WASHINGTON – The White House will hold a press briefing Wednesday afternoon with press secretary Sarah Sanders.
The briefing is scheduled to start at 3 p.m., EST - you can watch it LIVE here on ClickOnDetroit.com.
Here are some other headlines from around Washington:
President Trump blasts Steve Bannon after new book
President Donald Trump is blasting his former chief strategist ahead of the release of a new, unflattering book.
Trump says in the statement Wednesday that when Bannon was fired, “he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
A new book by writer Michael Wolff offers a series of explosive revelations, including that Trump never expected to win the 2016 presidential race.
An adaptation of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” published Wednesday in New York magazine says Trump believed his nomination would boost his brand and deliver “untold opportunities.”
An excerpt published by The Guardian says Bannon described a Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”
Trump boasts of ‘nuclear button’ but doesn't really have one
President Donald Trump boasted that he has a bigger and more powerful “nuclear button” than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un does — but the president doesn’t actually have a physical button.
The president’s Tuesday evening tweet came in response to Kim’s New Year’s address, in which he repeated fiery nuclear threats against the United States. Kim said he has a “nuclear button” on his office desk and warned that “the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike.”
Trump mocked that assertion, writing, “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!”
But despite ratcheting up the tension, Trump doesn’t really have a nuclear button.
The process for launching a nuclear strike is secret and complex and involves the use of a nuclear “football,” which is carried by a rotating group of military officers everywhere the president goes and is equipped with communication tools and a book with prepared war plans.
If the president were to order a strike, he would identify himself to military officials at the Pentagon with codes unique to him. Those codes are recorded on a card known as the “biscuit” that is carried by the president at all times. He would then transmit the launch order to the Pentagon and Strategic Command.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump sounded open to the possibility of an inter-Korean dialogue after Kim made a rare overture toward South Korea in a New Year’s address. But Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations insisted talks would not be meaningful unless the North was getting rid of its nuclear weapons.
In a morning tweet, Trump said the U.S.-led campaign of sanctions and other pressure were beginning to have a “big impact” on North Korea. He referred to the recent, dramatic escape of at least two North Korean soldiers across the heavily militarized border into South Korea. He also alluded to Kim’s comments Monday that he was willing to send a delegation to the Winter Olympics, which will be hosted by South Korea next month.
“Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see!” Trump said, using his derisive moniker for the young North Korean leader.
In response to Kim’s overture, South Korea on Tuesday offered high-level talks on Jan. 9 at the shared border village of Panmunjom to discuss Olympic cooperation and how to improve overall ties. The South said Wednesday that North Korea’s state-run radio station announced the North would reopen a cross-border communication channel.
If there are talks, they would be the first formal dialogue between the Koreas since December 2015. Relations have plunged as the North has accelerated its nuclear and ballistic missile development that now poses a direct threat to America, South Korea’s crucial ally.
The U.S. administration, however, voiced suspicions that Kim was seeking to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington. Pyongyang could view a closer relationship with Seoul as a way for reducing its growing international isolation and relief from sanctions that are starting to bite the North’s meager economy.
“We won’t take any of the talks seriously if they don’t do something to ban all nuclear weapons in North Korea,” U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told reporters at the United Nations. “We consider this to be a very reckless regime. We don’t think we need a Band-Aid, and we don’t think we need to smile and take a picture.”
North Korea has been punished with unprecedented sanctions at the U.N. over its weapons programs, and Haley warned Tuesday of more measures if the North conducts another missile test.
South Korea’s liberal President Moon Jae-in has supported Trump’s pressure campaign against North Korea, but he’s less confrontational than the U.S. president and favors dialogue to ease the North’s nuclear threats. Moon has long said he sees the Pyeongchang Olympics as a chance to improve inter-Korean ties.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the U.S. would keep “maximum pressure” on North Korea to give up its nukes. South Korea shares that same goal, she said.
Opportunity in Utah: Mitt Romney eyes political resurgence
He has already made a fortune in business, managed an Olympics, served as governor and secured a presidential nomination. Now, Mitt Romney, at 70 years old, is considering a new career in Congress.
Those who know Romney best expect him to announce plans in the coming weeks to seek a suddenly vacant Utah Senate seat. Such a decision would mark an extraordinary resurgence for a Republican leader who had faded from the national spotlight after two failed White House bids and an unsuccessful push to block President Donald Trump’s rise to power.
While Romney has softened his anti-Trump rhetoric over the last year, longtime associates suggest the former Massachusetts governor is eager to bring a new moral conscience to the Republican Party in Washington.
“Obviously, he’s ambitious. But he’s ambitious for the right reason: to serve,” said former New Hampshire Attorney General Tom Rath, a longtime Romney friend. “Mitt Romney is a grown-up voice that America needs. He will add dignity and common sense.”
Romney’s closest political allies were not given advance notice of Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch’s announcement Tuesday that he would not seek re-election this fall, but the decision was not a surprise.
Romney, who moved to Utah after losing the 2012 presidential contest, met privately with Hatch last year to discuss Hatch’s possible retirement. In the subsequent months, and with Hatch’s apparent blessing, he quietly expressed interest in running for the seat in Hatch’s absence. In recent weeks, however, Hatch seemed to be changing his mind — at Trump’s urging.
Facing the prospect of Romney’s resurgence, Trump openly pressured Hatch to stay in the Senate. His private lobbying campaign was bolstered by a public love fest in December, with Trump inviting Hatch with him on Air Force One in December when he shrunk the boundaries of two Utah monuments.
“Congratulations to Senator Orrin Hatch on an absolutely incredible career. He has been a tremendous supporter, and I will never forget the (beyond kind) statements he has made about me as President,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “He is my friend and he will be greatly missed in the U.S. Senate!”
Few in Romney’s small inner circle were willing to speak publicly about his intentions Tuesday, preferring instead to keep the day’s focus on Hatch’s decades of public service. Several spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss private discussions. None tamped down speculation about Romney’s Senate ambitions.
Should he run, Romney is not expected to face significant resistance in Utah’s GOP primary contest or in the November general election. Romney, who has five sons and 24 grandchildren, is perhaps the highest-profile Mormon in America and is hugely popular in Utah, where about 60 percent of residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Beyond his religious connections, many remember Romney for turning around Salt Lake City’s 2002 Winter Olympics after a bribery scandal. In the same city, he delivered a scathing speech in the spring of 2016 attacking Trump as “a fraud” who “has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president.”
The takedown resonated in Utah, a state steeped in a culture of courtesy, where people struggled to embrace Trump’s brash demeanor and comments about women, minorities and Muslims. He finished third in the state’s Republican presidential caucus and earned a smaller percentage of the vote than any Republican presidential candidate in the last two decades.
Just last October, GOP Utah Gov. Gary Herbert called Trump’s tenure up to that point “erratic” and noted that governing is different than running a business and is not a “dictatorship.”
But beyond Utah, Romney remains hated by many Trump loyalists. The hashtag NeverRomney quickly sprung up on Twitter in the hours after Hatch’s announcement. There also emerged a sense of resignation that little could be done to block his path to the Senate.
“The Republican base views Mitt Romney with the same disdain that they view Mitch McConnell,” said Andy Surabian, senior adviser to a pro-Trump super PAC allied with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. “I think the conservative movement will look to weaken him at every turn to ensure he never becomes anything more than a junior senator from Utah.”
That’s just fine for some Utah Republicans, who are concerned with the fate of the GOP under Trump’s leadership.
Derek Miller, the president and CEO of the World Trade Center Utah, who had been considering a run for Hatch’s seat, said Romney would be a stabilizing voice of the Republican Party.
“The Republican Party is going through turmoil right now, unfortunately,” Miller said. “I think Gov. Romney’s voice is an important voice right now in that debate of what the Republican Party stands for.”