| | | | |  | | By Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza and Rachael Bade | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | WHAT JEFF ROE IS READING — JMart’s new column: “Glenn Youngkin Is the GOP’s Forgotten Man” HEADLINE OF THE DAY — “Trump challenges Biden to a cognitive test but misstates the name of doctor who tested him,” by the L.A. Times’ Will Weissert
|  New questions are emerging about Will Lewis. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File/AP Photo | GOOD WILL HUNTING — WILL LEWIS suddenly has a lot more explaining to do. Last night’s blockbuster story from NYT’s Justin Scheck and Jo Becker unveiled new details about the Washington Post CEO’s entanglement in Fleet Street hacking tactics and his payment of large sums of money to sources, a major violation of U.S. journalistic ethics. It landed in the Post newsroom with what one current WaPo reporter called “a collective ‘holy shit,’” and it is raising fresh alarms both inside the enterprise and across its sprawling alumni network — including those who have been giving Lewis the benefit of the doubt. “Total transparency is key,” said SALLY QUINN, a veteran Washington Post columnist who has generally been supportive of Lewis’ proposed changes to the newsroom. “And it's only fair to give Will a chance to speak for himself.” The Post declined to provide answers from Lewis for the Times story and they also didn’t respond to multiple requests from Playbook last night and this morning. What is clear is that Lewis’ effort to move past the chaos created in the immediate aftermath of his decision to replace Executive Editor SALLY BUZBEE with two of his close associates isn’t working amid the drip-drip of unsavory revelations from his work as a top London editor. If the fire raging at WaPo HQ had shown signs of dying down, this latest Times story seems to have slathered it with kerosene. “I have asked my friends and family to stop sending me links to stories about Will Lewis,” one top WaPo star texted us. “Every scoop is worse than the last. I can’t focus on my work when each headline heightens what’s beginning to feel like an existential crisis.” We’re told Lewis started with lots of runway and goodwill. He sent notes to reporters when there were good and great stories. But at this point, there’s no question that he has lost the majority if not all of the newsroom. “The last two weeks have seemed to unravel a lot of that good feeling around him for a variety of reasons,” one veteran reporter we spoke with this morning told us. Ousting Buzbee was one thing; “the reexamination of some of his past journalistic ethics is another.” The biggest crisis, at this point, is that there’s almost no good answer to what should happen with Lewis. If he stays, it’s possible, we’re told, that some of the newsroom’s top names will gnash their teeth and reevaluate their career options. “People are like, ‘Do we really want to work here anymore?’” one Post reporter told us. “People are freaked out. They, for the first time or in a long time, are considering exiting. I don’t think people want to be there if this is what it’s going to be like.” But if he goes, that also risks destabilizing the newsroom at a critical juncture in the middle of a presidential election year. Reporters and editors are not deluded enough to believe that things can stay the same considering the outlet’s losses in revenue and readership. But for many at the Post, it feels as though the paper is now caught between two bad options. The sense of despair has been fueled by Lewis’ handling of the crisis, reporters told us. At every turn, he has presented a cockiness and intransigence that give him carte blanche to not answer questions reporters have — or, at times, an air that this is all settled business and everyone needs to move on. “To anyone who listened closely to Will’s speech in the newsroom fall of 2023 and didn’t fall under his ‘Aren’t I dry-witted, self-deprecating and charming’ spell, none of this is a surprise,” said one former Post reporter who took a buyout in December. “If you’ve been following the hacking scandal at all, none of this is a surprise.” What is Lewis’ future at the Post? Ultimately, there’s only one person whose opinion matters: JEFF BEZOS, the Post’s owner and one of the wealthiest people in the world. And it’s unclear at the moment what his calculus is. Playbook’s multiple requests for comment from Bezos were not returned. “Bezos has been a very good owner of The Post up until this point,” a current Post reporter told us. “And now we have a sort of a moment … Can you really stick with this guy who is doing all of this? If Jeff is sticking with him, then, like, what can you do? You have to make your own decisions.” Good Sunday afternoon, and Happy Father’s Day! Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza.
| | | | A message from Comcast: Did you know that most of the data on your smartphone travels over WiFi, not cellular? Thanks to WiFi innovation by Comcast, our customers connect over a billion devices to our network each year. Unlicensed spectrum is key to a fast and secure WiFi experience at home and on the go. Comcast leads the way by developing cutting-edge WiFi gateways that maximize our multi-gig broadband network and spectrum made available by the FCC. Learn more. | | | POPPING OFF ON THE HILL — “Freedom Caucus member takes unprecedented step backing chair’s challenger,” by Olivia Beavers SUNDAY BEST … — Sen. TIM SCOTT (R-S.C.) on whether Congress should act to ban bump stocks after the Supreme Court’s decision, on ABC’s “This Week”: “Well, I’m strongly in support of the Second Amendment. … We’re going to focus on the priorities of the American people. And what the priorities of the American people are today is to focus on closing our southern border.” — Rep. JIM HIMES (D-Conn.) on terrorist threats in the wake of the arrests of eight Tajiks, on “Fox News Sunday”: “The fact that there are lots of people who are here on an undocumented basis is a threat, and the FBI director is right about that. … Underlying this, of course, is the conflict in Israel and Gaza, which has sort of activated radical Islamic terrorists. They more than ever before would like to undertake an attack in a spectacular way.” — North Dakota Gov. DOUG BURGUM on getting to know Trump, on “Fox News Sunday”: “I wish every American could see him the way KATHRYN and I have got to know him in the last six months, because this guy is tireless, he’s committed, he’s smart, he’s funny. He’s nothing like he’s portrayed in the press. … Absolutely I would do business with him.” — Rep. BYRON DONALDS (R-Fla.) on a Trump supporter’s threats against an FBI agent, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I don’t support those comments. I think those comments are out of bound. I don’t think we should be doing that in our country. We have to make sure that we respect everybody in our country. You have to be tolerant of all people even when you disagree. … But there is a frustration of the American people when it looks like the institutions and the pillars of our country are being eroded simply for political purposes.” TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
| | | | A message from Comcast: Unlicensed spectrum is key to a fast and secure WiFi experience at home and on the go. Comcast leads the way by developing cutting-edge WiFi gateways that maximize our multi-gig broadband network and spectrum made available by the FCC. Learn more. | | | | | WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY | | At the White House Biden and first lady JILL BIDEN will return to the White House from Santa Monica, California. VP KAMALA HARRIS returned to Washington from Switzerland early this morning.
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At a fundraiser yesterday, President Joe Biden lit into the conservative Supreme Court. | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images | 9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. ON THE TRAIL: Biden’s splashy Hollywood fundraiser yesterday raised more than $30 million, Elena Schneider scooped. That’s a big boost at a time when Trump has started to catch up to Biden’s fundraising. At the event, which featured big-name celebrities and moderator JIMMY KIMMEL in conversation with Biden and BARACK OBAMA, Biden lit into the conservative Supreme Court as “so far out of step” with America. And he warned that the stakes of the election were high for the court: If Trump wins, “he’s going to appoint two more [justices] flying flags upside down.” Obama slammed Trump for his criminal conviction. In Michigan, meanwhile, Trump veered between an adoring crowd at the Turning Point Action conference in Detroit and a more reserved reception at a Black church across town, Natalie Allison reports. At the latter, Trump’s intense attacks on immigrants elicited little excitement, but his mention of “radical left-wing gender ideology” got the crowd on their feet. Both events showed how Trump is trying to flip Michigan back by making inroads with different parts of his and Biden’s coalitions. He also slammed Biden’s climate policies and United Auto Workers President SHAWN FAIN, per the Detroit News’ Beth LeBlanc and Eleanor Whitaker. Related polling: USA Today has new surveys out this morning of Black voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania, Susan Page reports, finding deep skepticism of both major candidates — but with especially bad news for Biden. He is cratering with this crucial demographic, down 20 points or more from his 2020 performance. Trump has ticked up several points in each state (small, but enough to make a difference in a tight race), while ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. and CORNEL WEST are notable factors too. 2. 2025 DREAMING: “The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started,” by NYT’s Charlie Savage, Reid Epstein, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan: “Opponents of Donald J. Trump are drafting potential lawsuits in case he is elected in November and carries out mass deportations, as he has vowed. One group has hired a new auditor to withstand any attempt by a second Trump administration to unleash the Internal Revenue Service against them. Democratic-run state governments are even stockpiling abortion medication. … [T]he early timing, volume and scale of the planning underway to push back against a potential second Trump administration are without precedent.” 3. ABORTION FALLOUT, PART I: “The anti-abortion movement is making a big play to thwart citizen initiatives on reproductive rights,” by AP’s Christine Fernado: “The tactics include attempts to get signatures removed from initiative petitions, legislative pushes for competing ballot measures that could confuse voters and monthslong delays caused by lawsuits over ballot initiative language. Abortion rights advocates say many of the strategies build off ones tested last year in Ohio.” 4. ABORTION FALLOUT, PART II: As we approach the second anniversary of the end of Roe v. Wade, the Biden campaign is launching a big push to place abortion front and center in voters’ minds and draw a sharp contrast with Trump, NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor scooped. There will be more than 30 events across swing states “to mobilize volunteers and contact voters,” including surrogates like actress LISA ANN WALTER, while new ads will tell the stories of women affected by abortion bans.
| | | | A message from Comcast:   Unlicensed wireless spectrum is key to fast and secure WiFi. Learn more. | | | 5. ABOUT LAST NIGHT: Indiana Republicans tapped MICAH BECKWITH as their lieutenant governor pick yesterday, an upset victory for the far right over Trump- and MIKE BRAUN-endorsed state Rep. JULIE McGUIRE, Adam Wren reports from Indianapolis. The convention’s rebuke of the GOP establishment handed the victory to a pastor who claims that God told him the Jan. 6 insurrection was God’s doing. Beckwith, of course, supports Trump too, but he managed to outmaneuver national Republicans by building strong grassroots support. That’ll make for an awkward ticket with Braun, the senator in line to become governor. 6. GREEN SHOOTS: “In a Divided Nation, an Infrastructure Develops to Build Bridges,” by NYT’s Jonathan Weisman: “The nation’s poisonous divisions, exacerbated by politicians, cable news and social media, and collectively known as the outrage industrial complex, have been much lamented. Less noticed is the counterweight, a constellation of nonprofits like Kentucky RUX, devoted to bridging divides — urban and rural, Black and white, L.G.B.T.Q. and straight, left and right. Call it the kumbaya industrial complex. The problem: The starkest divide — Trump-branded conservatism versus the rising political left — may be the one where no one is interested in reconciliation.” 7. DEMOCRACY WATCH: Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot still can’t answer the simple question of who won the 2020 election — raising fears that chatbots could spread damaging misinformation about democracy, WaPo’s Caroline O’Donovan and Cat Zakrzewski reveal. ChatGPT and Siri are better, acknowledging the reality that Biden won. Alexa in particular has been struggling to provide accurate information for months, whereas Google and Microsoft intentionally designed their tools not to answer questions about U.S. elections. 8. TUNING IT OUT: “Many voters in swing-state North Carolina are disengaged. Party activists hope to fire them up,” by AP’s Makiya Seminera in Oxford: “In this rural county in one of the states expected to help decide the presidency, the nuts-and-bolts efforts of party activists to generate election enthusiasm are sometimes met with indifference and even disgust from people who could be positioned to play an outsized role in determining the nation’s course.” 9. PRIMARY COLORS: Rep. TOM COLE (R-Okla.) isn’t expected to lose his primary Tuesday to challenger PAUL BONDAR. But the intense race, pitting an anti-spending champion against the House Appropriations chair, amounts to “the stiffest threat to his career yet” and one of the costliest primaries anywhere in the nation, NYT’s Catie Edmondson previews. As she notes, the challenge itself shows how much the GOP has changed: Cole’s plum position steering federal funding back home to Oklahoma would once have been political kevlar. But the right wing sees him as an embodiment of Washington’s high-spending problem.
| | | | SUBSCRIBE TO GLOBAL PLAYBOOK: Don’t miss out on POLITICO’s Global Playbook, our newsletter taking you inside pivotal discussions at the most influential gatherings in the world. Suzanne Lynch delivers the world's elite and influential moments directly to you. Stay in the global loop. SUBSCRIBE NOW. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | Xi Jinping said last year that he thought the U.S. was trying to get China to attack Taiwan. Joe Biden has Olaf Scholz’s confidence. Eve Levenson is the Biden campaign’s youth whisperer. Bob Bauer is having second thoughts about partisan fighting. Jill Biden said Hunter Biden’s trial was “tough” for the whole family. TRANSITION — Hadar Harris is now managing director of PEN America’s Washington office. She previously was executive director of the Student Press Law Center. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Playbook’s own Zack Stanton … Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) … Don McGahn … Michael Isikoff … Phil Singer of Marathon Strategies … Liz Bourgeois … NPR’s Steve Inskeep … POLITICO’s Madison Fernandez, Sophie Gardner and Cristina Gallotto … PBS NewsHour’s Rachel Wellford … Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor … Matt Gruda … Indira Lakshmanan … Matthew Bartlett … Mark Tapscott … Frank Sánchez of CNS Global Advisors … Colin Diersing … James Kim of the American Cleaning Institute … Rocky Deal … former Rep. Robert Hurt (R-Va.) … Reid Wilson … Angela Kelley … Phil Cox of GP3 Partners and P2 Public Affairs … Jared Kamrass of Technicolor Political … Jim Kim of the American Cleaning Institute … Alex Nongard … Michael Quibuyen … Ryan Yeager Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath. Correction: Friday’s Playbook incorrectly referred to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) role with the Joe Biden campaign. He is one of three Black co-chairs.
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