President Trump is on his way to Singapore for the highly anticipated meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which starts on Tuesday, and Singapore is already starting to feel the heat.
The big picture: More than 3,000 media personnel are descending on the island, the Associated Press reports, as the world braces for the historic summit. That, combined with heavy security presence and impersonators of the two leaders, has led to a feeling of "frenzy unusual for the laid-back tropical state."
On his way to Singapore for a highly anticipated meeting with North Korea, President Trump tweeted his satisfaction with the G7 summit he reluctantly attended touting the "great meetings and relationships with the six country leaders," but defended the recent tariffs he slapped on close U.S. allies saying "[w]e have put up with Trade Abuse for many decades — and that is long enough."
What's next: Trump followed up with multiple tweets during his AF1 flight to Singapore to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, displaying confidence in the dictator's willingness, explaining "I know that Kim Jong-un will work very hard to do something that has rarely been done before... Create peace and great prosperity for his land."
Mitt Romney said this week that President Trump will "easily" clinch the nomination in 2020, USA Today reports, and "solidly" win re-election.
Why it matters: Romney and Trump have had a tumultuous relationship, which seems to have evened out slightly after Romney announced his candidacy for Utah's Senate seat. And as Axios' Jonathan Swan reported, while Romney — who is likely to win the Senate seat — may push back against the president on things like trade and foreign policy, he's less likely to "make his campaign or Senate tenure a non-stop critique of Trump."
Canadian officials have begun traveling to the U.S. to educate immigrants about the immigration process in Canada, warning that "they can't simply rush north of the border to find safe haven" after President Trump's immigration crackdown, USA Today reports.
The big picture: In August, more than 5,500 people were caught trying to illegally cross into Canada from the U.S., but only 8% of asylum applications have been approved, per USA Today. Canada has been increasing the number of immigrants it accepts annually, aiming to bring in 340,000 by 2020, but special adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Randy Boissonnault, said "if you cross the border illegally, you will be breaking the law. You will be apprehended."
President Trump is in Quebec, Canada for a "skinny" version of a G7 summit with allies he has recently slapped with tariffs. What would normally be an opportunity for industrialized democracies to forge unity on key challenges, will be anything but, Richard Fontaine tells Axios.
The latest: President Trump said on Saturday morning before leaving the G7 summit that his meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong-un is "a one-time shot" for the regime's dictator.
The Department of Justice requested a two-week delay on Friday if an injunction is issued in Texas' challenge to DACA, the New York Times reports.
The details: Texas joins six other states in suing the federal government over DACA, saying it's unlawful and that the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas should be able to "immediately rescind and cancel all DACA permits currently in existence." The DOJ argues that an injunction could "conflict with separate nationwide injunctions that have already been issued."
The biggest key to understanding Trump's dogmatism on trade is that even as he switched political parties and changed his views on issue after issue, his one consistent stance over 40 years is that other countries are "ripping off the United States" in trade deals, as he put it in 1987.
Today is the last day of the G20 Summit, where President Trump is discussing trade with leaders of the world's economic powers. Trump, who has often claimed the U.S. is getting "ripped off" when it comes to trade with other countries, is seeking an overhaul of the international trade order, but what exactly does that entail?
Below we take a look at the top 3 products that the U.S. imports and exports with 5 key trade partners: China, Japan, Canada, Germany and Russia. Here's what we found:
Data: Census Bureau 2016; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon / Axios
President Trump tweeted about a "Democrat I.T. scandal" on Thursday morning, demanding that the Justice Department not let "[Imran] Awan & Debbie Wasserman Schultz off the hook."
Between the lines: This is the second time in a week that Trump has tweeted about speculative, right-wing theories. While Awan, a former congressional I.T. aide, is under FBI investigation and faces fraud charges, as of right now, there is no evidence that the most salacious accusations are true.
House Republicans have crafted the framework for a bill granting options to Dreamers in obtaining citizenship through a new visa system, reports Politico. Conservatives are meeting with Paul Ryan to discuss the framework on Friday.
The big picture: A bill has not been drawn up yet, but the framework of one being presented by House Republicans represents a step toward compromise on a key piece of immigration law.
President Trump told reporters on Friday that he will ask athletes who kneel during the National Anthem to suggest people he should pardon, explaining that he understood their concern for those who had been treated unfairly by the justice system.
Why it matters: This is the first time Trump has acknowledged why athletes kneel during the National Anthem — in protest of racial injustice and police brutality. The president has been adamantly outspoken against NFL players who have taken a knee during the anthem, calling it disrespectful to the military. He has said that NFL team owners should fire any "son of a bitch" who kneels, and, most recently, cited the kneeling issue as one of the reasons the Eagles were uninvited to the White House.
Why it matters: Investigators used a personal relationship Wolfe previously had with a reporter, as well as her phone records, to allege he leaked information to the media and lied to investigators about it.
Ahead of the G-7 summit in Canada Friday, President Trump told reporters that he thinks Russia, which was ousted from the group of countries with the leading advanced economies for annexing Crimea, to be reinstated — re-forming a Group of 8 (G-8).
Why it matters: As with the big-stakes talks with China and North Korea, this is Trump granting an enormous concession absent reciprocity, putting him further at odds with U.S. allies ahead of today's G-7 summit.
On Friday, ahead of the G7 summit in Canada, Trump told reporters that he's considering pardoning thousands of people, signaling that the next on his list may be deceased boxer Muhammad Ali.
What he's saying: "The power to pardon is a beautiful thing .... We are looking at a list of 3,000 names," said Trump. "... If we find those people have been unfairly treated, we'll let them out." He added that he gets a "bigger thrill" by pardoning people who aren't famous, like Alice Johnson, and thanks Kim Kardashian West for bringing her to his attention. Go deeper: Lock her up and let him out... Trump’s approach to justice
"Picture this," The Economist urges in its cover editorial, "Trump’s demolition theory of foreign policy":
"[N]ext week in Singapore President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un crown their summit with a pledge to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. A few days later America and China step back from a trade war, promising to settle their differences. And in the summer, as sanctions bite, the streets of Tehran rise up to cast off the Iranian regime."
After torching the White House with "Fire and Fury," Michael Wolff is coming back for more:
Wolff tells me he has signed with the same publisher, Henry Holt, for a sequel — although he says it's unclear what that means: His best sources (including Steve Bannon) have left the White House. And he's lost the element of surprise that came with his soothing technique of acting as curious therapist to tortured, befuddled aides: "I'm just listening!" or "Tell me what it's like!"
It’s not true President Trump doesn’t read. It’s just exceptionally hard to get him to do it.
So the workarounds by savvy aides have become legendary in the West Wing. Many of them revolve around the briefing binder that goes to the White House residence each night, known internally as “The Book."
Here's why it's so hard to predict whether Republicans will actually lose the House in November: It depends whether the election turns on President Trump's low approval ratings or the booming economy.
Between the lines: As this interactive graphic shows, the party in power tends to do well in the House during midterm elections when voters are happy with the economy, but it does poorly when the president's approval rating is low. There's no recent precedent in which the economy is doing well but the president's approval rating is underwater.
The Justice Department announced late Thursday that a former employee of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has been accused and arrested for lying to FBI special agents about his ongoing communications with three reporters by way of encrypted messaging applications. According to authorities, he also made false statements about providing two reporters with sensitive information related to the committee’s work.
The details: A federal grand jury indicted the longtime director, James Wolfe, on three counts of making fraudulent statements to authorities in the midst of an investigation into an unlawful disclosure of classified information while he was the director of security for the SSCI — a position he held for almost 30 years.
