POLITICO NIGHTLY: A Trump norm Biden might keep

 

BY RYAN LIZZA

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With help from Myah Ward and Alex Thompson NORMS! — Let’s stipulate at the outset that the biggest story in Washington right now is President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election and the second-biggest story is the number of Republican allies who have been silent. So far this looks a lot more like bad sportsmanship accompanied by a misinformation campaign, and not some well-thought out plot to stay in power. Trump’s legal challenges are almost certainly going nowhere. Whispers about flipping electors have basically no chance of success. There is not a single state so far where a recount has any chance of changing the results. At noon on Jan. 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden Jr. will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Trump’s aides tell me he’s unlikely to concede, he’s unlikely to invite Biden to the White House, and he’s unlikely to attend Biden’s inauguration. How ugly he makes things for Biden over the next few weeks will dominate the news. Why is this even worth pointing out? Because, as in the campaign, Trump’s dominance of the media continues to blot out coverage of Biden. Beat reporters covering Biden tell me that the basement strategy of the 2020 campaign has continued into the transition. Traditionally transition officials begin holding regular press briefings immediately after the race is called. In 1992, for example, these seemed to have started as early as Nov. 6, three days after the election that year. The 2020 race was called on Saturday morning, and as of this evening there was no plan announced by Team Biden to hold these traditional briefings. The press is being kept in the dark about what exactly the president-elect is doing most of the day beyond vague descriptions of “internal meetings.” Biden’s schedule for Wednesday simply reads, “President-elect Joe Biden will meet with transition advisors.” Monday and today Biden spoke to at least three foreign leaders. The press learned about those calls from foreign sources rather than Biden aides. After I noted that the Biden team was not releasing timely readouts of foreign calls, the campaign this afternoon sent out a consolidated list of several of today's calls. The campaign says it had been planned. But the Biden camp declined to provide basic details like the order in which he called world leaders today. Biden spoke in Wilmington today and even took some questions. But the Biden transition is still using a pool-only system of a few journalists rather than expanding these events to everyone in the press corps, using Zoom or some other Covid-safe method. During the campaign, Biden selected reporters at random as he glanced around the room. Today a press aide controlled who got to ask questions, which were limited to five outlets. As someone who has aggressively covered, and sometimes overreacted to, the long list of norms broken by Trump over the last few years, I don’t discount Trump’s final act of norm-breaking. It is obviously crucial for reporters to cover the Trump transition story. But it’s equally important — maybe more important — to aggressively document what Trump-established norms the new party in power will quietly hope to preserve. Transparency and press access is an area where both parties will be highly incentivized to restrict. And they will have allies. Access complaints by reporters often sound like whining, and the press is as convenient a punching bag for the left as it is for the right (check out the ratio on my tweet ). Resistance Democrats feel aggrieved by Trump’s recklessness and are apt to give Biden a pass when, well, he acts like Trump. His public schedule remains as light as it was on the campaign trail, raising the possibility that it wasn’t just a campaign strategy. “Of course there will be regular briefings from a range of officials, and we hope to get those started as early as next week” said Jennifer Psaki, who is assisting the Biden transition with press requests. (She will soon turn her attention to doing communications for the Senate confirmation proceedings of Biden picks.) The issue is not the lack of transition funds. As Biden himself made clear today, Trump’s refusal to concede is not impeding the president-elect’s work on the transition. If Biden can build a government and discuss foreign policy with world leaders, he and his people can make themselves accessible to the press. The Trump era is over. Biden is about to be the most powerful man in the world.

President-elect Joe Biden addresses the news media about the Trump administration’s lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del. | Getty Images

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out at rlizza@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @ryanlizza and @renurayasam.

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FIRST IN NIGHTLY

BAD NEWS FOR BIDENOMICS — When Biden takes office in January, he will face a U.S. economy at a crossroads . Positive vaccine news presents real hope for healing sectors battered by the coronavirus pandemic. But the nation still faces a dark winter of uncontrolled virus outbreaks that could spur a downward lurch in the economy, compounding the earlier damage. And the prospect of a divided Congress means the new administration may not be able to unleash the kind of sweeping, multitrillion-dollar fiscal stimulus it wants in order to triage the economy until Covid-19 is either vanquished or brought under control, Ben White and Victoria Guida write. Among the headwinds Biden is likely to face: — The environment could force the Biden team to wait for the Federal Reserve to lead the way just as the central bank did after the Great Recession — an approach that could again make investors richer, but only slowly help the types of workers Biden wants to support most. — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others in the Republican Party have suggested the relatively strong October jobs report and other positive indicators mean more big stimulus is no longer needed. Most economists disagree with that assessment but are no longer confident that a large package will get through Congress and to Biden’s desk. — The new president could feel compelled to back new state and local lockdowns if virus numbers keep spiking. Those kinds of restrictions tend to disproportionately hit lower-income workers, who have already borne the brunt of the crisis. — While news of a vaccine arriving for the general public in the spring could boost spending, big sectors of the economy remain broken while large swaths of consumers and businesses hobble along with mounting debt.

TRACK THE TRANSITION, SUBSCRIBE TO TRANSITION PLAYBOOK: The definitive guide to what could be one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history. Our Transition Playbook newsletter—written for political insiders—tracks the appointments, people, and power centers of the new administration. Don't miss out. Subscribe today.

PALACE INTRIGUE

THE DHS OFFICIAL WHO’S FACT-CHECKING TRUMPWORLD — Since Election Day, Trump and his allies have pushed numerous merit-free allegations of voting irregularities. The Department of Homeland Security’s top cyber official is swatting them down in near real-time — contradicting the president in a way that often ends in a pink slip, national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand writes. From his perch atop the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs has been using his agency’s “Rumor Control” website — and his personal Twitter feed — to take on the viral conspiracies that are circulating widely in conservative circles, some of which have been promoted by the president and his top allies. Launched before the election to help voters navigate domestic and foreign misinformation, the website has now essentially morphed into a post-election fact-checking operation for the outgoing president and his supporters. And over on Krebs’ Twitter feed, the dismissals are more blunt. “This is not a real thing,” Krebs tweeted in response to a conspiracy theory floated by Trump’s allies — including a prominent Fox News host — about a computer called “Hammer” and a corresponding program called “Scorecard” that some conservatives say secretly siphoned votes from Trump to Biden. “Same as yesterday, Hammer and Scorecard is still a hoax,” he reiterated a day later. “That’s it. That’s the tweet.”

COVID-2020

WHEN AT FIRST YOU DON’T CONCEDE — The U.S. has a long history of candidates conceding when results are decisive. Or … it had a long history. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, White House reporter Nancy Cook breaks down why Trump is refusing to accept reality while much of the world already has — and why it could spell trouble for Biden’s transition.

Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast

TRANSITION 2020

‘A SECOND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’ — Pompeo today became the latest senior U.S. official to resist accepting the results of last week’s presidential election. The chief U.S. diplomat even suggested — falsely, but possibly jokingly — that Trump had defeated Biden. “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo said during a news conference this afternoon. At one point, he referred to the importance of counting “every legal vote” — phrasing other Trump allies have used to suggest without evidence that widespread voter fraud helped Biden.

Biden today called the president’s refusal to concede an “embarrassment.” “I think it will not help the president's legacy,” Biden told reporters after a short speech timed to the oral arguments in a Supreme Court case challenging the Affordable Care Act.

ON THE HILL

‘WE NEED HIS VOTERS’ — There are two reasons why most Senate Republicans refuse to acknowledge Biden as president-elect: Georgia and Georgia. Simply put, the party needs Trump’s help to clinch two runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5 that will determine the fate of the Senate GOP’s majority, congressional reporter Burgess Everett writes. And accepting the presidential results ahead of Trump, a politician driven by loyalty, could put Republicans at odds with the president and his core supporters heading into the must-win elections down South. When the presidential election is finally certified, Republicans hope Trump will put on his red jersey this winter and help deliver his conservative base for Georgia’s Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. “We need his voters. And he has a tremendous following out there,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota. “Right now, he’s trying to get through the final stages of his election and determine the outcome there. But when that’s all said and done, however it comes out, we want him helping in Georgia.”

JOIN THURSDAY: A WOMEN RULE ROUNDTABLE : 2020 has been a history-making year for women in politics. Kamala Harris is vice president-elect, a record number of Republican women were elected to Congress and more women of color ran for public office than ever before. Join POLITICO's Elizabeth Ralph, Crooked Media's Shaniqua McClendon, and Winning for Women's Micah Yousefi for a conversation that examines the results for women who ran for office and what progress still needs to be made. REGISTER HERE.

FROM THE HEALTH DESK

EAT YOUR VEGETABLES — Obamacare went before the Supreme Court for the third time today (not counting suits over contraceptive coverage.) It seemed less suspenseful than usual; the law has been upheld before, and many legal experts regarded this case brought by Texas and other red states as a stretch. The plaintiffs argued that once Congress eliminated the penalty for the mandate, it was no longer a tax — and therefore the entire law is unconstitutional and should be scrapped. The justices, who are often quite opaque in oral arguments, made their skepticism quite clear, as our correspondents Josh Gerstein and

“I think it will not help the president's legacy,” Biden told reporters after a short speech timed to the oral arguments in a Supreme Court case challenging the Affordable Care Act. ON THE HILL ‘WE NEED HIS VOTERS’ — There are two reasons why most Senate Republicans refuse to acknowledge Biden as president-elect: Georgia and Georgia. Simply put, the party needs Trump’s help to clinch two runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5 that will determine the fate of the Senate GOP’s majority, congressional reporter Burgess Everett writes. And accepting the presidential results ahead of Trump, a politician driven by loyalty, could put Republicans at odds with the president and his core supporters heading into the must-win elections down South. When the presidential election is finally certified, Republicans hope Trump will put on his red jersey this winter and help deliver his conservative base for Georgia’s Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. “We need his voters. And he has a tremendous following out there,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota. “Right now, he’s trying to get through the final stages of his election and determine the outcome there. But when that’s all said and done, however it comes out, we want him helping in Georgia.”   JOIN THURSDAY: A WOMEN RULE ROUNDTABLE : 2020 has been a history-making year for women in politics. Kamala Harris is vice president-elect, a record number of Republican women were elected to Congress and more women of color ran for public office than ever before. Join POLITICO's Elizabeth Ralph, Crooked Media's Shaniqua McClendon, and Winning for Women's Micah Yousefi for a conversation that examines the results for women who ran for office and what progress still needs to be made. REGISTER HERE.     FROM THE HEALTH DESK EAT YOUR VEGETABLES — Obamacare went before the Supreme Court for the third time today (not counting suits over contraceptive coverage.) It seemed less suspenseful than usual; the law has been upheld before, and many legal experts regarded this case brought by Texas and other red states as a stretch. The plaintiffs argued that once Congress eliminated the penalty for the mandate, it was no longer a tax — and therefore the entire law is unconstitutional and should be scrapped. The justices, who are often quite opaque in oral arguments, made their skepticism quite clear, as our correspondents Josh Gerstein and Susannah Luthi reported. A decision will likely come in the spring of 2021. Joanne Kenen, our executive editor for health care, was also listening in, and noted that one thing has come up over and over again in these endless years of litigation: broccoli. She emails the Nightly: Today broccoli was joined by other vegetables, not to mention a whole boatload of other analogies and metaphors ranging from lawn mowing to mask-wearing to National Port Week, as the court debated whether people really faced punishment, other than perhaps some frowning neighbors, if they didn’t in fact honor National Port Week. (At least it sounded like “Port”, to both Joanne and the transcribers, although she did wonder if Justice Stephen Breyer, who seemed to be having some trouble with his remote audio, meant National Pork Week.) The broccoli analogy dates back to the 2012 case. Obamacare had a mandate to get insurance — which was likened, ad nauseum, to being forced to eat your broccoli. The mandate – and the law — survived, when swing voter Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that it was a tax. Back then, the mandate was seen as the lynchpin of the individual market. But after Congress zeroed out the mandate penalty in its tax bill in 2017, the prophesized implosion of Obamacare didn’t occur. The mandate wasn’t so important after all. “We spent all that time talking about broccoli for nothing?” Roberts asked today. That’s because it was never really about broccoli. It was about carrots. And sticks, explained Don Verrilli, the attorney representing the U.S. House in defending the law, and who argued the case that upheld it in 2012 when he was Solicitor General. The mandate was the stick. But the carrots — the availability of subsidized insurance that had good benefits and protected people with pre-existing conditions — were more important. Josh goes beyond broccoli, if you can believe it, in his 5 key moments from the SCOTUS showdown. NIGHTLY NUMBER 293 The number of ballots that arrived Monday in Philadelphia, according to USPS. Ballots continued to come to USPS facilities Monday, according to newly filed court documents , too late in many states to be counted, even if postmarked by Election Day. AFTER TRUMP POLITICO illustration; Getty/iStock HOW TO INVESTIGATE AN EX-PRESIDENT — On Jan. 20, 2021, Trump will no longer be the president of the United States. Later that year, he might become the first former president to face a criminal indictment. Trump is reportedly worried about being arrested, and he should be. This was always going to be a dilemma for Trump’s successor, Renato Mariotti writes in POLITICO Magazine. After an openly self-dealing president like Trump, the nation needs to see that no American is above the law. But any prosecution of Trump, no matter how fair, would draw criticism from Trump’s supporters in an already-divided nation. Even nonpartisan observers have reason to be concerned by the spectacle of the administration of a new president prosecuting the president who just left office. It's essential for any stable democracy that elected leaders don’t use their new powers to punish their opponents after they’ve lost. No president has ever done it. So Biden needs to pursue justice when it comes to Trump — but he also needs to ensure that any prosecutorial decisions about Trump are made in a manner that restores public faith in the Justice Department, rather than making it seem, as Trump has, like just another political arm of the White House. Biden has promised to stay out of any prosecutorial decision, but that won’t be enough. Former President Barack Obama stayed out of the investigation of Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server, but that didn’t stop rampant speculation regarding the role of then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Biden will have one tool, however, that allows him to pursue justice while also ensuring that the process doesn't appear to be tainted by politics. That tool is the special counsel — a prosecutor appointed not by Biden, but by his attorney general, who has a measure of independence from the administration. The special counsel should be a career prosecutor who has no connection to Biden or his team, and the attorney general should publicly state in advance that he or she does not intend to place any restrictions on the special counsel and will follow his or her recommendation. PARTING WORDS THE EMPIRE SLINKS BACK — When Biden is inaugurated as the next president of the United States, he will inherit an office whose powers have grown immensely over the past decades. His fellow Democrats are already demanding that he use the full scope of executive authority quickly and forcefully. Murmurs from the Biden camp suggest that he intends to do just that, beginning his tenure with a slew of executive orders reversing Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords, lifting the travel ban on several Muslim countries and reinstituting protections to the immigrant “Dreamers.” But governing by presidential fiat is a deeply flawed approach, POLITICO Magazine contributing editor Zachary Karabell writes, as each party seems to rediscover when the opposition wins. Once Biden undoes some of what Trump has done, he could leave his most indelible and important mark by rolling back that trend in American governance, ceding presidential powers back to Congress and the states, making it harder for any subsequent president to abuse the power of the office. He could, in short, do something truly radical and transformative: At the age of 77, very likely to be a one-term president, Biden could be the first president in modern history to acknowledge that office has become too powerful, and finally scale it back.   A message from The Bouqs Co.: Gatherings are looking a little bit different this holiday season. Luckily, The Bouqs Co. has everything you need to make home feel like somewhere you want to be versus somewhere you have to be. Festive autumn bouquets, wreaths, and plants from The Bouqs stay fresher longer because everything is sourced directly from the farm — even farms from the side of a volcano! Bouqs.com has all the fresh goodness to help spice up your space or brighten someone’s day, and with a thoughtful assortment that has something for everyone, sending smiles no matter the miles has never been easier. 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