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 Eli | Email Lauren Biden world believes the press corps is botching the coverage of the debt ceiling fight. White House officials groan that reporters are not framing the debate as one in which Republicans are using the debt ceiling, and the possibility of economic catastrophe, to force policy concessions. They’re frustrated that the press corps isn’t calling out House Speaker KEVIN MCCARTHY for treating the idea that he’d stop the country from plunging into a recession as some sort of compromise. They say reporters aren’t making it clear that raising the debt limit does not equal authorizing new spending. Complaints about press coverage are nothing new. Nor is the Biden White House an infrequent participant in that practice. Officials there have long taken issue with media coverage, expressing frustration that reporters are overly invested in palace intrigue and horse-race politics. But the coverage of the debt ceiling, those officials say, is a different breed, both because the stakes are so incredibly high and because — as they see it — the spin is so obvious. On Tuesday, Democrats noted, McCarthy described raising the debt ceiling as a concession while Rep. MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.) labeled Democrats as “our hostage." The perception among White House officials and Democrats close to the administration is that these utterances aren’t being adequately contextualized. The questions in the White House briefing room, they say, either ignore recent history (when the debt ceiling was raised with relatively little drama during the Trump years) or have prioritized conflict over substance. “The bulk of the political press is absolutely screwing up the coverage of the debt ceiling proving once again that they are culturally incapable of accurately portraying a radical faction using dangerous tactics,” said DAN PFEIFFER, former Obama White House communications director. “This is not a normal negotiation. The House GOP is threatening to blow up the economy if they don’t get what they want. The White House is demanding nothing other than asking Congress to do the basic task it assigned itself.” Republicans, naturally, scoff at the idea that they’ve been given a pass by reporters. McCarthy, they note, passed a debt ceiling hike with accompanying spending cuts, demonstrating that he did, in fact, have a plan to avoid default. He also made clear early on that a clean hike would not pass the House. Negotiations have happened before. It was President JOE BIDEN who chose not to engage. But JOSH SCHWERIN, a Democratic strategist and former communications director for Priorities USA, said such a fundamental framework demonstrates the “underlying problem,” which is “that the parties are graded on a curve” by reporters. “There’s this implicit knowledge that Democrats are responsible and Republicans are not when it comes to governance and everything else feeds off of that,” he said. “And somehow that’s being framed as both parties need to meet in the middle.” Despite the frustrations, there are certain lines the White House won’t cross. For example, it did not comment for this story. What officials have done is begun circulating pieces calling out the fourth estate. Those include items from New York Magazine’s JONATHAN CHAIT and the American Prospect’s RYAN COOPER and DAVID DAYEN criticizing the mainstream press for normalizing GOP tactics. But other Democrats argue that it was the White House, as much as the press corps, that is to blame for the normalization of debt ceiling brinkmanship. Biden had, after all, pledged not to negotiate, but he clearly is now doing so. “The red line that they didn’t draw was negotiating with the House speaker,” said FAIZ SHAKIR, Sen. BERNIE SANDERS’ 2020 campaign manager and current adviser. “So then you can’t later say, ‘Hey, why are you legitimizing hostage taking?’” Shakir said the more problematic media narrative has been around McCarthy’s power on Capitol Hill and the amount of credit that reporters gave him for passing his debt ceiling bill last month. “He’s still fundamentally a very weak speaker who doesn’t have votes to carry, and that's what really matters,” he said. Biden has at times expressed frustration with the White House press corps, both privately and publicly. He’s also been known to call columnists and TV hosts to push back on coverage he feels is unfair. DAVID BROOKS, one of those columnists that Biden has turned to, said in a text message to West Wing Playbook that he hasn’t had any recent conversations with Biden about the debt ceiling coverage. But he suggested that Democrats’ frustrations with the coverage might be unwarranted. “I do think the folks in the White House should go back and look at the dozens of times the opposition party used the debt limit as leverage in this way,” Brooks said. He did not respond to a follow-up text about what examples specifically he thought the administration should be considering. MESSAGE US — Are you SHALANDA YOUNG, director of the Office of Management and Budget and White House debt ceiling negotiator? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. 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