The Daily 202: Inside Biden’s heavily local media push for his coronavirus rescue package

Forget the green lipstick. Stay away from the ferns. Cancel Fox and Friends. Scrap the rage-tweeting. As President Biden sells his $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package, he and his team have leaned on a traditional White House communications model that includes heavy reliance on local and regional news outlets in 10 states.

At stake is Biden’s top legislative priority, one that requires all 50 Senate Democrats to stick together if there is no Republican support to be had. National polls show a clear majority of Americans support passage, but success could turn on a handful of lawmakers.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to detail the strategy, described a largely conventional media approach — albeit one shaped by pandemic-imposed restrictions. It blends high-profile interviews, like Biden’s exchange with CBS before the Super Bowl, with outreach to specialized publications like Parents Magazine, as well as Spanish-language outlets, and extensive local-media courtship.

Biden’s rescue package is entering a pivotal phase, with Democrats in Congress putting it through the committee process with an eye on securing a final vote before mid-March. Biden has invited Republicans to chime in but made it clear he’s prepared to push the package to passage with entirely Democratic support.

In addition to Biden’s Super Bowl interview, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has done CNN’s “State of the Union” and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on ABC’s “This Week.”

Administration officials and local allies — like the mayors of Dayton, Ohio, Denver, and Columbus, Ohio, as well as Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) — have conducted more than 30 interviews with outlets in Arizona, Nevada, West Virginia, Utah, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the White House official said. That’s about one-third of the total interviews Team Biden has done since Inauguration Day.

“We have also targeted constituency media outlets to ensure we are explaining the details of the American Rescue Plan and reaching communities where they are,” the official said.

So far, Biden aides have done just two podcasts: Deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has appeared on ABC News Powerhouse Politics; Biden’s choice to be surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, did Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast, the official said.

And the president has yet to embrace the truly unorthodox venues President Barack Obama sought out when he tried to sell the public on Obamacare, like chatting with a YouTube personality perhaps best known for wearing green lipstick and getting into a bathtub of Fruit Loops.

This column builds on work by my colleagues Ashley Parker, Matt Viser, and Seung Min Kim, who reported Sunday:

“More than a dozen senior administration officials have completed more than 100 national television, radio, and podcast interviews, an administration official said, and aides have also done over 30 local television interviews. »

 Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) complained bitterly about not getting advance notice Vice President Harris would be appearing on WSAZ-TV, an NBC affiliate based in Huntington. And some mocked Harris for referring to “abandoned land mines” instead of “abandoned mine lands” in coal country.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Manchin said. “That’s not a way of working together, what was done.”

While one theory holds local reporters are more easily dazzled by the White House, in practice they can be just as nettlesome as the regular press corps. After one tense back and forth in 2011 with WFAA-TV of Dallas, an ABC affiliate, Obama warned him: “Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview, all right?”

One running joke in the Obama White House press corps was how visiting local anchors and correspondents would always just somehow run into aides walking the first dogs, Bo and Sunny, and tweet their delighted surprise.

“It would make our jobs a lot easier, if these were the days when a vast majority of the American audience tuned into Walter Cronkite at night and we could just talk to ‘Uncle Walter’ and get our message out there, and that’s just not the case anymore,” Obama press secretary Jay Carney said in April 2011.

“So we reach out in numerous ways: Through national media interviews, through national White House press conferences, through regional media interviews, through Facebook town halls,” Carney continued.  

The Biden communications team will soon likely face two more high-profile tests: A probable address to Congress late this month, and a drive to convince Americans wary of the coronavirus vaccine that they should set aside their skepticism.

Rep. Ron Wright (R-Tex.) died at 67, weeks after testing positive for coronavirus. Wright, who represented Texas’s 6th Congressional District since 2019, had been battling cancer since 2018. He is survived by his wife, Susan, three children and nine grandchildren.  In a statement, his campaign said Wright “will be remembered as a constitutional conservative. He was a statesman, not an ideologue.” 

Trump’s attorneys filed a brief claiming that the Constitution doesn’t permit a trial of a former president. They asked the Senate to dismiss the case, accusing Democrats of a “hunger for this political theater,” John Wagner and Paulina Firozi report.

Hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would result in 1.4 million unemployed but would lift 900,000 out of poverty, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a new report.

Arkansas Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin dropped out of the 2022 governor race, clearing the way for former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders in the GOP primary. Griffin, who launched his campaign for governor in 2019, said he’ll be running instead to be the state’s next attorney general. Sanders, largely favored in the race, will now just face the state’s current attorney general Leslie Rutledge in the primaries. (Arkansas Democrat Gazette)

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) entered the state’s 2022 Senate race. Fetterman kicked off his campaign for retiring Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R) seat this morning, CNN reports. The Democratic primary campaign is expected to be crowded and competitive, but Fetterman has already raised more than $1.3 million from over 43,000 donations in the weeks since he first publicly considered a bid. 

• “How Russian biotech trampled protocols — and challenged the West — in race for Sputnik V vaccine,” by Robyn Dixon: “Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine now has a globally recognized seal of approval after British medical journal the Lancet published a peer-reviewed paper last week that put the vaccine in the same league as Western doses — with 91.6 percent efficacy 21 days after the first shot and 91.8 percent for those over 60 years old. For Russia’s biotech industry, the results are heady validation after facing Western skepticism, fueled largely by Russia’s decision to release the vaccine before medical trials were complete — even using researchers as test subjects.”
• “False claims hang over a Trump-loving county’s plans to buy Dominion voting machines,” by Hannah Knowles: “It was a good deal for the county, years in the making, says Board of Elections Director Jeff Matthews, who heads the Stark County GOP as well. It was also a step into a firestorm — Donald Trump’s supporters were falsely accusing Dominion Voting Systems of helping to rig the 2020 results… Two months later, Stark County has yet to replace its aging voting equipment while May primaries loom.”
• “Tom Brady, the one-man dynasty, was Tampa Bay’s perfect missing piece,” by Jerry Brewer: “As Tampa Bay discombobulated Kansas City in a 31-9 victory, the greatest statement wasn’t what Brady proved to his former team or anyone else wondering whether he still had it at age 43. It wasn’t that he outshined the luminous young [Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick] Mahomes. It was more personal than that … He decided to leave because he needed to write his ending.”

• “Inside the worst hit-county in the worst-hit state in the worst-hit country,” by the New Yorker’s Atul Gawande: “[Minot, in North Dakota’s Wade County] was divided over what to do about the pandemic, and even what to think about it. I wanted to understand what made it so difficult for people to come together and address a deadly crisis.”
• “Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, once foes, talk Trump,” by the AP’s Jim Mustian: “‘My battle is just now starting,’ Daniels tells Cohen in their first ever conversation, referring to litigation she said had been in a holding pattern before Trump left office. ‘People are really upset, and they’re just going to get more pissed off at me.’”
• “Bring back the nervous breakdown,” by the Atlantic’s Jerry Useem: “The nervous breakdown was not a medical condition, but a sociological one. It implicated a physical problem — your ‘nerves’ — not a mental one. And it was a onetime event, not a permanent condition. It provided sanction for a pause and reset that could put you back on track. But as psychology eclipsed sociology in the late 20th century, it turned us inward to our personal moods and thoughts — and away from the shared economic and social circumstances that produced them.”

Trump’s second impeachment trial begins tomorrow. You can follow The Post’s latest impeachment coverage here. 

• That would be followed by a simple-majority vote, Mike DeBonis reports.
• The debate would set up the beginning of opening arguments on Wednesday, with up to 16 hours of debate each for the House managers and the Trump defense team. 
• The trial will break Friday evening through Saturday to honor Trump lawyer David Schoen’s request to observe the Jewish Sabbath. The trial is likely to resume Sunday. At that point, the Senate could vote on calling witnesses or presenting additional evidence, if either side wishes to proceed.

• Castor, a lifelong Republican, has never met his new client in person, Karen Heller reports. The attorney was given little more than a week to prepare for the trial, but he doesn’t think the case is “particularly complicated.”
• “If you take the Democrats’ argument to its logical conclusion, you could be dead and you could still be impeached,” Castor said. “You could impeach Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or Bill Clinton, anyone. The Senate could be doing this from now until the end of time.”
• Conservative constitutional attorney Chuck Cooper said Republicans are wrong to assert it’s unconstitutional for a former president to be tried for high crimes and misdemeanors. “A vote by the Senate to disqualify can be taken only after the officer has been removed and is by definition a former officer,” Cooper said in a WSJ op-ed. “Given that the Constitution permits the Senate to impose the penalty of permanent disqualification only on former officeholders, it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders.”
• Civil rights lawyer Schoen, who defended former Trump adviser Roger Stone, will handle Senate jurisdiction issues, while Castor will be responsible for “the overall presentation and strategy,” he said.

• The poll found that 52 percent of Americans want their senators to vote for a conviction, while 45 percent prefer they vote for an acquittal. Three percent are unsure. Americans are leaning slightly more toward convicting Trump now than they did right before his first impeachment trial in 2020.

• Asked whether the Senate should vote to prevent Trump from holding federal office again, Biden said, per John Wagner. “Let the Senate work that out.”

• Jessica Marie Watkins, Ohio bartender and founder of a small, self-styled militia, planned ahead for the insurrection, federal prosecutors allege, Rosalind Helderman, Rachel Weiner and Spencer Hsu report. In text messages cited in court documents, Watkins explained her rationale: “Trump wants all able bodied patriots to come.” 
• This could bolster Democrats‘ case that Trump’s role in inspiring the crowd to action began long before the 70-minute speech he gave at a rally that day. “He amplified these lies at every turn, seeking to convince supporters that they were victims of a massive electoral conspiracy that threatened the Nation’s continued existence,” the House impeachment managers wrote. More than two dozen people charged in the insurrection specifically cited Trump and his calls to gather that day in describing on social media or in conversations for why they decided to take action.

• Republicans believe a conviction would embolden Trump and enrage his base in a way that could hurt them all in 2022 and 2024, Politico reports. “He does a pretty good job of being a victim,” said a GOP senator. “If he were to be convicted, there would be an uproar among his supporters. And it would probably energize them.”
• “I think he’s going to be a viable leader of the Republican Party,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. “He’s very popular. And he’s going to get acquitted.”

“I think this trial will tell us about what the GOP wants to be going forward,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “Donald Trump did not just drop out of the sky. Everything that he represents has its roots in earlier iterations of the Republican Party.”

• At least 1.5 million Americans quit their job last year rather than risk getting covid-19. They are now hoping Biden will help them collect unemployment, Eli Rosenberg and Hannah Knowles report. So far, about 80 percent of those who quit their jobs and applied for unemployment insurance have had their climes denied, statistics that speak speak to an unfortunate legacy of the crisis: workers have been forced to choose between their paycheck and their or their family’s health. One of Biden’s new executive actions directs the Department of Labor to clarify federal rules so that workers who refuse to go to unsafe workplaces will be more likely to receive federal assistance.
• Two in 3 Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the pandemic, according to an ABC News-Ipsos poll, with widespread support for his efforts to pass a relief bill. By contrast, in October, 61 percent said they disapproved of Trump’s response to the virus. (Brittany Shammas)

• U.S. authorities have seen the return of large groups of parents and children crossing the border, Silvia Foster-Frau, Arelis Hernández, Kevin Sieff and Nick Miroff report.
• New Biden rules for ICE could lead to fewer arrests and deportations, and a more restrained agency, Miroff and Maria Sachetti report. Agents will no longer focus on deporting immigrants for crimes such as driving under the influence and assault, and will focus instead on national security threats, recent border crossers and people completing prison and jail terms for aggravated felony convictions.

Utah parents wanted to opt their children out of Black History Month. Their school “reluctantly” let them, Antonia Noori Farzan reports: “Facing blowback, the school reversed course Saturday and said that all students would be taking part in Black History Month. The incident is the latest controversy to demonstrate how attempting to teach students about America’s past has grown increasingly fraught, with some parents and educators advocating for a more unvarnished look at the country’s legacy of racism and slavery, and others pushing a ‘patriotic’ curriculum that glosses over many of those details.”

Trump is “happier” now that he’s off social media, a former aide said. “The president has said he feels happier now than he’s been in some time,” former Trump campaign strategist Jason Miller told the U.K.’s Sunday Times. “He’s said that not being on social media, and not being subject to the hateful echo chamber that social media too frequently becomes, has actually been good.” Former first lady Melania Trump, Miller added, backed up the sentiment by saying the president is “enjoying himself much more.”  

Biden and Harris will virtually tour the State Farm Stadium vaccination site in Glendale, Ariz., this afternoon. 

Denis McDonough, Biden’s nominee for VA secretary, is expected to be confirmed by the full Senate today. 

Neera Tanden, Biden’s pick to run the Office of Management and Budget, will testify before two Senate committees tomorrow morning. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will vote on the nominations of Miguel Cardona and Marty Walsh for the education and labor departments, respectively, tomorrow morning. 

The Buccaneers won the Super Bowl; the Internet won with its memes: 

And Sonia Rao ranked the 8 best Super Bowl commercials, which include this “Edward Scissorhands” sequel: