Category: Policy Novice

Trump: China Trade to Improve If ‘North Korean Problem’ Solved

U.S. President Donald Trump added public pressure to his efforts to encourage China to rein in North Korea, saying Tuesday that he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that such action will help improve the conditions of a trade deal with the U.S.

“I explained to the President of China that a trade deal with the U.S. will be far better for them if they solve the North Korean problem!” Trump wrote on Twitter just before 8 a.m. in Washington.

“North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great,” Trump followed up minutes later. “If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A.”

The tweets come after Trump and Xi spent Thursday and Friday meeting at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump has long criticized China for exporting more to the U.S. than it imports and vowed during his campaign to be tough on China in trade negotiations.

(h/t Bloomberg)

Trump, Citing No Evidence, Suggests Susan Rice Committed Crime

President Trump said on Wednesday that he thought that the former national security adviser Susan E. Rice may have committed a crime by seeking the identities of Trump associates who were swept up in the surveillance of foreign officials by American spy agencies and that other Obama administration officials may also have been involved.

The president provided no evidence to back his claim. Current and former intelligence officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations have said that nothing they have seen led them to believe that Ms. Rice’s actions were unusual or unlawful. When Americans are swept up in surveillance of foreign officials by intelligence agencies, their identities are supposed to be obscured, but they can be revealed for national security reasons, and intelligence officials say it is a regular occurrence.

“I think it’s going to be the biggest story,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in the Oval Office. “It’s such an important story for our country and the world. It is one of the big stories of our time.”

He declined to say if he had personally reviewed new intelligence to bolster his claim but pledged to explain himself “at the right time.”

When asked if Ms. Rice, who has denied leaking the names of Trump associates under surveillance by United States intelligence agencies, had committed a crime, the president said, “Do I think? Yes, I think.”

Ms. Rice has denied any impropriety. In an interview on Tuesday with MSNBC, she said: “The allegation is that somehow the Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. That’s absolutely false.”

Mr. Trump’s comment broke with normal presidential conventions. Presidents traditionally refrain from suggesting that anyone is guilty or innocent of a crime out of concern for prejudicing any potential prosecution or legal proceedings. When they have violated that unwritten rule, defense lawyers have sometimes used a president’s comments to undercut prosecutions.

Mr. Trump did not make clear what crime he was accusing Ms. Rice of committing. It is legal for a national security adviser to request the identities of Americans mentioned in intelligence reports provided to them, and former national security officials said any request Ms. Rice may have made would have been subject to approval by the intelligence agencies responsible for the report.

Leaking classified information could be a crime but no evidence has surfaced publicly indicating that Ms. Rice did that and she flatly denied doing so in the interview with MSNBC. “I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have and never would,” she said.

Mr. Trump criticized media outlets, including The New York Times, for failing to adequately cover the Rice controversy — while singling out Fox News and the host Bill O’Reilly for praise, despite a Times report of several women who have accused Mr. O’Reilly of harassment. The president then went on to defend Mr. O’Reilly, who has hosted him frequently over the years.

“I think he’s a person I know well — he is a good person,” said Mr. Trump, who during the interview was surrounded at his desk by a half-dozen of his highest-ranking aides, including the economic adviser Gary Cohn and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, along with Vice President Mike Pence.

“I think he shouldn’t have settled; personally I think he shouldn’t have settled,” said Mr. Trump. “Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”

Mr. Trump described the chemical attack in Syria as a “horrible thing” and “a disgrace.”

“I think it’s an affront to humanity,” he said, adding it was “inconceivable that somebody could do that, those kids were so beautiful, to look at those, the scenes of those beautiful children being carried out.”

Asked about what it meant for Russia’s role in terms of Syria, Mr. Trump said, “I think it’s a very sad day for Russia because they’re aligned, and in this case, all information points to Syria that they did this. Why they did this, who knows? That’s a level first of all they weren’t supposed to have this.”

Mr. Trump again pointed to President Barack Obama for drawing “the red line in the sand, and it was immediately violated, and it did nothing,” and he suggested reporters won’t focus on it.

The president declined to say whether he would speak personally to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

(h/t New York Times)

Trump Tweets Suggest President (Still) Doesn’t Understand How NATO Works

Less than 24 hours after a very awkward and frosty meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to blast Germany for failing to pay enough to NATO and the United States for security. First though, the president began with a conciliatory message, writing that the meeting with Merkel went great. “Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” he wrote Saturday morning. But then the president added: “Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”

That statement echoed what Trump said during his joint news conference with Merkel on Friday, when he called on NATO members to contribute their “fair share,” saying that “many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the United States.” Although that could be open to interpretation, the commander in chief’s tweets on Saturday, though, seem to suggest Trump doesn’t really understand how NATO is funded. The New York Times explains:

The message was misleading because no nation actually “owes” money to NATO; its direct funding is calculated through a formula and paid by each of the 28 nations that are members.

Mr. Trump may have been referring to the fact that Germany, like most NATO countries, falls short of the alliance’s guideline that each member should allocate 2 percent of its gross domestic product to military spending, but that money is not intended to be paid to NATO or to the United States.

Ivo Daalder, the former U.S. permanent representative on NATO, called out Trump’s seeming mistake in a series of tweets that begin, “Sorry Mr President, that’s not how NATO works.”

“The US decides for itself how much it contributes to defending Nato. This is not a financial transaction, where Nato countries pay the US to defend them,” Daalder wrote. Although it’s true that only five of 28 NATO countries spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense, many are now increasing their defense budgets. “That’s a good thing,” he added. But even when they do increase their defense budgets, “no funds will be paid to the US … Europe must spend more on defense, but not as favor (or payment) to the US. But because their security requires it.”

These mistakes on Trump’s end are hardly new. During the presidential campaign, Trump frequently talked about NATO in a confusing way that left his statements open to interpretation.

(h/t Slate)

 

 

Trump’s Team Nixed Ethics Course for White House Staff

President Donald Trump’s team rejected a course for senior White House staff, Cabinet nominees and other political appointees that would have provided training on leadership, ethics and management, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

The documents suggest the program could have better prepared officials for working within existing laws and executive orders, and provided guidance on how to navigate Senate confirmation for nominees and political appointees, how to deal with congressional and media scrutiny, and how to work with Congress and collaborate with agencies — some of the same issues that have become major stumbling blocks in the early days of the administration.

But the contract was never awarded because after the election the transition team shifted its priorities, according to a letter the General Services Administration sent to bidders such as the Partnership for Public Service. The program was expected to cost $1 million, the documents show. The contract-based training program was authorized in 2000, and the Obama and Bush transitions both received the training.

“It has been determined that the requirements as defined in the RFQ do not accurately reflect the current needs of the Presidential Transition Team,” the GSA contracting officer, Matthew Gormley, wrote in the Jan. 10 letter.

The agency’s cancellation notice elaborated on the reasons for dropping the program.

“As a result of a change in Presidential Transition Team leadership after the Nov. 8, 2016, election, there have been changes in the PTT’s goals for the political appointee orientation program,” it said. Shortly after the election, Vice President Mike Pence took over running the transition from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The changes included the transition team’s desire to control all the speakers and content, according to the notice.

Gormley referred questions to an agency spokesperson who didn’t answer a request for comment.

After the story was published, a White House spokeswoman said in a statement, “Several sessions on ethics issues were done in the Transition office as a prerequisite to employees being allowed to get on the White House campus for the first time, and get their badges. The Office of the White House Counsel continues to work to provide employees of the Executive Office of the President with direct instruction on the standards they are expected to follow during their employment at the White House.”

The Trump team has said it was determined not to spend all of its transition funds, and it returned millions to the government. To some Republicans, the program could be seen as wasteful.

Several political appointees at agencies said they received very little training and that the period between the election and Inauguration Day was hectic. There has also been little contact between the political appointees at agencies and the longtime civil servants because of a lack of trust, several of these people said.

The lack of training likely fueled a series of early missteps in the presidency, as aides fired off executive orders and new rules without briefing Congress or their peers at agencies.

“It looks like a good program, and I wish they had implemented it,” said Norm Eisen, a White House ethics lawyer in the Obama administration who now leads the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It might have spared them the numerous ethics and other messes they have encountered.”

(h/t Politico)

Trump: ‘Nobody Knew That Healthcare Could Be So Complicated’

President Trump said Monday that “nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated,” as Republicans have been slow to unite around a replacement plan for ObamaCare.

“I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject,” Trump said after a meeting with conservative governors at the White House.

The GOP governors were in town this weekend for their annual conference and met with Trump to talk about a variety of things, but it’s likely the conversation largely focused on healthcare.

Governors have been split on what should be done with ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, which brought health coverage to many even in deep-red states.

Trump didn’t publicly address that issue Monday morning, but said ObamaCare’s repeal and replacement will give states more flexibility “to make the end result really, really good for them.”

“We have come up with a solution that’s really, really good I think. Very good.”

Trump also dismissed polls that show support for ObamaCare is at an all-time high.

The latest tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that 48 percent view the law favorably compared to the 42 percent who don’t.

“People hate it but now they see that the end is coming and they say, ‘Oh ,maybe we love it.’ There’s nothing to love. It’s a disaster, folks.”

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Calls for Building Up Nuke Arsenal To Be ‘Top Of the Pack’

President Trump said Thursday he wants to build up the U.S. nuclear arsenal so that it is at the “top of the pack.”

“I am the first one that would like to see everybody — nobody have nukes, but we’re never going to fall behind any country, even if it’s a friendly country. We’re never going to fall behind on nuclear power,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.

“It would be wonderful — a dream would be that no country would have nukes — but if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack.”

The interview also touched on Russia’s violation of an arms control treaty, North Korea’s ballistic missile tests and China’s ability to pressure Pyongyang.

Trump also claimed the U.S. has “fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity,” according to Reuters.

Trump previously called in a December tweet for the U.S. to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

The December comment drew consternation from arms control advocates, who said the U.S.’s current 30-year, $1 trillion nuclear modernization efforts and 7,000 existing nuclear warheads are already more than enough.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday that Trump was “very clear” that the U.S. cannot “yield its supremacy to anybody.”

“That’s what he made very clear in there in that if other countries have nuclear capabilities, it will always be the United States that has the supremacy and commitment to this,” Spicer said at Thursday’s press briefing.

“The question that was asked was about other people that were growing their stockpiles.”

In the Reuters interview, Trump slammed the New START Treaty with Russia that caps the number of nuclear warheads the U.S. and Russia can deploy, calling it “a one-sided deal.”

“Just another bad deal that the country made, whether it’s START, whether it’s the Iran deal,” he said. “We’re going to start making good deals.”

Trump also reportedly called the New START Treaty a bad deal in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month.

A separate treaty with Russia, known as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, bans ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Russia has violated the treaty by deploying a cruise missile within its borders.

Trump called the violation a “big deal” in the Reuters interview. He said he would bring it up with Putin “if and when we meet.”

Trump also said that “we’re very angry” at North Korea’s ballistic missile tests. Accelerating the deployment of a missile-defense system in South Korea was among many options available, he added.

As he has in the past, Trump pointed at China as being able to curb North Korea’s provocative behavior, saying Beijing could do so “very easily if they want to.”

“There’s talks of a lot more than that,” Trump said when asked about the missile defense system. “We’ll see what happens. But it’s a very dangerous situation, and China can end it very quickly in my opinion.”

(h/t The Hill)

Non-Lawyer Stephen Miller Told US Attorney How to Defend Travel Ban, Report Says

White House aide Stephen Miller, who does not have a law degree, told a federal attorney how his office should defend the president’s controversial travel ban on seven Muslim-majority nations, The New York Daily News reports.

The executive order, signed Jan. 27, quickly faced legal challenge from non-citizens who already had visas. This included two detained Iraq men, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq and Hameed Khalid Darweesh, and their case landed in a Brooklyn federal court. A federal law enforcement official reportedly told the Daily News that on Jan. 28, Miller called up Robert Capers, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and told him how he had to defend the policy.

The Eastern District declined to comment on this report when the Daily News reached out to them. We reached out to a White House spokesperson for comment.

The federal attorneys faced a setback. In court on Jan. 28, Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Riley argued that the hearing was scheduled too soon.

“This has unfolded with such speed, we haven’t had an opportunity to address any of the important legal issues,” she said.

The judge issued a temporary stay of the order. The policy has also gotten tied up in other federal courts nationwide, so Trump has promised a new EO.

Harry Siegel, the Daily News columnist who wrote the report, wasn’t sanguine about all this.

“That’s not how it works, since the legal issues the ongoing suits raise won’t all just disappear when Trump issues a new order,” he wrote. “But it shows how hard it is to distinguish sloppiness from nastiness, clumsiness from willful disruption, in this terribly new, terribly different administration led by a President with no prior governing experience.”

His article echoes other reports that claim the Trump administration failed to inform Congress and relevant federal agencies before releasing the EO, leading to disorganization. The president has denied these reports.

“The media is trying to attack our administration because they know we are following through on pledges that we made, and they’re not happy about it, for whatever reason,” he said at a Thursday press conference. “I turn on the news and I see stories of chaos. And yet it is the exact opposite. The administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.”

(h/t LawNewz)

Update

“Stephen Miller did not speak to Robert Capers,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said Tuesday, two days after this story was published. “They have never spoken to one another.”

Trump Asked a Black Reporter If the Congressional Black Caucus Are “Friends of Yours”

President Trump’s press conference Thursday had many unbelievable moments. But one of the most shocking was an exchange in which Trump asked a black reporter to set up a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus, and asked if the caucus members were “friends” of hers.

April Ryan, the White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks in Baltimore, asked Trump whether he would include the Congressional Black Caucus in conversations about his “urban agenda” for the “inner city.”

But Ryan used the abbreviation “CBC” for the Congressional Black Caucus at first — and Trump didn’t appear to know what she was referring to.

“Am I going to include who?” he asked.

Ryan clarified: “Are you going to include the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — ”

“Well, I would,” Trump interrupted. “I tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? Do you want to set up the meeting?”

“No, no, no, I’m just a reporter,” Ryan said.

“Are they friends of yours?” Trump asked.

Ryan replied, before Trump cut her off again, “I know some of them, but I’m sure they’re watching right now — ”

“I would love to meet with the Black Caucus,” Trump said. “I think it’s great, the Congressional Black Caucus, I think it’s great.”

As it turns out, the CBC asked Trump for a meeting weeks ago and never heard back:

Trump seems to have assumed that just because Ryan was black and asked a question about the CBC, she would know the caucus members personally and be able to set up a meeting with them. Trump’s question also reveals a basic ignorance of how reporters do their job.

As my colleague Jenée Desmond-Harris has explained, Trump has a big problem with racially stereotyping black people. He seems almost incapable of mentioning black Americans without also mentioning the “inner city,” which he strictly describes as a blighted, crime-ridden hellscape. But that association is not only racist stereotyping — it also doesn’t reflect how black Americans really live.

(h/t Vox)

 

Trump Says He Cut Wall Street Reform Because His “Friends” Need Money

On Friday, Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to roll back Dodd-Frank, the sprawling regulatory framework President Obama signed into law in 2010 to avoid another financial crisis, which was not entirely beloved on Wall Street. He also scrapped a fiduciary rule intended to protect retirees by forcing brokers and advisers to “work in the best interest of their clients.“ (This, too, was controversial.)

According to its defenders, Dodd-Frank has been a modestly successful, if tortuous affair, requiring banks to bend over backwards to comply with regulations that protect investors and consumers from abusive practices and excessive risk. According to Trump, it was inconveniencing his friends:

“There is nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than [JP Morgan C.E.O.] Jamie [Dimon]. So he has to tell me about it, but we expect to be cutting a lot from Dodd-Frank because, frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine, that have nice businesses, they can’t borrow money,” Trump said Friday morning, shortly before signing the executive orders. “They just can’t get any money because the banks just won’t let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank.”

And here’s how Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs president turned White House National Economic Council Director made the case for getting rid of the fiduciary rule unveiled last spring:

“We think it is a bad rule. It is a bad rule for consumers. This is like putting only healthy food on the menu, because unhealthy food tastes good but you still shouldn’t eat it because you might die younger.”

That is literally the greatest analogy we’ve ever heard, and we challenge Cohn and the Trump administration to top it. (In fact, the only way they could is if Cohn appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday and said, “The fiduciary rule is like only putting out vape pens at a party, because crystal meth feels good but you still shouldn’t smoke it because you might die younger.” Let the consumer have their meth! How could more choice be bad, in an industry defined by vast asymmetries of information between brokers and consumers?

Oh, and in case you were wondering: Elizabeth Warren is obviously pissed about all of this.

“Donald Trump talked a big game about Wall Street during his campaign—but as president, we’re finding out whose side he’s really on,” the Massachusetts senator said in a statement. “Today, after literally standing alongside big bank and hedge fund C.E.O.s, he announced two orders—one that will make it easier for investment advisers to cheat you out of your retirement savings, and another that will put two former Goldman Sachs executives in charge of gutting the rules that protect you from financial fraud and another economic meltdown.”

Warren, along with Senator Tammy Baldwin, also sent a letter to Gary Cohn telling him he ought to “recuse himself from decisions directly or indirectly related to Goldman Sachs.”

(h/t Vanity Fair)

 

 

 

Trump on Phone with Australian Leader: ‘This Was the Worst Call By Far’

It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief – a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America’s staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.

Instead, President Donald Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refugee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.

At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day – including Russian President Vladimir Putin – and that “this was the worst call by far.”

Trump’s behavior suggests that he is capable of subjecting world leaders, including close allies, to a version of the vitriol he frequently employs against political adversaries and news organizations in speeches and on Twitter.

“This is the worst deal ever,” Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center.

Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admissions of refugees, complained that he was “going to get killed” politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers.”

Trump returned to the topic late Wednesday night, writing in a message on Twitter, “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!”

U.S. officials said that Trump has behaved similarly in conversations with leaders of other countries, including Mexico. But his treatment of Turnbull was particularly striking because of the tight bond between the United States and Australia – countries that share intelligence, support one another diplomatically and have fought together in wars including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The characterizations provide insight into Trump’s temperament and approach to the diplomatic requirements of his job as the nation’s chief executive, a role in which he continues to employ both the uncompromising negotiating tactics he honed as a real estate developer and the bombastic style he exhibited as a reality television personality.

The depictions of Trump’s calls are also at odds with sanitized White House accounts. The official readout of his conversation with Turnbull, for example, said that the two had “emphasized the enduring strength and closeness of the U.S.-Australia relationship that is critical for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and globally.”

A White House spokesman declined to comment. A senior administration official acknowledged that the conversation with Turnbull had been hostile and charged, but emphasized that most of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders – including the heads of Japan, Germany, France and Russia – have been both productive and pleasant.

Trump also vented anger and touted his political accomplishments in a tense conversation with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, officials said. The two have sparred for months over Trump’s vow to force Mexico to pay for construction of a border wall between the two countries, a conflict that prompted Peña Nieto to cancel a planned meeting with Trump.

Even in conversations marred by hostile exchanges, Trump manages to work in references to his election accomplishments. U.S. officials said that he used his calls with both Turnbull and Peña Nieto to mention his election win or the size of the crowd at his inauguration.

One official said that it may be Trump’s way of “speaking about the mandate he has and why he has the backing for decisions he makes.” But Trump is also notoriously thin-skinned and has used platforms including social-media accounts, meetings with lawmakers and even a speech at CIA headquarters to depict his victory as an achievement of historic proportions, rather than a narrow outcome in which his opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote.

The friction with Turnbull reflected Trump’s anger over being bound by an agreement reached by former President Barack Obama’s administration to accept refugees from Australian detention sites even while Trump was issuing an executive order suspending such arrivals from elsewhere in the world.

The issue centers on a population of roughly 2,500 people who sought asylum in Australia but were diverted to facilities off that country’s coast at Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Deplorable conditions at those sites prompted intervention from the United Nations and a pledge from the United States to accept about half of those refugees, provided they passed U.S. security screening.

Many of the refugees came from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia, countries now listed in Trump’s order temporarily barring their citizens entry to the United States. A special provision in the Trump order allows for exceptions to honor “a preexisting international agreement,” a line that was inserted to cover the Australia deal.

But U.S. officials said that Trump continued to fume about the arrangement even after signing the order in a ceremony at the Pentagon.

“I don’t want these people,” Trump said. He repeatedly misstated the number of refugees called for in the agreement as 2,000 rather than 1,250, and told Turnbull that it was “my intention” to honor the agreement, a phrase designed to leave the U.S. president wiggle room to back out of the deal in the future, according to a senior U.S. official.

Turnbull told Trump that to honor the agreement, the United States would not have to accept all of the refugees but only to allow them each through the normal vetting procedures. At that, Trump vowed to subject each refugee to “extreme vetting,” the senior U.S. official said.

Trump was also skeptical because he did not see a specific advantage the United States would gain by honoring the deal, officials said.

Trump’s position appears to reflect the transactional view he takes of relationships, even when it comes to diplomatic ties with long-standing allies. Australia troops have fought alongside U.S. forces for decades, and the country maintains close cooperation with Washington on trade and economic issues.

Australia is seen as such a trusted ally that it is one of only four countries that the United States includes in the “Five Eyes” arrangement for cooperation on espionage matters. Members share extensively what their intelligence services gather and generally refrain from spying on one another.

There also is a significant amount of tourism between the two countries.

Trump made the call to Turnbull about 5 p.m. Saturday from his desk in the Oval Office, where he was joined by chief strategist Stephen Bannon, national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

At one point, Turnbull suggested that the two leaders move on from their impasse over refugees to discuss the conflict in Syria and other pressing foreign issues. But Trump demurred and ended the call, making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, François Hollande of France or Putin.

“These conversations are conducted candidly, frankly, privately,” Turnbull said at a news conference Thursday in Australia. “If you see reports of them, I’m not going to add to them.”

(h/t Chicago Tribune)

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