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Why is Wide World of News coming out late this morning?
Because my writing of this FAKE Ron Klain memo was interrupted by the need to build a pillow fort for Bear:
Please enjoy this FAKE Ron Klain memo to President Biden now.
****
TO: JRB
FROM: Ron Klain
DATE: September 23, 2022
RE: Hello, Yellow Brick Road!
Good morning, sir!
The Elton John concert is at 8pm tonight and we are all going.
I’ve already used two exclamation points in this memo because things are going pretty great for us right now!
There’s a third!
And a fourth.
Now, look, things could be EVEN BETTER if we got the credit we deserve on everything we’ve done.
Our FEMA work remains stellar. As you know, FEMA is like a baseball umpire – nobody notices them unless they mess up. So, fine. But the people of Puerto Rico have been taken care of.
Same with baby formula, gas prices, and a whole bunch of other stuff that The Most Prepared and Experienced President Ever and The Most Prepared and Experienced White House Chief of Staff Ever have handled with hard work and dexterity.
History (and Michael Beschloss and Jon Meacham) will give us the credit to which we are entitled, even if others don’t.
For now, we should just be grateful that the press is on our side, generally ignoring us, cutting us every bit of slack, cheering on Democrats in the midterms, and rooting hard against the Republicans.
As for ignoring us:
Here’s Drudge
Can you find the single reference to you on the whole page?
As for cutting us slack – look at all the stuff that isn’t being written about (unless you count the scribes who run the RNC twitter account):
* You are hosting a rock concert at taxpayer expense with a foreign artist.
* You are going to fundraiser after fundraiser with fat cat donors while real Americans are struggling with inflation.
* Democrats on the ballot are skipping your public appearances with regularity. OLD NEWS!
* You struggled to answer some of Scott Pelley’s queries in your “60 Minutes” interview, which one wag said weren’t even softball questions; they were t-ball.
* And the Washington Post gives your deficit reduction claims three Pinocchios – AND THE DOMINANT MEDIA DOES NOT CARE.
Why so little interest in an incumbent president with rising approval ratings and the most successful beginning of an administration ever?
Well, some wrongly say that you are as interesting as a slightly less interesting version of Dick Durbin. (I think of you as a more interesting Paul Sarbanes…).
But the really answer is five simple letters: T-R-U-M-P.
Imagine if the Times and Post directed their firepower in writing daily stories with four powerhouse byline names about you, combining gossipy saved string with investigative muscle.
Instead Maggie Haberman, Ben Protess, Matthew Goldstein, and Eric Lipton (Times) and Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Devlin Barrett, and Perry Stein (Post) are writing all about your “predecessor.”
If they turned that bandwidth on our record on, say, immigration, ahead of the midterms, they could do us real damage. But the Trump train has a lot of track left to travel to take us (and the Dominant Media) all the way through November.
Will there be major scrutiny of our record for their readers ahead of the midterms?
The chances are greater that AOC and MTG will co-host a charity backgammon tournament.
Instead, it is all about Trump, which is on balance great for us, the fulfilment of the strategy we devised long ago, long before we know about the Mar-a-Lago documents and other legal gifts that will keep on giving.
Per the Washington Post story on how Trump’s legal troubles are impacting things:
The summer’s planning for a fall presidential campaign announcement has been put on pause, according to two people familiar with the plans, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
That story has a pair of quotes that reflect the two schools of thought on the political fallout:
“The impact that the Mar-a-Lago issue has had is it’s raised the stakes on the unquestioning fealty of Republicans to Trump,” Democratic pollster Geoff Garin said. “So I don’t think they are necessarily litigating the details of Trump’s possession of super-classified documents, but voters are litigating the blind loyalty that Republicans have to President Trump and that is part of what people think about when they think about MAGA Republicans….”
“If the media, if the Democrats, if the New York attorney general and the Department of Justice just left this guy alone, you would see his numbers among Republicans fade, I guarantee it,” said one former Trump White House adviser who remains bullish on Trump’s prospects in a Republican nomination fight. “He is constantly getting attacked by these people, who our voters hate. That is what cleaves the base to him.”
So we have to be on guard that Trump’s big presence on the stage could end up hurting our side more than it appears now.
Even as Chris Christie mocks Trump in New York (and Jared Kushner hits Ron DeSantis, further stoking the “Republicans in disarray” meme we favor), there is a Politico story about a brand new Trump fundraising committee that might spend very big on the midterms to help Trump’s chosen nominees:
MAGA, Inc. will be overseen by Budowich, who’s been serving as the former president’s communications director and was previously a senior adviser on his 2020 reelection campaign. Chris LaCivita, a veteran Republican operative who in 2020 ran the biggest-spending pro-Trump super PAC, will be the vehicle’s chief strategist. Tony Fabrizio, a longtime Trump pollster who worked on his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, will oversee polling.
Running the finance team will be veteran GOP fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke, who has worked for Trump. The communications department will be staffed by Steven Cheung, who worked on Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns and worked in his administration, and Alex Pfeiffer, a conservative media strategist and former producer for Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Sergio Gor, the publisher of Trump’s post-presidential book “A Journey Together,” will be a senior adviser.
LaCivita’s involvement alone means we need to take this seriously. The political shop will learn more about this and report back.
Could this turn out to be a (or the) October Surprise, with slashing negative ads that cost us some seats?
Maybe.
Here’s what is NOT going to be the October Surprise: Kevin McCarthy’s Contract with America 2022, even with (especially with!) Mitch McConnell’s support. Maybe this is a one-day (Friday!) story. There is nothing politically scary in here for us (we are less vulnerable on China than they are!), and actually plenty we can distort and put in negative ads against McCarthy’s candidates.
Other potential October Surprises: inflation spikes, Iran (we are watching that very closely, since you might soon face an “Arab Fall” moment), and, of course, Putin.
The Washington Post took our organized “leak” that we have warned Russia repeatedly for a long time about the consequences of using nukes.
And David Ignatius has some great framing and advice on this, urging you to find a way to be tough and de-escalatory, while also comparing you favorably to Putin:
Biden and Putin are a study in contrasts. One is an aging elected politician; the other is a famously vigorous, unelected dictator; one has near-consensus support at home for his Ukraine policy; the other is increasingly attacked in Moscow by right-wing hawks and left-wing doves; one has a unified presidential administration; the other faces growing Kremlin bickering and finger-pointing; one has solid allies across Europe; the other has increasingly wary support from China and India. Clearly, whatever the differences in age and aggressiveness, Biden’s is the stronger hand.
David also echoes what Tony has told us – that Zelensky is not really ready to settle:
Ukraine, for now, shows no interest in the sort of diplomatic process that Biden has said is necessary to end the war. The Ukrainians want to press their advantage against the retreating Russians, regaining as much territory as possible before winter. There’s a kind of catch-22 at work here: When the Ukrainians were losing ground last summer, they didn’t want to negotiate from weakness. Now that they’re advancing, they see no reason to compromise from a position of strength. Kyiv needs a reality check about its longer-term battlefield prospects.
(We need to figure out if you can attend Tony’s father’s funeral.)
So while we are on guard for an October Surprise (or two), we are more focused on possible November Surprises, namely that we might be able to do much better in the midterms than the conventional wisdom suggests.
In addition to the power of the abortion issue and all the dark money our side is poised to spend, candidate quality on both sides could make a bigger difference than the press understands. And not just in the Senate races.
The self-destruction of the Republican nominee facing Marcy Kaptur in Ohio could be the first of many of these controversial first-time GOP candidates fatally messing up. Our party committees are sitting on a bunch of opposition research and digital assets that could well bring some seats our way.
And the Senate is sneaky good for us.
Take Pennsylvania. Fetterman is still skating by, despite stuff like this
Why?
Because Dr. Oz still has no control over his public image, which the Fetterman folks and our media allies are still framing on our terms:
You gotta watch that video, boss!
And look at Florida and North Carolina, two must-wins for the Republicans if they are to have any chance of taking the majority.
Both Marco Rubio and Ted Budd are struggling in every public and private poll.
Why is that? Hard not to notice that talented Black female candidates are running well-funded and great campaigns so far.
Both Cheri Beasley and Val Demings could be THE stories of election night, which would be a November Surprise over at Fox and in Palm Beach.
We are in a great place with expectations setting, in that sweet spot between creating momentum through optimism about our election prospects while also using abortion and Trump to constantly ring the alarm about how vital it is for the future of freedom and democracy that Democrats and independents turn out for our folks.
The other balance that we are striking involves our best surrogate (after you and the Vice President, of course). After what some might have said was a bit of overexposure, I purposefully scaled back my media appearances over the last few months, freeing me up to start doing more in the campaign homestretch.
Like Jim Baker, when I talk between now and Election Day, people will listen.
And victory will be ours!
That’s one more exclamation point!
See you after your great workout!
****