility, he couldn't trade off advances on North Korea against the concerns of the people who put him in the White House in the first place... The Chinese often talk about win-win outcomes, which, the cynics joke, means the Chinese win twice. By linking trade and North Korea, Trump is only making that outcome more likely."
During the darkest days of the campaign, when Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by wide margins in just about every poll, Trump's campaign staff searched hard for some good news to print out and place on their boss's desk.
One trusty source of good news: the Rasmussen Reports polls, which historically tilt Republican.
Today, the President, who's been concerned about his approval ratings, retweeted a rare burst of good news — "Trump approval hits 50%." The source of this information will be no surprise to Trump's campaign staff.
The shift from reasonable Trump to dangerous Trump is well underway in the Russian media, as demonstrated nicely by this pair of comments from Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselev, who heads the Kremlin-backed Rossiya Segodnya (which isn't the same thing as RT):
September 2016: "Trump's leading in the race. His ability to state things as they are, and his intention to end the recent extreme Russian-American tensions — all this puts him in a very risky situation. Now they may just kill him."
April 2017: "The world is a hair's breadth from nuclear war... War can break out as a result of confrontation between two personalities; Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un. Both are dangerous, but who is more dangerous? Trump is."
Why it matters: This is a good, albeit imperfect, way to see what Putin is thinking. As a Kremlin spokesman said of Kiselev, "His position is close, but not every time."
Kellyanne Conway has called on Hillary Clinton and other leading Democrats to repudiate the sporadic violence at recent anti-Trump protests.
Speaking from the South Lawn of the White House ahead of the Easter Egg Roll, Conway told Fox and Friends that Clinton, Tom Perez and Bernie Sanders should stop trying to make Trump's victory "go away" and instead "move forward and help us negotiate."
Our thought bubble: Conway's call echoes what Dems demanded of Trump during the campaign. But she bemoaned the fact that Trump's rivals keep bringing up the election, while in the same breath noting that Trump beat Clinton "handily" — and after Trump himself boasted about his margin of victory in a tweet. It seems no one is ready to move on.
North Korea is quickly becoming President Trump's biggest challenge, but it long predates the new administration. Below is a timeline of how the U.S. and its allies have tried to push North Korea away from building a nuclear arsenal.
Fromthe heart of Trump country, Craig Gilbert writes in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Trump's election did more than change the expectations of Republicans and Democrats about the economy's future performance. It altered their assessments of the economy's actual performance."
The numbers: "When GOP voters in Wisconsin were asked last October whether the economy had gotten better or worse 'over the past year,' they said 'worse' — by a margin of 28 points. But when they were asked the very same question last month, they said 'better' — by a margin of 54 points. That's a net swing of 82 percentage points between late October 2016 and mid-March 2017."
What it means: "What changed so radically in those four and a half months? The economy didn't. But the political landscape did."
After a reprieve over the weekend with the bellyflop of the North Korean missile test, experts warn that tensions with the U.S. will "remain dangerously high for the indefinite future."
Why it matters: Just 12 days from Trump's 100-day mark, his biggest test (including of his vow to both talk and act tough) is unfolding in real time — with massive global consequences.
Mike Pence has toured Camp Bonifas, a military base near the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, just a day after North Korea's failed missile launch and amid heightened tensions between Pyongyang and Washington.
Pence quotes: "North Korea would do well not to test [Trump's] resolve ... all options are on the table ... the era of strategic patience is over."
Why it matters: The Trump administration is trying to send a signal that they stand with South Korea and are prepared to confront the threat from the North. Pence called the failed launch a "provocation" after arriving for the first leg of his 10-day Asia trip.
