No more 'monkey business'? Trump touts big jobs number as proof of improvement
WINNING
President Donald Trump on Friday flipped his approach to the government’s employment report, celebrating the kind of strong showing he dismissed as phony under President Barack Obama.
The Labor Department reported that the economy created 235,000 jobs in February, above the 190,000 consensus, allowing the president to claim that business enthusiasm over his approach to taxes and regulation is already paying off. The unemployment rate ticked down 0.1 percent, to 4.7 percent.
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Trump Dissolves Business Advisory Councils as CEOs Quit
WINNING
President Donald Trump dissolved two of his business advisory councils Wednesday after a rash of CEOs resigned in the wake of his response to a white nationalist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, that occurred Saturday.
"Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both," Trump tweeted. "Thank you all!
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Second-Quarter Economic Growth Now Seen Doubling Pace of First Quarter
WINNING
Economic growth is expected to be double the first quarter's pace when second-quarter GDP data is released Friday morning.
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Poll: Global Opinion of U.S., Trump Down Since Election
GLOBAL DEALS
“The world is going to respect us again,” the president said on the campaign trail repeatedly. “Believe me.”
Five months into his administration, a new Pew poll reveals the opposite. Global opinions of the president, and the nation he leads, has fallen since Trump’s election: just 22 percent of the rest of the world has confidence in Trump, while 39 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States (up from 26 percent at the end of the Obama’s presidency.)
Just two countries have more confidence in Trump than they did in Obama at the end of his presidency: Israel, with a 7 point more favorable view, and Russia, which has a 42 point more favorable view.
100 Days In: How's Trump Doing on Winning?
WINNING
Status: Still looking for a big win
As a candidate, the president promised big wins that would be so frequent America would get bored of it. Ahead of the 100 days benchmark, the president seemed in search of such a win, hurrying to launch his tax plan and resurrecting the health care effort just weeks after it failed spectacularly.
"We are going to have a big win soon, because we are going to have health care and that's gonna happen. And there was no lose with health care, this is just a constant negotiation and the plan is getting better and better all the time,” Trump told a Wisconsin television network in April.
The president may also still be looking for a win in his approval ratings: Gallup said April 20 that Trump's average approval rating as is the lowest since the polling firm began its survey in 1953, though the latest NBC News poll saw his approval rating begin to creep back up.
The Promise: Make America Win Again — Whatever That Means
WINNING
At the core of Trump's political brand is winning. He cast himself, somewhat misleadingly, as a self-made winner who would bring prosperity, and win after win to America.
"We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning," Trump said during the first year of his bid. "Believe me, I agree, you'll never get bored with winning. We never get bored. We are going to turn this country around."
The promise is as vague as it is appealing, but we'll seek to quantify it through data and reporting, asking at every turn: Is America winning? Does unemployment keep falling? What's the labor force participation rate? How's the stock market and housing market? How is America's standing on the global stage? We'll watch for big headliners, or a canary in a coal mine, to keep tabs on this most central promise.