In a sometimes contentious news conference, Donald Trump outlined plans to let his sons manage his businesses rather than divesting or using a blind trust (“meaningless,” said the top U.S. ethics officer), denounced reports of a Russian dossier on him (and yelled at CNN), promised again that Mexico would pay for a border wall (nope, said Mexico again) and attacked high drug prices (yipes, said pharma investors). Here’s the transcript and some fact-checking. — [Glenn Thrush / New York Times]
Recode Daily: Donald Trump meets the press
In his news conference, the president-elect also talked about Russia, the border wall and high drug prices.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Fascinating reading: Maureen Dowd’s interview with Peter Thiel, in which the billionaire contrarian talks about his support of Trump and the reaction in Silicon Valley and the gay community, life-extension science, the similarities between Trump and Elon Musk, the Hulk Hogan-Gawker lawsuit and more. They also played a few rounds of Confirm or Deny. — [Maureen Dowd / New York Times]
Alphabet’s moonshot division, X, has given up on Project Titan, its effort to provide internet access via drones. Team members have been reassigned to Project Loon, which uses balloons for broadband access, and Project Wing, a drone delivery initiative. — [Brian Fung / Washington Post]
Struggling Macy’s would like to blame at least part of its woes on “changing customer behavior” (read: Amazon and online shopping in general), but its predicament is the result of a decade of complacency. — [Jason Del Rey / Recode]
Facebook, often criticized for the way it handles news, announced the Facebook Journalism Project, in which it will collaborate with news organizations on new formats, offer more support for local news and provide new tools to publishers. — [Peter Kafka / Recode]
Instagram has some new ad inventory to sell — in between Stories, the little montages assembled from user photos and videos. The company said 150 million people use Stories every day, up 50 percent since October. — [Kurt Wagner / Recode]
On the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka, Fox digital ad exec Joe Marchese says he’s fine with people using ad blockers because it sends a strong signal to publishers that online advertising needs to change. — [Eric Johnson / Recode]
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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