“Personally, I think he shouldn’t have settled,” Mr. Trump told Times reporters in a wide-ranging interview. “Because you should have taken it all the way; I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”
“I think he’s a person I know well,” Mr. Trump said. “He is a good person.”
.. But the president has a particular rapport with Mr. O’Reilly, whose hectoring braggadocio and no-apologies nostalgia for a bygone American era mirror Mr. Trump’s own.
.. Mr. Trump called it “locker room talk” and apologized for the remarks. Mr. O’Reilly, on air that evening, allowed that the tape was “an embarrassment” for the Republican nominee. But he also criticized The Washington Post, the newspaper that published the footage.
.. But Mr. Trump’s advice to his friend on Wednesday — that Mr. O’Reilly “shouldn’t have settled” — was consistent with the never-back-down ethos of a president, and former real estate magnate, who relishes the counterattack.
.. Fox News’s prime time and morning hosts are blatant champions of the administration — to the extent that NBC News’s chairman, Andrew Lack, recently compared the network to “state broadcasting.”
.. Mr. Murdoch’s former wife, Wendi Deng, is so close with Ivanka Trump that the president’s daughter became a trustee of the Murdoch children’s fortune.
.. Mr. Murdoch, meanwhile, had mentored Ms. Trump’s future husband, Jared Kushner, in the art of media moguldom after his purchase of The New York Observer in 2006.
.. Mr. Trump’s kind words for Mr. O’Reilly on Wednesday seemed a reciprocal gesture of sorts, from a leader who values loyalty.
Mr. Trump Plays by His Own Rules (or No Rules)
the very day that two of Ivanka Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s children were serenading the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago, the People’s Republic of China approved new trademarks allowing Ivanka to peddle jewelry, bags and spa services to a nation of 1.4 billion where she is a role model for aspirational oligarchs.
.. a culture of self-enrichment and self-dealing in which corporate C.E.O.s, lobbyists and foreign officials seeking the first family’s favor hold parties at Mar-a-Lago and at the Trump International Hotel in Washington
.. Mr. Trump struggled for years to close deals across the Middle East; now that he’s president, doors are opening. His family is seeking or holds trademarks in Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, where the president’s sons just opened a golf course in Dubai, and in Jordan, whose King Abdullah II just visited the White House to discuss joint efforts against ISIS.
.. That leaves Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has the legal authority and the resources to investigate and hold the administration to account. Anyone familiar with Mr. Chaffetz’s record of partisan, ineffectual witch-hunting won’t be surprised to learn that he’s done nothing.
.. But that’s hardly a match for an administration filled with people who seem determined to wring every last dollar and ounce of trust from the American people.
Video: Why a Staff ‘Shake-up’ Poses Challenges for President Trump
There are Three Pillars of Political Thought in the white house:
- Economic nationalists: Steve Bannon, Stephenen Miller, Peter Navarro
- Moderate Globalists: Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell
- Establishment Republicans: Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer
Costa: Ivanka and Jared Kushner Operate with ‘Ruthlessness’
“No one wants to go against Jared or Ivanka,” Costa said. “Now you have Ivanka Trump inside of the West Wing
.. “They really operate quietly but with some ruthlessness around the administration, having their fingerprints on all aspects of foreign, diplomatic relations, domestic policy,” Costa said.
.. “Ivanka Trump … is trying to reach out to a lot of women … who are not necessarily conservative … and that includes the leadership of Planned Parenthood,” Costa said.
.. “After spending two years on the campaign trail talking about China and how he’s going to put it to ‘em … there’s not a coherent vision right now for what exactly this admin wants to do on China and on trade,” Costa said. “You have Cohn and his group at the National Economic Council, and they’ve been clashing with [economic populist Peter] Navarro.”
.. “There’s a sense within the West Wing … that at the end of the day Trump could purge everyone — as he has in the past in his businesses and his campaign — but Jared and Ivanka will survive anything,” he said.
“If they’re always going to be there, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of that.”