Battlefield Hakeem, The Biden Debate Calculus & Trump V.P. Theory

Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri. Last night was a busy one for the greenroom crowd in Manhattan. Anthony Scaramucci hosted a book party for his latest tome, From Wall Street to the White House and Back, at his Hunt & Fish club in Midtown, which was attended by former governor Chris Christie, Chris Cuomo, Ben Sherwood, Lisa Sharkey, Chris Vlasto, Andrew Napolitano, and more. A few blocks away in Bryant Park, Dan Abrams hosted Mediaite’s 15th anniversary party, attracting media types like Ari Melber, Jesse Angelo, John Berman, Don Lemon, Erica Hill, Brian Stelter, Shawn McCreesh, Puck’s own Tina Nguyen, Davidson Goldin, Megyn Kelly, Joe Scarborough, Kat Timpf, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. 🎧 Podcast update: We’re in the homestretch of the first Trump criminal trial, so I welcomed CNN legal analyst and former New York prosecutor Elie Honig back on Somebody’s Gotta Win. And earlier this week, Teddy Schleifer and I surmised the origins of the Nikki Haley veep trial balloon, pondered Melinda Gates’s next move, and considered Trump’s TikTok flirtation. 🚨 And a quick programming note: On May 29 in D.C., Puck will host a screening of For Love & Life: No Ordinary Campaign, a film chronicling the life and times of attorney-turned-activist Brian Wallach and his wife, Sandra, in the aftermath of his ALS diagnosis at age 37. Following the screening, our very own Julia Ioffe will interview the filmmaker, Christopher Burke. You can RSVP here. Finally, if you’re a subscriber who still hasn’t updated your Member Information questions, please take a few seconds to fill out your responses. It will help us develop new products tailored to members’ interests. Just click here, and make sure you’re logged in. Thanks! Tonight, news and notes on the presidential debate détente, Democrats’ House headache in New York, and the Trump veepstakes. But first, here’s Abby Livingston with the latest on the Hill…

The G.O.P.’s Manhattan Field Trip

Early this morning, closely followed congressional reporter Paul Kane posted a tweet that made Capitol Hill pause. “With at least a half dozen House Rs in a Manhattan courtroom, Democrats are almost certainly majority party in House till late this afternoon,” he observed. “Dems could pull some hijinks & call a motion to adjourn. Shut down chamber.” Of course, no such thing happened. But it underscored a truth about this chaotic Congress: In a week that was supposed to offer some semblance of normalcy, everything still has the potential to go off the rails because a handful of House G.O.P. members have their priorities elsewhere. Here’s the latest chatter…

Oversight overlooked: On the Hill, there was at least one tangible repercussion of the G.O.P. field trip: the postponing of an Oversight meeting to Thursday night. In previous Congresses, a dramatic, middle-of-the-day change to a swath of members’ schedules was unfathomable, at least outside of shutdown season. But even “normal” days don’t feel normal anymore.
The Israel pinch: The House, however, did vote on a messaging bill tonight that would restrict Biden from curtailing weapons transfers to Israel. Chuck Schumer already declared it D.O.A. in the Senate, so the aim of this vote is to put the squeeze on Democratic frontliners—or at least to pick at the Israel-Gaza scab in the House Democratic caucus. Sixteen Democrats joined the Republican side of this vote, while three Republicans—Warren Davidson, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene—voted with most of the Democrats.
M.T.G.’s video days: As primary season heats up, there have been a handful of ads in competitive Democratic races that cast Marjorie Taylor Greene as the personification of MAGA extremism. I wondered whether this was part of a larger branding campaign, harking back to the 2010 cycle, in which House Republicans and their friends spent ungodly amounts of money on negative ads tying vulnerable Democrats to Nancy Pelosi. But after poking around in the House Democratic campaign world, insiders seem to believe that this will be a more limited affair. Despite Greene’s high name I.D. among political obsessives, she doesn’t have the kind of high profile that would play to general election voters.

Hakeem Ironies & Trump Veep Game Theory

News and notes on the fallout from the presidential debate détente, Biden’s big House Democratic headache in New York, and what Mar-a-Lago needs from the Trump veepstakes.

TARA PALMERI

This forthcoming election could be a legacy-defining moment for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whose chances of becoming speaker are increasingly dependent on Democrats retaking the chamber via the competitive races playing out on his very own turf. The problem, alas, is that Joe Biden, who won New York by 23 points in 2020, is now leading Donald Trump by only 10 points in the state, according to a Siena poll conducted last month. That margin, if the election were held today, would be the worst performance for a Democratic presidential candidate in the state since 1988.Governor Kathy Hochul’s lackluster performance at the top of the ticket in 2022 can’t be reassuring Jeffries. Back then, Hochul won the state by just six points, which was hardly enough to buoy down-ballot congressional candidates. Of the 11 districts won by her Republican challenger, Lee Zeldin, 10 congressional seats went to Republicans. The exception was Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, a West Point veteran, who ran 5 points ahead of Hochul in his Hudson Valley district. And I’ve heard from multiple sources that Biden is now underwater in Ryan’s district, NY-18, a region the president won by 9 points in 2020. Many Democrats I spoke with said that Biden’s double-digit lead in districts he won in 2020, specifically those that flipped red in 2022, may have shrunk to single digits. For example, a Congressional Leadership Fund poll conducted last October showed Biden up by just two points in NY-17, a district he won by 11 points in 2020, and which Mike Lawler clawed back for the Republicans in the 2022 midterms. While Republicans expect Biden to win NY-17, the G.O.P. grip on three districts Biden won in 2020 looks formidable. Namely, upstate district NY-19, held by Marc Molinaro; Nassau County district NY-4, held by Anthony D’Esposito; and upstate district NY-22, held by Brandon Williams. Sure, the Cook Political Report leaderboard still looks good for Democrats overall in the state. In a statement, a Biden campaign spokesperson boasted about their “record-breaking fundraising operation” and D.N.C. investments responsible for “consistent wins up and down the ballot.” Party operatives have been emboldened by Tom Suozzi’s victory over Mazi Pilip in the special election to fill George Santos’s seat on Long Island. But Suozzi won, in part, by running away from Biden, especially on immigration. And it remains to be seen whether that strategy is replicable by Democrats who may feel boxed in on that issue, or easily pigeonholed. With Biden’s lead over Trump edging down toward single-digit territory, the down-ballot effects could be unpredictable. “People are freaked out by how low Biden’s numbers are in New York,” said a Democratic strategist working on the races. “Still, having Trump on the ballot is incredibly useful. He’s far more unpopular than Zeldin was.” New York is hardly a swing state, but if Biden hopes to win the White House and a House majority, he’ll need to think tactically about how to navigate a state where his unfavorability rating is 52 percent, almost as high as Trump’s 59 percent. That might even necessitate a tactical retreat from the state, which would allow cross-pressured Democrats in competitive seats to distance themselves from his administration. Jeffries, of course, will be fine no matter what happens in November. At 53 years old, he’s already proven himself to be a competent, charismatic leader—as well as a strong fundraiser, under the tutelage of his former boss, speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi. New York Democrats say they’re heartened by his leadership, too. Seeing his own fate tied to House candidates, he’s heavily invested in candidate recruitment and has stayed in close contact with campaign managers. His House Majority PAC has committed to spending a whopping $45 million in New York—triple what it spent in 2022 and larger than their California program—even if it’s only reserved $21 million in advertising so far. The PAC has also set up a war room outpost in New York, according to Axios. An official at its Republican counterpart, the Congressional Leadership Fund, said they plan to spend around $16 million in the state. Regardless, there’s a lot for Jeffries to prove. “It’s a branding issue to have a Democratic leader that’s either losing or gaining [the speakership] from that person’s home state,” said a top Democratic operative. “Sure, it happened to Nancy [in 2022], but she’s had the runway of a longtime brand, no one questions her. The markets aren’t questioning her political acumen, whereas here’s a man who is playing footsie with the Republican speaker of the House.”

The Biden Debate Calculus

It’s been the dream of a presidential campaign, dating back to the creation of the Commission on Presidential Debates in 1987, to kill off the nonpartisan organization that sets the ground rules. That’s more or less what Biden and Trump accomplished Wednesday when they struck a deal to meet on their own in a pair of debates.The prevailing narrative surrounding the agreement pushed by the Biden camp is that it benefits the incumbent: There will be no Robert F. Kennedy Jr., no live audience for Trump to entertain, and moderators from the comparatively mainstream-friendly CNN and ABC. If Trump has a bad night on June 27, and if Biden performs like he did during his State of the Union address, the president might get the bump he needs to catch Trump in the polls. Debates, after all, are primarily an expectations game, at least insofar as media coverage is concerned. On the other hand, Biden’s decision to forgo the traditional late fall debate season, when a campaign can regroup, pivot, and rebound from a disastrous debate night with another round, certainly has its risks. “It’s like changing the terrain of a marathon, the contours and conditions, in a very material way,” said Steve Schmidt, a former senior advisor to the McCain campaign. “There are two finite commodities in a political campaign—time and money—and you have to manage them. A dominant feature of the fall campaign is the debate season, and that is gone.” With almost three summer months between the CNN debate, on June 27, and the ABC debate, on September 10, a subpar performance by Biden could linger for months and allow Trump to dominate news cycles with announcements like his vice presidential pick or whatever he has up his sleeve for the Republican National Convention in July. Also working against Biden is the historic underperformance by incumbents in their first debate. (Reagan vs. Mondale, Bush vs. Kerry, Obama vs. Romney, etcetera.) These stumbles tend to be temporary, because campaigns know their candidate can come out swinging in the next round, ten days or so later. A strong follow-up performance not only wipes the slate clean, but creates “comeback” headlines. Biden won’t have that opportunity. Schmidt, a converted Democrat who hosts a podcast called The Warning, predicted that a poor Biden performance in the CNN debate could have significant ramifications. If the president’s last major media moment until the Democratic National Convention in August were being steamrolled by Trump, he surmised, the White House would face a fresh round of calls for a new candidate and R.F.K. momentum. “If Biden fails, and he does poorly in this debate, you’ll have a full-on panic and chaos inside the party, and media narratives of changing the candidate until the convention, and that will go into hyperdrive,” he said. “It’s a zero-sum affair.”

“Where’s My Cary Grant?”

It’s always amusing to hear old Republican hands—you know, the types who have been around Washington longer than Trump and his posse of New Yorkers and neophytes—talk up their preferred vice presidential candidates. One day, I’m pitched on how Trump keeps bringing up Doug Burgum, the mellow-bordering-on-narcoleptic North Dakota governor; the next day, I’m hearing that Trump is being told he needs Tim Scott to win over suburban women; and the next day, that Marco Rubio, who would incur a constitutional penalty for sharing a home state with Trump, could easily relocate his family to Georgia. What I do know for sure is that until Trump makes that decision—probably right before the Republican National Convention in July—he’ll squeeze as much as he can out of his contestants in the veepstakes. One benefit of that extra time is that it allows Mar-a-Lago to put pressure on the contenders to mine their donor networks, urging them to fill Trump’s coffers on their behalf.In the end, of course, Trump will choose whichever candidate gives him whatever he covets at that exact moment in time, whether it’s a constituency he’s missing or a donor he needs. While, sure, Trump wants allies on his team, this is not a loyalty game. Instead, I’m told the campaign is carefully sizing up each of the candidates’ various assets and liabilities—especially as it pertains to what he calls the “a-word” (abortion), as if the word alone will hex his candidacy. Sources close to Trump say he doesn’t want to have to defend a veep who governs a state with restrictive abortion laws, for example. That doesn’t help governors like Burgum, Sarah Sanders, and Kristi Noem, who hail from “heartbeat” states. Many of the advisors in Trump’s ear these days are more socially liberal types, like Susie Wiles and Roger Stone and Kellyanne Conway, who have advised him to take a more moderate approach on abortion. But if Trump has issues with evangelicals in July, a Burgum candidacy could come in handy. Obviously, if he’s in need of cash, an offer of nine figures from Larry Ellison to pick Tim Scott could be the ticket. If he’s presented with a map that shows that the only way to the White House is through Nikki Haley voters, I could see him ultimately choosing her, too. It might be someone else entirely. Trump claims there are as many as 50 people on his mind, and I can report, after talking to numerous sources around him, that he has loyalty to none of them. This is the candidate who has asked his advisors, “Where’s my Cary Grant?” when looking for a vice president, suggesting that the need to select someone from “central casting” is still top of mind.

FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

The Bella Jar

Appraising Bella Hadid’s would-be fragrance empire.

RACHEL STRUGATZ

Cable News Microdramas

A potpourri of media world dish.

DYLAN BYERS

Johnson’s Courthouse Gambit

On the House speaker’s pilgrimage to the Trump trial.

TINA NGUYEN

Shari’s Denouement

The latest intel from inside the Paramount special committee.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

Need help? Review our FAQs page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with . To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 227 W 17th St New York, NY 10011.

SEE THE ARCHIVES