| | | | |  | | By Eli Stokols, Lauren Egan and Ben Johansen | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration and Harris campaign. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren Perhaps you’ve seen some of his posts spreading misinformation on X, the site he has run into the ground owns. Maybe you saw his, uh, enthusiastic prancing on stage with DONALD TRUMP at Saturday’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. And then there was his conversation with TUCKER CARLSON, where he joked — in the final weeks of a charged presidential campaign that’s already seen two assassination attempts targeting Trump — that it would be “pointless” to try and kill Vice President KAMALA HARRIS. The cringe antics and crass humor can’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s even vaguely familiar with the smallest billionaire who ever lived. But what’s somewhat surprising, the more one considers it, is that the world’s richest and perhaps most committed shitposter also happens to be the single biggest beneficiary of U.S. government contracts. Put another way: ELON MUSK is taking billions of dollars from the very administration he is attacking online and working to defeat. And JOE BIDEN isn’t likely to do anything about it. Musk is currently one of the Pentagon’s largest contractors. Two of his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have received more than $15 billion in federal contracts as of last year, a number that has likely only grown. Tesla, a fledgling EV company when Musk bought it in 2002, took off after receiving $465 million in subsidies from the Obama administration in 2010. In recent years, the government has effectively outsourced its space program to Musk’s SpaceX, which also provides the Starlink satellite internet service that’s been utilized both to aid Ukraine’s defense and hurricane recovery efforts in remote areas. In 2021, SpaceX entered into a $1.8 billion classified contract with the government. In August 2023, the Pentagon entered into a $70 million contract with Starshield, a SpaceX subsidiary. And Musk has continually worked closely with NASA, which awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract for Starship in 2021. But Musk and Carlson yukking it up about assassinating the biracial woman who could be the country’s next president has drawn additional scrutiny to the billionaire’s government contracts. Former Rep. ADAM KINZINGER — an Illinois Republican who served on the Joint House Select Committee on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and spoke at the Democratic convention in August about his decision to support Harris over Trump — responded to Musk’s comments by calling for the government to take action. “The government needs to cut @elonmusk and his companies out of contracting for the US Govt.,” Kinzinger posted, ironically, on X. “I can think of nothing more dangerous than this.” The former lawmaker had first called for Musk’s contracts to be reconsidered last month after he first joked about Harris’ potential assassination. Kinzinger wrote, also on X, that his comments “would have gotten anyone kicked out of the military. He needs to stop, or the government needs to treat him equally to everyone else. Being rich doesn’t put you above the law.” Biden, in his final months, appears unlikely to take any action to punish Musk. Asked about the matter on Tuesday, deputy press secretary EMILIE SIMONS called Musk’s comments “concerning” but said she had nothing to say about any government contracts. Musk is so deeply ingrained in the federal government that it would complicate any Biden attempt to discipline the tech billionaire, who holds a security clearance through his role at SpaceX. In 2019, the Pentagon put Musk’s clearance under review after he smoked weed on JOE ROGAN’s podcast. But retaliation would be highly out of character for the president. Biden has demonstrated a high political pain tolerance in the face of criticism and even disrespect from others, be they elected officials or foreign leaders like Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, who — much like Musk — has acted with brazen impunity in ignoring Biden despite his country’s continued reliance on American defense aid. Ultimately, aides say Biden may fume privately but believes deeply that his job is to make decisions in the country’s best interests, not based on his own personal feelings and predilections. That, of course, is not how Trump, a transactional former real estate tycoon perpetually preoccupied with not looking weak, would play it. As president, he threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO in a fit of pique about European allies not paying their share in defense spending. His White House revoked the hard passes of journalists whose tough questions upset him. And our colleagues reported last week that Trump, in the midst of devastating wildfires, contemplated withholding federal aid to California because, politically, it’s a blue state. And Trump’s allies are already suggesting that the consulting giant Deloitte, one of the government’s largest business partners, could see its contracts revoked if Trump wins — in retaliation for one company employee sharing messages from 2020 in which JD VANCE, Trump’s running mate, criticized the then-president’s record. “Maybe it’s time for the GOP to end Deloitte’s taxpayer-funded gravy train?” the former president’s son, DONALD TRUMP JR., wrote in a social media post that included the employee’s name and image — comments that have since been circulated by Vance’s chief spokesman and GOP lawmakers. MESSAGE US — Are you GRIMES? 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!
| | DANA CARVEY is the new “Saturday Night Live” pick to play Biden. What other president did Carvey portray on the show? (Answer at bottom.)
| | LOOK AT THE OTHER GUY!! After several days of backlash to Vice President Harris doing interviews with more “friendly” media (she was on “60 Minutes” on Monday), the campaign is trying to hammer home a concrete point: There’s a double standard. On Tuesday, Donald Trump did his 22nd consecutive interview on a conservative outlet — as campaign director of rapid response AMMAR MOUSSA pointed out — joining conservative commentator BEN SHAPIRO’s show. By Tuesday night, Trump will have done 24 consecutive interviews on conservative outlets, as Harris campaign spokesperson IAN SAMS noted. Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview forced her to answer tough questions about the Middle East, the economy, immigration and Ukraine. As many campaign staffers emphasized on X, Trump backed out of the decades-long tradition of joining the CBS show. SCOTT PELLEY, who was slated to interview Trump, detailed in the show’s opening how the campaign complained that CBS would fact check the conversation and requested Trump get an apology for his 2020 interview with LESLEY STAHL. Sams wrote, “If you can’t handle [Scott] Pelley, you can’t handle [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.” TRUMP WAR ROOM WILL LOVE THIS ONE: During an interview on “The View,” Vice President Harris grappled with how much to distance herself from her boss after being asked by co-host SUNNY HOSTIN if there was anything she would do differently than Biden, our MEGAN MESSERLY reports. “There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact,” she said, going on to talk about the administration’s work capping the cost of insulin at $35 for Medicare recipients. Thirty minutes later, she appeared to find a point of contrast. “You asked me what is the difference between Joe Biden and me — that will be one of the differences. I’m going to have a Republican in my Cabinet,” she said, reiterating a pledge she made during a CNN interview in August. MANAGING RISK: Tucked into this WaPo report on Harris’ eleventh-hour media blitz after months of extreme cautiousness, co-bylined by MICHAEL SCHERER, TYLER PAGER and JONATHAN O’CONNELL, are some interesting nuggets about OVP and the Harris campaign’s efforts to manage her more freewheeling public exchanges in an effort to minimize risk. As the Post reports, Harris advisers expressed a preference for moderators ahead of a Q&A last month with the National Association of Black Journalists. And an email between OVP and organizers of a 2023 event at the College of Southern Nevada shows that Harris’ team asked to have a handful of students submit questions on specific topics. BUCKLE IN: A new New York Times/Siena College poll has Harris leading Trump by the widest margin since she became the nominee — 49 percent to 46 percent — but still remains in the margin of error, NYT’s ADAM NAGOURNEY, RUTH IGIELNIK and CAMILLE BAKER write. Following the two candidates’ debate in September, the same poll had them tied at 47 percent. Voters were more likely to identify Harris with change and caring about people like them, but they trusted Trump more to manage the economy. TAKE IT FROM THEM: The Harris campaign rolled out a new digital ad on Tuesday, featuring two former Trump administration officials slamming the former president’s handling and politicization of national disasters. “He would suggest not giving disaster relief to states that didn’t vote for him,” said KEVIN CARROLL, senior counsel to the Department of Homeland Security. OLIVIA TROYE, former White House Homeland Security adviser, described how Trump’s team looked into the number of votes he got in certain impacted areas of California wildfires “to show him these are people who voted for you.” FLOTUS HITS THE TRAIL: First lady JILL BIDEN will step into a new role as a campaign surrogate for Vice President Harris, kicking off a five-state, five-day swing through battleground states starting this week, CNN’s ARLETTE SAENZ reports. Biden on Friday will head out west to Arizona and Nevada and then through the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The campaign is deploying the first lady to smaller, more targeted markets to court undecided voters and mobilize women in the 28 days left before the election. WHAT WILMINGTON WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by CNN’s JAMIE GANGEL, JEREMY HERB and ELIZABETH STUART, who give BOB WOODWARD a free promo preview of his upcoming book, detailing Biden’s bluntness behind the scenes when talking about world leaders, as well as Donald Trump’s private conversations with Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN. “That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!” Biden said of the Israeli leader (which our own JONATHAN MARTIN reported back in February). Woodward also writes in the book that Trump sent a secret shipment of Covid-19 testing equipment to Putin for his personal use during the height of the pandemic in 2020. And, since Trump left office in 2021, there have been as many as seven calls between him and the Russian leader, a Trump aide tells Woodward. Campaign spokespeople Ian Sams and JAMES SINGER shared the piece on X. WHAT WILMINGTON DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This piece by NOTUS’ JASMINE WRIGHT, who reports that in Arizona — one of a few key battlegrounds that will determine the election’s outcome — Harris has a numbers problem. Despite continued enthusiasm for the vice president, Democrats have lost nearly 100,000 voters registered to their party and Republicans now have over 250,000 more registered voters. There are also now 100,000 more registered independents than there are registered Democrats, a shift from 2020 when Democrats surpassed independents by 20,000. “If you would rank the seven battleground states, people think it’s the least likely she wins, which is surprising considering the confidence when she first replaced Biden,” a Democratic operative close to the vice president said about national campaign sentiment.
| | NOW PLAYING IN MILWAUKEE: Nope, not the Brewers — it was the president, who spoke Tuesday afternoon at the city’s public works warehouse about a new rule mandating the replacement of all the nation’s lead pipes within the next decade. Speaking about the impact of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which he said is creating jobs and ensuring cleaner drinking water and better public health for future generations, Biden took a few opportunities to frame the matter in a campaign context. “The last guy who was president, he promised an Infrastructure Week every week. And didn’t build a damn thing,” Biden said. “Folks, we can’t go backwards. We have to keep moving forward.” As Eli reports from the press van, Biden also sat down with The Grio’s APRIL RYAN, who brought with her a massive carry-on full of recording equipment and multiple winter coats, for an interview on the specific impact of the new lead pipe overhaul for Black communities. CHANGE OF PLANS: With Hurricane Milton — now a Category-5 storm again — set to slam the Florida coast in the next 36 hours, Biden has postponed his planned trip to Germany and Angola on which he was set to embark on Thursday, Eli reports. According to a statement from press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, Biden will remain in the U.S. “to oversee preparations for and the response to” the storm, which comes roughly a week after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across the southeast. It’s unclear if or when Biden will reschedule the trip, which was to include a G-7 summit on Ukraine and Biden’s long awaited fulfillment of his promise to visit Africa. Or if he will opt to spend this weekend in Delaware. ASK THEM ANYTHING: In response to the increased amount of misinformation circulating the internet about Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the White House will be launching a Reddit page “to keep people informed regarding our ongoing response, recovery and preparedness efforts,” a White House official said. This will include sharing information on state-based sub-Reddits and engaging existing threads on the administration’s response. The White House will also ensure information is shared on larger sub-Reddits, such as r/politics, where it plans to correct misinformation and clarify the work being done by federal agencies. “We are leaving no stone unturned to reach people where they are, across different digital destinations as well as across different topics,” the official added.
| | MORE FROM BOB: Woodward’s new book, this one written without the assistance of ROBERT COSTA, also details the president’s frustration with Attorney General MERRICK GARLAND. Biden's quoted in the book saying he “should never have picked” him during a conversation over his son HUNTER BIDEN’s legal troubles. As our JONATHAN LEMIRE and alum SAM STEIN (sad) reported back in February, Biden had told aides and outside advisers Garland did not do enough to rein in special counsel ROBERT HUR’s report that the president had diminished mental faculties. PERSONNEL MOVES: SMITA GUPTA has left the White House where she was director for federal facility decarbonization at the Council for Environmental Quality. — AMANDA DelGIUDICE is now intergovernmental affairs specialist for CHIPS for America at the Department of Commerce. She most recently was special adviser for state and local government at the Department of Education. — BRITTANY STICH is now deputy assistant secretary of the Employment and Training Administration at the Department of Labor. She most recently was director of Investing in America's Workforce at DOL.
| | BUMMER FOR THOSE LEAD FANS: As mentioned above, the Biden administration finalized a rule today requiring water facilities to replace all lead pipes within a decade, WaPo’s AMUDALAT AJASA and SILVIA FOSTER-FRAU report. It comes nearly four decades after Congress found that lead pipes posed a serious public health risk and banned them in new construction. The regulation from the EPA, called the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, establishes a national inventory of lead service lines and requires that utilities take more aggressive action to remove lead pipes on homeowners’ private property. It also establishes the first-ever national requirement to test for lead in schools relying on water from public facilities. GUN WIN FOR BIDEN: The Supreme Court seemed poised to uphold a Biden administration regulation cracking down on the sale of often-untraceable gun kits on the internet, our JOSH GERSTEIN reports.
| | Before his MAGA conversion, Vance indicated that Biden won the 2020 election legitimately (CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski) The Overlooked Demographic That Is a Huge Opportunity for Democrats (Paul Glastris for POLITICO Magazine) How Biden’s Middle East Policy Fell Apart (NYT’s Ezra Klein)
| | | The SNL legend also played GEORGE H.W. BUSH, which WaPo’s MICHAEL ROSENWALD described as “never mean” but “not flattering.” Carvey, Rosenwald writes, portrayed Bush as “a little more weird, a little more out of control with his hands, a little more prone to inexplicable, staccato phraseology.” The former president and his impersonator would develop an unlikely friendship, talking frequently and exchanging letters after Bush left office. “Dana has given me a lot of laughs,” Bush said to an audience (that included Carvey) in the East Room in December 1992, adding that “the fact that we can laugh at each other is a very fundamental thing.” 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 Steve Shepard and Rishika Dugyala | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
