He’s home tweet home, and Trump gets grumpy

D.T. Phone. Home.

Back from Asia, Donald Trump woke up in his own White House bed for the first time in 12 days. He then got up on the wrong side of it, which may also be the usual side, and must be where he keeps the phone.

“While in the Philippines I was forced to watch @CNN, which I have not done in months, and again realized how bad, and FAKE, it is. Loser!”

That was 5:45 a.m.

At 10:11 a.m., Trump seemed agitated that he hadn’t yet gotten gratitude from UCLA basketball players arrested for shoplifting, who were sprung by China after Trump put in a word for them.

“Do you think the three UCLA Basketball Players will say thank you President Trump? They were headed for 10 years in jail!” The players thanked him at a news conference later.

And the president didn’t like at least one of the takes he read about the trip.

“The failing @nytimes hates the fact that I have developed a great relationship with World leaders like Xi Jinping, President of China.”

He got respect

Trump spoke from the White House Wednesday afternoon for what was advertised as a “major announcement.” It was a speech offering a summary of his trip rather than any big breakthroughs.

The president called the five-nation tour a “tremendous success” in which “our foreign hosts greeted the American delegation, myself included, with incredible warmth, hospitality and, most importantly, respect.”

Trump said China agreed with him that North Korea’s nuclear program must be eliminated, not just frozen in place. He suggested the Asian countries “recognized the importance of fair and reciprocal trade,” but didn’t mention concrete progress toward closing the U.S. trade deficit.

Marco Rubio’s watery revenge

Trump took a sudden 20-second pause during his remarks to search for and then take a swig (video here) from a bottle of Fiji Water.

Which is no big deal. Except for those who remembered that Trump mercilessly mocked Sen. Marco Rubio for years after the Florida Republican in 2013 awkwardly stopped while delivering the GOP’s State of the Union response on national television.

Rubio remembers. He tweeted: “Similar, but needs work on his form. Has to be done in one single motion & eyes should never leave the camera. But not bad for his 1st time.” Here’s CNN’s side-by-side video comparison.

Unanswered is why the “America First” president was provided a bottle of imported water instead of a domestic brand.

Janison: Mess is Moore

Roy Moore was an irritant to Trump even before the sexploitation-of-teens scandal broke out. The ex-judge — twice bounced from the bench for defying the law in the name of religion — defeated the Trump-endorsed candidate in the GOP Senate primary. Trump didn’t like the look of betting on a loser.

Trump quickly got behind Moore. But he’s now gone silent even as every other leading national Republican says Moore has got to go. There’s more at stake than a Republican seat; there’s also Moore’s role in the proxy war between former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

See Dan Janison’s column for Newsday.

Tax bill inches ahead

House Republicans leaders said they are confident they’ll pass their sweeping tax overhaul, even though some of their New York members, including Long Islanders Peter King and Lee Zeldin, say they’ll vote no because the bill ends state and local tax deductions.

Trump is scheduled to meet with the House GOP Thursday.

The Senate outlook is murkier, with two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — going public with reasons they are not onboard. See Tom Brune’s story for Newsday.

What else is happening

• Hillary Clinton said that using the Justice Department to investigate any alleged ties between her family foundation and a 2010 uranium-company sale amounts to "such an abuse of power" that it threatens authoritarian rule.
• Determined to rescind even obscure actions from Obama's tenure, the Trump administration has reversed a ban on elephant trophies from Africa.
• Ivanka Trump had more to say than her dad about Moore. “There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children,” she told The Associated Press. “I’ve yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts.”
• Controversial judicial nominee Brent Talley, who never tried a case and didn't bother to disclose to Congress his wife's job at the White House, evidently defended the early KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest online in 2011.
• Trump tweeted condolences for the wrong mass shooting Tuesday night. “May God be with the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI and Law Enforcement has arrived,” the tweet said. That happened Nov. 5. Tuesday’s shooting was in northern California. Trump deleted the tweet, but the president who vowed to end "American carnage" didn't replace it with an accurate one.
• Forbes Magazine said it first and now the Bloomberg Billionaires Index agrees: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross doesn’t qualify for the rankings. Bloomberg cut its net worth estimate on Ross to $860 million from $3 billion after determining that figures he provided couldn’t be independently verified.
• In a party line vote, the Senate confirmed Trump’s choice of David Zatezalo, a former leader of a coal company with a record of serious safety violations, to become the country’s top regulator of miner health and safety.
• Wage growth that began in 2015 and is gathering steam could bring political benefits to Trump, The Economist writes.
• It was North Korea’s serve in the insult war with Trump. A state-run newspaper called him “an old lunatic, mean trickster and human reject.”