Good Thursday morning, I'm Anna Palmer, and welcome to your Politico Playbook Audio Briefing,

sponsored by ExxonMobil. And I'm Jake Sherman. Yesterday afternoon, President Donald Trump

delivered New York Congressman Dan Donovan, the endorsement he had long been waiting for.

Donovan is running against Michael Grimm, a former House Republican who was recently in prison.

The district they're running in is Staten Island and Brooklyn,

a narrowly Republican swath of New York City that voted for Trump overwhelmingly. Grimm has

positioned Donovan as insufficiently supportive of Trump's legislative agenda. Needless to say,

this is one of the districts in America where Trump could be very helpful. The only problem?

Trump's endorsement said Donovan voted for

the GOP tax cuts when he actually didn't. Donovan actually voted against it three times. He voted

against the tax bills in every single incarnation. The only material reason Trump gave to support

Donovan was incorrect. Not only did Donovan vote against it,

he was vocally opposed to it. He called it a tax hike on the people I represent. This is an

unforced error and an embarrassing one at that for the leader of the Republican Party. We got to ask,

where was the president's staff on a matter like this?

Big news in the trade front overnight. Megan Cassella and Ben White report that Trump is writing a plan

to hit Canada, Mexico, in the EU with steel and aluminum tariffs as soon as Friday.

They report conversations are still ongoing and a final decision could be made as soon as today.

Here's the latest on the investigations front. CNN is reporting that Senate Intel Committee

members remain divided over whether there is evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump's

2016 campaign. The New York Times is reporting that former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe

wrote a confidential memo that describes a conversation

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