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| | | | |  | | By Max Tani and Alex Thompson | 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 One item that will be on JILL BIDEN’s agenda when the first lady returns from her vacation, which has been unexpectedly extended by a recent Covid-19 infection, is the selection of her next press secretary. West Wing Playbook has learned that the search for the candidate to fill the role, which has been empty since the departure of former press secretary MICHAEL LAROSA earlier this month, has narrowed slightly in recent days. West Wing Playbook previously wrote about the search for a new FLOTUS press secretary, noting that the first lady’s office cast a wide net in its conversations with a number of current and former Biden campaign and administration officials. The search has begun to slim down: Biden’s office has made clear to some applicants that it wants someone with extensive experience — and has quietly been looking outside of the administration as well. One name we did not previously report that has emerged as a possible contender is RICHARD HUDOCK , who led comms for NBC’s Washington outfit for years. He has since been elevated to a communications vice president for NBC and MSNBC at the networks’ headquarters in New York. Multiple people familiar with the search told West Wing Playbook that Hudock is among the candidates the first lady’s office is taking seriously for the role. The first lady has not yet interviewed any of the candidates and her search team — led by ELIZABETH ALEXANDER and ANTHONY BERNAL — is in the middle of the process, drawn out by August vacations by applicants, as well as the first lady. Even so, the emergence of at least one outside, white male candidate has caused some frustrations internally, especially as women of color have been considered for the job. One person familiar with the dynamic told us that not picking a colleague at this point would “embarrass” them since a number of their names have been leaked to the press (including us). Another person familiar with the process told us numerous outside candidates including people of color. It is the latest example of the tensions that spark within the Biden White House whenever a high-profile position opens up. While the Biden Cabinet is the most diverse in American history, the top of the West Wing is largely white, the source of frustration among some staffers of color who want to see the administration deliver on its promise to fill the upper ranks with nonwhite candidates. While the leadership in FLOTUS' East Wing is more diverse, the tension has become more pronounced as staffers of color began leaving the White House during the late spring and early summer. The consideration of Hudock also highlights a familiar comms shop hiring theme. While the Biden White House is not in the same universe as its predecessor when it comes to plucking employees of a friendly TV network to fill its ranks, it has courted some well-known NBCU employees with experience in the political media world. If FLOTUS hires Hudock, he’ll be the second person in a row to arrive at the job following a stint at NBC: LaRosa was a veteran of MSNBC, having worked as a producer on CHRIS MATTHEWS’ show Hardball. LaRosa wasn’t the first comms hire with NBCU credentials either: TJ DUCKLO, who briefly served in the White House as deputy press secretary, came to the Biden 2020 campaign after years as the primary NBC News communications contact for LESTER HOLT. And the door revolves. JEN PSAKI and SYMONE SANDERS both left their White House gigs for shows on MSNBC and NBC’s streaming outfit. MESSAGE US — Are you an MSNBC staffer with eyes on a White House gig? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous if you’d like. 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.
| | | | STAY UP TO DATE WITH CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s 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. | | | | | | | | This one is from Alex. According to media reports at the time, which president ate the same (gross-sounding) lunch almost every day that included a ball of cottage cheese with A-1 steak sauce. (Answer at the bottom.) MEA CULPA: Yesterday, our trivia asked which president supported the theory that the Earth is hollow. We unwittingly stumbled into disputed territory. While many articles online say JOHN QUINCY ADAMS was a believer in the theory, that is in part because of a misunderstanding of a diary entry, according to the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. While Adams supported an expedition to the South Pole, he did not support the belief there was a pathway from there into the earth’s hollow center – a semi-popular theory at the time. He wrote on Nov. 4, 1826, that such a journey to the South Pole “would have no support in Congress. That day will come, but not yet nor in my time. May it be my fortune, and my praise to accelerate its approach.” Adams supported a plan to explore the South Pole, “not the hollow Earth theory,” NEAL MILLIKAN, the Society’s series editor for digital editions, told West Wing Playbook. We feel dumb about the error but feel consoled that other people were also confused. If you want to know more, we recommend reading these diary entries at the Society’s website here, here, and here. Also, for the record, the Earth is not hollow…. We think.
| | | WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: Anything about the FDA approving hearing aids for over-the-counter purchase. “Under the new rule, people with mild to moderate hearing loss should be able to buy hearing aids online and in retail stores as soon as October, without being required to see a doctor for an exam to get a prescription,” the New York Times writes. The paper notes Biden issued an executive order last July “calling for greater competition in the economy, which included a call for the rule ‘to promote the wide availability of low-cost hearing aids’ to be published.” Vice President KAMALA HARRIS quickly posted a social media video this morning promoting the new rule. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This other NYT story, from ERIC SCHMITT, that begins : “Soon after the U.S. military mistakenly killed 10 civilians , including seven children, last August in the final U.S. drone strike before American troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the Biden administration pledged to help surviving members of the family relocate to the United States for their safety.” The Biden administration has not made good on that pledge, Schmitt reports. “Nearly a year later, fewer than a dozen of the 144 family members have been resettled in the United States and 32 people remain trapped in Afghanistan with little hope of getting out soon, advocates for the family said on Monday,” he writes. “The rest have been stuck for months in a diplomatic limbo after being taken to three countries to await screening to enter the United States.” AVIATOR JOE RETURNS: The New York Times’ chief fashion critic VANESSA FRIEDMAN notes that "ever since Mr. Biden emerged from his Covid isolation into the sunshine earlier this month, the aviators have been front and center on his face.” YAHOOOOO!: The president and his team placed an op-ed in Yahoo News about the reconciliation bill, which Biden signed this afternoon. Our ADAM CANCRYN and OLIVIA OLANDER have more about the big moment here. SPEAKING ON WHICH: Biden gave the only pen he signed the bill with to Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.). OTHER HEADLINES:
| | | OUT-AND-ABOUT: Secretary of State TONY BLINKEN dined last night at the Swahili Village Restaurant in D.C. with Mandela Washington fellows (the organization’s 2023 application process opens today!) and other young “members of the African diaspora,” his office said. Some pics from the event and, we gotta say, the nyama kaanga on the restaurant’s menu looks especially good. INFLUENCER CULTURE: MICHAEL REGAN, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, appeared in a video with HANK GREEN and the vlogbrothers about the above-mentioned reconciliation bill.
| | | CANCELING SOME STUDENT DEBT: The Education Department announced Tuesday it plans to cancel nearly $4 billion worth of federal student loans owed by ITT Tech students who attended between January 2005 and September 2016, when the for-private college chain shut down due to allegations of fraud, MICHAEL STRATFORD reports. “It is time for student borrowers to stop shouldering the burden from ITT’s years of lies and false promises,” Education Secretary MIGUEL CARDONA said in a statement.
| | | Road to war: U.S. struggled to convince allies, and Zelensky, of risk of invasion (WaPo’s Shane Harris, Karen DeYoung, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Ashley Parker and Liz Sly) Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud (NYT’s David A. Fahrenthold) Record Numbers of Migrants Arrested at Southern Border, With Two Million Annual Total in Sight (WSJ’s Santiago Pérez and Michelle Hackman) Exclusive: New Biden abortion rights push addresses both women and men (Reuters’ Nandita Bose) China Warns US Against Underestimating Beijing’s Taiwan Resolve (Bloomberg’s Iain Marlow)
| | | The Atlantic Festival’s interviews with White House chief of staff RON KLAIN and Biden’s chief medical adviser ANTHONY FAUCI, along with other notable guests from Sept. 21-23 at The Wharf in Washington, D.C.
| | | President GERALD FORD had a taste for the cottage cheese and A-1 steak sauce combo. We can’t believe the guy had his finger on the nuclear button with that in his stomach. It’s even worse than the time Ford tried to eat a tamale with the husk. As the New York Times wrote in 1975 : “The President retires for lunch. I join him for a few minutes in his two room hideaway. One room is a small study, the walls of which are covered with mementos, including a huge Presidential seal, which is actually a rug, hooked for the President in Grand Rapids by his half sister-in-law, Mrs. Richard Ford; in one corner there is a luxurious stuffed leather Barcalounger, into which the President occasionally settles to read. “His lunch is served on a tray on a small table beside a desk in the other room. Day in and day out, Mr. Ford eats exactly the same lunch — a ball of cottage cheese, over which he pours a small pitcherful of A-1 Sauce, a sliced onion or a quartered tomato, and a small helping of butter-pecan ice cream.” “‘Eating and sleeping,’ he says to me, ‘are a waste of time.’” A CALL OUT — Do you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it. Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.
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