Daily Archives: May 14, 2017

Astronomy club hosts Safe Schools members and mentees at fundraiser – Herald and News

Posted: May 14, 2017 at 6:22 pm

The astronomy club at Klamath Community College recently welcomed Citizens For Safe Schools for an evening of excitement, inspiration and education at its Astronomy for Everyone: Size & Scale of the Universe fundraiser.

The club matched all mentor tickets for the agencys youth, providing an opportunity to foster curiosity and literacy in science for mentees in the program.

Former NASA Consultant Kevin Manning delivered a virtual journey through the cosmos, exploring the science of the universe and creation. His presentation was followed by hands-on observation of the moon, Jupiter, Saturn and the constellations in the night sky with a powerful self-engineered telescope.

The newest mentee was invited to select the winning tickets in a raffle drawing for several sextants and a telescope.

Funding generated during the event will be used to secure celestial navigation instruments and facilitate observational field trips throughout the summer.

Renee Haney, the clubs president, extended an offer to to include mentor/mentee matches on the clubs field trips to encourage ongoing education and enthusiasm for the science of astronomy. Many pairs have already expressed interest and are looking forward to partnering with the club.

Anyone interested in contributing to the clubs summer field trip project is asked to contact Renee Haney at 541-292-9237 or kcc.astronomy@yahoo.com.

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IBM Announces The Defense Calculator And A Cloud Computing Service – Forbes

Posted: at 6:21 pm


Forbes
IBM Announces The Defense Calculator And A Cloud Computing Service
Forbes
This week's milestones in the history of technology include the world's first analog computer, experimenting with the Web via TV in pre-Web days, the birth of the ITU, and IBM's first commercially available scientific computer and first computing ...

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Cloud Computing, Term of Art Complete Preakness Works – BloodHorse.com (press release) (registration) (blog)

Posted: at 6:21 pm

Klaravich Stables and William Lawrence's Cloud Computing tuned up for his expected run in the May 20 Preakness Stakes (G1) with a half-mile breeze in :48.85 over the Belmont Park training track May 13.

Under exercise rider Peter Roman, Cloud Computing beat the worst of the rain by coming out just after thetraining track opened at 5:30 a.m. The son of Maclean's Music posted the second fastest drill of 32 moves at the distance.

"He breezed very well, galloped out super, and came back good so far," said trainer Chad Brown. "That's his last piece of work and if he comes out of it well he'll be on to Baltimore on Tuesday."

Unraced as a juvenile, Cloud Computing has made three starts this season, with his most recent outing being a third-place finish in the April 8 Wood Memorial presented by NYRA Bets (G2). The dark bay colt previously ran second to J Boys Echo in the March 4 Gotham Stakes (G3) after he broke his maiden at first asking going six furlongs at Aqueduct Racetrack Feb. 11.

On the opposite coast, fellow Preakness hopeful Term of Art also completed his last serious work before shipping to Baltimore. He worked six furlongs in 1:13 4/5 at Santa Anita Park Saturday.

Calumet Farm's Term of Art is slated to leave Santa Anita May 16 for the middle leg of the Triple Crown. The Doug O'Neill-trained son of Tiznow was most recently seventh in the Santa Anita Derby (G1) but captured the Cecil B. DeMille Stakes (G3) at Del Mar last November.

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Cloud Computing, Term of Art Complete Preakness Works - BloodHorse.com (press release) (registration) (blog)

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Trump signs cybersecurity executive order, mandating a move to cloud computing – GeekWire

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The White House plan to address cybersecurity is taking shape. (White House / Pho.to / GeekWire Graphic)

President Donald Trump today signed a long-awaited executive order aimed at beefing up cybersecurity at federal government agencies with a shift of computer capabilities to the cloud as a key part of the strategy.

Weve got to move to the cloud and try to protect ourselves instead of fracturing our security posture, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert told reporters during a White House briefing.

The executive order gives the lead role in managingthe cloud shift to the director of the White Houses newly established American Technology Council, which is due to meet for the first time next month.

Although the councils full roster of members has not yet been announced, the director is said to be Chris Liddell, who formerly served as chief financialofficer at Microsoft and General Motors.

Some agencies already have begun shiftingdata resources to cloud computing services, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Carson Sweet, CTO and co-founder of San Francisco-based CloudPassage, said the emphasis on the cloud makes sense and builds on a trend that began during the Obama administration.

The question now will be how well the administration does with identifying and eliminating the obstructions agencies are facing as they consider adopting cloud / shared services, Sweet told GeekWire in an email.

The executive order also calls upon all federal agencies to implement the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, a set of best practices developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology for the information technology industry. And it calls on Cabinet secretaries to develop plans to protect critical infrastructure, ranging from utilities to the health care system to the financial system.

Bossert said the measures build on the efforts made by the Obama administration. A lot of progress was made in the last administration, but not nearly enough, he said.

As an example of past failures, Bossert pointed to 2015s data breach at the Office of Personnel Management, which exposed millions of sensitive employment records to hackers. He said such records are the crown jewels of the governments dataassetsand require enhanced protection.

Bossertnoted that Trumps budget blueprint sets aside $1.5 billion for cybersecurity.

Back in January, Trump vowed to come up with a major report on hacking defense within 90 days,but some observers said the executive order didnt meet the target.

Drew Mitnick, policy counsel at Access Now, said in a statement that the measures will serve as incremental changes to existing policies, while the Trump administration has otherwise either ignored or undermined pressing digital security threats internet users face.

The action does not touch several critical areas, like the insecurity of Internet of Things devices, data breaches, or vulnerability disclosure, Mitnick said.

During the briefing, one reporter asked whether shifting the federal governments data to the cloud might heighten rather than reduce cybersecurity risks. Bossert said its better to centralize risk, rather thanhaving 190 federal agencies come up with separate measures.

I dont think thats a wise risk, Bossert said.

Another reporter asked whether concerns over Russias online meddling with last years presidential campaign had any effect on the executive order.

The Russians are not our only adversary, Bossert replied. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, other nation-states are motivated to use cybersecurity and cyber tools to attack our people and our governments and their data. And thats something we can no longer abide.

He declined to say what type of cyber attack might constitute an act of war, other than to say that if somebody does something to the United States of America that we cant tolerate, we will act.

Trump was reportedly on the verge of signing an executive order on cybersecurity back in January, but held off. Bossert said there was nothing unusual behind the delay. He noted that between then and now, the White House had the chance to lay out a budget blueprint and announced the formation of the technology council two developments that set the stage for the executive order.

Bossert also acknowledged that some tech companies expressed concerns that theyd be compelled to take actions to head off distributed denial-of-service attacks, also known as botnet attacks. He emphasized today that the anti-botnet initiative would be voluntary.

The executive order callson Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to file a preliminary report on the anti-botnet campaign within 240 days.

Bossert declined to confirm a claim that federal computers are hit by tens of thousands of hacking attempts daily, but he acknowledged that attempted data break-ins and successful intrusions are on the rise.

The trend line is going in the wrong direction, he told reporters.

Correction for 1:50 p.m. PT May 13: An earlier version of this report incorrectly referred to Chris Liddell as the former chief technology officer of Microsoft and GM. He has served as chief financial officer for those and other companies.

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Scientists Invent Nanoscale Refrigerator For Quantum Computers – Wall Street Pit

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Centimetre-sized chip with nanoscale refrigeration. Credit: Kuan Yen Tan

Quantum computers have been hailed as the computers of the future because of their potential to solve the most complex of problems within a reasonable time frame. What differentiates a quantum computer from a traditional electronic computer is its use of quantum bits (qubits for short) instead of regular bits. A bit can only represent one of two states, either 0 or 1. In contrast, a qubit can represent more than one state 0, or 1, or both 0 and 1. And this is made possible through the quantum quirks known as superpositioning and entanglement. It is this bizarre ability to be in two states at once that makes a quantum computers computational power exceptional, extraordinary and virtually elusive up to now.

In spite of their differences in terms of functioning capabilities, one thing that a conventional computer and a quantum computer have in common is the need to keep both cool enough so their components do not overheat and malfunction or shut down completely. Traditional computers have their cooling fans. For quantum computers, its not as simple.

For starters, qubits must be protected from any kind of external disturbance because a slight interference will mess up the superpositioning state, resulting in errors and negating what a qubit is supposed to be for in the first place. Also, because qubits heat up while performing calculations, theres a need to reset them to their low temperature state or ground state before the next round of calculations can be done. For a quantum computer to be useful at all, it needs a cooling mechanism that can do this job (referred to as initializing) quickly.

This is where the work of Mikko Mttnen and his colleagues comes in. They are claiming that they have built a cooling device specifically designed for a quantum circuit that is capable of quickly initializing quantum devices, thus minimizing the incidence of errors when doing quantum computing.

The nanoscale refrigerator the team invented involves the use of voltage-controllable electron tunnelling to cool a qubit-like superconducting resonator through a two-nanometer-thick insulator. To make it work, current from an external voltage source is applied to electrons, giving them an amount of energy insufficient for direct tunnelling. This forces the electrons to capture the remaining amount of energy needed for tunnelling from the nearby quantum device, thus making the quantum device lose energy and cool down.

To turn off cooling, the external voltage simply needs to be adjusted to zero. In that condition, the electrons wont have enough energy (even if they capture energy from the quantum device) to move through the insulator.

As Mikko Mttnen aptly describes it their refrigerator keeps quanta in order.

Going forward, the team is planning to cool actual qubits, instead of just resonators. They will also work on lowering the minimum achievable temperature and speeding up the on/off switch.

The research was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

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Physics may bring faster solutions for tough computational problems – Phys.Org

Posted: at 6:20 pm

May 12, 2017 Eduardo Mucciolo, Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida. Credit: University of Central Florida

A well-known computational problem seeks to find the most efficient route for a traveling salesman to visit clients in a number of cities. Seemingly simple, it's actually surprisingly complex and much studied, with implications in fields as wide-ranging as manufacturing and air-traffic control.

Researchers from the University of Central Florida and Boston University have developed a novel approach to solve such difficult computational problems more quickly. As reported May 12 in Nature Communications, they've discovered a way of applying statistical mechanics, a branch of physics, to create more efficient algorithms that can run on traditional computers or a new type of quantum computational machine, said Professor Eduardo Mucciolo, chair of the Department of Physics in UCF's College of Sciences.

Statistical mechanics was developed to study solids, gasses and liquids at macroscopic scales, but is now used to describe a variety of complex states of matter, from magnetism to superconductivity. Methods derived from statistical mechanics have also been applied to understand traffic patterns, the behavior of networks of neurons, sand avalanches and stock market fluctuations.

There already are successful algorithms based on statistical mechanics that are used to solve computational problems. Such algorithms map problems onto a model of binary variables on the nodes of a graph, and the solution is encoded on the configuration of the model with the lowest energy. By building the model into hardware or a computer simulation, researchers can cool the system until it reaches its lowest energy, revealing the solution.

"The problem with this approach is that often one needs to get through phase transitions similar to those found when going from a liquid to a glass phase, where many competing configurations with low energy exist," Mucciolo said. "Such phase transitions slow down the cooling process to a crawl, rendering the method useless."

Mucciolo and fellow physicists Claudio Chamon and Andrei Ruckenstein of BU overcame this hurdle by mapping the original computational problem onto an elegant statistical model without phase transitions, which they called the vertex model. The model is defined on a two-dimensional lattice and each vertex corresponds to a reversible logic gate connected to four neighbors. Input and output data sit at the boundaries of the lattice. The use of reversible logic gates and the regularity of the lattice were crucial ingredients in avoiding the phase-transition snag, Mucciolo said.

"Our method basically runs things in reverse so we can solve these very hard problems," Mucciolo said. "We assign to each of these logic gates an energy. We configured it in such a way that every time these logic gates are satisfied, the energy is very low - therefore, when everything is satisfied, the overall energy of the system should be very low."

Chamon, a professor of physics at BU and the team leader, said the research represents a new way of thinking about the problem.

"This model exhibits no bulk thermodynamic-phase transition, so one of the obstructions for reaching solutions present in previous models was eliminated," he said.

The vertex model may help solve complex problems in machine learning, circuit optimization, and other major computational challenges. The researchers are also exploring whether the model can be applied to the factoring of semi-primes, numbers that are the product of two prime numbers. The difficulty of performing this operation with very large semi-primes underlies modern cryptography and has offered a key rationale for the creation of large-scale quantum computers.

Moreover, the model can be generalized to add another path toward the solution of complex classical computational problems by taking advantage of quantum mechanical parallelismthe fact that, according to quantum mechanics, a system can be in many classical states at the same time.

"Our paper also presents a natural framework for programming special-purpose computational devices, such as D-Wave Systems machines, that use quantum mechanics to speed up the time to solution of classical computational problems," said Ruckenstein.

Zhi-Cheng Yang, a graduate student in physics at BU, is also a co-author on the paper. The universities have applied for a patent on aspects of the vertex model.

Explore further: Study offers new theoretical approach to describing non-equilibrium phase transitions

More information: C. Chamon et al, Quantum vertex model for reversible classical computing, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15303

Imaginary numbers are a solution to a very real problem in a study published today in Scientific Reports.

While technologies that currently run on classical computers, such as Watson, can help find patterns and insights buried in vast amounts of existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where ...

One of the most striking discoveries of quantum information theory is the existence of problems that can be solved in a more efficient way with quantum resources than with any known classical algorithm.

How fast will a quantum computer be able to calculate? While fully functional versions of these long-sought technological marvels have yet to be built, one theorist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ...

(Phys.org) -- While there has been some skepticism as to whether the Canadian company D-Waves quantum computing system, the D-Wave One, truly involves quantum computing, the company is intent on proving that the system ...

Physicists have developed a quantum machine learning algorithm that can handle infinite dimensionsthat is, it works with continuous variables (which have an infinite number of possible values on a closed interval) instead ...

A well-known computational problem seeks to find the most efficient route for a traveling salesman to visit clients in a number of cities. Seemingly simple, it's actually surprisingly complex and much studied, with implications ...

By precisely measuring the entropy of a cerium copper gold alloy with baffling electronic properties cooled to nearly absolute zero, physicists in Germany and the United States have gleaned new evidence about the possible ...

When Northwestern Engineering's Erik Luijten met Zbigniew Rozynek, they immediately became united by a mystery.

It's a material world, and an extremely versatile one at that, considering its most basic building blocksatomscan be connected together to form different structures that retain the same composition.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have produced and precisely measured a spectrum of X-rays using a new, state-of-the-art machine. The instrument they used to measure the X-rays took ...

Scientists have discovered a way to solve a problem that has baffled humans for so long it is mentioned in the Bible: achieving the most efficient packing of objects such as grains and pharmaceutical drugs.

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If this tech solves the traveling salesman problem in non-polynomial time without quantum computers, the Nobel Committee should create a Computer Science prize for it.

Stimulate-annealing problem was a bitch due to phase transition. This seems like actually innovation, rather than the descriptive and iceberg-meting garbage permeating the site.

Really cool work, love to see physicists in CS. Simulated Annealling is the beginning, I think there's a lot more: a principle of least information in AI will emerge, I predict, matching physics principle of least action, and in time computation will illuminate more physics. For instance, imagine if its NOT the case that there is physical solution to Travelling salesman or other NP complete problems, (meaning no physical system computes their solution) that's profound as a solution. It implies an anonymity to photons for instance, the fact that they have no history. It also lends a lot of credence to those weird ideas that we're all living in a computer simulation.

Einsteins quote about everything being explained as simply as possible is sort of similar - less energy expenditure.

Right, Occam's razor has formal statements in information theory too. Its really just kind of common sense: if we encoded the world around us smartly, common things, like an orange in an orange tree, would little information to encode, but uncommon things, like a traffic cone in an orange tree would take more info. So an AI, on seeing something orange between the leaves of an orange tree, should assume its an orange, as our brains would.

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Donald Trump’s disastrously bad week in Washington – CNN

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Even by Trumpian standards, the wild swings, erratic messaging and general chaos was beyond the pale -- raising real concerns about whether Trump was losing control of the ship of state.

On Tuesday -- even as Trump's White House was trying to find an explanation for that 18-day gap -- Trump stunned the political world by firing Comey. He did so by having his former bodyguard deliver a hand-written letter -- in which Trump asserted that Comey had told him on three occasions that he wasn't under investigation(!) -- to the FBI. Comey was in Los Angeles at the time, finding out of his firing the way the rest of us did: on TV.

Trump's White House was entirely unprepared for the firestorm that erupted -- likely because they, like the rest of us, had no idea it was coming. The initial spin offered by the White House, from Vice President Mike Pence on down, was that Trump had acted "decisively" after reading a memo from deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that hammered Comey for his conduct in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.

From the start, that felt like tenuous spin, especially considering that Trump had praised Comey effusively when the FBI director reopened the investigation in late October after new emails had been found on a computer belonging to longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Trump himself debunked the explanation in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt on Thursday. "I was going to fire Comey -- my decision," Trump told Holt. "There is no good time to do it, by the way. I was going to fire regardless of recommendation."

So ............

Think about that. Any one of those things would be a HUGE story under another president. For Trump, it was just a Friday morning.

Trump has built his presidency on his unpredictability and unorthodoxy. But his policy of just saying and doing whatever comes to mind isn't, of course, a policy at all. Which became frighteningly apparent -- again -- this week.

Donald Trump, for still not realizing that the presidency isn't the same thing as a reality TV show, you had the worst week in Washington. Congrats, or something.

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‘Our Institutions Are Under Assault’ – HuffPost

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WASHINGTON Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Sunday that our institutions are under assault internally by President Donald Trump, who is eroding the American system of checks and balances on political power.

The developments of the past week are very bothersome, very disturbing to me, Clapper told CNNs Jake Tapper. I think in many ways, our institutions are under assault externally and thats the big news here, is the Russian interference in our election system. And I think as well, our institutions are under assault internally.

Tapper asked Clapper if internally indicated Trump. Exactly, Clapper responded.

Trump fired FBI Director James Comey this week, and told NBC News that he did so out of frustration with the agencys continued investigation into alleged Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. Trump later tweeted that Comey should be careful about leaking to the press, in case tapes of conversations between Comey and Trump exist. The tweet was widely interpreted as a threat to Comey. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the tweet inappropriate during an appearance on NBC Sunday.

On Sunday, Clapper praised the American system of three coequal branches of government created by the founding fathers with a built-in system of checks and balances.

I feel as though thats under assault and is eroding, Clapper said, adding that congressional Republicans should publicly condemn the presidents recent activities. I hope theyll speak up, he said.

Clapper lied to Congress in 2013 about the Obama administrations mass surveillance activities, infuriating some Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans, some of whom called for the government to pursue perjury charges against him.

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Donald Trump Is Reportedly Considering Blowing Up the West Wing – Vanity Fair

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By Chip Somodevilla/Getty images.

Donald Trump, frustrated with his staffs failure to contain the fallout from his seemingly abrupt decision to fire F.B.I. Director James Comey, is reportedly weighing a huge reboot of his West Wing team. According to various reports Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and press secretary Sean Spicer, among others could be axed. This was the first major crisis or test theyve had, and it looks like a lot of systems failed, Chris Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax and longtime Trump ally, told The Washington Post. My experience with the president is when he sees failure, he quickly adapts and tries new things. Hes not a guy that keeps the same ol.

What was supposed to be a quiet week in the West Wing ahead of Trumps first foreign trip, quickly devolved into chaos when the news of Comeys ouster broke on Tuesday night. Trump, who has reportedly grown increasingly distrustful of his staff amid an endless stream of White House leaks, kept a number of key staffers in the dark about his decision to fire the F.B.I. director, leaving only a close-knit circle of his top advisors privy to his thinking. But in his paranoia, the president hamstrung his own press shop. Given an hour to prepare for the media frenzy that would ensue, the White House communications team led by Spicer and communications director Michael Dubke crafted a narrativethat Comey was fired for mishandling of the probe into Hillary Clintons use of a private e-mail server at the State Department at the recommendation of deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteinwas quickly dismissed by the media as pretext. Faced with a deluge of contradictory reports and a torrent of White House leaks, the Trump administrations story of Comeys firing shifted dramatically over the course of 48-hours, fueling speculation that the F.B.I. directors exit was related to the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaigns Russia ties.

It was Trumpacting on his belief that he is his own best spokespersonwho delivered the final blow to the White Houses Comey story. Regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey, Trump told NBC Newss Lester Holt during an interview that aired on Thursday. In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, effectively confirming that his teams initial talking points were a lie. And to make matters worse, a series of tweets the president fired off on Fridaywherein he attacked the media and made a vague threat about tapes of his conversations with Comeycreated new headaches for the administrations embattled press team. Trump is putting a lot on the backs of his spokespeople, while simultaneously cutting their legs out from underneath them, Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and a former adviser to Florida Senator Marco Rubio, told the New York Times. There is nothing more discouraging or embarrassing for a spokesman than to have your boss contradict you. In political communications, youre only as good as your credibility.

Despite the self-inflicted nature of the crisis swirling around Trump, the president is blaming his staff and a series of media reports indicate that a White House staff shakeup could be imminent. Mike Allen of Axios reported on Sunday that Trump is mulling a huge reboot of his staff. A close confidant of Trumps told Allen, Hes frustrated, and angry at everyone, and added, The advice he's getting is to go bigthat he has nothing to lose, the confidant said. The question now is how big and how bold. I'm not sure he knows the answer to that yet. The potential White House purge could take out high-ranking aides. According to Axios, even Priebus, who has struggled to find footing in the West Wing; senior strategist Stephen Bannon, who has a reportedly contentious relationship with Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner; and White House counsel Donald McGahn might be on the chopping block. But one trusted adviser told Allen that top aides who have fallen out of favor with the president might just find themselves cut out of key discussions and decision making rather than out of jobs. Most reports indicate that a staffing overhaul is more likely to originate within the White House press shop.

On Friday, Trump seemingly provided cover for his press team when he tweeted, As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy! Longtime Trump ally and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, echoed the sentiment, telling the Times that the president resembles a quarterback who doesnt call a huddle and gets ahead of his offensive line so nobody can block him and defend him because nobody knows what the play is. Despite having been caught largely flat-footed by Trumps decision to fire Comey, the White House communications team has bore the brunt of the blame for the sharp criticism the president has faced over the past week, according to multiple media reports. And during an interview with Fox Newss Jeanine Pirro, Trump reiterated a suggestion he made earlier on Twitter that he might cancel the daily White House press briefingsundercutting the work of Spicer and deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who took up the podium this week while Spicer was out for two days on Naval reserve duty.

Any shakeup of the White House communications team would likely begin with Spicer. According to the Times, Trump might already have a candidate in mind to go head-to-head with the White House press corps everyday: Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle. And for his part, Spicer is reportedly aware that his days in the Trump administration might be numbered. An ally of the press secretary told The Wall Street Journal, that he recognizes this hasnt been a good week for him.

But overhauling his communications team might prove to be a difficult task for Trump. The fallout from the Comey debacle laid bare the dysfunction within the West Wing, but most notably exposed that the incoherency in its messaging lies with Trump. As former Obama advisor David Axelrod noted to the Times, The most hazardous duty in Washington these days is that of Trump surrogate because the president constantly undercuts the statements of his own people. He added, You wind up looking like a liar or a fool, neither of which is particularly attractive. And to Axelrods point, one anonymous White House official asked CNN during an interview, Do you think were liars? This dynamic, that Trump surrogates are always at risk of being contradicted by the president, is unlikely to cease and likely to ward off competent potential candidates.

Of course, as Allen notes, this wouldnt be the first timenor is it likely to be the last that Trump has engaged in a Hamlet-esque should-I-or-shouldnt-I deliberation about staff. As has proven to be the case on many occasions with Trump, his talk of a staff overhaul could be nothing more than bluster.

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See Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump Dismiss Nixon… – RollingStone.com

Posted: at 6:20 pm

Saturday Night Live mocked Donald Trump's interview with NBC's Lester Holt as Alec Baldwin's president stumbled his way through questions about James Comey's firing and comparisons to Richard Nixon.

Regarding the controversial firing of the FBI director, Trump accidentally negated the explanations doled out by his press secretaries during the NBC interview, a mistake that SNL seized on.

"I fired him because of Russia. I thought 'I don't like that. I should fire him,'" Baldwin's Trump said in the cold open. Michael Che's Holt then pointed out that is obstruction of justice and wondered aloud, "That's it? Did I get him? Is it all over?" before being informed "nothing matters anymore."

"That's right, nothing's gonna stop me because I have the Republicans in the palm of my hand," Baldwin's Trump said before ringing a bell, which summoned Paul Ryan holding a tray of two scoops of ice cream.

The president is then forced to fight off comparisons between his administration and Nixon's during Watergate. "I am nothing like Nixon because I am not a crook, plus I bet Nixon only got one scoop of ice cream for dessert, but I get two."

Holt pointed out another difference between Nixon and Trump: Nixon actually won the popular vote.

On SNL, Trump again (falsely) reiterates that he invented the economic term "priming the pump," although the definition has grossly changed: "It's when I tug on myself a half-hour before Melania comes in so she can find it easier, okay?"

After an especially WTF week at the White House, Holt asked Trump to pump the brakes on a presidency that's become a 24-7 reality show.

"Too bad because this is gonna run for eight years, okay? Even though it should've been canceled months ago, but don't worry: We have plenty of fun plot twists coming up," Trump told Holt. "A lot of your favorite characters will be coming back: Kim Jong Un, Carter Page, even that little psycho Steve Miller. Also, I don't want to give away too much but in an upcoming episode we will find out that Kellyanne was dead this whole time."

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