TRUMP’S SCHEDULE TODAY

11 a.m.: President Donald Trump will receive his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.

12:30 p.m.: Trump will have lunch with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis at the White House.

DAILY BRIEFING: Press secretary Sarah Sanders will brief the press at the White House at 3 p.m.

TRUMP’S TWITTER THIS MORNING: “Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government. You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time!”

TRUMP’S BIG TUESDAY NIGHT ON TWITTER: From POLITICO’s Cristiano Lima: “On Tuesday evening, Trump seemingly cast aside his prior comments expressing optimism about finding a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff with North Korea, sending a warning to leader Kim Jong Un that the U.S.’s nuclear button is ‘much bigger & more powerful one than his,’ and that unlike Kim’s, his actually ‘works.’ ‘North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,”’ the president tweeted. ‘Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!’ The rhetoric marked a momentary shift for Trump, who earlier Tuesday appeared to entertain the possibility that South Korea would be able to persuade the Kim government to scale back their weapons testing after the North Korean leader appeared to offer up an olive branch of sorts to their neighbor to the south during a national address. And within 16 minutes President Trump returned to firing jabs at the media, reviving the tactic he has deployed since the early days of his presidential campaign.”

TRUMP-ROMNEY RIVALRY: From POLITICO’s Alex Isenstadt: “Donald Trump had just returned from Utah last month when the president placed a call to his longtime nemesis Mitt Romney. Trump was ostensibly trying to ease tensions between the two men, after a trip dominated by news reports that he was courting Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to run for reelection in order to keep Romney from seeking the seat. But the 10-minute chat only further raised suspicions within Romney’s inner circle that the president was out to stymie the former GOP presidential nominee’s political ambitions. The president told Romney that he knew he was thinking about running. But according to one person familiar with the conversation, the details of which have not been reported before, Trump didn’t press the former Massachusetts governor about his thinking or ask why he might be interested in being a senator. Romney’s aides came away convinced the president was trying to suss out Romney’s intentions and position himself as an ally, when he’d been anything but. The conversation highlighted the fraught relationship between the Republican heavyweights — one that will now take center stage as Romney prepares a Senate bid in the wake of Hatch’s announcement Tuesday that he won’t seek another term, contrary to Trump’s wishes. Should Romney run and win, as many expect, he will be poised to be Trump’s most prominent GOP foil, representing the wing of traditional Republicanism that the president has purposefully cast aside.”

BANNON FIREWORKS: From The Guardian’s David Smith: “Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as ‘treasonous’ and ‘unpatriotic,’ according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian. Bannon, speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: ‘They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.’”

DACA WATCH: From The Washington Post’s Robert Costa, David Nakamura and Ashley Parker: “President Trump escalated tensions with Democratic leaders Tuesday over the fate of young undocumented immigrants known as ‘dreamers,’ claiming the lawmakers are ‘doing nothing’ to protect them from deportation as a key deadline nears, even though last year he ended the Obama-era program that allowed those immigrants to stay in the country. But the Twitter salvo masked a murkier reality as lawmakers returned to Washington: Trump remains open to negotiations on a charged issue that has vexed him since his presidential campaign — and his brash partisanship was widely seen as a nod to his base rather than a sudden turn in the talks. Inside the White House and the Republican Party, Trump is caught in a thicket of political pressures as he maps out possible requisites for a deal. Many of his supporters are clamoring for a standoff over funding for his promised, gigantic wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, while some aides and GOP officials are reminding him of his pledge last year to ‘show great heart’ toward dreamers — immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/trump-schedule-today-white-house-321208