The Playbook Podcast

The Republican presidential primary is shaping up to be a case of déjà vu. 

In 2015 into 2016, Donald Trump gained an early lead and never looked back. The hype about a well-funded, twice-elected Florida governor proved to be illusory. Most of Trump’s opponents waited around for someone else to take him down until it was too late. Chris Christie, one of the few Trump opponents who had sharp words for Trump, was too moderate for Republicans. Trump dominated the only thing that seemed to matter: the media’s attention. Most of the GOP’s elite donors, opinion pages, and elected leaders rallied in opposition to Trump (often privately) and prayed that some meteor-like event would destroy his candidacy 

So far in 2023: 1) Ron DeSantis may be reprising the role of Jeb Bush; 2) Nikki Haley and Mike Pence (so far) are reprising the role of Trump’s milquetoast challengers, who occasionally swat at him but rarely damage him; 3) Chris Christie is reprising the role of … Chris Christie; 4) Trump is once again flooding social media, email inboxes and cable news with his own content; and 5) many Republicans are once again looking to the sky for meteors, this time in the form of criminal indictments.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Good Monday morning from Accra, Ghana, where VP Kamala Harris is kicking off a seven-day diplomatic mission to Africa, aiming to reset relations between the United States and the three countries she’s visiting — Ghana, Zambia and Tanzania — as China looks to deepen its foothold on the continent.

Playbook is with Harris as she becomes the latest and highest-ranking administration official to travel to Africa as part of President Joe Biden's effort to reengage with the continent economically after decades of relations focused mainly on human rights and humanitarian concerns.

Her schedule includes bilateral meetings with the leaders of each of the three nations, a visit to Ghana’s Cape Coast slave castle, announcements of new public-private investments, confabs with business and philanthropic leaders and even a trip to a local music studio.

Harris must balance myriad diplomatic goals …  

Even as he faces indictment in Manhattan, Trump has to watch his back on the federal classified documents investigation. The recent courtroom fight over Evan Corcoran's testimony “indicate[s] that prosecutors have continued to build a case and that the inquiry remains a serious threat to Mr. Trump,” per the NYT. Corcoran will testify again today, and the Times reports that he doesn’t plan to plead the Fifth. The feds also want to talk to Trump lawyer Jennifer Little in the probe.

The latest revelation: Trump lawyer Timothy Parlatore testified before a grand jury in December in the documents probe, ABC’s Katherine Faulders and Alex Mallin scooped. That came shortly after he told authorities that Trump’s team had just found four more documents with classified markings.

Meanwhile, in the federal Jan. 6 investigation, a judge heard arguments yesterday over whether special counsel JACK SMITH can force former VP Mike Pence to testify, CBS’ Robert Costa and Robert Legare report

And as Biden meets with Trudeau in Canada, the two countries have reached a deal on immigration that will give each side the ability to send back asylum-seekers who illegally crossed the border, the L.A. Times’ Hamed Aleaziz and Erin Logan scooped from Ottawa.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

JMart’s latest column is hot off the presses and already blowing up group chats on Capitol Hill: “Sinema Trashes Dems: ‘Old Dudes Eating Jell-O’”

As her fundraising efforts plow forward, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) “has used a series of Republican-dominated receptions and retreats this year to belittle her Democratic colleagues, shower her GOP allies with praise and, in one case, quite literally give the middle finger to President Biden’s White House,” Martin writes. “Speaking in private, whether one-on-one or with small groups of Republican senators, she’s even more cutting, particularly about Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whom she derides in harshly critical terms, according to senior Republican officials directly familiar with her comments.”

White House chief of staff Jeff Zients has been President Joe Biden's top aide for less than two months — and grumbling has already erupted both inside and outside the administration over whether he’s up to the job.

In a story out this morning, Adam Cancryn, Eugene and Nicholas Wu spoke with 16 administration officials, lawmakers and others with knowledge of internal White House dynamics, and found widespread concerns “over whether Zients has the political instincts and Capitol Hill relationships to deftly navigate a crucial period ahead of Biden’s anticipated reelection run.”

And, tech reporter Rebecca Kern stops by for a preview of TikTok CEO Shou Chew's hearing  before the House Energy and Commerce committee.

Yesterday came and went without the arrest of Donald Trump. 

Meanwhile, the contours of the 2024 Republican presidential race continue to evolve — even as the political, media and legal worlds hold their collective breath waiting for word from lower Manhattan.

Here are three key storylines emerging amid the indictment watch

TRUMP IN GROWING PERIL: First off, the next steps in Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's investigation into the 2016 hush-money allegations lodged against Trump could come today, with the grand jury in the case meeting and possibly voting to indict the former president.

DeSANTIS TURNS UP THE HEAT: While Trump fights legal battles left and right, his biggest potential rival for the 2024 nomination found a friendly home inside Rupert Murdoch's media empire to fire some notable new barbs at the front-runner. 

SCOTT GEARS UP: Well, if you’re looking for sharp new attacks on Trump, they probably aren’t going to be coming from mild-mannered Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). But as the sparring escalates, Scott appears to be tip-toeing closer to a White House bid.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

On the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, as pro-Trump rioters were ransacking the Capitol in Washington, prosecutors in Manhattan gathered on Zoom to discuss Donald Trump's bookkeeping practices. 

More than two years later, while state and federal criminal investigations into Trump’s culpability for the events of Jan. 6 continue, it is the Manhattan probe that is set to produce the first Trump indictment — as soon as this week.

While we don’t know for sure what crime — or crimes — that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg will charge Trump with, the weight of available evidence suggests Trump will be charged with violating a New York state law against falsifying business records. 

Specifically, Bragg is apparently preparing to argue that Trump created fictitious records during the scheme to pay off Stormy Daniels in October 2016 after she threatened to expose their alleged affair.

The return of the hush money caper to the white-hot center of American politics has a lot of people scratching their heads and puzzling over some basic questions: Of all the Trump scandals, why is this the one that’s going to get him arrested? Didn’t authorities already rule out any culpability for Trump in that case? And isn’t Bragg’s legal theory hopelessly flawed?

To understand how one of the OG Trump scandals returned from the dead to ensnare Trump seven years after Daniels got her $130,000, we need to review the case’s complicated history.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Good morning from Orlando, where House Republicans are gathered at a luxury resort not far from Disney World for their annual three-day retreat — and where, we’ve learned, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and senior GOP leaders are preparing demand to testimony from members of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office amid reports of an imminent Trump indictment.

This morning, we can report two things:

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

A pair of fresh stories out this morning illuminate two emerging storylines in the early jockeying for the 2024 campaign …

White House aides tell us that President Joe Biden is likely to announce a final decision on the 2024 reelection in the coming weeks. And as he gears up for a likely reelection, he appears to be shimmying back to the ideological middle (an easy move when there’s no real primary challenge). 

And, our Olivia Beavers spoke with (nearly) every Republican of the Florida congressional delegation to see which Florida Man they plan on supporting in the 2024 GOP primary: former President Donald Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has yet to officially announce a bid.

The members are torn over what to do. They fear Trump’s wrath, worry about retaliation against those he sees as disloyal and fret about the long-term need to get closer to DeSantis, who is three decades younger than Trump and has a much longer runway ahead of him.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio

All eyes will be on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen today as she testifies before the Senate Finance Committee at 10 a.m.. 

Yellen’s appearance was originally scheduled to discuss the Biden budget. But after the weekend rescue of Silicon Valley Bank, this will be senators’ first chance to cross-examine Yellen about the controversial actions she took on Sunday in concert with her colleagues at the Fed and FDIC.

Not everything will be about SVB, but the Biden team’s response to the bank failures will dominate the meeting. And she is likely to feel the populist outrage bubbling up in Congress from both Democrats and Republicans. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio

We’re barely into the 2024 Senate cycle, and already some Republicans are feeling a sense of deja vu. 

In a new must-read, our Holly Otterbein attended a rural Pennsylvania rally for Doug Mastriano, the “state’s most MAGA Republican” who also won its gubernatorial primary last year only to lose the general election by double digits to Democrat Josh Shapiro. 

Her biggest takeaway: Despite that huge loss, Pennsylvania Republicans aren’t ready to toss Mastriano overboard as he mulls a challenge to veteran Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr.

“Establishment Republicans have found a silver lining amid the grimness [of 2022]: Perhaps there will be a reckoning,” she writes. “Even diehard supporters of former President Donald Trump, they’ve reasoned, are finally sick of losing. … In this corner of the political world in Pennsylvania, it’s the establishment — not the MAGAverse — that needs course-correction.”

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio