Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka was a trustee of the nearly $300 million fortune Mr. Murdoch set aside for the two children he had with his third wife, Wendi, who arranged the trusteeship.
Ms. Trump gave up that oversight role in December, before her father’s inauguration but well after Election Day.
.. That means the whole time that Mr. Murdoch’s highly influential news organizations were covering Mr. Trump’s campaign and transition, their executive chairman was entangled in a financial arrangement of the most personal sort — tied to his children’s financial (very) well being — along with the president’s daughter.
.. And she is married to a key presidential adviser, Jared Kushner, who, as it happens, is so close with Mr. Murdoch that he even helped Mr. Murdoch set up his bachelor pad after his last divorce
.. The latest news about the Murdoch-Trump axis is acutely problematic for the leadership at The Wall Street Journal — owned by News Corp. — as it seeks to quell a rebellion by a group of staff members who believe that the paper has held them back from more aggressively covering Mr. Trump, they suspect, under pressure from Mr. Murdoch.
.. In the George W. Bush years, when Fox News rallied for the president’s war efforts, Mr. Murdoch successfully pushed the Federal Communications Commission to block a proposed merger between DirecTV and EchoStar, clearing the way for Mr. Murdoch to buy control of DirecTV after an earlier attempt.
.. Stephen K. Bannon, a Trump adviser, made a similar observation in an interview with the media writer Michael Wolff shortly after the election, saying, “Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump.”
.. With the loss of the 9 p.m. host Megyn Kelly, the network’s prime time has become that much friendlier for Mr. Trump.
.. concerns among some — and certainly not all — members of the staff that the paper is tilting Mr. Trump’s way erupted anew two weeks ago when Mr. Baker wrote to editors asking them to avoid describing the countries affected by Mr. Trump’s immigration order as “majority Muslim,” which was in keeping with Mr. Trump’s talking points.
Jared Kushner Delivers Critique of CNN to Time Warner Executive
Trump’s son-in-law and adviser complains that coverage has been slanted against the president
.. the fight with CNN has special intrigue because its parent company has a massive piece of business awaiting government approval: a proposed $85.4 billion sale to AT&T Inc. Messrs. Kushner and Ginsberg, who have been friends for a decade and whose discussion covered a variety of issues including Israel and the economy.. The White House official said: “It’s no secret that the President and his team have been critical of CNN’s dishonest coverage of the President both during the campaign and since his inauguration, and it’s obvious their ratings have suffered as a result. FOX on the other hand provides mostly fair, and more complete coverage of the Administration and their ratings have never been better.The CNN spokeswoman said, “Once again, the White House has their facts wrong. CNN’s ratings are up 50%.”..CNN’s Mr. Zucker has a long history with Mr. Trump, having helped turn him into a national television star by putting “The Apprentice” on the air in 2004 while Mr. Zucker was president of NBC Entertainment... At Thursday’s press conference, Mr. Trump referred to their shared history, saying, “Ask Jeff Zucker how he got his job, OK?”
Mike Pence Finds Himself in Unusual Role in Mike Flynn’s Firing
But Mr. Pence also learned he remains very much a junior partner in the still-forming White House power structure, as a timeline shows President Donald Trump knew about Mr. Flynn’s deceptions for two weeks without informing his No. 2.
.. The warning from the Justice Department about Mr. Flynn’s inconsistencies was delivered to the president’s chief counsel, Donald McGahn, who informed Mr. Trump. It’s unclear who else knew.
.. and a flashy style that cuts against the former Indiana governor’s religious beliefs.
.. is the latest incident to raise doubts about Mr. Trump’s creation of an informal power-sharing arrangement among top advisers. Unlike his predecessors, he has placed himself at the center of a spinning wheel of former campaign advisers, family, confidants and aides
.. “This is something entirely different. The ineptitude, the sloppiness, the incompetence and the chaos are unprecedented.”
.. This is all a part of the way he operates. He keeps his adversaries off balance and he keeps people guessing.”
.. Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has influence over everything from foreign policy to job creation and may be the person in the West Wing the president trusts most. Chief strategist Steve Bannon helped craft the president’s populist identity and also has a hand in foreign policy through a new seat on the National Security Council. Mr. Pence is the main point of contact for Republicans on Capitol Hill.
.. Some Republicans have been talking to Mr. Trump’s team and urging them to put in place a system that would impose more order. It isn’t clear that is what Mr. Trump wants. Friends say he likes to “curate” opinions from people he trusts inside and outside of government—sounding people out on what they think he should be doing.
.. A senior White House official said Wednesday that one course correction will be to hold more campaign-style rallies meant to deliver an “unfiltered” message to Americans. One such event is scheduled for Saturday evening in Orlando, Fla., and more will be coming, the official said.
.. Multiple candidates have turned down the position of White House communications director, forcing press secretary Sean Spicer to perform double duty
.. what some Republicans hope is that Mr. Trump will further empower Mr. Pence
.. After a tape surfaced during the campaign showing Mr. Trump making lewd comments toward women, Mr. Trump phoned Mr. Pence’s wife, Karen, to offer reassurance
.. Mr. Trump urged him to go see the Douglas MacArthur statue.
.. pay respects to one of the military leaders Mr. Trump most admires
Trump’s hard-line actions have an intellectual godfather: Jeff Sessions
Sessions’s ideology is driven by a visceral aversion to what he calls “soulless globalism,” a term used on the extreme right to convey a perceived threat to the United States from free trade, international alliances and the immigration of nonwhites.
.. From immigration and health care to national security and trade, Sessions is the intellectual godfather of the president’s policies.
.. The author of many of Trump’s executive orders is senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a Sessions confidant who was mentored by him and who spent the weekend overseeing the government’s implementation of the refugee ban.
.. The mastermind behind Trump’s incendiary brand of populism is chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who, as chairman of the Breitbart website, promoted Sessions for years.
.. Then there is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who considers Sessions a savant and forged a bond with the senator while orchestrating Trump’s trip last summer to Mexico City and during the darkest days of the campaign.
.. In an email in response to a request from The Washington Post, Bannon described Sessions as “the clearinghouse for policy and philosophy” in Trump’s administration, saying he and the senator are at the center of Trump’s “pro-America movement” and the global nationalist phenomenon.
.. “In America and Europe, working people are reasserting their right to control their own destinies,” Bannon wrote. “Jeff Sessions has been at the forefront of this movement for years, developing populist nation-state policies that are supported by the vast and overwhelming majority of Americans, but are poorly understood by cosmopolitan elites in the media that live in a handful of our larger cities.”
.. The senator lobbied for a “shock-and-awe” period of executive action that would rattle Congress, impress Trump’s base and catch his critics unaware, according to two officials involved in the transition planning. Trump opted for a slightly slower pace, these officials said, because he wanted to maximize news coverage by spreading out his directives over several weeks.
.. Trump makes his own decisions, but Sessions was one of the rare lawmakers who shared his impulses.
“Sessions brings heft to the president’s gut instincts,” said Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser. He compared Sessions to John Mitchell, who was attorney general under Richard M. Nixon but served a more intimate role as a counselor to the president on just about everything. “Nixon is not a guy given to taking advice, but Mitchell was probably Nixon’s closest adviser,” Stone said.
.. Sessions has also been leading the internal push for Trump to nominate William H. Pryor Jr., his deputy when Sessions was Alabama’s attorney general and now a federal appeals court judge, for the Supreme Court. While Pryor is on Trump’s list of three finalists, it is unclear whether he will get the nod.
.. Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House and informal Trump adviser, said, “Sessions is the person who is comfortable being an outsider to the establishment but able to explain the establishment to Trump. There is this New York-Los Angeles bias that if you sound like Alabama, you can’t be all that bright, but that’s totally wrong, and Trump recognized how genuinely smart Sessions is.”