Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1980, the Moscow Summer Olympics began. Dozens of nations, including the United States, boycotted the competition to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Here are five takeaways from that conversation.
The media reboot
The expansive social-media universe, the proliferation of partisan outlets and the abysmal approval numbers for traditional news organizations mean there may soon be an election cycle in which a candidate can win the White House while completely shunning “MSM” interviews.
This is apparently not that cycle. At least not for DeSantis.
Over at the Miami Herald, Alex Roarty, Mary Ellen Klas, Michael Wilner and Max Greenwood underlined what a big strategic shift this was for DeSantis “who for the last five years has both bashed and ignored non-partisan media outlets.”
“Since launching his national book tour in February and announcing his campaign in May, DeSantis has spent time on right-wing podcasts and courted conservative Fox News hosts. Until agreeing to sit down Tuesday with Tapper, he had not granted an extensive interview to any Florida-based or national mainstream news organization,” they wrote.
His Trump problem, part one
CNN sandwiched clips from the interview between segments on the latest legal troubles for former president Donald Trump, and the first clip of Jake’s Q-and-A was the anchor seeking a reaction from DeSantis. The governor seemed reduced to a supporting player in Trump’s drama.
In a recent interview with Fox News, DeSantis had complained that Trump getting indicted left the former president “just dominating the media coverage” and seemed to blame that for his own loss of momentum.
Trump’s support in the polls and fundraising numbers have only gotten stronger since he was charged, suggesting a kind of rally-round-the-Gadsden-flag effect fed at least in part by the former president’s ability to take the absolute value of any publicity.
His Trump problem part two
Compounding that phenomenon, DeSantis seems to have settled on an approach to the investigations and prosecutions targeting Trump that blends tepid criticism of the former president with some kind of denunciation of law enforcement.
Though he’s open to deleting the tepid criticism.
On Tuesday morning, Trump revealed the Justice Department had notified him he is a target of the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
DeSantis, Take One: “I think it was shown how he was in the White House and didn’t do anything while things were going on. He should have come out more forcefully.” But the governor complained about efforts to “criminalize” that behavior.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung denounced the remarks as “a disqualifying take from an unserious candidate in the last throes of his failed candidacy.”
DeSantis, Take Two, with Jake: The criticism of Trump was gone.
It’s absolutely not true that DeSantis hasn’t attacked Trump. It’s just that he seems genuinely flummoxed by how to respond to the former president’s legal problems, or at least feels trapped by the GOP front-runner’s hold on the base of the party, which the governor can’t afford to alienate.
The abortion dodge
In April, DeSantis signed a ban on abortions after six weeks, before most pregnancies are detected. He did so at night, without media coverage, then announced he had done so in a statement from his office after 11 p.m. A year earlier, he had signed a ban on abortion after 15 weeks in front of invited news cameras and a crowd of supporters.
So he understands the political liability.
In interviews in which he’s been asked whether, as president, he would support a six-week ban, DeSantis has given a reply, not an answer. And that was the case again with Jake.
“I'm pro-life, I will be a pro-life president, and we will support pro-life policies,” he said. He did not mention the six-week restriction. Or the 15-week restriction, for that matter, though he hadn’t been asked about that.
Democrats limited GOP gains in the 2022 midterms in part because of the Supreme Court ruling striking down Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed federal rights to obtain an abortion for decades. Biden’s party hopes to have similar success harnessing the issue in 2024.
Foreign policy
That wasn’t the only question DeSantis didn’t answer directly. He wouldn’t say whether he would defend Taiwan militarily from an attack from the mainland. (“Our policy is going to be very simple. We're going to deter that from happening.”)
He seemed to hedge on whether he would stop sending arms to Ukraine, which he called “a secondary or tertiary interest” rather than a “vital” one. “I am not going to diminish our stocks [of weapons] and not send to Taiwan,” he said. “I'm not going to make us less capable to respond to exigencies.”
DeSantis may return to both topics if he goes ahead with a foreign policy speech he reportedly plans for next month.
Politics-but-not
What’s happening now
Trump loses bid for new trial in E. Jean Carroll case
“A federal judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial on damages after a jury found the former U.S. president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million,” Reuters reports.
- “In a 59-page decision, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan dismissed Trump’s arguments for reducing damages to less than $1 million, saying the May 9 verdict was neither a ‘seriously erroneous result’ nor a ‘miscarriage of justice.’”
Putin, facing war crimes arrest, will skip BRICS summit in South Africa
“Russian President Vladimir Putin, facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, will not attend next month’s summit of the BRICS group of nations in South Africa ‘by mutual agreement,’ South Africa’s presidential administration said Wednesday,” Mary Ilyushina and Robyn Dixon report.
As the world sizzles, China says it will deal with climate its own way
“As parts of the Northern Hemisphere reach heat close to the limits of human survival, Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared in remarks reported Wednesday that Beijing alone will decide how — and how quickly — it addresses climate change,” Christian Shepherd and Emily Rauhala report.
Lunchtime reads from The Post
Biden’s asylum changes reduced border crossings. But are the rules legal?
“A federal judge is set Wednesday to hear a challenge to the Biden administration’s new restrictions on seeking asylum, a case that could upend the fragile calm that has taken hold in U.S. border cities and reshape America’s role as a refuge for foreigners fleeing harm,” Maria Sacchetti reports.
- “The restrictions — which penalize migrants who fail to follow the rules — have led to a dramatic drop in unauthorized border crossings. But thousands are waiting in Mexico for an appointment to seek humanitarian protection in the United States, jammed into fetid tent camps similar to those President Biden deplored on the campaign trail in 2020.”
Why experts aren’t all that concerned about Biden’s and Trump’s ages
“Four experts consulted by The Washington Post said Biden and Trump were likely to retain the cognitive and physical abilities to perform as president between 2025 and 2029 — unless they suffer a serious illness or injury. A fifth said it is too difficult to predict how well any individual will do, but agreed that Biden and Trump are more likely than an average person to retain their capabilities,” Michael Scherer and Lenny Bernstein report.
- “Three actuarial approaches consulted by The Post suggest a risk of death in a second term that remains low, even if it is much higher than the risks for their younger competitors like former United Nation’s ambassador Nikki Haley, 51, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), 44. Depending on the methodology, the models showed a 14 to 31 percent risk of death for Biden’s cohort before the end of his second term. The risk for Trump’s cohort in the same time period was between 13 and 22 percent.”
… and beyond
Senators to propose ban on U.S. lawmakers, executive branch members owning stock
“Two U.S. senators are set this week to introduce bipartisan legislation to bar members of the federal executive branch and lawmakers from owning stock in individual companies, as new polling shows broad public support for such a measure,” the Wall Street Journal’s Brody Mullins reports.
- “The bill from Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) and Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) would permit the president, vice president, lawmakers, Capitol Hill aides and employees of the executive branch to own mutual funds and broad industry and index funds.”
Ron DeSantis allies press for a campaign shake-up
“The idea that DeSantis needs a shake-up is widely held among Republicans, according to conversations NBC News had with roughly a dozen strategists and donors, both affiliated with the campaign and not,” NBC News’s Matt Dixon, Natasha Korecki and Jonathan Allen report.
LGBTQ-related earmarks stripped out by GOP during House markup
“House Republicans struck three Democratic projects that would provide services to the LGBTQ community during Tuesday’s fiscal 2024 Transportation-HUD Appropriations markup, enraging Democrats on the committee,” Roll Call’s Aidan Quigley reports.
- “The three earmarks total $3.62 million, with two in Massachusetts and one in Pennsylvania. The projects were eliminated as part of a Republican en bloc amendment that advanced a range of Republican cultural priorities, including a provision that would ban flying gay pride flags over government buildings. The vote was along party lines, 32-26.”
The Biden agenda
Biden administration moves to ban funding for Wuhan lab
“The Biden administration is taking steps to impose a 10-year ban on funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese research laboratory at the center of a heated debate over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a memo made public by a House subcommittee on Tuesday evening and an official familiar with the issue,” the New York Times’s Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports.
Biden takes aim at Trump in campaign’s first shot of 2024
“For months, Joe Biden’s reelection campaign largely refrained from lashing out at Donald Trump by name. They’re now firing their first official shot. Hours before Trump was scheduled to appear in a primetime interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity — and the same day the former president revealed a third criminal indictment is likely forthcoming — Biden’s campaign lambasted Trump for sitting for ‘softball townhalls,’” Politico’s Natalie Allison and Holly Otterbein report.
Biden administration unveils tougher guidelines on mergers
“The guidelines — which generally provide a road map for whether regulators block or approve deals — show the Biden administration’s commitment to an aggressive antitrust agenda aimed at curtailing the power of companies like Google, Meta, Apple and Amazon,” the NYT’s Cecilia Kang and David McCabe report.
One way drinking changed during the pandemic, visualized
“The growth of the spirits industry has been pronounced, helped by the popularity of luxury brands and ones backed by celebrities — think tequila brands launched by actors such as Dwayne Johnson or Mark Wahlberg. The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States reports that in 2022, the spirits revenue market share (42.9 percent) eclipsed that of beer (41.9 percent) for the first time. The council’s president recently called it a ‘great American success story,’ according to CNBC,” Caitlin Gilbert, David Ovalle and Hanna Zakharenko report.
Hot on the left
Tommy Tuberville pledged to ‘donate every dime’ to veterans. He hasn’t.
“As senator, Tuberville has made veterans one of his key issues. The former football coach serves on both the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the Armed Services Committee. He is now in a high-profile battle with the Biden administration over abortion policy affecting veterans,” Glenn Kessler explains.
- “Yet there is no evidence that Tuberville has kept a key pledge he made when he ran for Senate three years ago — that he would ‘donate very dime’ he made in Washington to Alabama veterans.”
Hot on the right
Super PAC backing Tim Scott purchases $40 million ad buy
“A super PAC backing Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) will spend $40 million on television and digital ads, including in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the group announced on Tuesday,” Marianne LeVine and Maeve Reston report.
- “The group’s ad buy will begin in September and run through January 2024 — a move that is clearly intended to capture the attention of Republican donors who are trying to assess which campaign will have lasting power as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis falters.”
Today in Washington
At 12:15 p.m., Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing with Vice President Harris.
Biden will hold a meeting of his Competition Council at 3 p.m.
At 6 p.m., he Bidens will host the congressional picnic at the White House.
In closing
👀
Omg the reviews are coming 👀 pic.twitter.com/TkhZhdaHT8
— George (@gpdr0meter) July 18, 2023
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.