President Trump takes first flight aboard Air Force One
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says Air Force One is beautiful and is a “great plane.”
Trump’s first flight on the modified Boeing 747 was a roundtrip to Philadelphia to address GOP House and Senate members at their annual retreat.
Journalists traveling with Trump were brought to the front of the plane after it landed at Maryland’s Joint Base Andrews and found a smiling Trump in shirt sleeves, seated behind his desk. A navy blue Air Force One jacket was draped over the back of his chair.
Asked for his impressions, Trump said Air Force One was special for a lot of reasons.
Trump later walked across the tarmac to shake hands with people in a viewing pen before he boarded the presidential helicopter for the trip to the White House.
TRUMP ABC INTERVIEW
President Donald Trump still knows how to win a television time slot.
ABC reached 7.5 million viewers for its Wednesday night interview special of the president speaking to anchor David Muir. It was billed as Trump’s first network television interview since his inauguration last week.
The special beat every other program competing at 10 p.m., according to the Nielsen company. CBS’ “Code Black” drama came in second with 5.6 million viewers.
Trump was pressed on his assessment of the so-called enhanced interrogation technique, which stimulates drowning, in an interview airing on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” Thursday night.
Trump points to radical extremists who “go into a club and they machine gun everybody down. And then, they were not allowed to waterboard?”
He says, “it seems so foolish and so naive.”
Many intelligence and military officials dispute Trump’s claim that harsh interrogation methods are effective in getting critical intelligence from detainees.
But Trump says he has no doubt waterboarding works and questions whether it is “torture.”
Trump has said he will follow the advice of Defense Secretary James Mattis.
President Donald Trump still knows how to win a television time slot.
ABC reached 7.5 million viewers for its Wednesday night interview special of the president speaking to anchor David Muir. It was billed as Trump’s first network television interview since his inauguration last week.
The special beat every other program competing at 10 p.m., according to the Nielsen company. CBS’ “Code Black” drama came in second with 5.6 million viewers.
FIRST PROCLAMATION
President Donald Trump has signed his first presidential proclamation, declaring this week “National School Choice Week.”
The proclamation states that because education is important, parents should have the right to a “meaningful choice” about where their children goes to school.
Charter schools and school choice are expected to be major elements of federal education policy in Trump’s administration.
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, has spent more than two decades advocating for school choice programs. Such programs provide students and parents with an alternative to a traditional public school education. DeVos is awaiting a Senate vote on her nomination.
The proclamation adds that a renewed commitment to expanding school choice can make a great education possible for every child in America.
SCOTUS CHOICE WILL BE ‘STRICT CONSTRUCTIONIST’
Vice President Mike Pence offered Republican lawmakers a preview of the upcoming Supreme Court pick. He says President Donald Trump will nominate a “strict constructionist” to the high court.
Pence is speaking to House and Senate Republicans at a retreat in Philadelphia. He notes Trump plans to announce the Supreme Court pick next week and says he can “already tip you off.”
Pence says the choice will be a “strict constructionist,” or a jurist who supports a narrow reading of the U.S. Constitution.
The vice president says the choice will have a “top-notch legal mind” and a “commitment to the Constitution.”
DRUG PRICING
A Democratic congressman says he got a call from President Donald Trump, who wants to meet with him to discuss the price of prescription drugs.
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings said Thursday he received the short but cordial call a day earlier “to my surprise.”
Cummings says Trump told him they would not agree on everything, but they could find some common ground on trying to address the rising costs of prescription drugs.
Cummings says he’s looking forward to the meeting, which hasn’t been scheduled yet.
Cummings also says Trump asked about the congressman’s special assistant, Katie Malone, who was injured in a fire at her home this month that killed six of her nine children. Cummings says the president said he wanted to make a contribution to help the family and expressed sincere sympathy.
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