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Seems like there are way more reporters & guests with “appointment” badges at the White House today and judging by their giddiness they are all here to see BTS. The briefing room is already full.
Joe Biden now has a PowerPoint slide show up of Rick Scott’s proposal to sunset legislation every 5 years, which the president says would include Medicare and Social Security.
Missed this yesterday, but Gavin Newsom is ripping Democrats in D.C. & arguing they’re getting smoked by GOP on abortion.
“Where the hell is my party?”
“This is a concerted, coordinated effort and yes, they’re winning. Where’s the counter-offensive?"
Scoop: Kamala Harris scores another big 2020 endorsement
Dolores Huerta, the iconic labor and civil rights leader who with Cesar Chavez cofounded the National Farmworkers Association, is backing Harris and joining her presidential campaign as a co-chair
Gov. Gavin Newsom has appointed Alex Padilla to succeed VPE Kamala Harris.
In a state that's roughly 40 percent Latino, Padilla will be the first Latino to represent California in the U.S. Senate.
SCOOP: Gavin Newsom will appoint EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler to fill the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, elevating the head of a fundraising juggernaut that works to elect Dem women who support abortion rights, per a person familiar.
NOT an SNL sketch, though it sort of looks like one!
In PHILLY, Joe BIDEN is a man who knows his audience.
Pulls up his pant cuff and shows he’s wearing red Phillies socks
Kamala Harris will go one-on-one with Bill Clinton on Friday to talk about the impact of COVID-19 on women, and empowering women and girls in the U.S. and around the world as part of a Clinton Global Initiative event.
Scoop:
@marcorubio
urged Joe Biden on Tuesday night to immediately call on Congress to pass $2,000 stimulus checks as a sign of congressional unity, according to a letter obtained by
@axios
Biden's campaign wants 12 feet or more of separation, with Kamala Harris and Mike Pence standing at VP debate. But the commission has so far sided w/ the Trump camp, in opposing extending the distance between them.
@natashakorecki
New: Kamala Harris is pulling out of the Second Step Presidential Justice Forum at Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., citing the award to Donald Trump, along with most of the HBCU’s students being excluded. “I cannot in good faith be complicit in papering over his record.”
“National sales tax,” Joe Biden says, sarcastically, of House Republican plans. “Go home and tell your moms. They’re going to be really excited about that. Come on!”
The owner of a Kenosha, Wisconsin camera shop refused to appear w/ Trump for a photo-op today. So Trump instead appeared w/ the store’s former owner and made it seem like the business was still his.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are releasing their 2019 taxes this afternoon, their campaign says on a pre-debate press call. Will mark 22 years of tax returns for Biden and at least 16 years of documents for Harris.
Millions of Californians heard the governor announce Musk’s heroic donation of “ventilators.” Yet not one unit has been delivered – and Musk likely never had the real ventilators our hospitals need.
Tesla did not respond to an interview request.
“Surprising flat” and “didn’t seem to have the bite that he usually does have in his speeches,” Fox News’ Chris Wallace says in panning Trump’s RNC address. “Chris has a point,” Brit Hume added. “The speech was very long.”
Source close to Don Jr. responds to Harris tweet: “We feel bad for Kamala at this point ... she’s irrelevant. She’s a phony who should go back to lying about listening to Snoop Dogg before Snoop Dogg was even a rapper.”
At the home of the Gettys in San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi introduced Joe Biden by reading an unspecified quote from Aristotle about the middle class.
As she turned to Biden, he said, “I knew him well.”
People in the room laughed, per the pool.
News: In 2011, Rep. George Santos appears to have confirmed that he participated in drag shows while he was a teenager in Brazil.
The wiki user — under Santos alias Anthony Devolder — claimed he won drag pageants & a role in Disney's "Hannah Montana."
GOP Gov. CHRIS SUNUNU at Gridiron:
“The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I’ll say it this way: I don't think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out.”
Biden: "You saw what trickle down does. We've known it for a long time. This is the first time we've been able—since the Johnson administration, or maybe even before that—to begin to change the paradigm."
New: Gavin Newsom has met the donor threshold to qualify for the 2024 GOP debate stage — 43,800 individuals
He got them all between Thursday & Saturday, after proposing a U.S. constitutional amendment on guns
His PAC sent an email, text & ran online ads. More in
@politicoca
Katie Hobbs’ campaign manager, Nicole DeMont, all but declaring victory in Arizona over Kari Lake.
“With the latest tabulation results from Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties, Katie Hobbs is the unequivocal favorite to become the next governor of Arizona.”
At the
#BigIdeas
@MoveOn
festival moments ago —
@KamalaHarris
was on stage answering questions when a man jumped on stage and grabbed her microphone.
The senator came back out on stage to finish her speech about
#EqualPay
.
Joe Biden with a rare comment on testimony from the Jan. 6 committee from a Baskin Robbins out west:
“I think the testimony and the video are actually devastating and I’ve been going out of my way not to comment. I think it’s been devastating,” he said.
Katie Porter, a former Harvard Law student of Elizabeth Warren’s, is tops on the list for progressives looking at possible economic posts in a Biden administration.
Porter is also the most sought-after progressive in CA for Kamala and/or DiFi seat.
That’s Kamala Harris pretending to drive an all-electric bus, then honking the horn.
“The wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round,” Harris said, letting out a big laugh as Pete Buttigieg looks on.
“You know, he’s probably going to be the next president,” Sununu said, musing about Trump’s “experience,” “passion,” “integrity” & rational approach he brought to Twitter. As the room quieted to see where he was going, Sununu paused: “Nah, I’m just kidding. He’s FUCKING CRAZY!”
“You’re the president. You’re not like someone’s crazy uncle,”
@SavannahGuthrie
tells Trump after he refuses to say why he retweeted a conspiracy theory that Biden tried to have S.E.A.L. Team Six killed to cover up the fake death of Osama bin Laden.
NEW: Howard Schultz invested millions of dollars and personally owned stock in Capella University, which overcharged the federal student loan program hundreds of thousands of dollars
Inbox: Joe Biden will travel to southwestern Pennsylvania to lay out a core question voters face in this election: are you safe in Donald Trump's America?
Laura Ingraham stops Trump from finishing his thought comparing police officers using lethal force to a golfer missing a three-foot putt because, she says mid-interview, it’s the type of remark the media will jump all over.
NEW: VP Kamala Harris' aides & others inside and out the administration say her office is mired in disfunction.
“It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like shit.”
w/
@dlippman
@EugeneDaniels2
@theodoricmeyer
Joe Biden, who spoke after Kamala Harris tonight in Philadelphia, nodded a bit at their relationship. “She’s more like my buddy and my sister, but I trust her with my life,” he said. “I trust her completely.”
Republicans tearing into Judge Kavanaugh’s latest accuser, noting that while the New Yorker quotes her as “not politically motivated,” she’s a registered Democrat who also “works toward human rights, social justice, and social change.”
Maya Wiley has tapped
@MayaRupert
, a former Warren adviser who ran
@JulianCastro
‘s presidential campaign, to managed her campaign if she runs for NYC mayor, via
@SallyGold
NEW: DuBois, Pa. — I spent time w/ Democrats in their towns and, yes, even a rural diner.
They voted for Biden and yet a relentless and toxic campaign to delegitimize him makes them feel as if they're under siege.
READ: The Last Democrats in Trumpland
Joe Biden is receiving his ashes for Ash Wednesday from Rev. Brian O. McDermott, S.J. at Georgetown University, Wolfington Hall, per pool, a historic moment for the presidency.
John Bolton to
@jaketapper
on Trump declaring an early win before all the votes are counted:
"I think he is trying to set up a fraud, a con on his own supporters and the entire electoral system to justify actions he is contemplating taking after the polls have closed."
White House outreach to conservative white men to get vaccines includes running ads on “Deadliest Catch” and Country Music Television, Psaki says at briefing.
This one takes an unexpected turn.
Rep. Debbie Lesko: “I would do anything — anything — to protect my five grandchildren, including, as a last resort, shooting them if I had to, to protect the lives of my grandchildren.”
Klain said the current White House is the most serious he’s ever seen, with a serious president and a serious set of advisers in place. “And I hope I’m a serious chief of staff,” he said.
That President Trump’s good week included a 14,000-exposé in the newspaper of record on how he acquired his wealth is really saying something about all of the developments we’re living through
Joe Biden isn’t worried about culture war attacks over Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head and Neanderthals.
A White House official sends over a statement for our time.
More, w/ the great
@meridithmcgraw
Mick Mulvaney is taking up a side gig as a hedge fund founder where he’ll buy stock in banks and other financial firms based on his knowledge of government regulations.
Biden campaign lawyer Bob Bauer says if Donald Trump appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court over ballots cast during the election, "he will be in for one of the most embarrassing defeats a president has ever suffered by the highest court in the land."
Trump confidant tells
@MarcACaputo
that George P. Bush smartly embraced MAGA.
“But I can tell you the president enjoys the prospect of knowing how much it kills Jeb that his son has to bend the knee and kiss the ring. Who’s your daddy? Trump loves that.”
New: Gavin Newsom wants a 28th Amendment for guns in the U.S. Constitution — citing the deadliest wave of mass shootings in U.S. history and a conservative Supreme Court that has rolled back gun laws.
“We want to go on the offense,” Newsom tells POLITICO.
SCOOP: Kamala Harris is bringing on famed ad-maker Jim Margolis as a media adviser, sources tell POLITICO. Margolis, a veteran of Obama in 2008 and 2012, and a key player in Clinton’s 2016 run, will work closely with Harris' team of strategists at SCRB.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper tells CBS he expects Joe Biden to run in ‘24
“I had a conversation with him just a couple of days ago. I support him. He's been a fantastic president. I've told him that I will try to win North Carolina. If he makes the decision, I'm for him 100%”
New: Adam Schiff has ridiculed Katie Porter for refusing to seek earmarks.
POLITICO found he secured millions for defense firms while taking contributions from top corporate brass & D.C. lobbyists.
Schiff also would not provide his earmarks from ‘01-‘07.
.
@PressSec
calls out Trump:
“Donald Trump's comments were anti-semitic, as you all know, and insulting, both to Jews and our Israeli allies. Let's be clear: For years now, Donald Trump has aligned with extremist and anti-semitic figures. And it should be called out.”
Biden: "I shouldn't say this. I'm going get in trouble in Delaware."
After the 2020 election, "The first thing I asked, I said, 'how did I do in Scranton?'"
*the president leans on the podium and whispers*
"I won every precinct."
Biden camp growing increasingly confident this morning: They expect to win Wisconsin, with a call coming soon; and for Michigan to be called in their favor by mid-afternoon. Also, the vote by mail in Philly to come tonight or tomorrow, Nevada called tomorrow.