White House race

Update: A Commerce spokesman told Fox News that Ross was not involved with Navigator’s decision to engage in business with Sibur, a publicly traded company, which was not under sanction at the time and is not currently. The spokesman also said Ross, the Trump administration’s point man on trade and manufacturing policy, “never met” Shamalov, and generally has supported the Trump administration’s sanctions against Russia, while recusing himself from matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels.

Update: We have a fourth Trump attack story as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow claims that "someone is shopping a carefully forged, fairly convincing fake NSA document" to news organizations pointing to Trump campaign collusion with Russia... "we don't know who is doing it but we're wroking on it."

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George Clooney, apparently still upset that the millions of dollars he raised for Hillary Clinton's campaign was a complete and utter waste, told a group of reporters in London that the U.S. got "a little unlucky" with the election of Donald Trump and we're just going to have to "hope that he can do a decent job."  Per The Hill:

“When we first needed a president, we had George Washington,” Clooney said, according to the Associated Press. “We had Jefferson, Adams.”

 

• European Stocks Fall as Chinese Economic Data Disappoint (WSJ)
• Oil Climbs to Highest Since November as European Shares Retreat (BBG)
• Yen weakens on Japan intervention talk before G7 meets (Reuters)
• Wall Street’s Bond Forecasters Splinter as Fed Credibility Wanes (BBG)
• Amazon to Expand Private-Label Offerings—From Food to Diapers (WSJ)
• Oil prices rise on Nigerian outages, Goldman forecast (Reuters)
• 'Avengers' threaten new insurgency in Nigeria's oil-producing Delta (Reuters)

When it comes to Donald Trump, the mainstream media has had a habit of being repeatedly wrong in its forecasts. Most recently, in the aftermath of Trump's effective victory in the GOP primaries, the conventional wisdom was that the real estate billionaire would "never" be able to catch up to Hillary's support at the national level. This too now appears to have been a mistake.