The ‘24 Seven - 3/11/24
The top seven stories shaping the race for the White House
Hello, and welcome to The ‘24 Seven – 24sight’s daily roundup of the top seven stories shaping the race for the White House. If you see something we missed or have suggestions, drop us a note - tom@24sight.news and warren@24sight.news.
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1 Knowing when to turn in
Former President Donald Trump inserted himself into the Academy Awards Sunday night, writing at his social media company that host Jimmy Kimmel was “less than average”.
Kimmel read the former president and presumptive Republican nominee’s attack on-air, in which Trump also said the “washed up” and “cheap” ABC host George Stephanopoulos would have made everything “more glamorous”. Kimmel replied, “Isn’t it past your jail time?”
Trump’s attacks and insults don’t get the same play they used to when he was tweeting from the White House and he has refused an offer from X.com owner Elon Musk to return to the former social media juggernaut. (Of note, his stake in his social media company is valued at roughly $4 billion after the SEC approved its merger last month.) But that could easily change if he’s back slinging mud from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave next year.
Something that pols, even former Vice President Mike Pence, routinely note is that politics is “downstream” of pop culture.
2 Age-old question
Fresh off his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden’s campaign pulled in a stunning $10 million in donations, NBC News reports. That, plus a hefty campaign coffer that’s almost double what Trump and the GOP have collected, helped fuel a six-week ad buy of $30 million in which Biden takes on the age question - direct to camera.
There’s been a sense among pundit and wags that Biden finally woke up last week and got in the race. But what’s not clear yet is whether the SOTU performance and a dedicated turn into the general election, with profligate spending, will change public attitudes at all. Large chunks of the populace are still looking for someone much younger than Biden (81) or Trump (77).
3 Trump keeps digging
Last week, Trump had to post a $92 million bond in order to delay defendant E. Jean Carroll from collecting the $83 million awarded to her earlier this year in the defamation case she brought against the embattled former president.
This morning, Trump continued lashing out against Carroll during an interview on CNBC – a tirade that prompted one of the lawyers involved to note that returning to court remains on the table.
“As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client, E. Jean Carroll,” attorney Robbie Kaplan told the New York Times.
The latest outburst prompted one observer to quip that “The RNC is going to need more money” – a one-two punch directed at Trump’s mounting legal bills and the recent installation of his fawning daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the Republican National Committee.
4 … and digging
The other potentially problematic thing Trump said on CNBC was floating the idea of cutting Social Security.
“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” he said before wandering off on a vibes-based assessment of inflation. And while he didn’t specifically say he’s ready to take a knife to Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid to ease budgetary pressures, Trump did put out there that something has to be done about the “tremendous bad management of entitlements.”
Mind you, the same man steered clear of touching the so-called third rail of politics during his single term in office. And he went out of his way to clobber former presidential primary challenger Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for supporting changes to Social Security in the past.
But that was then, this is now — who knows what Trump will say about it the next time he’s asked.
5 GOP hardliners bemoan ‘business as usual’
Some of the House Republicans who threw the chamber into chaos last year because they craved bold new leadership have slowly realized that nothing has changed.
“It is business as usual,” frustrated House Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy of Texas told NBC News of life under struggling Speaker Mike Johnson. While he wasn’t one of the eight GOP rebels who forced out short-lived Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Roy seems to have soured on Johnson for doing the same thing every time one of the rolling government shutdown deadlines approaches – kicking the can down the road a few more weeks.
House Freedom Caucus chair Bob Good joined Rep. Matt Gaetz and six others in ousting McCarthy so that the next guy would theoretically fight for MAGA priorities like gutting the IRS, clamping down on immigration at the southern border and punishing Donald Trump’s opponents. Johnson was left out of the months-long border talks that ultimately flamed out in the Senate after Trump railed against giving Biden an election year win. And Good is convinced that Johnson’s counting on Democratic votes to keep moving stopgap spending patches – same as McCarthy – because he’s afraid to grind things to a halt.
“He just wants to pass what the Senate wants so that we avoid any conflict,” Good said of the go-along-to-get-along strategy the House rebels supposedly wanted to break.
6 Points of order
Gabe Fleisher, author of the Wake up to Politics newsletter, has a very sharp piece over at POLITICO Magazine about the mystery social media account keeping Congress in line - highly recommend.
7 Britt fallout
Oh that it had just been a drink of water.
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Alabama, continued taking on water over the weekend for her awkward official GOP rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address.
(Of note, Sen. Marco Rubio was the about the same age as Britt in 2013 when he paused to quench the nation’s thirst for a rising GOP star. He went on to run a fairly strong race for president in 2016 and, years later, is even being floated in the expansive list of possible Trump running mates - proving there is indeed political life after a flopped rebuttal.)
Former The Messenger colleague and rising star at Axios Stephen Neukam scooped that veteran Trumpworld operatives Katie Walsh and Mike Shields did the legwork prepping Britt for her widely panned monologue. (Former Republican operative turned Never Trump influencer
hit Walsh and Shields for the flop on X.com.)Britt dodged a chance to explain why she pinned the rape story on Biden this past Sunday on Fox News.
If there’s an upside in all this for the freshman lawmaker, in the mainstream, it’s that she was portrayed by Scarlett Johansson on Saturday Night Live.
But remember that communications is about the intended audience. There’s a good chance that Britt was playing more to the marginalized base of the GOP than the mainstream, which is something
discussed a bit with and Friday for the 24sight Pod.