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During talks with Pak PM, Trump to seek release of doctor who helped track Osama

Imran Khan and Donald Trump are scheduled to meet at the White House on Monday.

Where Is Ivanka? 3%

Ivanka Trump wants it both ways.

Since joining her father’s White House as a senior adviser in early 2017, the first daughter has reserved the right to toggle between a strict and loose construction of her portfolio. When flashy opportunities arise—such as the chance to play diplomat with Kim Jong Un—the edges of her purview, which she often defines as “women’s economic empowerment,” become conveniently blurry. But when the issue du jour is particularly messy, she is quick to clarify its limits, thus absolving herself of accountability for problems that exist outside it. When The View’s Abby Huntsman, for example, asked Trump in February why she didn’t speak up about family separations along the U.S.-Mexico border, she objected that she is “not president of all women’s issues.”

This awkward dance underscores the true nature of Trump’s silence on a flurry of new controversies surrounding her father: She is declining to speak out not because of the limits of her portfolio. She simply does not want to.

“It’s an exclusive club,” said a former senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk frankly. “People who want to be in charge of everything, but when the going gets weird, just disappear.”

Trump has, indeed, largely disappeared from public view amid perhaps the worst humanitarian crisis plaguing the United States and amid questions about whether her father sees nonwhites as sufficiently American. Each day, it seems, brings with it new reports of the inhumane conditions within migrant camps along the border, where many detainees have little to no access to proper medical care, adequate nutrition, or basic hygiene. On Monday, multiple news outlets reported that a Border Patrol agent in El Paso, Texas, told a 3-year-old Honduran child that she had to pick which parent would stay with her in the United States, and which would be sent to Mexico, as the U.S. processed her family’s asylum claim. And back home in Washington, the White House is currently navigating the fallout from the president’s racist tweets about four Democratic congresswomen of color, whom he told to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Both the border crisis and President Donald Trump’s Twitter attack are the kinds of events that many Americans feared, however vaguely, would take place in a Trump presidency. They also represent the kind of moment in which many people, reasonably or not, once assumed his elder daughter would intervene. As I wrote in April, the founding myth of Ivanka Trump is that she would prove a moderating force in her father’s White House. This myth was born, in large part, out of a collective assumption about how her status as a wealthy, liberal Manhattanite would affect the administration’s agenda. Surely, for example, Trump wouldn’t allow her father to do severe damage to abortion access, because how could a New York businesswoman and socialite—married to a Democrat, no less—be anything but ardently pro-abortion-rights?

At the same time, Trump seemed to have little interest in dispelling this perception. In the first year of her father’s administration, it was common to see anonymously sourced news reports detailing her distress following an especially unpopular decision by the president. Still other reports would explain her attempts to persuade her father to change course. Even if those attempts failed, a “source close to Ivanka” was usually there to inform the public that she had tried. (Trump’s team did not respond to a request for comment on this story.)

[Read: Inside Ivanka’s dreamworld]

Those signals began to ebb in frequency, however, following the president’s decision to remove the United States from the Paris climate accord. Trump was public in her efforts to keep the U.S. in the pact, making her failure to change her father’s mind equally public. It was then, as I reported in my April profile of Trump, that she came to see the value of using her narrowly tailored portfolio, full of largely uncontroversial issues, as a shield in moments of crisis. The thinking, according to her current and former colleagues: You wouldn’t seek out comment from the presidential adviser Stephen Miller, who is closely associated with immigration policy, about, say, the White House’s failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. Why, then, would you ask Trump, if the issue doesn’t fall under her purview?

That posture could make Trump’s utter silence today on the continuous separation of migrant families or her father’s racist invective seem slightly more reasonable. But the problem is that, as time healed the wounds of her climate loss, she began adopting it only on an as-needed basis. It became nearly impossible to predict when the boundaries of her platform were sacrosanct and when they weren’t.

At no time was this dynamic more obvious than earlier this month, when it was revealed that Trump, along with her husband and fellow senior adviser, Jared Kushner, had joined President Trump in meeting with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in the demilitarized zone, a conversation that included discussions about, among other topics, nuclear weapons. It is unclear, to put it mildly, how North Korea’s nuclear program dovetails with her work on women’s economic empowerment on the Ivory Coast, which her team insists is her biggest priority.

There was once a time when even if Trump was unable to succeed as a conscience-check on this White House, she wanted to seem like she was trying all the same. But as the events of recent weeks—her eagerness to participate in historic photo ops, her refusal to wade into things murkier—lay bare, even that pretense has dissolved. “Maybe she’s coming more to grips with the fact that she’s tied forever to everything that happens in there, and it’s not even worth trying to distance herself from it all anymore,” posited a second former senior White House official, who also requested anonymity.

Multiple people close to Trump have told me that she speaks of her time in the White House as “sand in an hourglass,” a race to “make the most” of a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” before it slips away. (Indeed, she has a gorgeous hourglass in her White House office, perched near a window a few feet from her desk, to remind her of just that.) It may be difficult now, though, to grant Ivanka the benefit of the doubt, that when she speaks of making the most of her time, she means in service to the American people—and not simply herself.

White House to host meeting with tech executives on Huawei ban: sources 10%

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow will host a meeting with semiconductor and software executives on Monday to discuss the U.S. ban on sales to China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, two sources briefed on the meeting said on Friday.

UPDATE 2-White House to host meeting with tech executives on Huawei ban -sources 10%

White House to host meeting with tech executives on Huawei ban -source 14%

U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow will host a meeting at the White House on Monday of semiconductor and software executives to discuss the U.S. ban on Huawei, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday.

Ex-Trump aide Hicks denies involvement in hush money talks: lawyer 16%

An attorney for former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks denied on Friday that she was involved in discussions during the 2016 presidential campaign about a hush-money payment to a porn star who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with President Donald Trump.

Trump tells France's Macron U.S. concerned with proposed digital services tax

U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday and expressed concerns about the country's proposed digital services tax, the White House said.

Megan Rapinoe condemns Donald Trumps racist tweets: Its disgusting, to be honest

Seattle-based star refused to visit White House

Trumps arch-hawk lured Britain into a dangerous trap to punish Iran | Simon Tisdall -1%

With the seizure of a supertanker off Gibraltar, distracted UK government was set up by John Bolton as collateral damage

John Bolton, White House national security adviser and notorious Iraq-era hawk, is a man on a mission. Given broad latitude over policy by Donald Trump, he is widely held to be driving the US confrontation with Iran. And in his passionate bid to tame Tehran, Bolton cares little who gets hurt – even if collateral damage includes a close ally such as Britain.

So when Bolton heard British Royal Marines had seized an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar on America’s Independence Day, his joy was unconfined. “Excellent news: UK has detained the supertanker Grace I laden with Iranian oil bound for Syria in violation of EU sanctions,” he exulted on Twitter.

US aware of reports Iran seized a British oil tanker - White House 8%

The United States is aware of reports that Iran seized a British oil tanker and it will work with its allies and partners to defend against Iran, a White House National Security Council spokesman said

China and Israel will both lose from Trump's trade wars

China's economy is feeling the pinch and Israel will, too, because the global system under assault from the White House has been a boon to Israel

Trump's soft spot for anti-Semites is now a big problem for his Jewish fans -21%

When pro-Israel Trump invites an alt-right, anti-Semitic cartoonist into the White House, even if he's belatedly ditched, Jewish supporters have to face an unpleasant truth about the president

Trumps Very Big, Very Important White House Social-Media Summit 30%

Andrew Marantz writes about President Donald Trump’s social-media summit at the White House, which includes politicians and right-wing meme-makers who are popular on MAGA Twitter.

Pelosi trying to run political playbook of first speakership under Trump rules 3%

The speaker’s strategy worked in 2007-2008 as Democrats won the White House, setting the stage for major legislation.

Steve Scalise says House Republicans didnt disrespect Obamas position. Lets go to the tape.

When Obama invited congressional Republicans to the White House, they often ignored him.

It has been 00 days since a high profile Trump adminsistration departure

All the key firings and resignations from a turnover-heavy White House.

Megan Rapinoe quotes Serena Williams, vows to fight until the day Im in my grave 12%

About a visit to the White House, the soccer star said, "I’ll never close any door all the way, but I think it would take more than Trump is willing to do.”

Joe Bidens cancer nonprofit suspends operations indefinitely

The former vice president created the Biden Cancer Initiative after leaving the White House.

US promises Turkey constraints in relations as it kicks it out of F-35 program over S-400 -15%

Washington is cutting Ankara out of the F-35 program, because the stealth fighter “cannot coexist” alongside the Russian air defense systems currently being delivered to Turkey, the White House announced.
Read Full Article at RT.com

Op-Ed: Trump's race-baiting hasn't produced many policy wins, but that was never the point -33%

Trump is tripling down on racism and xenophobia as a path to remaining in the White House, and having his policy initiatives blocked or his Twitter rants attacked is at worst irrelevant and possibly quite helpful.

Fact check: Trump falsely accuses Ocasio-Cortez of calling Americans 'garbage' -8%

During an exchange with reporters as he left the White House on Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump made false accusations against both Rep. Alexandria-Cortez and Rep. Ilhan Omar, two of the four Democratic members of Congress against whom he launched a racist "go back" attack earlier in the week.