Iran criticized President Trump's tweet in support of a series of economic protests in major Iranian cities over issues including unemployment, corruption and unbalanced government spending, per The Associated Press.
Key quote: "Iranian people give no credit to the deceitful and opportunist remarks of U.S. officials or Mr. Trump," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi said, according to the AP.
N.Y. Times' Michael Schmidt gives a behind-the-scenes around of his impromptu Trump interview:\
"I spent the past week in Florida covering the president's Christmas vacation to give my colleagues on the White House beat the chance to take some time off ... Until Thursday, my time in Florida had been quiet. But that afternoon, I went to Mr. Trump's golf club with his longtime confidant Christopher Ruddy, who had invited me for lunch."
The White House issued a warning to the Iranian government on Friday night regarding the protests taking place around the country.
"There are many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with the regime's corruption and its squandering of the nation's wealth to fund terrorism abroad. The Iranian government should respect their people's rights, including their right to express themselves. The world is watching." -- White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders
The latest: Thousands of Iranian citizens have taken part in the biggest protests since 2009. In what originally started as a protest against the state of the economy, citizens began shouting out against government policies, and President Hassan Rouhani. Some protesters have been arrested in Tehran, which the State Department criticized, per the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "We urge all nations to publicly support the Iranian people and their demands for basic rights and an end to corruption."
At Mar-a-Lago, President Trump can "be Trump," former campaign adviser Roger Stone told the Washington Post.
"Nobody tells Donald Trump where he can and cannot go...The president is able to get a lot of information that is normally blocked from getting to him...You don't have the minders. There is no doubt that he makes more calls."
Why it matters: Per the Post, aides view Trump's Florida golf club as "a respite...for him to recharge." He handles comments made on cable news better, and tweets a little less. But, it's also more difficult for his staff to control who he speaks to, as seen on Thursday when a New York Times reporter was able to sit with Trump for a 30 minute interview without any aides or advisers having a say.
The White House will soon start bipartisan talks on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, with the hopes of avoiding a government shutdown, but this time Chief of Staff John Kelly will lead the meeting instead of President Trump, sources told Politico.
Why it matters: Democrats have repeatedly said they won't sign on to a government funding bill without striking a deal to protect Dreamers — undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children — from deportation. And on Friday, Trump tweeted that the funding package must include funding for the border wall. Congress only has two months left to figure out what to do with DACA before the repeal goes into effect in March 2018.
Editor's note: The story was updated to clarify when DACA repeal goes into effect.
President Trump has yet to visit California, the nation's largest state, during his time in office, the L.A. Times points out in its lead story, by Brian Bennett.
Why it matters: "For Trump, [California is] ground zero for 'the resistance.'"
The infamous Trump Hotel located in D.C.'s old post office surpassed its business goals this year, raking in $1.97 million in profit in the first four months, according to the Daily Beast's Betsy Woodruff. The hotel was projected to lose $2 million, as most luxury hotels don't turn a profit in their first few years.
Big picture: Trump hotels across the country became sites for anti-Trump protests, which isn't exactly great for business, and several hotels have attempted to distance themselves from the name. One Trump hotel in the SOHO neighborhood in New York and one in Toronto changed their names, and a third hotel in Panama City is looking to rebrand. But despite frequent protests, the D.C. location, conveniently situated between the White House and the Capitol, has hosted and entertained Republican officials, campaigners, foreign leaders, conservative outside groups, pro-Trump tourists and even, on occasion, the president himself.
In a morning tweet, President Trump laid out his demands for Democrats to save DACA: a southern border wall, an end to chain migration, and stopping the diversity visa lottery.
If you ask some close to President Trump what worries them most about 2018, it's not Robert Mueller's probe. It's that establishment guardrails of 2017 come down — and Trump's actual instincts take over.
Next year will bring "full Trump," said one person who recently talked to the president.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is set to address a party summit for Germany's Christian Social Union next month, per Politico. The CSU is the Bavarian (and far more conservative) counterpart to Angela Merkel's nationally-oriented center-right Christian Democratic Union.
Why it matters: Merkel and the CDU are struggling to assemble a governing coalition after losing ground in September's elections — and they're set to sit down with the center-left Social Democrats in a last-ditch effort to cobble an alliance together. The CSU is a needed ally for the CDU in their talks, but its embrace of Orbán, a hardliner with extremely controversial views on immigration, could be a troubling sign for Merkel as she tries to reach across the aisle.
