The auction for a chance to spend up to 45 minutes with Ms. Trump over coffee at either Trump Tower in New York or the recently opened Trump International Hotel in Washington was to continue for another three days. As of Friday morning, the high bid was $ 72,888.
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But then the auction disappeared from the Charitybuzz website that had been hosting it, along with details on all the bids that had been offered since it opened on Dec. 5.
"The loser is St. Jude, and the winner I'm not exactly sure," one of the bidders, the Tex-Mex restaurateur Russell Ybarra, wrote in an email, referring to the Tennessee children's hospital, which stood to reap the proceeds.
Eric Trump, in an interview Thursday, had said he was considering terminating the auction, after The New York Times raised questions about it. The Trump Organization and Charitybuzz did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment.
The Obama family has not directly participated in any fund-raising solicitation efforts since President Obama took office to avoid the impression that donations would allow the donor to get special access, said Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer.
An infrastructure plan Democrats can love?
The president-elect's son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, told New York business leaders on Friday that Mr. Trump's vision for a large-scale federal infrastructure program was "closer" to Senator Chuck Schumer's, the incoming minority leader, than to the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell's.
Mr. Kushner made the remarks at an event hosted by the Partnership for New York City, just after an appearance by Mr. Schumer, the New York senator.
This week at a news conference in Washington, Mr. McConnell said he was not interested in "trillion-dollar stimulus" to finance any infrastructure plan, setting up what could be the first of many clashes with a Trump White House that will not always hew to Republican orthodoxy.
The Trump campaign floated a $ 1 trillion infrastructure plan that would depend on private investors raising money and building the projects with the aid of some form of tax credit. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump's chief strategist, said shortly after the election that a huge infrastructure plan would be in the offing, but the form was not clear. Democrats have long said they want an infrastructure plan that has plentiful direct federal funding, something Mr. Schumer has said repeatedly, not tax credits for rich developers.
This does not excite Mr. McConnell who, like most Republicans, recalls President Obama's early stimulus plan unfavorably. That plan came in the middle of the worst recession since the Depression.
Mr. Trump inherits an economy that is healthy enough that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates Wednesday to head off overheating. The Fed has made it clear that if Mr. Trump insists on pumping money into the economy, it will hasten rate increases to stave off inflation.
"We need to do this carefully and correctly, and the issue of how to pay for it needs to be dealt with responsibly," Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky senator, said this week.
And speaking of cross-party conciliation.
Senate watchers used to the obstructionist stance that the Republican leader, Mr. McConnell, took with President Obama for eight years have been waiting for signs of the kind of minority leader that Mr. Schumer will be when he takes over as Democratic leader.
The Democratic senator sent a big flashing of conciliation on Friday.
Mr. Schumer praised Mr. Trump's call with the president of Taiwan, which drew objections from both sides of the aisle, as a shrewd move that sent a signal to China of a change in direction.
Mr. Schumer made the remarks at the same annual meeting of the Partnership for New York City that Mr. Kushner spoke at, according to two people in attendance.
Those attendees interpreted the comments as aligning Mr. Schumer with Mr. Trump on a diplomatic issue that has been met with consternation by the Obama White House.
Mr. Schumer described the call that Mr. Trump took roughly two weeks ago as shrewd, and not necessarily indicating that it was a reflection of his view of the "One China" policy, the two attendees said.
An aide to Mr. Schumer did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Mr. Schumer has been a critic of China as a currency manipulator over the years. At the breakfast, where he was followed by Mr. Kushner, Mr. Schumer suggested that Democrats lost in part because the election was about a change in course, and Hillary Clinton ran as a continuation of the Obama administration's direction.
Trump dismisses Russian hacking — again.
The president-elect took to Twitter on Friday to again dismiss the significance of Russia's meddling in the election — but with a new twist. This time, he seemed to praise the revelations of one of the cyberattacks.
The post seems to refer to an email stolen from the Democratic National Committee and given to WikiLeaks that came from a Democratic strategist, Donna Brazile, before a CNN Democratic primary debate in Flint, Mich.
Ms. Brazile's subject line: "One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash."
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"Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint," Ms. Brazile wrote to John D. Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, and Jennifer Palmieri, the candidate's communications director.
That might seem like a pretty obvious question, given that the debate was in Flint to address the crisis over the city's lead-contaminated water. But it cost Ms. Brazile her commentator's job at CNN, and it helped to fuel Mr. Trump's accusation during the campaign that the election was "rigged" in Hillary Clinton's favor.
Many are excited, but more are worried as Trump presidency nears.
A new CBS News poll found that 46 percent of Americans are excited or optimistic about Donald J. Trump's presidency, about the percentage who voted for him. But 53 percent say they are concerned or scared.
With the inauguration about a month away, a solid majority — 62 percent — say the president-elect will bring real change to the way Washington works. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing probably depends on your party. Some 58 percent say they believe he will divide rather than unite people.
The Jewish community confronts a divisive ambassador to Israel.
The announcement on Thursday that David M. Friedman, Mr. Trump's bankruptcy lawyer, would be nominated to be the United States ambassador to Israel, is likely to roil an American Jewish community that sided overwhelmingly with Hillary Clinton and is already at sea in the wake of the 2016 election.
Divisions remain among Jewish people over President Obama's policies, especially his nuclear deal with Iran. And Mr. Friedman is not likely to unify the community. Confronting the liberal Jewish group J Street, which largely opposes the policies of Israel's conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Friedman once leveled one of the worst insults possible to a Jew. He compared the group to kapos, the Jewish collaborators who enforced Nazi edict in the World War II concentration camps.
"Are J Street supporters really as bad as kapos? The answer, actually, is no. They are far worse than kapos — Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps," Mr. Friedman said.
J Street reacted almost immediately to news of Mr. Friedman's nomination, calling on the Senate to reject him.
"As someone who has been a leading American friend of the settlement movement, who lacks any diplomatic or policy credentials and who has attacked liberal Jews who support two states as 'worse than kapos', Friedman should be beyond the pale for senators considering who should represent the United States in Israel," the group said in a statement.
The Republican Jewish Coalition was all praise:
"The selection of Mr. David Friedman to serve as United States ambassador to Israel sends a powerful signal to the Jewish community and the State of Israel that President-elect Trump's administration will strengthen the bond between our two countries and advance the cause of peace within the region.
"We look forward to working with David and the entire Trump administration to cripple Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons through new and strengthened sanctions, move the U.S. Embassy to the eternal capital of Israel, Jerusalem, and repair relations with our greatest ally in the Middle East that have eroded over the last eight years."
It doesn't pay to jump the gun.
A Trump economic adviser, Stephen Moore, caused quite a kerfuffle in Detroit on Thursday when in a fit of excitement, he announced that the economic commentator Larry Kudlow would be named chairman of Mr. Trump's White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Mr. Kudlow, while certainly versed in economics, is not an economist. He has an undergraduate degree in history. The council chairman has traditionally been pulled from the highest echelons of academia to advise the president, not to lobby or persuade.
Moreover, Mr. Kudlow is an ardent free trader and was openly critical of Mr. Trump's position on trade during the campaign, even as he enthusiastically backed the candidate.
The announcement would have also come as a surprise to Peter Navarro, a Harvard-trained professor of economics at the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. Professor Navarro is widely considered the front-runner for the post, and his views on trade are more in line with the president-elect's.
After the Democrats sent out their reactions, and the news media came alive, Mr. Moore sheepishly admitted that, while he is pulling for his friend Mr. Kudlow, the deal is not done.
"Larry is the obvious choice, because he has all the connections with the key players on Capitol Hill, and there's nobody that can articulate the free-market, conservative economic message better than Larry can," he said. But he admitted he had jumped the gun.
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