Will endorsement-happy Trump cost GOP the Senate? – Politico

BREAKING OVERNIGHT — A shouting match erupted on the Senate floor after the vote to delay the debt limit crisis for two months. Sens. JOHN THUNE (R-S.D.) and MITT ROMNEY (R-Utah) confronted Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER after he lambasted Republicans in a floor speech immediately following the vote. They thought Schumer should have been more gracious after they threw him a small lifeline. (Though Romney voted to filibuster the extension.) Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.), appearing to sympathize with Republicans, put his head in his hands as he listened to Schumer’s tirade (scroll down for that image). Afterward, Sen. SUSAN COLLINS (R-Maine) chased the Democratic leader into the cloakroom to chew him out. Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.) told Playbook it’s all sour grapes: “Listen, they kicked our ass and we have no one to blame but ourselves.” As for Schumer, a source who knows him well said, “He’s not gracious, he’s from Brooklyn!”

SPOTTED: Caddy-turned-senior Trump White House official DAN SCAVINO, surrounded by hundreds of law enforcement officers and ERIC TRUMP on Wednesday at the funeral for Dutchess County, N.Y., Sheriff BUTCH ANDERSON. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot has struggled to locate Scavino for over a week to serve him a subpoena.

FUNDRAISER CRASHER — As fundraising season approaches at DONALD TRUMP’s Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago, expect the former president to crash the events for 2024 candidates and let donors know that he’s also planning to run. “He’s going to have a more careful eye about who is going to raise money on his front porch,” an aide said. The club was the de facto hub of Republican fundraising in 2021 and will likely be again in 2022.

OOPS, HE DID IT AGAIN — It’s no secret that Trump’s endorsements have been impulsive, and it looks like he jumped the gun again by giving an early nod to SEAN PARNELL in the open Pennsylvania Senate race. Republicans we talked to in Washington and Trump-world are clearly worried since the news broke this week that Parnell requested a gag order on his estranged wife LAURIE and her lawyer during their custody battle. Shortly after Trump endorsed Parnell in September, rival JEFF BARTOS revealed that Parnell’s wife filed two protective orders against him in 2017 and 2018. Both were expunged, but some Republicans worry that there may be more shoes to drop.

It’s happened over and over: Trump endorses a seriously flawed candidate early in the primary race, even though he’s been accused of domestic abuse already — in the case of HERSCHEL WALKER in Georgia — or faces such allegations soon after, in the case of MAX MILLER in Ohio. Miller and Walker deny the accusations. There’s also ERIC GREITENS in Missouri, who Trump hasn’t endorsed but has a team stacked with former Trump staffers and loyalists, including KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE.

But Parnell may be in a tighter spot than Walker or Miller, whose opponent, Rep. ANTHONY GONZALEZ (R-Ohio), recently dropped out. JOE BIDEN won Pennsylvania by just over a percentage point. Parnell has some tough competition in the primary — not only Bartos but fundraiser and former ambassador CARLA SANDS. And he lacks the star power of Walker, an NFL legend.

“Sean Parnell can’t score touchdowns, so this is a little different,” said one Republican operative.

Parnell, 40, was recently endorsed by Rep. DAN CRENSHAW (R-Texas) and Sen. JOSH HAWLEY (R-Mo.). He raised $1.1 million in the past quarter. He was also dubbed one of the top House Republican recruits in 2020, and the NRCC named him one of their “Young Guns.”

Trump endorsed Parnell, a former Army Ranger, last month in the midst of the Afghanistan withdrawal, when Parnell was a regular on Fox News. It also helped that DONALD TRUMP JR. was pushing for him.

“Sean Parnell is one of the most impressive candidates of the entire cycle and is above all else a bonafide American hero,” said Trump Jr. in a statement.

People close to Trump say the problem is two-fold: He’s not putting enough money into his vetting operation, and he ultimately does whatever he wants. Trump also seems to think that other politicians share his “Teflon Don” ability to shed scandal.

Trump’s team said they did a full vetting of Parnell, including a criminal background check, but added that divorce issues wouldn’t surface in such a check because of the privacy of those records. An operative on an opponent’s team, however, said they discovered the protective orders within three days.

“They make hasty decisions that are not thought out or well researched,” said a source in Trump-world. “All it does is confirm lessons that we’ve known all along: that no one is in control.”

IN OTHER TRUMP NEWS — There’s a new book out next week by TED OSIUS, the former U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, recounting his experiences in the job. He tells one story about preparations for Trump’s 2017 trip to Vietnam for an APEC meeting. The planning included an upcoming White House meeting with Vietnamese PM NGUYEN XUAN PHUC. When Trump heard the name, he responded with a racist joke.

“You mean like FOOK YOO?” the former president said, according to Osius. “I knew a guy named Fook Yoo. Really. I rented him a restaurant. When he picked up the phone, he answered ‘Fook Yoo.’ His business went badly. People didn’t like that. He lost the restaurant.”

On Thursday night, Trump made another racist remark, telling Fox News that there are “hundreds of thousands of people flowing in from Haiti” and “many of those people will probably have AIDS.” This is something of an obsession for Trump dating to the 1980s. And lest we forget, the president in 2018 infamously referred to Haiti as a “shithole country.”

Happy Friday, and thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri.

PUSH IT TO THE (DEBT) LIMIT — What actually happens if the nation defaults on its debt? Planes fall out of the sky, the streets run red with blood — OK, not literally. But the reality could be economic catastrophe: “Market chaos, economic chaos, all for absolutely no good reason,” explains POLITICO’s Ben White. After a week of debt-ceiling drama in D.C., Ben joins Eugene to unpack the partisan fights, the doomsday hypotheticals and one of the most absurd twists so far: a trillion-dollar coin. Listen and subscribe to Playbook Deep Dive

BIDEN’S FRIDAY:

— 9:30 a.m.: The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief.

— 10 a.m.: Biden will sign the HAVANA Act of 2021 and K-12 Cybersecurity Act of 2021 into law.

— 11:30 a.m.: Biden will deliver remarks on the September jobs report.

— 1:45 p.m.: Biden will deliver remarks on restoring protections for national monuments and conservation.

— 2:30 p.m.: Biden will receive the weekly economic briefing.

— 6:15 p.m.: Biden will depart the White House for Wilmington, Del., where he is scheduled to arrive at 7:10 p.m.

VP KAMALA HARRIS’ FRIDAY:

— 9:35 a.m.: The vice president will depart D.C. en route to Newark, N.J.

— 11:45 a.m.: Harris will participate in a roundtable conversation on the importance of federal investment in child care at the Ben Samuels Children’s Center at Montclair State University.

— 2:40 p.m.: Harris will tour a vaccination site at Essex County College.

— 4:35 p.m.: Harris will depart Newark to return to D.C.

Press secretary JEN PSAKI will brief at 2:30 p.m.

The SENATE is in. The HOUSE is out.

CONGRESS

BENEATH THE SURFACE — Burgess Everett writes that an actual default on the country’s debt was never going to happen — it was simply the scrim for a power struggle between Schumer and Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL to determine who has more power in the evenly divided chamber. Schumer came out slightly ahead Thursday, but senators are exhausted and the leaders’ relationship is threadbare. “As the final agreement took shape, Schumer and McConnell appear to have held no personal conversations. Aides and emissaries handled the details.”

DONALD VS. MITCH — WaPo’s Felicia Sonmez and Mike DeBonis write “Thursday’s debt-limit deal has prompted a new round of attacks on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell by former president Donald Trump and his supporters, highlighting McConnell’s beleaguered role in a party where Trump remains the most powerful force. … The attacks reflect McConnell’s contradictory, difficult role in the Republican Party.”

PRAMILA’S PRICE TAG — In an interview with the AP, Rep. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-Wash.) “said she has pushed Biden to hold the line and keep his ambitious social spending plan closer to $3 trillion instead of the $2 trillion range that he has floated to Democrats in recent days.”

FEUDING FOR HOUSING FUNDS — The White House is considering cutting $300 billion in housing aid in the proposed $3.5 trillion spending plan, and Rep. MAXINE WATERS (D-Calif.) has vowed to fight for the full figure, Katy O’Donnell reports. The debate comes as the White House works to cut down the funding proposal’s top line to move the bill through Congress.

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

TOUR DE CONGRESS — French Ambassador PHILIPPE ETIENNE returned to D.C. last week after being recalled to France amid the Australian submarine debacle with a mandate from President EMMANUEL MACRON: reengage with the U.S. — not just with the Biden administration, but with Republicans and Democrats on the Hill. So Etienne immediately lined up back-to-back meetings with lawmakers on the Hill from both parties.

His first round of meetings were on Sept. 30, with national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN and Sens. CHRIS COONS (D-Del.), TIM KAINE (D-Va.) and RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-Conn.). The following days of his diplomacy marathon included huddles with Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN, USTR KATHERINE TAI, Rep. ELAINE LURIA (D-Va.) and Sens. JEANNE SHAHEEN (D-N.H.), JAMES RISCH (R-Idaho), BILL HAGERTY (R-Tenn.) and JOHN BOOZMAN (R-Ark). Etienne’s spokesperson explained his féroce charm offensive like this: “There is a crisis and it will take a long time to heal. We don’t want to be aggressive, we don’t want to underestimate, but the way forward is to see what concrete acts can be made by this administration and to have good relations with Congress.”

CUTTING THE TENSION — After this week’s meeting between senior Chinese foreign policy adviser YANG JIECHI and Sullivan, AP’s Ken Moritsugu writes that the U.S. and China “finally appear to be trying to ease tensions that date from the Trump administration — though U.S. complaints about Chinese policies on trade, Taiwan and other issues are little diminished.”

ALL POLITICS

YOUNGKIN’S TRUMP DILEMMA — In the closing weeks of Virginia’s close gubernatorial election, AP’s Sarah Rankin writes that Republican GLENN YOUNGKIN’s “murky answers” on Trump’s false election claims “underscore [his] dilemma. … False claims and misinformation about the results are so widely believed by Republican voters that disputing the lies can be politically risky. For months, while running for his party’s nomination, Youngkin declined to say whether Biden was legitimately elected.

“Now, in a general election, vying for votes in a tight race in left-leaning Virginia, Youngkin has tried to resist being branded as an election denier or letting Democrats tie him to Trump’s false claims.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: PROGRESSIVES TO WHITE HOUSE: RELEASE THE MEMO — Earlier this year, White House chief of staff RON KLAIN told us that within “weeks” the Biden administration would make a decision about the president’s authority to cancel student debt. Biden was just waiting for a legal memo from the Department of Education to help guide him.

More than six months later, the administration has yet to announce a decision.

The lack of clarity has annoyed progressives agitating for Biden to cancel all student debt, and today a group of 15 House members, led by Rep. ILHAN OMAR (D-Minn.), will be sending the White House a letter demanding “the release to the public by October 22, 2021 the memo that the President requested from the Department of Education to determine the extent of the administration’s authority to broadly cancel student debt through administrative action.” Full memo and 15 signatories here

BIDEN PUBLIC LANDS ANNOUNCEMENT TODAY — Biden is expected to announce today the restoration of two Utah parks — Bears Ears National Monument and the Grand Staircase-Escalante — as well as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts of the New England coast, NYT’s Coral Davenport reports: “Trump had sharply reduced the size of all three national monuments at the urging of ranchers, the fishing industry and many Republican leaders, opening them to mining, drilling and development.”

TV TONIGHT — PBS’ “Washington Week”: Katie Benner, Nancy Cordes, Cecilia Kang, Marianna Sotomayor and Eamon Javers.

SUNDAY SO FAR …

• CBS

  “Face the Nation”: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) … Fiona Hill … Scott Gottlieb … Chris Krebs.

• Gray TV

  “Full Court Press”: Anthony Fauci … Jeanne Marrazzo.

• FOX

  “Fox News Sunday”: Panel: Jason Riley, Jacqueline Alemany and Harold Ford Jr. Power Player: Alec Lace.

• ABC

  “This Week”: Panel: Donna Brazile, Chris Christie, Julie Pace and Maggie Haberman.

• NBC

  “Meet the Press”: Panel: Donna Edwards, Yamiche Alcindor and David French.

• MSNBC

  “The Sunday Show,” guest-hosted by Tiffany Cross: Michael Li … Phillip Atiba Goff … Jacqueline Charles … Yvonne Kwan … Versha Sharma.

• CNN

  “Inside Politics”: Panel: Tamara Keith, Eva McKend, Lauren Fox, Jeff Stein, Michael Warren and Leana Wen.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff takes down Stephanie Grisham’s takedown of Melania Trump.

Cory Booker seemed to truly enjoy presiding over the Senate more than … maybe anyone we’ve ever seen.

Kamala Harris will be rooting for her San Francisco Giants as they take on the L.A. Dodgers in the NLDS, which starts tonight. But the Naval Observatory will be a house divided: Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is a true-blue member of Dodgers nation.

Doug LaMalfa video-chatted into a committee meeting from the driver’s seat of a working combine harvester to question Tom Vilsack.

Taylor Swift-themed merch trashing Glenn Youngkin was quickly pulled from the Democratic Party of Virginia’s online store — and it’s a mystery why.

Comedy Central announced the cast for its upcoming animated feature “Washingtonia,” executive produced by Stephen Colbert, which includes new “SNL” addition James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump. There are too many characters for us to list here, but they include everyone from Pete Buttigieg to Madison Cawthorn to Hunter Biden to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Ron DeSantis to Kristen Welker.

SPOTTED: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in Manhattan to fundraise with former New York Gov. George Pataki, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), Adam Weiss and Jeff Miller.

OUT AND ABOUT — Friends of American University in Afghanistan held Leslie Schweitzer’s annual fundraiser for the school at the Four Seasons in Georgetown on Thursday night with honorary chair Laura Bush, who sent a letter to be read, followed by a VIP reception. SPOTTED: Hillary Clinton, Tom Freston, Carey Lowell, Qatari Ambassador Sheikh Meshal Bin Hamad Al-Thani, Susanna and Jack Quinn, Jamie Dorros, Adrienne Elrod, Elizabeth Thorp, Kelly and Roy Schwartz, Melanne Verveer, Huma Abedin, Gayle Lemmon, Katherine and David Bradley, Rick Klein, Jon Karl, Jennifer Griffin, Gen. John Nicholson Jr., Peter Bergen and Autumn Hanna VandeHei.

— SPOTTED at a screening of the first episode of “Dopesick,” a new Hulu series about the origins of the opioid epidemic in America, at the Aspen Institute on Thursday night with writer and executive producer Danny Strong, Warren Littlefield, Beth Macy and cast members Michael Keaton, Rosario Dawson, Peter Sarsgaard, John Hoogenakker and Will Poulter: John Brownlee, Rick Mountcastle, Randy Ramseyer, Alison Kodjak, Dana Bash, Mike Isikoff and David Corn.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Stew Boss is joining Sen. Jacky Rosen’s (D-Nev.) office as deputy chief of staff. He previously was a senior comms strategist at DSCC, where he will be succeeded by Patrick Burgwinkle. Burwinkle was previously an account director at Sunshine Sachs and is an alum of End Citizens United, the DCCC and Hillary for America.

TRANSITIONS — Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone is joining Browne George Ross as a name partner and a member of the executive committee. Announcement … Matt VanHyfte is now press secretary for Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). He most recently did opposition and comms research for the RGA and is a Trump 2020 campaign alum. … Jordan Colvin is now legislative director for Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.). She most recently was a VP at Platinum Advisors, was involved with the Veterans and Military Families for Biden movement and is a former undercover D.C. police officer.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) and Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) … Adrienne Watson of the DNC … Rev. Jesse Jackson (8-0) … Steve Coll of the Columbia Journalism School and The New Yorker … Bill Schneider … National Journal’s Mackenzie Weinger … Dan Dunham … Dan Gallo of MSNBC … Kirk Monroe … Brianne Gorod of the Constitutional Accountability Center … Caroline Nonna Holland … Aaron Hiller of the House Judiciary Committee … David Burstein … Shripal Shah of Left Hook … Sean Kennedy … Larry Calhoun of Rep. Kat Cammack’s (R-Fla.) office … Kirk Schwarzbach … Joe Gilson of Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) office (3-0) … Nicole Schlinger … Bully Pulpit Interactive’s Ivanka Farrell … Blain Rethmeier of 76 Group … Tom Sheridan … Abdul Dosunmu … Micah Morris … Facebook’s Riki Parikh … Dennis Alpert … Jennifer Allen of the League of Conservation Voters … former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) … Quinn Nii … former HHS Secretary Tom Price … Anna Levin

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