| | | | |  | | By Garrett Ross | | Presented by |  | | | |  | THE CATCH-UP | | | BUNKER TO BUNKER — It appears DONALD TRUMP will have more time to hit the campaign trail in the final weeks of the election. Ever since the apparent assassination attempt against him in Florida, Trump has not been on a golf course and won’t at least until the election is over, NBC’s Dasha Burns, Julia Ainsley and Dareh Gregorian report. “Trump was told that federal agents could not ensure his safety to a degree with which they were comfortable while he is golfing.” And amid threats that include Iran plotting against Trump, his campaign has “requested military aircraft for Trump to fly in during the final weeks of the campaign, expanded flight restrictions over his residences and rallies, ballistic glass pre-positioned in seven battleground states for the campaign’s use and an array of military vehicles to transport” him, WaPo’s Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf report. FOR YOUR RADAR — We are 24 days away from Election Day, and top Republican officials still won’t deliver a firm answer on whether Trump lost the 2020 Election. In a conversation for NYT’s “The Interview” podcast posting tomorrow, Sen. JD VANCE (R-Ohio) “repeatedly refused to acknowledge former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat and went to even greater lengths to avoid doing so than he did during the vice-presidential debate earlier this month,” NYT’s Michael Bender writes.
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Donald Trump and VP Kamala Harris are locked in a tight race with just weeks to go before Election Day. | Alex Brandon/AP | DOWN THE STRETCH THEY COME — As we enter the final sprint to Election Day, there’s really no other way to put it: The race is a toss-up, a coin flip, too close to call — however you want to say it, that’s the reality that poll after poll is showing, including a fresh one from the Wall Street Journal this morning that shows Harris narrowly leading in some states where she’s been trailing in poll averages, and Trump leading in some states where he’s been trailing:
- Arizona: Harris 47%, Trump 45%
- Georgia: Harris 46%, Trump 45%
- Michigan: Harris 47%, Trump 45%
- North Carolina: Trump 46%, Harris 45%
- Nevada: Trump 47%, Harris 42%
- Pennsylvania: Trump 46%, Harris 45%
- Wisconsin: Harris 46%, Trump 45%
The zoom-out: “Across the full set of 4,200 swing-state voters, Trump gets 46% support and Harris draws 45%. The survey finds that the race in every state — and therefore the presidential election — is too close to call. If Harris wins the states where she leads in the poll, she would win a narrow majority in the Electoral College,” Aaron Zitner writes. On the issues: There is some bruising data for the Harris campaign when you drill into the top issues animating voters, which you’re sure to hear nonstop over the next few weeks. “By 10 percentage points, more say Trump than Harris would be better at handling the economy—the issue that voters cite as most important to their choice of candidate. By 16 points, voters favor Trump for handling immigration and border security, the No. 2 issue of concern.” See the full poll Mood music: “Trump is pushing falsehoods. Some Republicans are worried about the fallout,” by Adam Wren DEMOGRAPHIC DIVE — As the Harris campaign continues trying to shore up her support among Black men, Harris is booked for a special show with CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD on Tuesday. The counterpoint: “Trump has been courting young Black men, but data suggests it won’t work,” by the Philly Inquirer’s Layla Jones The other side of things: Trump will head to Cumming, Georgia, for a town hall with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner with an all-female audience focused on women’s issues that will be taped on Tuesday but aired on Wednesday at 11 a.m. Meanwhile, Harris also knows she can’t take her support among Jewish voters for granted, New York Rep. DAN GOLDMAN, a campaign surrogate, told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod. Happy Friday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Programming note: Playbook PM will be off on Monday for Indigenous Peoples Day. Playbook will still publish in the morning and we’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday afternoon. Drop me a line at gross@politico.com.
| | | | A message from United for Democracy: Banning IVF, abortion, and many types of contraception. Creating a national pregnancy registry. Criminalizing porn. Making you pay more for healthcare and housing. Sound like a nightmare? No - it's Project 2025. And if Trump is elected, it will be the MAGA movement's dream that the corrupt Supreme Court justices made come true. But we can vote to stop them – learn more at Project2025.wtf. | | | | | 7 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW | | |  Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) has made nice with Trump as he angles to take over as Senate Republican leader. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | 1. THE POST-ELECTION ELECTION: A trio of Senate Republicans are running to succeed longtime leader MITCH McCONNELL, and it’s likely that whoever comes out on top will need the backing — or absence of vitriol, at least — from Trump. That’s why Sen. JOHN THUNE (R-S.D.), one of the hopefuls, went down to Mar-a-Lago with his wife for a meeting with the former president to cut the tension between the two, WSJ’s Kristina Peterson and Lindsay Wise report. As Thune tells it, mission accomplished: “I think we have an understanding, and it’s professional,” Thune told WSJ in a recent interview. “We both know we have a job to do.” From Trump’s perspective, the “former president believes the tall, chiseled Thune would ‘look the part,’ and Thune’s outreach efforts have registered as respectful to Trump.” FWIW: Sen. JOHN CORNYN (R-Texas), who is also running, has also been to Mar-a-Lago and met with Trump and his transition team. “I feel like it’s going pretty well,” Cornyn said of the race. Related read: “Conservatives look for more power in possible Senate GOP majority,” by The Hill’s Alexander Bolton 2. HURRICANE LATEST: The Small Business Administration is “set to run out of funding for hurricane victims within days” and “could be forced to stop offering new disaster assistance,” Administrator ISABEL GUZMAN wrote in a letter sent to Congress yesterday, WaPo’s Jacob Bogage reports. “SBA issues loans worth as much as $100,000 for renters, $500,000 for homeowners and $2 million for business owners. The agency has roughly $50 million left in disaster loan authority, but officials expect to run out in the next several days due to escalating demand.” The electoral effects are still being considered as North Carolina prepares for voting in the coming weeks, WSJ’s Alyssa Lukpat writes: “County election directors need to find a way to communicate any changes to voters who don’t have internet or cell service. … Some voting sites in Henderson County, just south of the hard-hit Asheville, can’t be reached because of sinkholes or washed-out bridges. Other locations are being used as shelters or distribution sites for food and water. … Trucks carrying voting machines will need enough space to maneuver around compromised roads.” Related read: “How do you run an election after a hurricane? New Jersey’s secretary of state during Sandy has some pointers,” by Madison Fernandez 3. SWAMP READ: Despite his vow to “drain the swamp” while mounting his first presidential campaign, “advocates for corporate interests, including companies based in China and other foreign countries denounced by Trump, now sit at virtually every level of his campaign,” WaPo’s Isaac Stanley-Becker and Josh Dawsey report. “Lobbyists are represented among high-level staff, informal advisers and party faithful who planned the summer convention in Milwaukee, as people with access to Trump or insight into his at-times erratic decision-making turn that knowledge into moneymaking opportunities.” Meanwhile, the call to “drain the swamp” has mostly fallen away. “A Washington Post analysis found that Trump has used the metaphor just 59 times on Truth Social, his social media site, in the past two years — fewer times than he wrote about it on Twitter in October 2016 alone.”
| | | | A message from United for Democracy: Project 2025 is a policy blueprint created by the far-right Heritage Foundation meant to gut America’s system of checks and balances. Their goal? Take control of the government… and our lives.
If MAGA extremists win this fall, they will pursue Project 2025 policies like banning IVF and setting up a national abortion and pregnancy registry to force states to report abortion data. While raising taxes on middle-class Americans, they’ll also remove many environmental protections so companies can pollute our air, soil, and water with known cancer-causing toxic chemicals.
You think the Courts will save us?! LOL. The six MAGA Supreme Court Justices are already implementing some of Project 2025’s worst ideas.
In fact, they already deemed a president immune from all criminal acts they deem “official,” and stripped women of their reproductive freedom.
Learn more at Project2025.wtf, before it’s too late.
Paid for by United for Democracy. | | | 4. MUSK READ: ELON MUSK going all-in to boost Trump’s reelection campaign is well-documented by this point. But how the polarizing billionaire tech mogul made his way to Trump’s camp captures a remarkable shift in the contours of the campaign that could prove decisive if Musk’s bet pays out. NYT’s Teddy Schleifer, Maggie Haberman, Ryan Mac and Jonathan Swan have a rollicking read on the journey Musk has been on to arrive at the nerve center of Trump’s operation. “As early as February, Mr. Musk was speaking apocalyptically, in private, about what he considered the crucial need to defeat President Biden. But even as he was meeting with advisers in Austin, Texas, in April to plot his super PAC, Mr. Musk sounded as if he considered Mr. Trump merely the lesser of two evils. He told friends in the spring that he wasn’t sure he even wanted to explicitly endorse Mr. Trump.” Fast forward to now, and Musk is “obsessive, almost manic,” about why Trump has to win. 5. CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’: Trump is headlining Coachella this weekend, dropping in to the Golden State, which has no influence for his electoral map math and visiting an area of the state with very few donors worth tapping. So why? “Of the current six competitive House races in the state, Trump is visiting the only one that he won four years ago,” Lara Korte writes. Further to the point, the district is home of GOP Rep. KEN CALVERT. In 2022, Calvert won by a razor-thin margin and finds himself in another tight race this cycle (as we nodded to in Playbook this morning) in which he will need to turn out every possible Trump voter to fend off Democratic challenger WILL ROLLINS. 6. LIFE IN SPRINGFIELD: It’s been nearly a month since the lies about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, entered the political bloodstream. While some of the national attention has faded, those in the community are still feeling the impacts every day. Many immigrants “are still shaken, reordering their daily routines and reconsidering whether to stay where they feel unwanted and unsafe,” NYT’s Miriam Jordan reports. “In the streets and stores, strangers have hurled insults at Haitians. The tires on their cars have been slashed overnight. Some shoppers have meowed at Haitians in supermarket aisles, according to Haitians, community leaders and immigrant advocates.” Related read: NYT’s Linda Qiu tracks how a misleading claim about migrant children went from a Fox News interview to a key talking point in Trump’s immigration rhetoric. 7. WILD STORY: “A Democratic Boss Is in Prison. He Still Has 2 Public School Jobs,” by NYT’s Tracey Tully: “There is no possibility that the district was unaware [Hillside Dem Party Chair ANTHONY] SALTERS had admitted to willfully failing to file taxes; his criminal defense lawyer, RAYMOND HAMLIN, is also the school board’s lawyer. Even in a state known for political patronage and corruption, the post-plea appointments to two taxpayer-funded jobs — and Mr. Salter’s continuing role as Hillside’s Democratic leader despite being in prison — are striking. And at a moment when New Jersey politics are at a crossroads, they highlight the challenge facing those seeking to upend the old ways of wielding power.”
| | PLAYBOOKERS | | Jon Tester is openly courting Donald Trump voters. Colin Allred is responding to a flurry of anti-transgender ads. Mickey Edwards is voting for Kamala Harris. Bill de Blasio doesn’t think the charges against Eric Adams are very strong. Joe Biden confessed to Boris Johnson that his family is from England not Ireland, according to BoJo. OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at the Hurricane Helene Relief Reception hosted by The Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida state societies of D.C. and the Tennessee Business Forum at Mission Navy Yard yesterday evening, which raised $622,522: Jeanne Wolak, Bob Russell, Stoney Burke, Gloria Dittus, Gene Rackley, Joby Young, Baker Elmore, Eric Gray, Maggie Newton, Carey Turner, Brett Layson, Heath Wheat and Mary Dee Beal. — SPOTTED at the Porterfield, Fettig and Sears Annual Golf Tournament yesterday, where Stephen Newton hit the first hole-in-one of the tournament’s history: Leslie Sack, Ernie Jolly, Carol Danko, Wayne Cimons, Tanner Daniels, Abby Gunderson-Schwarz, Freddy Mitchell, Vaun Cleveland, Sarah Mamula and Annie Webb. WHITE HOUSE ARRIVAL LOUNGE — Philip Murphy is now assistant director for spectrum and telecom policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He most recently was senior adviser at National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the Commerce Department. TRANSITION — Carlos Vivaldi Lanauze is now special adviser for racial equity at the Treasury Department. He most recently was a special assistant to the Education Department. 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. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our politics and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
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