POLITICO NIGHTLY: Virus politics, meet viral politics

 

BY CORY BENNETT AND RENUKA RAYASAM With help from Myah Ward TRUMP’S TURN — The Republican convention’s prime-time programming begins at 8:30 p.m. ET and includes speeches by Nikki Haley and Donald Trump Jr. Live video, chats with POLITICO reporters, and all the latest news and analysis can be found at POLITICO’s RNC hub: politico.com/rnc MEME CULTURE GOES MAINSTREAM — The meme wars have merged with the 2020 presidential campaign. In the past, political conventions existed, in part, to create moments that would be spliced, memed and shared — think Khizr Khan brandishing the Constitution in 2016, or Clint Eastwood conversing with an empty chair in 2012. But this year, the pandemic has taken the conventions into the realm of pure internet. The Republicans, like the Democrats last week, aren’t putting on a televised performance and hoping someone watching will create a viral tweet or Facebook post. These two conventions are already designed as an endless scroll of viral moments, pre-sliced and served hot. The slate of speakers at the Republican National Convention this week is crafted to draw from — and feed — the grievance-fueled corners of the MAGA internet and Trumpy news sites like The Daily Wire and The Gateway Pundit (recent headline: “WATCH: Violence Breaks Out as Conservatives Refuse to Back Down From Black Lives Matter Mob in Beverly Hills). The St. Louis couple who waved guns at Black Lives Matter protesters will appear tonight, as will student organizer Charlie Kirk, who regularly circulates anger-provoking videos to his 1.8 million Twitter followers. Donald Trump Jr., a self-described “General in the Meme Wars,” will give a keynote speech. On Tuesday, Covington Catholic high schooler Nick Sandmann will lament how the news media covered his viral moment. The Democrats tried the same thing last week, especially with Jacquelyn Brittany, the New York Times security guard whose gushing exchange with Joe Biden went viral, and Brayden Harrington, a CNN-profiled 13-year-old who bonded with Biden over their mutual struggles with stuttering. The appearances mirrored heartwarming posts on feel-good progressive news sites. Before the convention, NowThis promoted a video in 2019 of Biden sharing a “touching message” with a young man who stuttered. After the convention, Harrington’s speech remained a top headline for days on Upworthy, placed under the “Heroes” tag. The chasm between the Democrats’ tug-at-the-heartstrings internet stars and the Republicans’ umbrage generators highlights the cleave in liberal and conservative online culture, but the uniting thread is that Trump’s presidency has merged meme culture and mainstream politics for both parties Although President Barack Obama’s team was internet-fluent — getting the Blackberry-addicted Obama on “Between Two Ferns,” bringing YouTubers to the White House to interview the president — Trump is in some ways the first internet president. He dashes off viral tweets, boosts viral videos, circulates viral memes and invites internet celebrities to the White House. He playfully refused to denounce QAnon. His aides issue statements filled with MAGA internet jargon. The Democrats have been playing catch up, trying to find ways to tap into progressives’ digital energy. They put forward their internet stars last week. Now it’s the Republicans’ turn. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Join me for a live, one-on-one interview with Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves this Wednesday. Register here. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.   PLUG IN WITH PLAYBOOK AT THE RNC : Join POLITICO Playbook co-authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman for "Plug In with Playbook," our new political show popping up at the Republican National Convention each morning at 9 a.m. EDT. Cut through the noise and go behind the scenes with elected officials, political VIPs and top journalists for the latest campaign news and whispers, in-depth analysis of down-ballot races, and the latest juicy nuggets from reporters' notebooks. Aug. 25-27. Watch it live here.     FIRST IN NIGHTLY TIGHT ELEX VEX TEX — Texas was already one of the nation’s most-watched battlefields of 2020. Then came the pandemic. Republicans and Democrats are brawling over a dozen House seats in the state's most expansive political landscape in recent memory — swing districts that also happen to encompass some of the worst-hit coronavirus hotspots in Texas, Congress reporters Sarah Ferris and Melanie Zanona write. Roughly 70 days before the election, Republican incumbents have been forced on the defensive by the pandemic, as Democrats pitch their health care platform and try to tag the GOP as irresponsible and anti-science. Democrats are looking to flip as many as seven GOP seats, spanning the suburbs from San Antonio to Dallas to Houston, with several more in play that were hardly seen as competitive just a few months ago. But the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 11,000 Texans and infected a half million more, has permeated the tightest races on issues from mask orders to health insurance to school openings. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy arrives at the Rayburn House Office Building for a House Oversight hearing on "Protecting the Timely Delivery of Mail, Medicine, and Mail-in Ballots" on Capitol Hill in Washington. | Getty Images COVID-2020 THE ‘KARL ROVE RULE’ FOR MUSICAL ACTS — Mark McKinnon became a Republican in the late 1990s to work for George W. Bush. Now he co-hosts Showtime’s The Circus , a real-time documentary about American politics. He’s crisscrossing the country to cover the Covid campaign for Showtime along with co-hosts John Heilemann, Alex Wagner and Jennifer Palmieri. Your Nightly host talked to McKinnon today about why he prefers virtual conventions, what Republicans need to do this week and how it’s hard for Republicans to book good musical acts. This conversation has been edited. What do you think of the Covid conventions? I had some responsibility for the programming of the 2000 and 2004 conventions. Even back then we were talking about how anachronistic the conventions were. There's a physics to the tradition that just made it really hard to change until Covid. It’s so much better when people aren’t giving a speech to a crowd of, I don’t know, 20,000 partisans that clap at every single thing you say. These speakers are much more intimate and much more authentic. What do Republicans need to do this week? They’ve got a couple of things they need to do. One is to communicate that they take it seriously, that they do recognize the impact of the health crisis on the country, that they are empathetic to those who have suffered and that they have control of it and they have a plan. They have to get beyond, “It’s just gonna disappear.” They have great potential with an economic message. Trump is better prepared to handle the economy even with Covid and that he’ll bring it back faster and stronger than Joe Biden. They’re going to just make the case: “We've got a handle on this. You know what we can do on the economy. We're gonna do it again.” Even though people feel strongly about Trump's economic record, a huge majority of people think the country’s headed the wrong direction right now. That’s a tough wind in the face for reelection. The buck stops with the president. The greatest challenge is that the Trump campaign has to convince people it’s headed in the right direction. By the way it doesn’t need to be solved. People don't base their votes on the way things are today. They're gonna vote based on how they think it’s going to be. Any lessons for the Trump campaign from Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign? Bush was also steering the country through a crisis and managed to convince voters to stick with him. The parallels are that we were an incumbent in facing reelection, and he was not particularly popular nor were his policies. We had to make it a choice between us and someone else and not just a referendum on George Bush. We came up with a strategy early on that we realized may not be perfect, but we all decided that we’re gonna plant the flag of that strategy and never change it. An imperfect strategy, consistently executed, was better than a strategy that changes every week in search of perfection. My advice to the Trump campaign is that whatever you're laying down this week, lay it down and stick with it. Agree or disagree with Donald Trump in 2016, you knew exactly what his message was. It was as clear as any presidential message I've ever heard. What’s your favorite convention memory? It was driving with George W. Bush to the convention hall to deliver his speech in 2000. I was quiet, thinking he was trying to concentrate and focus on the biggest speech of his life. Then I heard someone whistling the song “Go Tell It On The Mountain.” I thought it was the radio, but turns out it was Bush. I said: “Are you kidding me? There could not be more pressure on you, and you're whistling an old gospel song?” And he said: “I've never felt more calm in my life. Because I know that every word of this speech reflects who I am and what I believe. And if people accept me, great. But if they don't, I know they will have done so not based on some false sense of what I stand for.” It’s always tough for Republicans to match the Democrats when it comes to entertainment. I had that thankless job in 2004, and after months of begging every A-list entertainer we could find, we ended up basically with the holy trinity of past GOP conventions: Lee Greenwood, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Wayne Newton. Initially we had the “Karl Rove Rule.” If he’d heard of them, they were off our list. In the end, Karl knew ’em all. Hopefully, Team Trump will do better. Hard to do worse. NO BUMP FOR BIDEN — Biden hasn’t gotten much of a polling bounce between his Democratic convention speech last Thursday and the start of the Republican convention today. A new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll showed virtually no change in Biden’s image ratings, which remain split evenly between voters who view him positively and negatively. Other horse-race polling shows Biden with a large lead over Trump — but still roughly where his advantage stood going into the conventions. THE TRUMP RNC SEQUEL — Trump officially became the Republican presidential nominee in an unusual party convention in 2016 marked by divisiveness, threats and demands of loyalty. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, senior staff writer Michael Kruse talks about how the event teed up the last four years — and what it can tell us about this week's convention. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast FROM THE HEALTH DESK SPIT UP — Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are just one of the groups that have created a new Covid test that replaces a swab up with the nose with spitting into a tube. NBA players have been using a saliva test developed by Yale. Last week Illinois’ test received emergency use authorization from the FDA and it’s now part of a campus wide strategy to keep Covid contained. Illinois Playbook author Shia Kapos emails us. Taking the test requires a person to dribble saliva into a tube, which is then capped and placed in a hot bath. That kills the virus and keeps workers safe. But the heating also breaks open the virus to release genetic material that allows scientists to conduct tests. Instead of waiting days for results, scientists know within five hours if you’ve contracted Covid-19. Paul Hergenrother, who designed the process, says there’s now “massive collection” on his campus: 40 collection stations with workers on hand 24 hours a day. The scientists say they have received calls from some 50 universities wanting to set up similar labs. ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asks you: What is your favorite memory from previous editions of the RNC or DNC? Send us your response on our form and we'll include select responses in Friday's edition. NIGHTLY NUMBER 55 The percentage of college students who believe the 2020 election will not be administered well, according to a Knight Foundation survey of student opinions on November’s vote. PARTING WORDS DEJOY OF HEARINGS — Democrats accused Postmaster General Louis DeJoy today of downplaying disruptions to mail delivery that began when he assumed his position in June. They threatened to subpoena him for what they say is deliberate withholding of internal decision-making documents, Kyle Cheney reports. “How can one person screw this up in just a few weeks?” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) asked DeJoy. The confrontation, during a hearing of the House Oversight Committee, laid bare mounting fury among Democrats for what they say is a deliberate effort by DeJoy and Trump to disrupt the Postal Service in advance of the November election, when mail-in ballots are expected to surge. DeJoy agreed with Lynch that postal workers deserve praise for risking their health to deliver mail on time, but he insisted that any suggestion he has implemented new policies to drive up delays or disrupt mail delivery are simply “misinformation.” “The rest of your accusations are actually outrageous,” DeJoy said to Lynch. The exchange was part of a sustained barrage from Democrats on the panel. DeJoy told the Senate on Friday that any mail delays caused by changes he carried out upon taking the role were the result of previously implemented policy changes — which he’s now paused until after the election.   INTRODUCING POLITICO MINUTES: These unprecedented times demand an unconventional approach to political news coverage. POLITICO Minutes is a new, interactive content experience that delivers the top takeaways you need to know in an easy-to-digest, swipeable format straight to your inbox. Get a breakdown of what we've learned so far, why it matters and what to watch for going forward. Sign up for POLITICO Minutes, launching at the 2020 Conventions.     Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   FOLLOW US

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