| | | | |  | | By Sam Stein, Lauren Egan, Myah Ward and Benjamin Johansen | | | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from producer Raymond Rapada. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren It’s no secret that a good swath of the Democratic Party’s base is angry over President JOE BIDEN’s handling of the war in Gaza. Everyone from Arab-American advocacy groups to State Department personnel to prominent donors and White House interns have conveyed their discontent. One imagines the Biden family text chain has featured a spicy exchange or two. Less understood is how the White House feels about those critiques. Publicly, they’ve played it straight: repeating the administration’s support for Israel’s right to self-defense (including its response to the Oct. 7 attacks) while emphasizing the need to protect civilians, accelerate humanitarian aid, and affect an enduring two-state solution. Their underlying point is that the critics are barking up the wrong tree. Look at what DONALD TRUMP would do. Privately, it’s different. There is frustration among Biden allies over the Gaza fallout. And it’s not just because they feel their approach is being misconstrued, but because they believe there has never been a willingness to give Biden credit or cover on foreign affairs. “The Squad,” a new book by the Intercept’s RYAN GRIM has a telling passage that gets at this dynamic. It deals with the tumultuous days and weeks following Biden’s decision to finally — after two decades of war — pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. The coverage of the subsequent chaos and violence in Kabul was brutal. It precipitated a polling decline from which the president has never recovered. Inside the White House, aides were incredulous that the very people who spent years pining for a full withdrawal had suddenly gone silent. “Chief of Staff Ron Klain was livid that the president was getting no backup externally from the Squad or the progressive caucus, most of whom either stayed quiet or criticized the execution of the withdrawal while commending it in principle,” Grim writes. “The White House put out the suggestion privately that a little support might be nice but, effectively, nothing was coming.” West Wing Playbook asked RON KLAIN about the exchange this week. “I don’t recall it but I don’t dispute it,” he replied. “It sounds like how I would have felt.” Klain’s lament may have centered on a very specific political frustration, but it was underpinned by something larger: a belief that Biden’s approach (certainly on international affairs) is often underappreciated or misunderstood. One need look no further than the attempts to actually define Biden’s foreign policy doctrine. He has been described as a “traditionalist” and someone willing to “upend decades of dogma on globalization.” He’s a “realist” driven by “fantasies,” who is both “unsentimental” and guttural in his approach. What’s undisputed is that Biden has been doing this for a long time. His allies see this as a virtue. To them, he is seasoned. The relationship he has with Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU helped produce the since-ended ceasefire in Gaza. His willingness to see the Afghanistan drawdown through was because he, unlike BARACK OBAMA, could buck the pressure from the military brass. There would be no comprehensive international support for Ukraine’s defense if not for his ability to build it. But, to a degree, Biden also suffers from the perceptions built over that lengthy career. It’s not just that he can be headstrong and rigid, including in his steadfast support for Israel, but that he is seasoned in all the wrong ways. Is this fair? That’s the fundamental question. On the evening of HENRY KISSINGER’s death, the New York Times posted a lengthy obit noting he’d “advised 12 presidents” from “John F. Kennedy to Joseph R. Biden Jr.” This was hardly a posthumous gift to the administration. The taint of Kissinger is not something Democrats desire. But Biden has been around long enough that it seemed likely true. And yet, there isn't a readily accessible record of it. In fact, the one main report that exists was that Biden hadn't invited Kissinger to the White House. West Wing Playbook asked the White House if they could specify when Kissinger had advised Biden. They directed us to the National Security Council. We asked the NSC the same question. They directed us back to the White House. We asked the New York Times and they never responded. MESSAGE US — Are you RYAN GRIM? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
| | | | SUBSCRIBE TO CALIFORNIA CLIMATE: Climate change isn’t just about the weather. It's also about how we do business and create new policies, especially in California. So we have something cool for you: A brand-new California Climate newsletter. It's not just climate or science chat, it's your daily cheat sheet to understanding how the legislative landscape around climate change is shaking up industries across the Golden State. Subscribe now to California Climate to keep up with the changes. | | | | | | | | | Which president included skinny dipping in the Potomac river as a part of his morning routine? (Answer at bottom.)
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Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff delivers remarks during the Annual National Menorah Lighting at the White House on Thursday. | Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images | | | | GO WEST, YOUNG (IT’S A RELATIVE TERM!) MAN: Biden left Washington on Friday for a three-day swing out West, largely to raise money before the fourth quarter deadline. After a speech today in Las Vegas on infrastructure, he is scheduled to travel to Southern California for a star-studded fundraising event with STEVEN SPIELBERG, ROB REINER, SHONDA RHIMES, BARBRA STREISAND and LENNY KRAVITZ. A senior campaign adviser told West Wing Playbook earlier this week that the final quarter going into an election year is normally a challenging fundraising stretch for incumbent presidents. But the adviser said they were pleasantly surprised by Biden’s stronger-than-expected quarter. The president will raise $15 million this week between fundraisers in Boston, D.C. and California, according to another person familiar with the campaign. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: Friday’s November jobs report from the Labor Department, which shows employers adding over 199,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropping to 3.7 percent from 3.9 percent in October. November was the 22nd straight month with an unemployment rate under 4 percent, a more than 50-year record. It beats many projections by economists who had expected the unemployment rate to hold steady at 3.9 percent and for job gains to be at 185,000. White House deputy communications director JENNIFER MOLINA and National Economic Council’s deputy director DANIEL HORNUNG shared the news on X. ALSO THIS: Second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF, while marking the start of Hanukkah Thursday evening, joined the growing list of those condemning the congressional testimonies of several university leaders earlier this week. The presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania were asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their school’s code of conduct, to which each said it would depend on the context. “The lack of moral clarity is simply unacceptable,” Emhoff said in front of the White House. “When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or identity … that is antisemitism and it must be condemned. And condemned unequivocally and without context." WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This Pew Research Center poll published Friday that found only a third of Americans approve of the Biden administration’s approach to the Israel and Hamas conflict, with 41 percent disapproving of the response. The generational divide was apparent in the poll — nearly half of all adults under 30 disapprove of the response, with a less negative view found with older age groups. UH, YEAH. THIS IS THE RIGHT CALL: White House press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE said Friday that the traveling press corps would no longer fly on Osprey helicopters after the U.S. military announced earlier this week that it would ground the aircraft. This follows the death of eight Air Force Special Operations Command in a crash last week off the coast of Japan. The Ospreys, which have a less-than-perfect safety history, are often used by the White House press corps to keep up with the president when he flies on Marine One. Jean-Pierre told reporters traveling with the president on Friday that they would be using “alternative transportation as of today.” SIMON TAKES AN L: U.S. District Judge JOHN BATES on Thursday rejected SIMON ATEBA’s lawsuit against Jean-Pierre. Ateba, the correspondent for the website Today News Africa, sued the press secretary for changing the criteria to qualify for a hard pass, claiming that it was discriminatory and violated his First Amendment rights. In an extensive 37-page opinion, Bates knocked down Ateba’s claims, writing that the White House’s new hard pass policy is “reasonable” and noting that Ateba is still free to apply for a day pass to access the press area.
| | A message from Keep the Promise Coalition: President Biden, keep your promise to Native Tribes! Secretary Haaland is considering a decision that would pit some of our country’s most marginalized communities against each other and irreparably deprive several Tribes of significant revenues. A bipartisan coalition of senators, representatives, and governors, along with local elected officials and Tribal leaders, strongly oppose this decision, which would harm Tribes and open the floodgates for an explosion of gaming across the country. Read More. | | | | | GREAT NEWS FOR TRAIN PEOPLE: On Friday, Biden announced the most significant investments in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak, CBS’ BO ERICKSON reports. The administration is putting $8.2 billion in funding toward 10 rail projects throughout the country, including nearly a third for a high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG told reporters that taking the trip on the Brightline West line would take around two hours — about half of the time it takes to drive. “Other passenger rail projects that will receive funding include a Los Angeles-San Francisco train that will reach 220 miles per hour, a rail expansion between Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Virginia, and other upgrades in Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana and other states,” Erickson writes. Look, as long as they keep serving the cheese platters, we’ll be happy on Amtrak. QUITE THE OFFER: On Thursday, Senate Republicans laid out their latest border proposal as part of the deal being hammered out to secure aid to Israel and Ukraine, Myah, BURGESS EVERETT and JENNIFER HABERKORN report. But Democrats will all but likely shut it down because, well, it includes a lot of stuff they’ve already rejected. One of the proposals would be to ban class-based “parole,” a tool the White House has utilized to create legal entry pathways and manage the influx of people at the border. Another would “set metrics for automating a border shutdown — halting U.S. acceptance of migrants if border numbers hit a certain level." PROBLEM IN THE GREAT LAKES: Environmental advocates in Michigan are applying pressure on Biden to block a project that would relocate part of a 70-year-old oil and gas pipeline in an underground tunnel beneath the Great Lakes, our ADAM ATON reports for Pro subscribers. Tribal leaders and advocates argue that a leak in the pipeline would devastate the Great lakes environment and economy. Opponents of the plan argue that if Biden doesn’t step in, support among Native Americans could fade in a key battleground state where he needs their support.
| | | | A message from Keep the Promise Coalition:   | | | | | Biden the closer? Senate GOP urges president to clinch Ukraine-border deal (POLITICO’s Jennifer Haberkorn, Burgess Everett and Jonathan Lemire) Biden’s Foreign-Policy Legacy Is Now Intertwined With Border Crisis at Home (WSJ’s Andrew Restuccia, Michelle Hackman and Lindsay Wise) ‘What the Heck?’ CNN’s Debate Plans Leave New Hampshire Officials Confused (NYT’s Michael M. Grynbaum)
| | A message from Keep the Promise Coalition: President Biden, keep your promise to Native Tribes! The Interior Department is considering a decision that would undermine your historic support of Native communities and commitment to advancing equity—both for and among Tribes.
Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) to support Tribal communities through gaming revenues, while limiting the risks associated with gaming in communities across country. Now, one Tribe wants the Interior to help them circumvent the law and open more casinos, which would not only harm Tribes in Oregon, but open the floodgates for an explosion of gaming across the country. Read More. | | | | | JOHN QUINCY ADAMS on most days, around 4 or 5 in the morning, would find solace by skinny dipping in the Potomac river. According to Business Insider, on multiple occasions the Potomac tide nearly swept away his clothes while taking a dip. “I rise usually between four and five — walk two miles, bathe in Potowmack river, and walk home, which occupies two hours,” Adams wrote in a July 1818 diary entry. Honestly, WTF? Who wakes up that early? A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it! Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.
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