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Despite the recent ouster of its president, the Heritage Foundations interim leadership insists the conservative think tank will continue to be a power player in Washington as well as President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpPence at Cinco de Mayo party: Trump has made Latinos 'a priority' Alphabet's Eric Schmidt: H1-B visa cap is 'stupid' Lewandowski to leave lobbying firm: report MORE's favorite think tank."

Interim Heritage President Ed Feulner made the comments at an internal meeting this week.

Feulners spoke to about 300 Heritage staffers at a time when questions are swirling about the future of the nonprofit and the resignation of Heritage president and former GOP Sen. Jim DeMint.

On Tuesday, the same dayDeMint resignedamid a flurry of rumors, Feulner reportedly told staff that Heritage would remain "the leading ideas factory in Washington," according toa Thursday Washington Examiner report.

"We were Ronald Reagan's favorite think tank," said Feulner, who was also the president from 1977 to 2013. And today we are, and will continue to be, Donald Trump's favorite think tank."

Feulner appeared to address concerns that Heritage might take a step back from politics now that DeMint is out of leadership, saying Heritage will continue to work with Trump to make things better" and occasionally "point out to him maybe little errors in some of his policies.

He also emphasized that he will be working closely with Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham, who leads the organizations lobbying branch. Needham will remain "at my side reminding [Ryan] that we are who we are and what it is that we stand for, Feulner reportedly said.

Many expressed surprise when DeMint, a former South Carolina senator, was ousted after developing a close relationship with the president and the White House.

Since DeMint's exit, Feulner indicated he has been shoring up relationships with the House GOP. He reportedly said he had "a very good conversation" with House Speaker Paul RyanPaul RyanTrump: GOP healthcare bill 'could change a little bit' Amash: 'A lot of exaggeration' from both sides on health bill GOP looks to heal from healthcare divisions MORE (R-Wis.) early in the week and claimed the Speaker reaffirmed his commitment to jointly working on conservative policy, according to the Examiner. The two men reportedly discussed healthcare policy ahead of the Houses successful vote on Thursday to replace ObamaCare.

"So I think you could say it was a pretty friendly meeting with Paul Ryan last night," Feulner said. He reminded me of where we were and how far we've come with him and how we can work closely together."

"He wants to work with us. He wants to hear what we have to say and I think we can have a very good and positive relationship," Feulner continued, accordingly the recording obtained by the Examiner.

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Post-DeMint Heritage 'Donald Trump's favorite think tank' says interim president - The Hill

At an annual gathering of the world's most powerful thinkers and trendsetters in Beverly Hills this week, business leaders and major investors said they have gotten used to dismissing most things that President Donald Trump says or tweets .

On panels at the Milken Institute Global Conference, CEOs and billionaires were generally enthusiastic about Trump's mission to reform health care, cut taxes, reduce regulations, and stimulate the economy. Panelists including JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin offered positive remarks about the president and urged attendees to give him more time to accomplish such sizeable goals.

But in interviews on the sidelines, the Wall Street set was far more dubious that Trump can get anything done.

"I don't take Trump seriously," said a senior executive at one of the country's six largest banks. "I'm listening less and less."

Like most who wanted to share their more candid views privately, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the president, his employer or business associates. But his comments were echoed by at least a dozen institutional investors and bank executives who spoke to Reuters.

While they remain hopeful Trump will be able to get reforms through Congress , the lack of progress combined with conflicting messages coming out of the administration make it hard to put faith in anything, they said.

Several cited comments on Monday from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who joked on a panel that bank investors should thank him for boosting share prices. Hours later, Bloomberg News published an interview with Trump, in which said he was considering breaking up the country's biggest banks an idea that is an anathema to shareholders of lenders like JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp or Citigroup Inc.

However, few people at the event in the Beverly Hilton Hotel appeared to take the comment seriously.

"Until it's signed into law, you can't bank on it," said Aaron Cutler, a regulatory lawyer at Hogan Lovells who lobbies Congress on behalf of banks and hedge funds and was milling about on a sunny terrace. He said his clients are not yet acting on anything the administration says.

A report last week by PwC's financial services regulatory practice echoed that view. Despite Trump's talk of quick action, PwC predicts his executive orders will "yield few results," that plans to repeal a package of financial regulations called Dodd-Frank will not happen, and that any change in Washington will be slow due to a lack of consensus, a slothy appointments process and upcoming midterm elections.

A spokeswoman for Trump did not return a request for comment for this article by publication time.

Even as Wall Street honchos privately disregard the administration's mixed messages, they were rubbing shoulders with top White House officials around the event and afterwards at swanky parties. Among the guests at one evening soire was a cheetah from the San Diego Zoo.

In addition to Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were all featured speakers at the Milken conference. Each has a background in business or finance, something other conference-goers found encouraging.

Ultimately, some said, they have to consider whether Trump is making a statement to win political points or because he truly wants to accomplish a goal. If the former, his remarks can be more easily dismissed, they said. The head of a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund firm said the situation has become "a Rorschach test" where people celebrate or shrug off Trump's comments depending on what they want to see.

Sir Michael Hintze, founder of $12.5 billion investment firm CQS, said people are being too hard on the president. Trump may have a different style because he is not a politician by nature, but has his heart in the right place, Hintze said.

"I'm pretty constructive about the whole thing," he said. "Everyone was there to hate him, (but) Trump's a decent man."

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Why Wall Street Has Stopped Listening to Donald Trump - Fortune

Forbes

In Response To President Donald Trump, Silicon Valley Creates 'Tech Pledge' Forbes A small working group of entrepreneurs with deep Silicon Valley roots is about to ask every major tech company a simple question: Are you with us? "The Tech Pledge," as it's called now, is a list of core values that the group hopes will elicit a 'Yes ... and more »

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In Response To President Donald Trump, Silicon Valley Creates 'Tech Pledge' - Forbes

"The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate which are not there! We ... either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good 'shutdown' in September to fix mess!" Trump said Tuesday in two consecutive tweets.

Congressional leaders announced Sunday that they'd reached a deal to avert a government shutdown until September. The deal did not include several Trump campaign promises -- including money for a border wall -- in part because GOP leaders needed Democratic votes to pass the deal in the Senate.

Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney on Tuesday took to the White House briefing room to slam Democrats' claims of victory in the budget deal, arguing that Trump secured a large increase in defense spending and pushed border wall funding to its highest level in a decade.

Mulvaney also responded to Trump's tweet Tuesday morning about a potential September shutdown.

"A shutdown is not a goal," Mulvaney said, but rather a "negotiating tool to an extent."

He added a shutdown would show American voters that Washington "really was as broken as they thought it was when they voted for (Trump) for president."

The President's suggestion that we "change the rules now to 51%" is a variation of the so-called "nuclear option" that Republicans deployed during the Gorsuch Supreme Court fight -- when they lowered the number of votes needed to break a filibuster of a judicial nominee. In this case, Trump is proposing a rule change that would also lower the number of votes needed to break a legislative filibuster, something Republicans left untouched when they changed Senate rules for Gorsuch.

While Republicans do have majorities in both the House and Senate, their 52-seat Senate majority is too thin to break a filibuster unless eight Democrats side with the GOP.

A CNN/ORC poll from March found that 72% of Americans want to see Trump to reach bipartisan compromises rather than try to pass laws he thinks are right for the country, even if they aren't supported by Democrats. That includes a majority of Republicans (57%) who said Trump ought to be compromising with Democrats.

And that cuts both ways -- in the same poll, 69% said Democrats ought to be trying to compromise with Trump and not just resist the president's agenda.

CNN's Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

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Donald Trump: Our country needs a good 'shutdown,' suggests Senate rule change - CNN

New York Times

The 'Surreal Disarray' of Donald Trump New York Times Donald Trump's vision of American history, in this case his strange analysis of Andrew Jackson's settling the problem of the Civil War, strikes me as the perfect window into his political worldview. He puts outsize individuals at the center (Andrew ... What's up with Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson?PolitiFact Conan O'Brien Imagines a Donald Trump-Produced Civil War DocumentaryVanity Fair Maybe Donald Trump Can't Read?The Root CNN -Salon -USA TODAY -Washington Examiner all 386 news articles »

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The 'Surreal Disarray' of Donald Trump - New York Times