News: Biden-Trump debate week begins with spin

Monday, June 24, 2024

Biden-Trump debate week begins with spin

Jun 24, 2024

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THE CATCH-UP

BIDEN CONDEMNS SYNAGOGUE VIOLENCE — President JOE BIDEN this morning forcefully condemned violent clashes between pro-Palestine demonstrators and pro-Israel counterprotesters that occurred outside a Los Angeles synagogue on Sunday, saying he was “appalled” by the incident.

“Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American,” Biden wrote in a post on X. “Americans have a right to peaceful protest. But blocking access to a house of worship — and engaging in violence — is never acceptable.” More from Tyler Katzenberger

The (exceedingly) early debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is just days away. | AP Photo

UP FOR DEBATE — Ahead of Thursday’s (exceedingly early) presidential debate, Biden and DONALD TRUMP are prepping for the matchup as their aides and advisers try to set expectations (low for their candidate; high for the other guy) and otherwise frame the meta debate about the debate.

What Team Biden wants: “Biden’s aides hope to present a vigorous president — in command of the issues, able to take Trump on directly and explain to the American people his own accomplishments in office,” write WaPo’s Michael Scherer and Marianne LeVine.
What Team Trump wants: “Trump’s advisers have been coaching their candidate to focus on the issue advantages in the polls, reaffirming the image as a tough businessman ready to disrupt Washington that got him elected in 2016,” Scherer and Levine continue.

The Trump camp has a two-step strategy for the pre-debate “expectations game”:

Step one: Recalibrate expectations for Biden.

Just one problem with that: “Trump has been the one relentlessly pounding down expectations for his opponent this time, declaring he was ready to debate Biden ‘any time, any place’ and couldn’t ‘wait to wipe the floor with him,’” writes the Boston Globe’s Jim Puzzanghera.

That could come back to bite him. “Republicans set similar low expectations for Biden in his State of the Union address this year, and he exceeded them.”

On the other hand, the first debate of any cycle has a tendency to trip up the incumbent president, as CNN’s Kevin Liptak and Jeff Zeleny write: “Unaccustomed to such direct and hostile confrontation after the insulated deference of the Oval Office and Air Force One, presidents are rarely forced to square off in public. In the past, that has translated into first debate performances that seem flat-footed, meandering — or, in the case of [BARACK] OBAMA, contemptuous of the entire exercise.”

Step two: Lower expectations for Trump by accusing CNN, the network hosting the debate, of bias — which, let’s be real, is a way of trying to lay blame at the moderators’ feet if Trump doesn’t perform well. (If we win, it’s an upset; if we lose, the game was rigged.)

That’s precisely what we saw this morning, when Trump campaign spox KAROLINE LEAVITT got into a heated exchange with CNN’s KASIE HUNT after baselessly alleging that debate moderators DANA BASH and JAKE TAPPER are “biased,” and saying that Trump is “knowingly going into a hostile environment.”

A readout of part of the exchange, via Isabella Ramírez:

Leavitt: “Well first of all, it takes someone five minutes to Google ‘Jake Tapper, Donald Trump’ to see that Jake Tapper has —”

Hunt: “Ma’am, we’re going to stop this interview if you’re going to keep attacking my colleagues. … I would like to talk about Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who you work for. If you’re here to speak on his behalf, I will have this conversation.”

Leavitt: “I am stating facts that your colleagues have stated in the past. Now —”

At that, Hunt cut off the interview as CNN muted Leavitt’s microphone.

Related read: “In This Debate, CNN Is the Decider,” by NYT’s Michael Grynbaum: “Much of the credit — or the blame — for what transpires on tens of millions of screens on Thursday will land at CNN’s feet. Leaders at the channel, which has endured a run of poor ratings and viewer apathy, say they don’t mind the pressure.”

Good Monday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at gross@politico.com.

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8 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Visitors pose for photographs outside the Supreme Court on June 18.

The Supreme Court said today it will hear a case on gender-affirming care for trans youth. | Jose Luis Magana/AP

1. SCOTUS WATCH: The Supreme Court this morning entered the national debate surrounding gender-affirming care for transgender youth, announcing that it has deciding to take up a case reviewing the constitutionality of a Tennessee law that bans hormone therapy and puberty blockers for transgender minors, Kierra Frazier and Josh Gerstein write.

The case: “The court’s decision will affect a wave of other state laws passed in recent years that restrict gender-affirming care for minors. … Families and a doctor, with the support of the Biden administration, challenged the Tennessee law. They argued that the law violates the 14th Amendment by discriminating on the basis of sex.”

The timing: “The justices will likely hear the case in the fall, close to the November presidential election.”

Related read: “In Abortion Cases, Legions of ‘Friends’ Seek to Persuade Supreme Court,” by NYT’s Adam Liptak: “A new study analyzed 50 years of friend-of-the-court briefs and found that abortion opponents were more relentless than their adversaries, with some reflected in the justices’ opinions.”

2. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: Israeli PM BENJAMIN NETANYAHU walked back his comments from Sunday, when he appeared to reject the broad cease-fire/hostage release deal that Biden had laid out in a major speech. “We are committed to the Israeli proposal for a hostage deal that President Biden welcomed, our position has not changed,” Netanyahu said today, per Axios’ Barak Ravid.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister YOAV GALLANT is in D.C. today, where he is scheduled to meet with Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN and CIA Director WILLIAM BURNS, coming a day after Netanyahu “said that the intensive phase of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip was ‘about to end,’” NYT’s Mike Ives reports. Gallant is also scheduled to meet with Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN tomorrow and with national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN on Wednesday.

3. DOCU-DRAMA: A previously unreported visit that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago compound was allegedly “kept quiet” by aides “just weeks before FBI agents searched the property for classified materials in his possession raised suspicions among special counsel Jack Smith's team as a potential additional effort to obstruct the government's classified documents investigation,” ABC’s Katherine Faulders reports.

The visit by Trump “which allegedly took place July 10-12 in the summer of 2022, was raised in several interviews with witnesses, sources familiar with the matter said, as investigators sought to determine whether it was part of Trump's broader alleged effort to withhold the documents after receiving a subpoena demanding their return. At least one witness who worked closely with the former president recalled being told at the time of the trip that Trump was there ‘checking on the boxes,’ according to sources familiar with what the witness told investigators.”

Related reads: “Prosecutors in classified files case to urge judge to restrict Trump from inflammatory comments about FBI,” by AP’s Eric Tucker and Adriana Gomez Licon … “As Trump’s Documents Case Crawls Along, Questions About Judge Abound,” by WSJ’s C. Ryan Barber: “Trial in Florida is nowhere in sight as Judge AILEEN CANNON gives the former president’s legal team chances to argue against prosecution.”

4. ABORTION ON THE BALLOT: “Abortion Debate Shifts as Election Nears: ‘Now It’s About Pregnancy,’” by NYT’s Kate Zernike: “The public conversation about abortion has grown into one about the complexities of pregnancy and reproduction, as the consequences of bans have played out in the news. The question is no longer just whether you can get an abortion, but also, Can you get one if pregnancy complications put you in septic shock? Can you find an obstetrician when so many are leaving states with bans? If you miscarry, will the hospital send you home to bleed? Can you and your partner do in vitro fertilization?

Interesting nugget: “That shift helps explain why a record percentage of Americans are now declaring themselves single-issue voters on abortion rights — especially among Black voters, Democrats, women and those ages 18 to 29.”

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5. DEBT COLLECTION: “The national debt is ballooning. The next president probably won’t stop it,” by WaPo’s Jacob Bogage: “Trump is pledging to extend the enormous package of tax cuts adopted on his watch and has discussed further reducing taxes for corporations. Biden, meanwhile, also wants to extend the Trump tax cuts for families earning less than $400,000 a year, while calling for nearly $1 trillion in fresh spending over the next decade on social programs — though Biden vows to cover those costs by raising taxes on the rich.

“Neither candidate has made debt reduction a priority while in the White House, according to research released Monday by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The debt grew by $8.4 trillion during Trump’s first term, while Biden so far has added $4.3 trillion, according to the group.”

6. COMEBACK CRACKDOWN: As Republicans prepare for a potential Trump return to the White House, the conservative American Accountability Foundation is “digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security,” AP’s Lisa Mascaro reports. “In a move that alarms some, they’re preparing to publish the findings online. With a $100,000 grant from the influential Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda — and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings.”

7. TEMPERANCE 2.0: “Do Americans Drink Too Much? Alcohol Is Driving a Debate in Washington,” by WSJ’s Kristina Peterson and Julie Wernau: “For the first time, the guidance on alcohol consumption is being considered separately from the dietary guidelines. That has set off a struggle to set the new rules of the game. Government agencies, the alcohol industry and its allies on Capitol Hill have clashed over how much information about the process should be released and who should shape the final recommendations.”

8. WOWZA: “Law enforcement is spying on thousands of Americans’ mail, records show,” by WaPo’s Drew Harwell: “The U.S. Postal Service has shared information from thousands of Americans’ letters and packages with law enforcement every year for the past decade, conveying the names, addresses and other details from the outside of boxes and envelopes without requiring a court order. Postal inspectors say they fulfill such requests only when mail monitoring can help find a fugitive or investigate a crime. But a decade’s worth of records, provided exclusively to The Washington Post in response to a congressional probe, show Postal Service officials have received more than 60,000 requests from federal agents and police officers since 2015, and that they rarely say no.”

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Mitch Landrieu showed off his pipes at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at a summer kick-off party on Saturday night co-hosted by Shadi Hamid and Amirah Sequiera at Shadi’s home: Zolan Kanno-Youngs, John Hudson, Adam Green, Rachel Rizzo, JP Freire, Catherine Valentine, Usha Sahay and Josh Altman, Vera Bergengruen, Tom Rogan, Jamie Kirchick, Charlotte Clymer, Christina Sevilla and Steve Rochlin, Katherine Doyle, Mustafa Akyol and Riada Akyol, Harrison Mann, Jason Willick, Damir Marusic, Elizabeth Hagedorn, Micah Meadowcroft, Raquel Krahenbuhl, Ani Chkhikvadze, David Segal, Phil Linder, Brett Forrest and Hamid Bendaas.

TRANSITIONS — David Urban, John Ullyot, Justin Romeo and Brett Katz are joining Torridon Law. Urban will be of counsel and previously was president of American Continental Group and is an Arlen Specter alum. Ullyot will be a senior adviser for the strategic consulting group and previously was managing partner at Brighton Strategy Group and is a Trump White House alum. Romeo will be a partner and previously was chief counsel for oversight and investigations for Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Lindsey Graham. Katz will be a partner and previously was a partner at Ellis George.

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