POLITICO Playbook: Harris trashes her media coverage – POLITICO – Politico

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DRIVING THE DAY

SURPRISE: WALLACE LEAVING FOX — In a surprise announcement at the end of “Fox News Sunday,” longtime host CHRIS WALLACE announced that he’s leaving the network, effective immediately.

“After 18 years, this is my final ‘Fox News Sunday,’” Wallace said, thanking his viewers and the Fox News family for the opportunity, while ticking off some of the stories he’s covered during his tenure. “I have decided to leave Fox. I want to try something new, to go beyond politics to all the things I’m interested in. I’m ready for a new adventure.” Watch here

… AND JOINING CNN. Per CNN’s media relations site, Wallace will anchor a new show on the network’s upcoming streaming service, CNN+.

BUZZY 2024 STORY — President JOE BIDEN has told aides privately that he plans to run for reelection in 2024. But if he changes his mind, the list of Democrats who might quietly be ready to jump into a race stretches well beyond the recent speculation about VP KAMALA HARRIS and Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG, report NYT’s Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns. Among those name-checked in the story (though at least a couple say they’re not interested): North Carolina Gov. ROY COOPER, Sens. ELIZABETH WARREN (Mass.) and AMY KLOBUCHAR (Minn.), former New Orleans Mayor MITCH LANDRIEU, Commerce Secretary GINA RAIMONDO, Michigan Gov. GRETCHEN WHITMER, New Jersey Gov. PHIL MURPHY, Illinois Gov. J.B. PRITZKER and Georgia gubernatorial candidate STACEY ABRAMS.

TRUMP AND O’REILLY FLOP IN FLORIDA — When former President DONALD TRUMP and former Fox News host BILL O’REILLY took to the stage Saturday at the FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, Fla., there were so many empty seats that “the top level was closed and ticket buyers were ‘upgraded’ to the lower bowl,” reports Brittany Wallman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and “many tickets remained unsold,” adds HuffPost’s Mary Papenfuss.

Those who showed up were fed a steady diet of MAGA red meat.

— Trump rewrote history while discussing the deadly riot on Jan. 6. Per Wallman: “He said a tiny fraction [of his supporters] invaded the Capitol, but most of the people were just there to protest the … election and loved each other. ‘There was love in the air,’ he said.”

— Speaking of political violence, when Trump suggested that new libel laws would help rein in the media, O’Reilly replied: “That’s better than my solution, which is a machine gun.”

Good Sunday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri.

INSIDE HARRIS’ THINKING — After our colleagues at West Wing Playbook reported that Harris avoids using Bluetooth headsets over security fears, the internet went ablaze. The reaction of the veep herself: “Really?”

That comes from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Tal Kopan, who scored a sit-down interview with the VP last week, during which Harris “was relaxed and in good spirits, so much so that she extended the time of our interview to keep talking,” Kopan tells Playbook.

The piece, out this morning, is a glimpse into Harris’ mindset after months of bruising headlines and stories that her supporters find both frivolous and relentlessly negative — like the coverage of her purchase of cookware in Paris, or a body language expert’s analysis of her interactions with Buttigieg.

It’s one thing for her surrogates and aides to express exasperation with the coverage; it’s another thing for the VP herself to do so.

“Harris called the headlines ‘ridiculous.’ ‘Oh, how about, “She’s going to buy a pot on her way to the airport,”’ she said, ‘after a very significant and highly successful bilateral meeting in France on issues that are about national security, on issues that are about climate, on issues that are about what we are doing in terms of international norms and rules on everything from cyber to space. Come on.’”

And yet: “Harris twice did not directly answer a question about lessons she had learned and whether she wished she’d done anything differently over the past year.”

As for what to expect in 2022? Harris “said her goals for next year include more travel around the country to sell the administration’s priorities,” something made difficult “by the pandemic and the 50-50 Senate, which means she must be in D.C. in case she’s needed for tie-breaking votes. ‘That’s a real thing,’ Harris said. ‘That’s very constraining.’” Also worth a click: Kopan got the first real look at how Harris has redecorated the VP’s office, including with abstract art and a portrait of THURGOOD MARSHALL.

SUNDAY BEST …

— Sen. ROGER MARSHALL (R-Kan.) on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this morning refused to acknowledge the reality that Biden won the 2020 election, saying merely that he is the president because he was inaugurated.

— Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.) on Sen. JOE MANCHIN’s (D-W.Va.) thoughts about the reconciliation bill, on “Fox News Sunday”: “Joe Manchin came to me and he said, ‘I think this bill is full of gimmicks that these programs won’t go away, Lindsey, and if you [CBO] score them, I think the bill will double.’”

— JILL BIDEN on being first lady, on “CBS Sunday Morning”: “I think it’s a little harder than I imagined. It’s not like a job that you do; it’s a lifestyle that you live. It’s 24 hours a day.”

— Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN on next steps if Russia invades Ukraine, on “Meet the Press”: “We are looking at and we are prepared to take the kinds of steps we’ve refrained from taking in the past that would have massive consequences for Russia. In fact, I’m here in Liverpool with the G-7 countries. They are equally resolute in their determination to stand against Russian aggression, to ideally deter it, prevent it. And we’ve made clear as well that there would be massive consequences if Russia commits renewed acts of aggression against Ukraine.”

— Kentucky Gov. ANDY BESHEAR with the latest tornado damage update, on “Meet the Press”: “I know we’ve lost over 80 lives. I think it’s going to be over 100. It may be well over 100. It is so hard to describe. There’s not a camera lens big enough to show the path of absolute destruction. People have lost everything.”

— NYC Mayor BILL DE BLASIO on not vetoing a bill allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections, on “Fox News Sunday”: “I have mixed feelings. I’ve been very open about it on this law. And I think there are big legal questions, but I also respect the City Council. They made a decision.”

BIDEN’S SUNDAY — The Bidens will leave Wilmington, Del., at 11:55 a.m., arriving back at the White House at 12:50 p.m.

HARRIS’ SUNDAY — The VP has nothing on her public schedule.

PLAYBOOK READS

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

NEWSOM ANNOUNCES GUN BILL MODELED ON TEXAS ABORTION LAW — And so it begins. In response to the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to allow Texas’ near-total abortion ban to remain in place while its constitutionality is decided, California Gov. GAVIN NEWSOM announced Saturday night that he’ll pursue a similar “law that would allow private citizens to sue manufacturers or distributors of assault weapons as well as ghost gun kits or parts,” reports L.A. Times’ Liam Dillon.

FWIW, two of the court’s dissents Friday predicted something like this.

— Justice SONIA SOTOMAYOR: In its decision, “the Court effectively invites other States to refine [the Texas law’s] model for nullifying federal rights.”

— Chief Justice JOHN ROBERTS: “Indeed, ‘[i]f the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery,’” he wrote, referencing an 1809 ruling. “The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.”

That’s how Newsom rationalized his proposal Saturday: “If states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts … then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.”

JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH

ABOUT THAT POWERPOINT — Retired U.S. Army Col. PHIL WALDRON, one of the authors and circulators of a now-infamous PowerPoint presentation that offered the Trump administration a buffet of “options” for Jan. 6 — including declaring a national emergency and seizing the paper ballots cast in the 2020 election — told WaPo he “visited the White House on multiple occasions after the election, spoke with President Donald Trump’s chief of staff ‘maybe eight to 10 times’ and briefed several members of Congress on the eve of the Jan. 6 riot.”

Though a version of the presentation made its way to then-White House chief of staff MARK MEADOWS on Jan. 5 — it circulated online this week after the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 announced it had been turned over to them — the Post reports that Meadows met with Waldron and others “in the days around Christmas” and discussed “how to determine whether the election had been hacked. [Waldron] said Meadows asked, ‘What do you need? What would help?’” More, including appearances by JOHN EASTMAN, RUDY GIULIANI and BERNARD KERIK, in the full story

THE WHITE HOUSE

OFF TO SOUTH CAROLINA — Biden is set to head to South Carolina this week to be a featured speaker in the December commencement at South Carolina State University, which — purely coincidentally, we’re sure — is the alma mater of House Majority Whip JIM CLYBURN, and where the honors college is named after his late wife, EMILY ENGLAND CLYBURN. AP’s Meg Kinnard notes that it’s Biden’s first trip to the state since he won the presidential primary there in 2020 and resuscitated his campaign.

ALL POLITICS

DEMOCRACY DIGEST — Georgia may be newly purple, but the state’s Republicans are doing everything in their power to bulldoze Democrats in the critical Atlanta area, including by potentially wresting control of elections from local officials in four key counties, reports Maya King. The big picture is that “the GOP-controlled legislature has gone to extraordinary lengths to overhaul election administration, rewrite election rules and redraw political lines in the fast-growing metro region that is currently reshaping state politics. The changes stand to roll back many of the recent Democratic Party’s gains or dilute Democratic power.”

— NYT’s Charles Homans dives deep into how Trump loyalists have run for local political offices in an attempt to control elections, with few obstacles standing in their way.

KNOWING GREG ABBOTT — The Texas governor’s sudden and recent tack to the hard right, even against the wishes of the business community, has stunned people who have known the establishment Republican through his long rise to the top. But this is the Republican Party in 2021, and Abbott has been torn between competing impulses, reports NYT’s J. David Goodman in a new profile. He writes that the “governor with a keen sense of the political winds” knows that “even in business-centered Texas, corporate interests are out and cultural concerns are in.”

PLAYBOOKERS

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Alyssa Farah is joining CNN as a political commentator.

Chuck Grassley, U.S. senator and longtime fan of the History Channel (we’re not sure in which order), saw that the network was dropped from his DirecTV package. We’ll leave it to Grassley, who’s also been a vocal critic of the channel for “not having any history,” to explain the rest. Adding punctuation where helpful: “Just spent 45 mins finding out why I don’t [have] history channel[:] Negotiations btwn 4 channels incl history & Direct tv[.] Results: if I want history channel[,] my bill go fr $65 to $99[.] I’m not paying $34 for history ch when not much history /or should I change from Direct to DISH??”

Chasten Buttigieg doesn’t seem to be a fan of the Biden administration’s plan to restart student loan payments come January.

Mikie Sherrill attended the annual Army-Navy game at MetLife Stadium, and ran into fellow Naval Academy alum Elaine Luria. The Midshipmen bested the Black Knights, 17-13.

Andrew Yang bemoaned that there is no political party “in America called the Independent Party,” unaware that, in fact, there is.

Megan Apper and Andrew Bates are renaming their cat Popcorn.

SPOTTED: Press secretary Jen Psaki and a group of friends in a candy cane hut at Maxwell Park Navy Yard on Saturday night.

TRANSITIONS — Laura Nasim is now director of national development for the American Conservative Union. She most recently was finance director for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s reelect, and is a Trump White House alum. … Megan Swiatkowski is now director of marketing at AI company NLX. She most recently was program manager for fleet ops integration at Amazon, and is a POLITICO and Axios alum.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD — David Pasch, EVP at Targeted Victory, and Danielle Pasch, a special education teacher at Brightwood Elementary School in D.C., welcomed Hannah Mariam Pasch on Tuesday. Pic … Another pic

BIRTHWEEK (was Thursday): Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Lanny Davis … Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson … Christian Martinez of Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin’s transition team … Targeted Victory’s David Pasch … Broderick Johnson … POLITICO’s Taylor Miller Thomas and Yu Wu … ABC’s Becky Perlow … Nora Boustany … Peter Fenn … Charli Huddleston … Bret Wincup … Jeff Burton … Sarah Horowitz of Lewis Global Communications … Google’s José Castañeda (29) and Nick Pearson … Lawrence Duncan of Monument Advocacy (54) … Fox Business’ Liz Claman … former Reps. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) (7-0) and Steve Kagen (D-Wis.) … Cassidy Hutchinson … Rebecca Neale … Jamie Brown Hantman … Todd Bertoson of Capitol Hill Policy Group … Danny Russel … Bob Wood … Tina-Maria Henry … Tanner Hishta … Kelly O’Brien … Dawn Laguens … Maren Hesla … Riley Nelson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation … AP’s Seth Borenstein

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Send Playbookers tips to [email protected]. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike Zapler, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Allie Bice, Eli Okun and Garrett Ross.

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