The Playbook Podcast

Today’s Jan. 6 committee hearing is going to be one for the history books, so tune in at 1 p.m.

On Wednesday night, we caught up with today’s star witness, Michael Luttig. “America is at war with herself,” he will say. “One war is for the cultural heart and soul of America. The other is a war over America’s democracy.” He will say that “both of these wars must end in peace if America is to go forward.”

Today, Luttig is appearing as a fact witness because of his role in the leadup to Jan. 6, when Luttig told then-VP Mike Pence to ignore the advice of John Eastman, a former Luttig clerk who hatched the scheme to persuade Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 election by rejecting electoral votes from states former President Donald Trump lost. 

Luttig first told the full story of his role on that day in our “Playbook Deep Dive” podcast in February. But what he is planning to talk about today goes beyond his views of the Electoral Count Act and his gripping account of his role on Jan. 6.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Here’s everything you need to know about Tuesday’s elections, which included primaries in four states (Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina) and a special election in Texas.

— Republicans can survive crossing Trump, but rarely can they survive being anti-Trump

— Republicans continue to make major inroads with Hispanics, especially in border areas of Texas …

— 2020 election deniers are winning everywhere …

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

It’s a Tuesday in 2022, which means it’s time for yet another stop in Donald Trump's post-presidency revenge tour against incumbent Republicans he thinks have wronged him. 

Today will see two high-profile GOP primaries in South Carolina, where Reps. Tom Rice and Nancy Mace face Trump-backed opponents. 

Though there are similarities between the two — Rice was one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, while Mace, a freshman then on her third day in Congress, went on TV to slam Trump for lying about the 2020 election — today will be a case study in the divergent tactics the two have taken in responding to Trump’s attacks, as NYT’s Maya King noted Monday

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Just before 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 4, 2020, then-President Donald Trump went before a group of supporters at the White House and prematurely declared victory over Joe Biden in an election he ultimately lost.

Today at 10 a.m., that moment — and the avalanche of lies about the election that followed — will be front and center as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack (1) highlights the origins of the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election, (2) shows how it spread and (3) attempts to prove that in the weeks and months following Election Day, even as Trump continued to falsely claim that he’d actually won, he privately knew he’d lost — and that his public insistence otherwise led to the insurrection.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

The Jan. 6 investigation can sometimes seem sprawling and complicated. The story of that day is filled with weird groups, conspiracy-minded lawyers, and fringe characters. Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. John Eastman and Sidney Powell. The “QAnon Shaman” and “caveman rioter.”

The big message from the first public hearing of the Jan. 6 committee was that it’s a lot simpler than all of that. It’s really about one person: Donald Trump.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

At 8 p.m., the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack plans to start unveiling the most complete and visceral dissection to date of the mob of Donald Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the results of a democratic election.

Drawing on months of interviews and thousands of documents, the committee has thus far kept most of its findings close to its vest — so we expect a lot of new information and some of the most terrifying video from that day that hasn’t been shown to the public yet.

As one committee aide told reporters in a background call on Wednesday, they see their job as showing “that the violence of Jan. 6 was the result of a coordinated, multistep effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and stop the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.”

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Seven states held elections on Tuesday. We stayed up overnight as the returns from California continued to roll in, and we have the key takeaways for you:

— Five of the 35 House Republicans who voted to establish a Jan. 6 Commission faced primaries on Tuesday. Trump vowed to exact revenge on all of them. How’d they fare?

— A bad night for progressives in two big California cities facing upticks in crime…

— Political dynasties are alive and well in New Jersey…

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Today, seven states hold primaries: Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota and California.

What should you be watching for? The day’s biggest news will likely come from the Golden State, where voters are poised to make major statements about the directions of their respective parties.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

The Senate is back today, with all eyes on whether 10 Republican votes materialize for a gun legislation deal. … On Tuesday, it’s primary day in California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. … On Wednesday, President Joe Biden heads to L.A. to host the Summit of the Americas. … On Thursday, the House Jan. 6 committee holds a hearing on its investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. … On Friday, the next big Consumer Price Index report is released.

And Jonathan Lemire goes deep inside the Biden White House to bring back this juicy report detailing frustrations at the top and sinking morale throughout the building.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Three key leaders who are committed to firearms legislation in the wake of a string of horrific massacres spoke Thursday about what they want in a bill. 

In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi blessed the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” which passed out of the Judiciary Committee after a raucous markup that included one Republican member, Greg Steube (Fla.), appearing via Zoom while brandishing his Sig Sauer handgun to make a point about high-capacity magazine bans.

In the Senate, John Cornyn (Texas), the lead GOP senator tasked by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to strike a bipartisan deal on gun legislation, spoke to our Marianne LeVine about the state of the talks.

At the White House at the end of the day, Biden made a rare primetime address to talk about the recent massacres and urge Congress to act.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.