The world’s most powerful local paper

By Alex Thompson and Theodoric Meyer

With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne

Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here! Have a tip? Email us at transitiontips@politico.com.

To this day, President JOE BIDEN still gets the paper edition of Delaware’s The News Journal delivered to his home in Wilmington. When a News Journal reporter was at the briefings during the transition, they would often get a question.

The White House declined to comment on how often the president reads his old paper, but old habits have died hard as he has ascended the rungs of national politics. As vice president, he had a special section in his morning news clips for News Journal stories and editorials. As a senator, aides remember he always had a hard copy on his morning Amtrak ride.

And before PETER DOOCY, KAITLAN COLLINS, PETER BAKER and KRISTEN WELKER covered Biden, there were reporters and columnists like CRIS BARRISH, CELIA COHEN, RALPH MOYED, MAUREEN MILFORD, JEFF MONTGOMERY, JOHN SWEENEY and dozens more.

Like many local papers, Delaware’s leading paper is a skeleton of its former self. Its staffing is way down, the paper version is thinner, and print circulation is a fraction of past highs. The Biden beat reporter in 2020 was also the paper's main health reporter, covering the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet the paper — its current reporters, its past ones and its archives — offers insight into the president that one can’t find anywhere else in the world (with the exception of Biden’s papers at the University of Delaware, which aren’t open to the public).

The News Journal waved a red flag on HUNTER BIDEN’s ethical conflicts well over a decade ago. The archives are rich with details about the tension between Biden’s working-class image and the “blueblood company he keeps in the corporate state,” as Milford once wrote. And Biden’s now oft-remarked-upon empathetic gifts are on display throughout the clips covering his eulogies and remarks during state tragedies.

“You know, if I could have someone do my eulogy it would be him — it was really, really that good,” said Barrish, recalling one he attended.

When the Acela Twittersphere responded incredulously in 2019 to Biden’s tale of a long-ago confrontation with a “bad dude” named “Corn Pop” while working as a lifeguard at a Delaware pool, the News Journal’s MEREDITH NEWMAN reported out a story with a semi-exasperated lede: “Yes, ‘Corn Pop’ is a real person.”

The News Journal’s original 2017 story about the pool dedication where Biden told the “Corn Pop” story didn’t mention the anecdote because it wasn’t newsworthy. “When everybody else was making fun of Corn Pop, we knew who Corn Pop was,” said MIKE FEELEY, the paper’s executive editor.

Asked if she had any “hot takes” on the Biden presidency so far, Newman said: “We're not really a ‘hot take’ kind of place.”

Past reporters also offer a more nuanced view of the current president that isn’t filtered by the trappings of power. Some recalled him largely as a punchline throughout the 1980s. The internal newsroom jokes about Biden’s hair were plentiful and sometimes even made it into the paper.

A 1977 column mocked Biden for saying he might not run for reelection, quipping: “It would be a waste of his obvious political talents--to say nothing of those hair-transplant operations--for Biden, at the age of 36, to return to trying burglary cases in Court of Common Pleas.”

They also see a very Delawarean approach to his presidency. In such a small state, where one is likely to run into political opponents and reporters at the grocery store or a niece’s track meet, politicians are known for their skill at managing relationships and bringing down the temperature of public debate, the reporters say.

Almost every past News Journal reporter we talked to is shocked to see Biden in the Oval Office now, in part because they just never thought the country would elect a president from Delaware. And if they did, it certainly would not be Joe Biden. Most thought if anyone even had a chance, it would have been past Republican Gov. PETE DU PONT.

“It’s a political miracle,” said one.

But Biden outlasted many of the paper’s veteran political reporters, many of whom are now retired. He also outlasted du Pont, who passed away last week.

“Pay attention to your local stories, pay attention to your local journalism, because before you know it, that's gonna become the national story,” said PATRICIA TALORICO, a longtime reporter at the News Journal whose photo of a man at BEAU BIDEN’s grave on Inauguration Day went viral. She said she didn’t know anyone was going to be there but stopped by on a hunch.

Biden’s personal affection for the paper has not always trickled down to his staff. During the primary and general campaigns, Biden spokespeople ignored interview requests. When the paper was using its archives for a detailed story on Biden’s past busing stances, they had to rely on comments the Biden team gave to CNN and the Washington Post because the campaign didn’t respond.

As for whether Biden still gets the paper copy in Washington, it appears to be a state secret. The White House declined to say. Even the paper’s editor didn’t know if it’s delivered there. “I've asked people and it's this mystery,” he said.

West Wing Playbook called Gannett as a this week, the company said the News Journal was “undeliverable” to Alex’s personal address in D.C. Out of curiosity, we asked if the paper could be delivered to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Yes, they said.

It may not matter now, anyway. The News Journal does not cover Washington in depth any longer, and sees its value add in covering local issues. It writes about the president, of course, but sometimes just to cover all the traffic Biden’s entourage causes when he returns to Wilmington, which is often.

“Biden's weekend return causes big traffic tie-ups; Delays during Friday commute last more than hour,” read one March headline.

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A psychotherapist to which president suggested ''mental health certificates should be required for political leaders, similar to the Wasserman test demanded by states before marriage?”

(Answer is at the bottom.)

MEA CULPA: Yesterday’s edition said that DWIGHT EISENHOWER was the first president to visit an Asian or Pacific Island country in office, but the right answer was FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, who traveled to Iran in 1943. We apologize for the error. H/t to reader NOAH SUTHERLAND for pointing this out to us.

Cartoon by Jack Jurden | The News Journal

Every Friday, we’ll feature a cartoon of the week — this one is courtesy of Delaware’s News Journal. Our very own MATT WUERKER also publishes a selection of cartoons from all over the country. View the cartoon carousel here.

FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK — JULIA REED is now Biden’s day scheduler, a person familiar with the matter tells DANIEL LIPPMAN. Reed, whose father is White House deputy chief of staff BRUCE REED, spent two years as an advance site lead for the Biden campaign and also worked for two years teaching middle school on the south side of Chicago.

FAMILY MATTERS: Reed isn’t the only child of a top Biden aide who’s snagged a job in the administration.

SHANNON RICCHETTI, whose father, STEVE RICCHETTI, is a top Biden aide, is deputy associate director of the White House social secretary. Steve Ricchetti’s son, DANIEL RICCHETTI, is a senior adviser in the office of the under secretary of State for arms control and international security. And SARAH DONILON, whose mother, CATHY RUSSELL , heads the Office of Presidential Personnel, worked on the Commerce Department’s agency review team during the transition. (Her uncle, MIKE DONILON, is a Biden senior adviser.)

@NEERA’s BACK!: NEERA TANDEN is joining the administration after all. The White House confirmed on Friday that Biden had appointed Tanden to be a senior adviser more than two months after Biden withdrew her nomination to be Office of Management and Budget director, NATASHA KORECKI reports. (Tanden’s hire was first reported by CNN.) She’ll start Monday. She has not yet tweeted the news. The position doesn’t require Senate confirmation.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS — The New York Times’ MICHAEL SHEAR, KATIE ROGERS and ANNIE KARNI unearthed telling anecdotes about Biden’s decision-making process — or his Socratic “journey,” as some in the West Wing refer to it. “He has a kind of mantra: ‘You can never give me too much detail,’” national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN told the paper.

This is a little ironic since Biden criticized his predecessor for the same quality. Biden sometimes thought President BARACK OBAMA “was deliberate to a fault,” Biden wrote in “Promise Me, Dad,” his 2017 memoir.

“Just trust your instincts, Mr. President,” I would say to him,” Biden wrote. “On major decisions that had to be made fast, I had learned over the years, a president was never going to have more than about 70 percent of the information needed. So once you have checked the experts, statistics, data, and intelligence, you have to be willing to rely on your gut.”

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND — There seems to be one thing that consistently slips White House press secretary JEN PSAKI’s mind: the Friday “Skype seat” questions from reporters for publications based outside the Beltway. The Biden administration resumed the practice, which started under President DONALD TRUMP, in early April .

Chalk it up to just having one eye on the weekend, perhaps , but for several weeks in a row now, Psaki has tried to call curtains on the day’s briefing before the remote reporter got a chance to pose his or her question — a faux pas that Psaki herself has picked up.

“I’m sorry. I keep forgetting,” she said to MAAYAN SCHECTER of The State newspaper in South Carolina, who went on to ask about the timeline on police reform in light of JAMAL SUTHERLAND’s death in sheriff's custody in January. (Video footage of the incident was released Thursday night.) FROM NICK NIEDZWIADEK

‘AWESOME SPLENDOR,’ REVOKED — Biden today rescinded six more of Trump's executive orders, including one Trump signed last summer after protesters tried to pull down a statue of President ANDREW JACKSON in Lafayette Park. The order directed the attorney general to prosecute anyone who desecrated a statue, memorial or monument on federal property “to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law.”

Biden also revoked Trump’s order calling for the creation of a “National Garden of American Heroes,” a statuary park meant “to reflect the awesome splendor of our country's timeless exceptionalism,” as Trump’s order put it. The order included a list of more than 200 Americans whose statues he wanted included, from the widely admired (ROSA PARKS, CHRISTA McAULIFFE) to the controversial (ANDREW JACKSON, FRANCIS SCOTT KEY) to the only recently dead (KOBE BRYANT, ALEX TREBEK).

ANNALS OF WORKING FROM HOME — With masks no longer required in the White House, Commerce Secretary GINA RAIMONDO told the 19th in a live interview this afternoon that “we are now beginning the discussion around what’s it going to look like post-Covid,” for those working at the Commerce Department.

The post-pandemic future is likely to include at least some ability for the department’s staff to keep working from home. “I think we will get to a place where we will still allow for some virtual work, so people can have some flexibility,” she said. “But I also think everybody’s kind of excited to get back into the office and see their friends and colleagues.”

IN LIEU OF A FAMILY BIBLE: DON GRAVES, a longtime Biden aide, was sworn in this morning as deputy Commerce secretary on a copy of the 13th Amendment gifted to his family by abolitionist Sen. CHARLES SUMNER (R-Mass.).

Vice presidential niece @meenaharris tweets: “if you’re fully vaccinated, the cdc says you can drop down and get your eagle on.”

If you don’t understand, here’s Urban Dictionary.

BuzzFeed found Biden’s Venmo account (BuzzFeed News’ Ryan Mac, Katie Notopoulos, Ryan Brooks and Logan McDonald)

Some border patrol agents are so frustrated with Biden’s policies that they’re considering early retirement (Reuters’ Ted Hesson, Kristina Cooke and Mica Rosenberg)

Biden will rename but not shutter Department of Homeland Security’s Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office, which Trump created (Time’s Vera Bergengruen)

Texas AG sues Biden administration over billions in rescinded Medicaid funding (Houston Chronicle’s Jeremy Blackman and Austin Bureau)

He met with six DACA recipients who work in health care, education and agriculture in the Oval Office to highlight the need for immigration reform legislation.

She and second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF traveled to New York City for their daughter’s graduation.

While working as Biden’s Covid-19 adviser, ANDY SLAVITT once ignored a call from the White House because the caller ID said it was a spam risk.

On the Feb. 24 episode of his podcast “In the Bubble,” Slavitt said he was in a Zoom meeting with pharma CEOs when he was interrupted by another call.

But the caller ID said “Spam Risk, Washington D.C.,” so he “clicked it off.”

“A minute later it rings again: ‘Spam Risk, Washington, D.C.’ so I put my other call on hold and it’s the switchboard. And I said, ‘That’s great, what switchboard?’” Slavitt said.

The caller explained that it was the White House switchboard, and that the president’s assistant was trying to get ahold of Slavitt to invite him into a meeting that had already begun in the Oval Office.

“So I’m looking at these pharma CEOs and I’m like ‘Ok I think I got what I needed, I gotta go.’” he added. “I book on over to the Oval and the president’s in the dining room that’s adjacent to the Oval with RON KLAIN and JEFF ZIENTS … The president wants to have a conversation about how to talk to the public about what’s going on with the virus, vaccines, etc.”

“Spam Risk” isn’t the worst excuse we’ve ever heard but it’s not the best, Andy.

HELP US OUT — It's been interesting digging through memoirs and college newspaper clips about Biden administration officials. But we want your help, too. Gota story — that’s potentially embarrassing but not too mean or serious — you think we should use for an "Oppo Book" item? Email us transitiontips@politico.com.

RICHARD NIXON’s psychotherapist, Dr. ARNOLD HUTSCHNECKER, suggested the idea of mental health certificates back in the 1950’s, according to the New York Times.

We want your tips, but we also want your feedback as we transition to West Wing Playbook. What should be covering in this newsletter that we’re not? What are we getting wrong? Please let us know.

Edited by Emily Cadei

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