“The creation of the Trump Leadership Council back in 2016 went almost entirely unnoticed at the time. Until now, the members of the council have not been made public. But Rolling Stone obtained a complete list of the members and interviewed half a dozen people who attended and organized the council.”

“Together, they form a lost chapter in the story of how Trump’s pro-industry, anti-regulation America First agenda became a reality.”

President Trump will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom today to economist Arthur Laffer, a former top Ronald Reagan adviser and the father of supply-side economics, the Washington Post reports.

Brian Stelter: “Wednesday will be the 100th day without an on-camera White House press briefing. Up until now, the longest stretch without a briefing lasted 42 days. So this is really the worst kind of record.”

Joe Pompeo: “The apparent apathy about who gets the job seems to stem from the all-too-obvious notion that this is no normal administration. Gone are the daily press briefings, where correspondents could attempt to elicit answers—or, perhaps, non-answers—on the hot-button topics of the day. Gone are the days of big, gift-wrapped scoops and policy rollouts to favored reporters from the most prestigious publications. Rare is the broadcast interview to an outlet other than Fox News. (The occasional Lester Holt or George Stephanopoulos sit-down are the exceptions that prove the rule.)”

“In previous administrations, press secretaries have been gatekeepers. But Sanders, for all of her visibility and confrontational bluster, arguably didn’t have the same kind of power or stature as her predecessors had, in terms of what the role has traditionally meant and entailed. Under the current, unprecedented circumstances of White House reporting, does it really matter whether it’s Sean Spicer or Sarah Sanders or anyone else who doesn’t go out into the briefing room every day?”

“President Trump at his 2020 campaign kickoff rally on Tuesday took credit for passing a veteran’s health care bill that was signed into law by former President Obama,” The Hill reports.

“A little more than a year ago, moments after he fired former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by tweet, President Trump looked ahead optimistically to reshaping his Cabinet,” Politico reports.

“It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Instead, Trump has a Cabinet-by-default, many of whose members were simply the last man — or woman — standing after others pulled out of the running, declined the president’s job offers or couldn’t get through their nomination hearings.”

“The result is that the Trump administration’s senior ranks are comprised largely of individuals who were not, in many cases, the president’s first or even second choice to fill the post, but instead became the only logical choice after the competition evaporated.”

President Trump tweeted last night that the State Department’s identification of “multiple security incidents” surrounding the handling of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails is “really big.”

Said Trump: “Wow! The State Department said it has identified 30 Security Incidents involving current or former employees and their handling of Crooked Hillary Clinton’s Emails.”

He added: “This is really big. Never admitted before. Highly Classified Material. Will the Dems investigate this?”

“President Trump is facing a hurdle no other president has — an unprecedented onslaught of investigations into almost every recent organization he has led,” Politico reports.

“In total, Trump faces at least 15 criminal or civil inquiries by nine federal, state and city agencies into his business, his charity, his campaign, his inaugural committee and his personal finances.”

Rick Wilson: “We live in a world of counterfactuals, hypotheticals, and more tu quoque scenarios than a reasonable person can process. That said, I have to beg my Republican friends to imagine — just for a moment — what you’d be doing if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama said they would accept the help of a foreign power in a campaign and not report it to the FBI.”

“I’ll tell you what you’d do: You’d lose your fucking shit.”

“You’d spurt blood from your goddamn eyes.”

President Trump on Sunday floated the possibility of staying in office longer than two terms, suggesting in a morning tweet that his supporters might “demand that I stay longer,” the Washington Post reports.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds 27% of Americans say there’s enough evidence to begin impeachment hearings into President Trump now — up 10 points from last month.

Another 24% think Congress should continue investigating to see if there’s enough evidence to hold impeachment hearings in the future, which is down eight points. And 48% believe that Congress should not hold impeachment hearings and that Trump should finish out his term as president — unchanged from a month ago.

Almost all the growth in support for impeachment has come from Democrats, with 48% of them wanting impeachment hearings now, versus 30% who said this a month ago.

Jonathan Greenberg: “How did Donald Trump, a self-serving promoter who lost billions of dollars for his investors, convince the world that he is a financial genius? It wasn’t just by fabricating tales of his success. It was also by bullying and silencing people who could have stopped those deceits — particularly reporters and Wall Street analysts — forcing all but a very few into a conspiracy of silence.”

“These tactics, which form a core element of his politics, were something I saw him hone firsthand in the 1980s and 1990s as Trump’s company was imploding.”

Bloomberg: “Vice President Mike Pence was set to deliver a speech criticizing China’s human rights record on June 4, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre — until Donald Trump stepped in. The president delayed the speech to avoid upsetting Beijing ahead of a potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 meeting in Japan at the end of this month.”

“Trump also put off U.S. sanctions on Chinese surveillance companiesthat Pence planned to preview in his remarks. The speech was tentatively rescheduled for June 24, just days before the Osaka meetings. But with Beijing signaling that Xi might not agree to a meeting, there is now debate within the administration about when Pence should deliver the speech and how hard he should be on the Chinese.”

New York Times: “Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s announcement that she would step down as White House press secretary has set off the latest round of musical chairs in the West Wing and an internal debate over whether to revive the daily news briefing as President Trump heads into the thick of election season. Some White House officials have argued that the daily briefing, which on the day of Ms. Sanders’s resignation on Thursday had not been held for 94 days, is a powerful tool that would help elevate Mr. Trump above his Democratic opponent in the 2020 race.

“One of those pushing for its revival, officials said, is Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, who wants the next press secretary to play a more proactive role in shaping the White House message, adding at the least a daily untelevised briefing to his or her duties. But others have argued that Mr. Trump has never liked the daily briefing as a forum to disseminate the message of the day, preferring to do it himself on Twitter.”

The Justice Department backed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s refusal to turn over President Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee in a 33-page memo, the Wall Street Journal reports.