Playbook PM: Biden to address nation over shootings

From: POLITICO Playbook - Thursday Jun 02,2022 05:04 pm

Jun 02, 2022

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Joe Biden speaks.

President Joe Biden will deliver a speech on guns on Thursday night before leaving for Rehoboth Beach, Del. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

BREAKING — President JOE BIDEN will deliver an address on the “recent tragic mass shootings, and the need for Congress to act to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence” at 7:30 p.m. at Cross Hall, the White House announced this afternoon. He will then depart for Rehoboth Beach, Del., at 8:10 p.m.

— Some context, from our colleagues Chris Cadelago and Laura Barrón-López: “Biden has delivered relatively few prime time addresses to date. Absent his speeches before joint sessions of Congress, he spoke to the nation last March to mark the one-year anniversary of the country shutting down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But the White House also is cognizant of leaving news vacuums over long weekends, with the president often appearing before the cameras on Fridays (especially those Fridays when jobs numbers are announced) or taking questions before he departs for weekend getaways.”

… BUT CAN HE BREAK THROUGH? — Speaking of Biden’s media presence, the White House is growing more frustrated with its struggles to land messaging among the American public — as an old-school Washington creature tries to break through in a new era.

After an NBC News story earlier this week describing a West Wing “adrift,” CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere has one up today, detailing the frustration over Biden’s inability to break through in media coverage. Aides bluntly (albeit anonymously) ask: “Why are we doing this?”

Here’s the readout: “Biden and his inner circle get weekly readouts of the metrics on local newspaper coverage of his speeches, how long and for what he was covered on cable, but also videos that staff post on Twitter and other social media interactions. Those reports go on the piles with internal memos from pollsters saying Biden isn't breaking through in traditional news outlets and that the people who are engaged are mostly voters who've already made up their minds.

“But beneath this struggle to break through is a deeper dysfunction calcified among aides who largely started working together only through Zoom screens and still struggle to get in rhythm. They’re still finding it hard to grasp how much their political standing has changed over the last year, and there’s a divide between most of the White House staff and the inner circle who have been around Biden for longer than most of the rest of that staff has been alive. …

“The country is pulling itself apart , pandemic infections keep coming, inflation keeps rising, a new crisis on top of new crisis arrives daily and Biden can’t see a way to address that while also being the looser, happier, more sympathetic, lovingly Onion-parody inspiring, aviator-wearing, vanilla chip cone-licking guy — an image that was the core of why he got elected in the first place. ‘He has to speak to very serious things,’ explained one White House aide, ‘and you can’t do that getting ice cream.’”

The immediate concern: “Aides and allies worry that the West Wing is making the same mistakes as they tout the White House's big pivot to inflation -- which they know is a defining issue for the midterms -- using all the methods Biden and his top advisers keep going back to: A Wall Street Journal op-ed, a basic photo-op Oval Office meeting with the Federal Reserve chairman and Treasury secretary, dispatching Cabinet secretaries for short TV interviews. Biden himself, meanwhile, is staying barely visible, spending all of this week at the White House and his beach home in Delaware, removed from any interaction with anyone who's actually on edge about their bills going up.”

MORE NEWS FROM 1600 PENN — Two things for your radar:

— This morning, the administration launched a webpage, www.whitehouse.gov/formula, which will track the administration’s actions to address the infant formula crisis.

— The White House also announced that it will begin paying interns — “lifting a longtime barrier of entry to many young Americans,” writes CNN’s Betsy Klein, who was first to report the news. The first session will start in the fall, with a 14-week program that will pay the selected interns $750 a week — roughly $21 an hour (the D.C. minimum wage is $15.20, FWIW). Read the White House FAQ sheet

THE LATEST IN TULSA — “The assault-style weapon found on the scene of Wednesday’s shooting at a Tulsa medical building was purchased the day of the shooting, according to three federal sources briefed on the investigation,” per CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz and Evan Perez. “The weapon was an AR-15 style firearm, a source said. A handgun, also found on the scene, was purchased on May 29, a source tells CNN.” The full timeline, via CNN

— “Tulsa City Councilor JAYME FOWLER said the gunman was targeting a specific doctor, and began shooting after not finding him,” the Oklahoman’s Nolan Clay reports. More live updates from the Oklahoman

NEW JAN. 6 DETAILS EMERGE — “Republicans who texted Meadows with urgent pleas on January 6 say Trump could have stopped the violence,” by CNN’s Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb and Elizabeth Stuart

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SHOOTING FALLOUT

— Top-ed: Sen. CHRIS MURPHY (D-Conn.) writes for Fox News: “Uvalde school shooting demands action: The only thing we cannot do about gun violence is nothing.”

— NYT’s Glenn Thrush and Matt Richtel explore a depressing trend in the recent string of mass shootings that have devastated the nation: “Six of the nine deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2018 were by people who were 21 or younger, representing a shift for mass casualty shootings, which before 2000 were most often initiated by men in their mid-20s, 30s and 40s.”

— The long-term impact: “There Are Hundreds of Thousands of School-Shooting Survivors, Their Lives Forever Altered,” by WSJ’s Zusha Elinson, Arian Campo-Flores, Cameron McWhirter and Dan Frosch

— “Ohio school districts could begin arming employees as soon as this fall under legislation approved by Republican lawmakers and set to be signed by GOP Gov. MIKE DEWINE,” AP’s Andrew Welsh-Huggins writes from Columbus, Ohio. “Lawmakers fast-tracked the legislation to counter the impact of a court ruling that said, under current law, armed school workers would need hundreds of hours of training. … The measure is opposed by major law enforcement groups, gun control advocates, and the state’s teachers’ unions, which asked DeWine to veto the measure.”

CONGRESS

THE SHAKY FUTURE OF UKRAINE AID — The latest bipartisan cause on Capitol Hill is worrying about how the administration is keeping track of all the funding that has been earmarked for Ukraine aid. “And given the Pentagon’s recent track record concerning congressional oversight, it’s coming under increased scrutiny from members of both parties — from progressive ELIZABETH WARREN to libertarian RAND PAUL,” Andrew Desiderio, Lara Seligman and Connor O’Brien report today. “Some lawmakers are already warning the Biden administration that a future aid package could lose the overwhelming congressional support that has been a hallmark of the previous efforts.”

ABORTION FALLOUT

SURVEY SAYS — The WSJ is out with the latest polling on Roe v. Wade in the wake of the disclosure of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would wipe out the landmark ruling. Some of the numbers that caught our eye:

“In the survey, 68% of respondents said they wouldn’t like to see the court completely overturn Roe, while 30% said they support that move.”
“On banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, 34% of respondents were in support, 43% were in opposition and 21% said they neither supported nor opposed such a move. The numbers were similar for a ban after six weeks, with 30% of respondents in favor, 49% opposed and 19% with no view.”
“Some 57% of respondents said a woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion if she wants it for any reason, the highest share since NORC began asking the question every few years starting in 1977. The share opposed to a woman having an abortion simply because she wants one, 41%, was the lowest on record.”

REAL-WORLD IMPACT — “Limits on early abortion drive more women to get them later,” by AP’s Barbara Ortutay

THE ECONOMY

THE UNEMPLOYMENT PICTURE — “Applications for unemployment benefits fell by 11,000 to 200,000 for the week ending May 28, the Labor Department reported Thursday. First-time applications generally track the number of layoffs. The four-week average for claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, dipped by 500 from the previous week to 206,500,” per the AP’s Matt Ott.

PAIN AT THE PUMP — Sen. DEBBIE STABENOW (D-Mich.) sounds happy that she doesn’t have to experience the surging gas prices right now: “As somebody who just bought my first electric vehicle, I’m driving by the pump. And I won’t tell you the motion I’m making when I drive by,” Stabenow told MLive’s Taylor DesOrmeau.

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WAR IN UKRAINE

— “As Moscow’s war in Ukraine approached its 100th day, President VOLODYMYR [ZELENSKYY] on Thursday said that Russia now occupied one-fifth of the country,” NYT’s Matthew Mpoke Bigg writes.

— WaPo’s Karoun Demirjian has the story on a “small, shadowy network of former military personnel and small-scale contractors” that is sending equipment to arm Ukrainians against the more advanced Russian military. “It’s a delicate venture, one that involves close scrutiny of U.S. laws governing the sale and distribution of sensitive military equipment, people familiar with the effort say. At least three members of Congress have been approached by groups seeking guidance on how to speed applications for government approval to export material that is closely regulated.”

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

FOR YOUR RADAR — “OPEC and its allies agreed Thursday to a bigger-than-expected oil-production increase, OPEC delegates said, allowing Saudi Arabia to potentially pump more crude and paving the way for a potential oil-for-security deal with the U.S.,” report WSJ’s Summer Said, Benoit Faucon and Dion Nissenbaum . “The move represents a shift for the Saudis, who lead the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and have resisted calls from the U.S., U.K. and other Western countries to pump more oil to help reduce a price boom resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

TRUMP CARDS

FOR THOSE KEEPING TRACK — “ MICHAEL AVENATTI was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for cheating client STORMY DANIELS, the porn actor who catapulted him to fame, of hundreds of thousands of dollars in book proceeds,” AP’s Bobby Caina Calvan and Larry Neumeister write.

MEDIAWATCH

BREAKING! — “CNN cutting back on over-hyping everything as ‘breaking news,’” by Axios’ Sara Fischer: “CNN's new boss CHRIS LICHT says that beginning today, CNN has added a ‘Breaking News’ guideline to its stylebook, to address overuse of the breaking news banner across its network and cable news writ-large. … ‘We are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our viewers,’ he said in the note obtained by Axios.”

PLAYBOOKERS

MEDIA MOVE — Laura Barrón-López is joining PBS NewsHour as White House correspondent. She currently is a White House reporter at POLITICO and is a CNN political analyst, which she will continue in her new role. More from The Hollywood Reporter … Heidi Blake is joining The New Yorker as a contributing writer. She currently is an investigative journalist at BuzzFeed.

NSC ARRIVAL LOUNGE — Becky Farmer and Nicole Schwegman recently joined the National Security Council as directors for strategic comms and assistant press secretaries. Farmer is detailed from the State Department, where she is a career member of the Foreign Service and worked most recently in the Office of Iranian Affairs. Schwegman is detailed from DoD, where she has served for 18 years, most recently as the force public affairs officer for the commander of Naval Surface Forces of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

TARGET ACQUIRED — Targeted Victory is acquiring TMA Direct, “an industry-leading direct response firm in the political data and marketing arena,” they announced today. TMA’s CEO Mike Murray will join Targeted Victory as political chairman.

TRANSITIONS — Libby Marking is now the director of government affairs and public policy at the National Wildlife Refuge Association. She most recently was the senior manager for government affairs at the National Audubon Society and is a Heidi Heitkamp and Obama Interior Department alum. … Keiffer Mitchell is joining BGR Group as a VP in the state and local advocacy practice. He previously was chief legislative officer and senior adviser for Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. … Morgan Kaplan is now a comms specialist at Palantir Technologies. He most recently was a fellow with the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.