Your Presidential Daily Brief: Trump's Abortive Honeymoon | Ready to Utter the Oath

[The Presidential Daily Brief] [The Presidential Daily Brief] IMPORTANT January 14, 2017 [Embattled President-elect Donald Trump takes an elevator up New York's Trump Tower Friday. Source: Getty] [Trump's Honeymoon: Over Before It Began] He's not even president, and his approval rating's 37 percent. Donald Trump faced his worst week since his Nov. 8 election, with allegations swirling that Russians filmed him performing lewd acts, causing the president-elect - deriding the reports as "fake news," to tweetstorm the media, the [intelligence community] and "guilty as hell" Hillary Clinton, Meanwhile, Trump's allies in Congress, like House Speaker Paul Ryan, and even the mogul's cabinet picks, backed away from his positions, while the Senate Intelligence Committee launched a bipartisan probe into allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Kremlin electioneering. Sources: [USA Today], [Politico], [NYT], [Washington Post], [The Hill] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Fasten Your Seat Belts, Inauguration Day Is Nigh] This is happening. On Friday, Donald John [Trump] is scheduled to brave the chill in Washington, D.C., and recite the oath of office to become the 45th president of the United States. Initially thought to be a low-key affair, with three official balls down from the usual eight to 10, the $90 million event will be met by an unprecedented number of protesters. The National Park Service expects an estimated 200,000 women's rights advocates, among more than 350,000 demonstrators (some pro-Trump), to converge on the National Mall. Sources: [Politico], [Newsweek], [US News], [AP] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Rafsanjani's Unfinished Iranian Revolution] He was called Machiavellian. When Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died Sunday at age 82, helped install Ali Khamenei as [Iran's] ayatollah in 1989, Rafsanjani saw himself as his pal's puppet master. Instead, Khamenei consolidated power and led the country toward anti-Western authoritarianism. Rafsanjani, a modernizer who used his power to become fabulously wealthy, was twice elected president, but humiliated at the polls in 2005. Late in life, Rafsanjani turned into Khamenei's political foe. Current president Hassan Rouhani, an acolyte, is now testing whether Iran can shift in the direction Rafsanjani always wanted. Sources: [The Atlantic] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Filipinos Wonder Who's on Rodrigo Duterte's Hit List] It's a deadly distinction. The fiery populist president, in his mandate to rid his nation of [drug dealers] and corrupt officials, brandishes a "watch list" he says contains a million guilty Filipinos - thousands of whom have already been gunned down by police or vigilantes. But how do you get on or off the list? One local politician, who supported Duterte's drug war, was told he, too, was on the roster. Alvin Mañalac passed a drug test, but with so much unpredictable bloodshed, he keeps a fully loaded pistol handy just in case. Sources: [NYT Magazine] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] Briefly Know This: Democratic members of Congress were unsatisfied with FBI Director [James Comey's response] to questions asking why he didn't reveal the FBI's probe of Russian election influence but did make announcements about Hillary Clinton's private server investigation. The U.S. House of Representatives voted along party lines to facilitate the [dismantling of Obamacare.]  And Moody's has agreed to pay [$864 million] to the U.S. Justice Department to settle a claim that its mortgage-bond ratings played a part in the financial crisis of 2008.  Translate This: French far-right leader Marine Le Pen visited Donald Trump's New York headquarters building, but didn't meet with the president-elect, his spokeswoman said. But Thursday's convergence of populists appeared not to have been coincidental, and "even if no meeting occurred, the [spectacle of Ms. Le Pen in Trump Tower] ricocheted across the world on social media."  Talk to Us: We want your feedback on the Presidential Daily Brief - what you think we're doing right and what we should be doing differently. Send us an email at [pdbrief@ozy.com] [From Beirut, With Love] [The Most Ambitious Clown In The Middle East] Sabine Choucair is a clown with a mission. After years of clowning (yes, that's a technical term) to boost morale for the Syrian kids stuck in the purgatory of Lebanon's refugee camps, Choucair decided to try another form of art therapy. She began a project called the Caravan, which enables Syrians to create their own street theater based on the stories recounted and recorded by other Syrian refugees. And yes, they travel and perform out of a van. [Watch Now]. Sources: [OZY] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] INTRIGUING [New Silicon Valley Craze Eschews Booze] Spirits don't move them. The work hard, play hard tech world seems to be edging away from its drink hard reputation with a new cadre of radically teetotaling entrepreneurs. Bulletproof Coffee's Dave Asprey tells his 350,000 Twitter followers to make java their new vice, and Meebo's Elaine Wherry says abstinence gives her strength. Adherents claim a productivity boost, and Silicon Valley party planners report a demand for mocktails. Mind you, the Valley's still the capital of binge drinking, and research shows booze juices creativity - but many are now seeking clear heads and healthy bodies. Sources: [OZY] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] [A Pillow Empire Founded on Crack] Sleep tight. The multimillionaire who's helping Americans [sleep better] got his big idea, appropriately, in a dream. But while selling his first form-fitting pillows, Mike Lindell rode a drug-fueled roller coaster - until even his crack dealer told him to stop. He's clean and sober now, and his MyPillow startup has sold more than 26 million of what he bills as the world's best pillows, costing upwards of $45 each. Lindell, who's self-publishing his autobiography later this year, is finding new audiences to impress as a staunch backer of Donald Trump. Sources: [Bloomberg] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Danish Zoos Dissect Animals While Kids Watch] It's all part of the great circle of life - in a cage. The Copenhagen Zoo caught a lot of flak for killing Marius, a young giraffe that was healthy but not diversifying the captive gene pool. The killing and subsequent dissection for an all-ages audience, common in Danish zoos, sparked outrage around the world. But some defiant Danes are defending their straightforward, educational approach to [animal] death, rather than a "Disneyfied" American version in which animals with cute names are culled where a squeamish public isn't permitted to see them die. Sources: [New Yorker] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Angelina Jolie Confronts Cambodia's Dark History] She's exploring new fields. Angelina Jolie is making a bold directorial statement - tackling one of the 20th century's greatest horrors. The Khmer-language First They Killed My Father is based on the autobiography of Loung Ung, whose family was swept up in the [Khmer Rouge's] brutal social engineering that killed some 2 million people in the 1970s. Jolie, who fell in love with the country while filming 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, says artistic control rests with her all-Cambodian cast and crew, and the Netflix-destined film will premiere in Siem Reap on Feb. 18. Sources: [The Guardian] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] [A High School Football Player's Posthumous Protest] He lived and died for the game. Recent payouts to former NFL players have called attention to how widespread brain injury really is - but the diary of high school defensive back Zac Easter shows that football's destructive impact reaches far beyond the pros. Easter killed himself in 2015 after spending months detailing his suffering. He described a school [football] culture that encouraged him to conceal his symptoms and get back on the field - and the head tremors and memory loss from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, that shattered his brain and relationships. Sources: [GQ] Share: [Facebook] [Twitter] [Facebook] [Twitter] Your 8 must reads to get you ahead of the curve RISING STARS [Lebanon's O.G. Surfboard Shaper] [Read In Full] RISING STARS [The Designer Who Opened Beirut's First Free Fashion School] [Read In Full] GOOD SH*T [The Best Sandwich in Beirut ... Courtesy of Armenia] [Read In Full] 20M people love reading OZY every month. Be part of the revolution. [Facebook] [Twitter] [Instagram] [Vimeo] [Youtube] Add us to your Address Book | Having trouble viewing this email? [Read Online] This email was sent to {EMAIL} This email was sent by: OZY Media 800 West El Camino Mountain View, CA 94040 [Manage Subscriptions] | [Privacy Policy]