POLITICO Playbook Daily Briefing - POLITICO

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Aug. 16, 2022: Liz Cheney's day of reckoning Aug 16, 2022

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When it comes to dealing with Donald Trump, plenty of Republicans have chosen sycophancy — backing him no matter what. Others pick their spots, delivering an occasional critique alongside heapings of praise. Others just keep their heads down and hope for the best. And then there’s Liz Cheney.

A three-term congresswoman from the least populous state in the union, Cheney walked into Congress the same month that Trump walked into the Oval Office. During his presidency, she voted with Trump more than 90% of the time.

Now she’s the Republican face of the anti-Trump movement, a position she has cemented as the vice chair of the Jan. 6 select committee, and it will likely cost Cheney her political career — at least for now.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Aug. 15, 2022: Inside the White House’s plan to sell itself Aug 15, 2022

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President Joe Biden and his entire administration are readying for a roadshow with a simple message: We did what we said we would do.

The White House, looking to capitalize on his string of policy and political wins, is launching a travel and media blitz over the next few weeks as it looks to beat the historical midterm odds in less than three months.

The details of the victory lap were outlined in a White House memo from deputy chief of staff Jen O'Malley Dillon and senior adviser Anita Dunn to chief of staff Ron Klain, exclusively obtained by Playbook.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Aug. 12, 2022: Clock ticks down on Mar-a-Lago warrant reveal Aug 12, 2022

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Donald Trump will not oppose the Justice Department’s motion to unseal the search warrant approved by a federal court in West Palm Beach on August 5 and a partially redacted property receipt listing the items seized during the FBI search. (The redactions, according to the government, “remove the names of law enforcement personnel who executed the search,” which seems to indicate that they do not remove any information about the items seized.)

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the government’s filing Thursday afternoon at an unusual two-minute briefing at the Department of Justice.

His reason for unsealing the documents? “The department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former president’s public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances, and the substantial public interest in this matter.”

It seems likely that Garland would not have asked the court to make the warrant and property receipt public if Trump had not gone nuclear with his accusations that the attorney general and FBI had weaponized law enforcement against him.

Garland, as many observers put it, called Trump’s bluff.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Aug. 11, 2022: 'Informant' reports jolt Trump world Aug 11, 2022

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There are two stories worth your time this morning: one about Donald Trump in the Wall Street Journal and one about Joe Biden in the Washington Post. They intersect with each other in a way that gets to the heart of the most profound question in American politics.

First: There’s a government informant inside Trump’s inner circle. (Awake now?)

That’s the takeaway from WSJ’s Alex Leary, Aruna Viswanatha and Sadie Gurman, who retell the tale of the Mar-a-Lago records caper with important new details.

Second: The second story worthy of your time is Michael Scherer, Ashley Parker and Tyler Pager’s account of recent meetings between Joe Biden and a circle of policy, political and academic experts from outside the administration. The meetings follow Biden’s promise to do more outreach — to seek “more input, more information, more constructive criticism about what I should and shouldn’t be doing,” as he put it during a news conference in January.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Aug. 10, 2022: Trump lawyers provide new info but no warrant Aug 10, 2022

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It’s been two days since the FBI searched Trump’s Florida home, spurring loud calls for transparency at Justice. But Trump’s lawyers have the warrant and a detailed manifest of what the FBI took away. Why haven’t they been released? We asked Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, who was at Mar-a-Lago during the search, and will report back what we hear.

Both Bobb and a second Trump lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, who was also present for the search, gave interviews on Tuesday and filled in some details.

CBS News: “Halligan received a call at around 10 a.m. Monday that FBI agents were at Trump’s Palm Beach home, Mar-a-Lago, and they had a search warrant. She was the second Trump attorney to arrive on scene, at about 11 a.m, after the search had begun. Christina Bobb, who used to be a TV host on the far right OAN Network, was already there.

“Over the next eight hours, Halligan said 30-40 FBI personnel conducted the search. There were a handful dressed in suits, but most wore t-shirts, cargo pants, masks and gloves. Halligan estimates 10-15 FBI vehicles went in and out of the property, including a Ryder truck. …

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Aug. 9, 2022: After the search: GOP torches FBI, hugs Trump Aug 09, 2022

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The news of the FBI search on Mar-a-Lago, the most aggressive law enforcement action ever taken against a former American president, broke last night in the most understated way imaginable.

Peter Schorsch of FlordiaPolitics.com just tweeted it out: “Scoop — The Federal Bureau of Investigation @FBI today executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, two sources confirm to @Fla_Pol.” (Not even an all caps “SCOOP!”)

In an age where bragging about reportorial prowess is normal, Schorsch was charmingly humble: “Not sure what the search warrant was about. TBH, I’m not a strong enough reporter to hunt this down, but it’s real.”

It was indeed real, as Donald Trump confirmed within the hour. “[M]y beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” the former president said in a lengthy statement. “They even broke into my safe!”

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Aug. 8, 2022: How it really happened: the Inflation Reduction Act Aug 08, 2022

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We know readers love tick-tocks, those now-it-can-be-told accounts of what really went on that appear soon after a bill is safely passed. This morning, there are several good ones about how the Inflation Reduction Act made it through the Senate. Today's Playbook, written edition, chopped them up, rearranged them, added our own reporting, and, in what we hope is a recurring feature, present Playbook’s master narrative of how it all went down. But two pivotal dates jump out: July 15 and July 18.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Aug. 5, 2022: GOP budget nerds: here's how to kill the reconciliation bill Aug 05, 2022

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New Jobs Report — The July unemployment report drops at 8:30 a.m. The economy added 372,000 jobs in June, and economists are predicting a gain of 250,000 jobs for July. Yesterday, the White House called the anticipated drop an expected “transition” from “record-high-breaking jobs numbers” to “stable and steady growth.”

Sinema on Board — Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reached a deal last night to secure her vote for the reconciliation bill. In the end, she wasn’t hard to get. Democrats wanted to raise $14 billion by narrowing the carried interest loophole. Sinema wanted the provision removed. Instead, Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine report, Democrats added “a new 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks that will bring in $73 billion, far more than the $14 billion raised by the carried interest provision, according to a Democrat familiar with the deal.”

What else she got: “The deal with Sinema also adds roughly $5 billion in drought resiliency to the bill, according to another person familiar, and changes portions of the corporate minimum tax structure to remove accelerated depreciation of investments from the agreement. That depreciation-related change will cost about $40 billion. All told, the agreement with Sinema is expected to increase the bill’s original $300 billion deficit reduction figure.”

Listen to Playbook Deep Dive: Biden's big bill: Two GOP strategists on how to kill it

Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Aug. 4, 2022: Why the left is quiet about Manchin’s reconciliation deal Aug 04, 2022

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As the Senate moves onto the Inflation Reduction Act, bipartisanship is not in the cards. The two biggest obstacles remaining before Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can celebrate the best end of summer Labor Day party of his life are Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough. The latest reporting suggests that Sinema is eyeing three changes:

— Burgess Everett and Marianne LeVine scooped yesterday that Sinema wanted to (1) nix the carried interest loophole pay-for, which represents less than 2% of the financing for the bill, and (2) add some $5 billion in drought resiliency funding.

— WaPo’s Tony Romm and Jeff Stein add that Sinema also seems to be (3) questioning the bill’s corporate minimum tax, an idea she seemed to endorse last year, though “discussions are fluid” and her “exact requests are unclear.” Bloomberg and Axios also have similar stories with an equally cloudy picture of what exactly she wants to do on the corporate minimum tax. But everyone seems to agree she’s talking to a lot of Arizona business interests about the bill’s tax provisions.

Meanwhile, Caitlin Emma and Marianne Levine report that there are at least four policies in the reconciliation bill that their sources believe could be vulnerable to a Byrd Rule challenge before MacDonough, who, as Senate Parliamentarian, is the second most powerful person in Washington (after Sinema) for the next week or so.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Aug. 3, 2022: Last night's biggest primary winner wasn’t a candidate Aug 03, 2022

Show notes

What a night. Millions of voters took to the polls yesterday, and the takeaways are many: the blocked political return of a scandal-plagued former governor, mixed results (once again) for former President Donald Trump, and primary defeats for two incumbent members of Congress seeking reelection.

But the most surprising vote — and possibly most wide-reaching — wasn’t a race between two candidates; it came instead on one of the most divisive issues in American life: abortion rights.

In Kansas ... It marked the first time since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade that voters had a chance to directly weigh in on abortion rights.

By a stunning, roughly 20-point margin, Kansas voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have given state lawmakers the chance to either further restrict or ban abortions in the state. Turnout swelled — “approaching what’s typical for a fall election for governor,” per the AP — and the “no” vote did well not just in Democratic strongholds, but in conservative and rural areas, outperforming Joe Biden's 2020 vote share there.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

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