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Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, focused on what’s really being talked about in this town. I’m Tara Palmeri. On behalf of my co-authors of this email, Julia Ioffe, Tina Nguyen, and Peter Hamby, thanks as always for your support and feedback.
In today’s edition, an inside look at Mike Pence’s 2024 campaign strategy, as told by some of his closest aides, allies, and advisers. But first…
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Is DeSantis Taking Ozempic?
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The talk of Tallahassee has been that Ron DeSantis is losing weight, and fast. Juxtaposing photos from his inauguration, two months ago, to pictures from his State of the State speech, last week, suggests a dramatic difference. Not as dramatic as, say, Mike Pompeo, but his boxy suits are looking even baggier. “He’s a shell of his former self,” said one Tallahassee insider.
If there’s one thing that’s been documented about DeSantis, it’s his ability to shove anything in his mouth. Staffers used to lure him into meetings with cupcakes, as I once noted. He loves fried chicken from...
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| Pence & Sensibility |
| Absent a coalition or a lane or movement, Mike Pence’s putative presidential campaign seems unclear. Is he just running to reclaim his dignity? |
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| Last Saturday, Mike Pence stepped onto the stage at the annual Gridiron Club dinner, in Washington, looking for an image makeover. The stiff, soft-spoken former vice president wanted to convince a ballroom of self-serious journalists, pompadoured TV hosts, and tux-clad politicos that he wasn’t merely a Donald Trump supplicant, but rather a bonafide conservative fighter, who was ready to attack his old boss. Sure, Pence has refused to testify about the events of Jan. 6, when a mob called for his lynching at the Capitol, and he has not cooperated with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into Trump’s attempts to stay in power. But on Saturday night, his team was determined to take the inside chatter head on. Pence delivered a calculated attack on his former boss, saying “history will hold Donald Trump accountable for January 6,” and that he endangered his family.
It was a canny yet careful move deployed by his careful and calculating team, which has up until this point been steering Pence toward academic conclaves, policy institutes, religious centers and universities to highlight his wedge issues with Trump and Ron DeSantis. He chose the Clements School of Security, at the University of Texas, to draw... |
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| FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT |
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| SVB Post-Mortem |
| A close look at an abbreviated financial crisis. |
| WILLIAM D. COHAN |
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| Zaz in CNN |
| A scholarly perusal of the WBD C.E.O.’s arrival at CNN H.Q. |
| DYLAN BYERS |
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| DeSantis’s Trojan Horse |
| On DeSantis’s domestic policy-based foreign affairs play & the N.R.A.’s withdrawal. |
| TINA NGUYEN |
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| Hulu Hunger Games |
| Poking holes in the oversimplified narrative surrounding Iger’s Hulu headache. |
| JULIA ALEXANDER |
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