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| | | | |  | | By Alex Thompson and Max Tani | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max If you’re a foreign leader meeting President JOE BIDEN, chances are good you’re coming away with a fresh set of aviator sunglasses. The eyewear is not just part of Biden’s signature look, it’s become a common component of the diplomatic gift exchange at the end of his tête-à-têtes — he even gave VLADIMIR PUTIN a pair. That held true this past week as Biden traveled to Japan and South Korea amid consequential negotiations over a nuclear North Korea, billions in economic investment, and confronting China. A person familiar with the gift exchanges gave a readout to West Wing Playbook:
- Biden gave Japanese Prime Minister FUMIO KISHIDA — a huge baseball fan, especially of his hometeam the Hiroshima Carp — a custom baseball bat and a bat with the presidential seal and signature on it. He also threw in a pair of aviator sunglasses.
- In return, Kishida gave Biden a sportswear set (jacket, shirt, and pants) from the Japan-based Asics along with Asics running shoes with Biden’s initials. Asics shoes, it should be noted, are having a moment. As this WSJ headline from February put it: “Why Asics and Salomon Sneakers Are Fashion’s Hottest Shoes.”
- Biden gave South Korean President YOON SUK-YEOL a desk sign reading “The Buck Stops Here.” On a television show after his recent victory, Yoon had cited Truman. "I wasn't really anxious, and slept well during the campaign, but since the election, I've been struggling to get a good sleep… I guess loneliness is what being the president means… You know, former U.S. President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that says 'The buck stops here.'" For good measure, Biden also threw in some, yes, aviators.
- Yoon gifted Biden a small traditional low desk.
Gift exchanges between foreign leaders require a ton of preparation and research into the leader’s personal preferences and the country’s customs. They often get little attention except when they go awry. And they can go awry. BARACK OBAMA’s first meeting with British Prime Minister GORDON BROWN in 2009 was panned in the U.K. because of the newly-elected president’s gifts. While Brown gave Obama a pen holder made from the wood of a famed Victorian anti-slave ship, Obama gave the PM a set of 25 DVDs of classic U.S. movies, which the Daily Mail quipped was “about as exciting as a pair of socks.” If that wasn’t bad enough, The Telegraph reported the DVD’s only worked on North American DVD players so the prime minister couldn’t even watch them. Obama stumbled further from there. When he later traveled to England, he gave QUEEN ELIZABETH an iPod containing a video of her trip to the United States along with audio of his own speeches. But Biden and the State Department’s Chief of Protocol RUFUS GIFFORD, who oversees the gift-giving, avoided such missteps in Asia. Yoon in particular seemed to appreciate his gift, pointing out his new Truman sign in a CNN interview after the trip. “I do not know how (Biden) knew I liked this statement,” said Yoon, placing it in the middle of his office. TEXT US — Are you EMPEROR NARUHITO? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous. Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.
| | | | DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE. | | | | | | | | Today’s question is courtesy of CHARLES BROLL: Memorial Day weekend has become synonymous with Indianapolis, because it’s also Indy 500 weekend. Who was the first president to visit Indianapolis while in office? (Answer at the bottom.)
| | | HEADING TO TEXAS: The president and first lady JILL BIDEN will travel to Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday “to grieve with the community that lost 21 lives in the horrific elementary school shooting,” according to the White House. ALEXA, IS THIS A CONFLICT OF INTEREST?: As the White House was starting to engage Amazon founder JEFF BEZOS over his criticism of its economic policies, it was also bringing back on board ANITA DUNN, who has business ties to the company, our HAILEY FUCHS and EMILY BIRNBAUM report. Dunn came back to the White House in an advisory role earlier this month, after a stint at the firm she founded, SKDK. A White House official said that Dunn specifically did not serve on an Amazon account while at SKDK and is recused from working on matters that would overlap with SKDK’s work while in the White House. BILAT ON THE BOOKS: Brazilian President JAIR BOLSONARO will attend the Summit of Americas meeting in Los Angeles in June and is also planning a bilateral meeting with Biden, Brazilian officials told AP’s DÉBORA ÁLVARES. The leader’s attendance has been in question for weeks. K-POP POTUS: South Korean boy band and K-pop group BTS is set to meet the president at the White House next week, our QUINT FORGEY reports. According to a White House statement, the group will “discuss Asian inclusion and representation,” and “address anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination” with the president. This is huge news for Sam Stein, co-editor of this newsletter and a diehard BTS superfan. Prep by listening to their hit song “Dynamite,” which has over 1.4 billion views on YouTube. DEBT RELIEF ANTICIPATION: The president is scheduled to deliver the University of Delaware’s commencement speech this weekend, and there’s some speculation he will make an announcement about student debt relief in the remarks, according to Forbes’ ZACK FRIEDMAN. Biden said on April 28th that a decision on the matter would be announced within weeks.
| | | MITT LOVE: In his speech about the future of the U.S. approach to China, Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN gave a shout-out to Republican Sen. MITT ROMNEY , who attended the speech. “And I have to say I am really grateful, Sen. Romney, for your presence here today – a man, a leader, that I greatly admire, a person of tremendous principle, who has been leading on the subject that we’re going to talk about today,” he said. Read POLITICO’s QUINT FORGEY and PHELIM KLINE on the speech in which Blinken called China “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order.” BULLY NULL-PIT: The White House is overtly keeping distance from the legislative debates around gun control that have been kicked up by the shooting in Texas. Aides say it’s deliberate—designed to give negotiators some space to craft a deal, if there is one to be crafted. But it’s enraging gun control groups, as our CHRIS CADELAGO and LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ report. “He can’t just be the ‘eulogizer in chief.’ He also needs to put the full force of his office into the legislative process,” said PETER AMBLER, executive director for the gun safety group Giffords. LARRY, LARRY QUITE CONTRARY: Economist LARRY SUMMERS threw a bunch of cold water on a recent forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which predicted inflation had peaked and would drop to 2 percent by 2024. “This is the first year that I would characterize the @USCBO forecast as highly implausible,” Summers wrote in a tweet. “For @USCBO to go off the rails is very sad at a time when respected technocratic expertise of the kind it has traditionally provided has never been more important.” Read his thread here.
| | | YELLEN LACKS CLOUT: Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN’s lack of influence in the White House has come as a surprise to some, as previous secretaries have had a more central role in advising the president on matters like financial nominations, tax policy and the debt ceiling, our KATE DAVIDSON and VICTORIA GUIDA report. Case and point: The White House nominated Cornell Law professor SAULE OMAROVA to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, despite Yellen voicing her objection to Biden and White House chief of staff RON KLAIN. While the Treasury Department has typically driven fiscal policy decisions, the pair notes it’s taken a back seat to the National Economic Council. FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK: GABRIEL UY has left the White House, where he was associate director for intergovernmental affairs, DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. Uy, an Army National Guard officer, is going to Syracuse University’s Whitman and Maxwell Schools as part of a defense program for an MBA and executive MPA. Also, CARISSA SMITH has started as VP for government relations at Fox, Lippman learned. She most recently was senior adviser on women and girls and health for the Office of Public Engagement in the Biden White House. AND ANOTHER ONE GONE: DAVID KAMIN, a deputy director at the National Economic Council, will be leaving the role this week, Lippman and Davidson report. His last day is Friday. Kamin was an integral part of Biden’s plans to raise taxes on wealthy Americans to pay for his social spending packages. AVIVA ARON-DINE, an executive associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, is set to fill Kamin’s spot.
| | | Local police say they’ve already implemented many of Biden’s reforms (WaPo’s Tom Jackman and Peter Hermann) Blinken: US to leverage Russia-Ukraine bloc against China (AP’s Matthew Lee) Digital Dollar Could Coexist With Stablecoins, Fed Vice Chairwoman Says (WSJ’s Andrew Ackerman)
| | | He received the president’s daily brief in the morning.
| | | She joined the president for the daily brief.
| | | We’ve highlighted a few interesting moments of Secretary of State Blinken’s musical career, and he’s actually probably his harshest critic. Blinken confessed on “The Late Show with STEPHEN COLBERT” last week that it’s been a dream of his since he was a child but “there was just one missing ingredient — talent." He mentioned his time in the band "Coalition of the Willing," and another we hadn't heard of yet — "Big Lunch," titled because the music makes “you feel the way you do after you've had a big lunch, a little bit drowsy." Oof! "What I found in my experience is that the best audience we have tends to be very young children who haven't developed critical faculties,” he joked. Don’t be so hard on yourself, Antony!
| | | While MARTIN VAN BUREN visited after his presidency and there are tales of his stagecoach overturning there, President ANDREW JOHNSON was the first to visit while in office, receiving such a noisy reception in September 1866 he refused to speak until the next day. A CALL OUT — Think you have a more difficult trivia question? Send us your best question on the presidents with a citation and we may feature it. Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein
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