White House Chief of Staff John Kelly apparently wasn't thrilled about my story last Sunday revealing the president's liberal use of "Executive Time" — a three hour block carved into his private schedule every morning for tweeting, watching TV and making phone calls.
Since then, the White House has implemented new security measures on the president's real schedule, so I'll share less detail with you this week.
Foreign media outlets are having trouble translating "shithole," the word of the week, into their languages. Here's how a few outlets have tried to describe the uniquely American obscenity:
The White House will never admit this publicly, but the president is developing a softer attitude towards the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Five sources who've spoken privately with Trump about NAFTA say he's taking more seriously the risks of withdrawing the U.S. from the trade deal with Canada and Mexico.
A conga-line of Republican senators have met with the president and explained to him why they consider NAFTA so important to their states. Two arguments have helped change Trump's thinking:
President Trump is preparing to send less than half of an expected $125 million contribution to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the Associated Press reports.
Why it matters: Per the AP, at the moment it looks like Trump will send $60 million, and make future contributions dependent on "major changes" in the agency, per the AP, possibly including demands for Palestinians to re-enter peace talks.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas gave a belligerent Anti-Trump speech tonight in a special session of the PLO central council which was organized to take formal decisions against Trump's Jerusalem announcement.
Why it matters: Abbas said in his speech that after the Jerusalem announcement the U.S. cannot and will not be the mediator between Israel and the Palestinians: "We will not take orders from anyone…we told Trump we will never accept your plan. The deal of the century is the slap of the century and we will not accept it."
Since the report broke on Thursday that President Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as "shithole countries," there have been conflicting reports from the lawmakers who were in the room.
The bottom line: This is a straightforward question about a meeting that happened just a few days ago, yet some participants seem to have forgotten what was said remarkably quickly. Meanwhile, Sen. Dick Durbin told the press that Trump made such remarks "repeatedly," while Sen. David Perdue denies the account entirely.
Sen. Rand Paul told Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" that the firestorm over President Trump's remarks about "shithole countries" is hurting immigration negotiations.
"I do want to see an immigration compromise, and you can't have an immigration compromise if everybody's out there calling the president a racist."
But, but, but: Paul also said that it's unfair to "draw conclusions" from Trump's comments. He said when he was presidential candidate before Trump, he traveled to Haiti on a medical mission trip, and Trump was "a large financial backer." He said he knows "for a fact, that he cares very deeply about the people in Haiti."
GOP Sen. David Perdue told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning that President Trump did not say "shithole countries" in an Oval Office meeting this week, which he attended.
Following raids last week on 98 7-Eleven stores, DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen said on "Fox News Sunday" that more raids on businesses that have hired illegal immigrants are coming:
"Yes, and the message we're trying to send is if you consistently and willfully ignore the laws congress and the American people have passed, and you will be held accountable. These are not accidental hirings of illegal immigrants. Some of these companies unfortunately have continually and systematically tried to get around the system."
DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen was in the room for President Trump's heated immigration meeting, but says she can't recall whether he referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as "shithole countries."
Worth noting: Nielsen isn't denying the substance of what Trump said about the U.S. accepting immigrants from these countries.
"Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam [D] took some veiled shots at President Donald Trump as he was sworn in as the 73rd governor of the commonwealth, ... telling a crowd gathered in Richmond, 'You don't have to be loud to lead," per CNN.
From Northam's inaugural address: "It can be hard to find our way in a time when there's so much shouting, when nasty, shallow tweets take the place of honest debate, and when scoring political points gets in the way of dealing with real problems."
"Virginia has told us to end the divisiveness, that we will not condone hatred and bigotry, and to end the politics that have torn this country apart."
Trump's day of reckoning ... The one thing that could dramatically diminish President Trump’s chances of avoiding impeachment and chalking up legislative wins is Democrats winning the House.
And, thanks to series of recent developments, Trump knows this no longer just seems plausible, but probable.
After a federal judge last week ordered the Trump administration to resume the DACA program, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that recipients can once again apply for renewal.
What happened: President Trump announced in September that he would be ending DACA, but would give Congress until March to pass a legislative replacement for the Obama-era program, which shields 700,000 immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children from deportation and allows them to receive work permits. That left a gap for recipients of the protections who couldn't renew their status, which is required every 2 years. Amid legal challenges to Trump's move, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the government to resume the processing of renewal applications.
