The Daily 202: GOP Senator says Biden’s just not tweeting enough

That consultant probably couldn’t envision a political environment in which Republicans would use a Democrat’s refusal to follow Trump’s bombastic, volatile social-media example as evidence they were a mere figurehead.

Enter Sen. John Cornyn. The Texas Republican on Monday repurposed a Politico article to argue President Biden’s relatively low-key communications strategy might be a symptom he’s not actually at the helm of government.

“The president is not doing cable news interviews. Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional. The public comments are largely scripted. Biden has opted for fewer sit down interviews with mainstream outlets and reporters,” Cornyn said, citing the article word for word.

In a subsequent tweet, the Texas lawmaker added: “Invites the question: is he really in charge?” — a question neither asked nor implied by the Politico piece.

Cornyn’s line of attack came as Republicans have struggled to unify behind a defining policy-based attack on Biden, who gets high marks on the economy and the pandemic, the defining crises of his young presidency, though much less so on his handling of the border.

During the (very brief) fight over Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package, Republicans seemed at least as focused on Dr. Seuss’s estate opting not to keep publishing books with racist images as they were on turning the public against the bill.

The idea was to portray Biden as weak, under wraps for his political protection, even as Trump himself seemed all-too aware public opinion polls had the Democrat favored to win.

“I’m going to say I lost to the worst candidate in the history of politics,” Trump said at one point. “Maybe I’ll have to leave the country. I don’t know.”

Biden, meanwhile, seemed aware of the appeal of a return to more traditional presidential communication by a more traditional politician.

Something Is Terribly Wrong With Joe Biden remains a popular genre among some right-wing writers, and of course on Fox News. Conservative media highlight verbal flubs like Biden calling Harris “President Harris.” One of my regular readers insists by email that Biden has “dimentia” [sic].

Asked about Cornyn’s tweets yesterday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters: “I can confirm that the president of the United States does not spend his time tweeting conspiracy theories. He spends his time working on behalf of the American people.”

(None of this is meant to endorse Biden’s media strategy. He could stand to do more regular formal news conferences and sit-down interviews with major news media. He plans to hold a question-and-answer session on Friday when he meets with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.)

White House aides have made clear for months they believe Biden will be judged — by history, or by voters as early as the 2022 midterm elections — based on how well he manages the vaccination campaign and efforts to revive the economy.

Biden will withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021. “The decision, which Biden is expected to announce on Wednesday, will keep thousands of U.S. forces in the country beyond the May 1 exit deadline that the Trump administration negotiated last year with the Taliban, according to one person familiar with the matter,” Missy Ryan and Karen DeYoung report. “While the Taliban has vowed to renew attacks on U.S. and NATO personnel if foreign troops are not out by the deadline, it is not clear if the militants will follow through with those threats given Biden’s plan for a phased withdrawal between now and September. Officially, there are 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, although the number fluctuates and is currently about 1,000 more than that… Biden’s decision comes after an administration review of U.S. options in Afghanistan, where U.S.-midwived peace talks have failed to advance as hoped and the Taliban remains a potent force.” 

Biden spoke this morning with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the White House said. Of note, Biden underlined his “unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” amid increasing Western concerns about Russian troop activities along its border with Ukraine. Biden also proposed a summit with Putin, to be held “in a third country in the coming months.” The Russian readout of the call was not immediately available.

The FDA and the CDC called for a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine “out of an abundance of caution” after six reported cases of rare blood clots among the 6.8 million people who received the vaccine. “All six cases in the United States occurred among women between the ages of 18 and 48, and symptoms occurred six to 13 days after vaccination, according to a statement issued by the [federal agencies]. One vaccine recipient died and another is in critical condition, an FDA official said Tuesday,” Laurie McGinley, Carolyn Johnson and Lena Sun report. “The officials said the clots ‘appear to be extremely rare.’ They said people who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine who develop severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath within three weeks after vaccination should contact their doctor. The CDC will hold a meeting Wednesday of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to review the cases and assess their potential significance, the statement said. The FDA will continue to investigate the cases.”

The Biden administration will stop a plan by Trump to withdraw thousands of troops from Germany, and instead add 500, defense officials said today. “The decision was made while Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Germany,” Dan Lamothe reports. “The Army said in a news release after Austin’s announcement that two additional units will be added in Germany in coming months, and that three sites previously scheduled to be returned to the German government will remain open.”

Consumer prices in the U.S. jumped 2.6 percent last month compared to a year ago, fueled by a strengthening economy. “U.S. officials have stressed that even though inflation is ticking upward, the changes are likely to be short-lived, as parts of the economy normalize in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic,” Hamza Shaban reports.

Iran will begin enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, a top official said today. This far exceeds its current level in a defiant move following a Sunday attack on a key nuclear site that Iran has blamed on Israel, Kareem Fahim reports. 

Protesters and police once again clashed in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb, following the fatal shooting of a 20-year-old Black man by a police officer. “Protesters had been on hand throughout the day outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department, but the scene escalated after the start of a 7 p.m. curfew across four Twin Cities metro counties instituted by Gov. Tim Walz,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. “At a 12:30 a.m. Tuesday news conference, Minnesota State Patrol Col. Matt Langer said that 40 people were arrested Monday night at the Brooklyn Center protest.” 

• “Chauvin defense team attempts to put George Floyd’s drug addiction on the stand,” Toluse Olorunnipa reports: “Time and again throughout the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, defense attorney Eric Nelson has found ways to bring up George Floyd’s drug use. … As Nelson is set Tuesday to begin his formal defense of the former Minneapolis police officer charged with Floyd’s killing, he is expected to focus heavily on the deceased man’s drug addiction… Attempting to justify the officer’s use of deadly force as a legitimate response to an intoxicated and potentially dangerous suspect could instead be seen as an effort to demonize Floyd, whose death sparked a global reckoning over racial injustice, inequality and police brutality.” 
• “Arkansas is finally set to pass a hate-crime law — but critics call it ‘hate crimes lite,’” Hannah Knowles reports. “The measure, which the governor promises to sign, says offenders must serve at least 80 percent of their sentences for ‘serious’ violent felonies motivated by the victim’s membership in a group with shared ‘mental, physical, biological, cultural, political, or religious beliefs or characteristics.’ Advocates say it will expand prosecutors’ ‘toolbox’ and allow them to bring strong penalties in a wide range of cases. But the bill conspicuously does not name categories such as race and sexual orientation, amid politically thorny questions about whom these laws should seek to protect.”

• “ ‘Bond girl’ talk and groping: Albany’s toxic culture for women,” by the New York Times’s Sydney Ember, J. David Goodman and Luis Ferré-Sadurní: “A legislative aide in New York’s state capital grabbed the thigh of a lobbyist so hard at a fund-raiser that he left finger-shaped bruises on her skin. A top official at a state agency projected a picture of a colleague in a bikini for all to see in a meeting she was attending. Another lobbyist described a legislator touching her thighs and feeling her chest in his State Assembly office. And a state senator said a male colleague told her she looked ‘like a Bond girl’ as they sat near each other in the chamber. … If encounters like these are unacceptable and potentially career-ending, especially in the #MeToo era, they are also a defining part of the culture of government in Albany, N.Y. … Some women said they had adopted personal rules to cope: no meetings after 7 p.m. No staying in Albany for longer than a day. Several female lobbyists said they would not meet with certain legislators alone, even in their offices.“
• “D.C. restaurants had a staffing problem before the pandemic. Now it’s a crisis,” by the Washington City Paper’s Laura Hayes: “Some workers can’t afford to live in the District, which regularly ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. for renters. And transportation to further flung suburbs where housing is cheaper isn’t reliable. Metro currently stops running at 11 p.m., one hour before restaurants have to call it a night under the latest COVID-19 reopening guidelines. … If there’s an abundance of both open positions and workers grappling with a troubled unemployment system, why aren’t the puzzle pieces fitting together?”
• “Banks, after bracing for disaster, are now ready for a boom,” by the Wall Street Journal’s Ben Eisen: “Encouraged by government efforts to pump money into the economy and signs that Americans are spending more, the largest financial institutions are expected to release some of the rainy-day money they set aside after the coronavirus pandemic hit. That will offer a jolt to their income in the first three months of the year.”
• “Miami is now home to the world’s first mega club to accept Bitcoin,” by the Miami Herald’s Rob Wile: “The move is part of the club’s [E11EVEN MIAMI] grand, post-pandemic reopening on April 23. … Though the prices of cryptocurrencies remain volatile, the owners point out that, over the longer term, their values have only increased. And as club operators, they must already deal with charge-back risks from accepting credit cards.”

• The remains of Capitol police officer William “Billy” Evans were carried into the Rotunda through the East Front entrance today at 10 a.m., Paul Duggan reports. A congressional tribute followed at 11 a.m., with Biden paying his respects. A viewing period for Capitol Police officers begins at noon, and Evans’s remains will be removed from the Rotunda in a 6:30 p.m. ceremony, officials said.

• Housing Secretary Marcia Fudge moved to reinstate fair housing regulations that Trump slashed, one of the most tangible steps the Biden administration has taken thus far to address systemic racism, Tracy Jan reports.
• “The Biden administration plans to reinstate a 2013 rule that codified a decades-old legal standard known as ‘disparate impact’ as well as a 2015 rule requiring communities to identify and dismantle barriers to racial integration or risk losing federal funds, according to notices posted [this] morning by the Office of Management and Budget signaling that the rules have been accepted for review,” Jan writes. “The two rules are integral to the enforcement of decades-old fair housing law barring discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and disability that has far-reaching impact, say civil rights attorneys.”

• The 18 Republican senators wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting an investigation into whether Colin Kahl disclosed classified information on Twitter after leaving a national security post in the Obama administration, John Wagner reports.
• “The senators, led by Bill Hagerty (Tenn.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.), also asked Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) not to advance Kahl’s nomination until the FBI can complete a review of the GOP allegations, which Kahl has denied.”
• Attacks on the social media postings of Biden nominees appear to be the GOP’s new playbook, as David Nakamura pointed out last month. Republicans successfully sank Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead the OMB — with the help of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) — over past Twitter posts.
• “Kahl addressed accusations of tweeting classified information, writing in a letter to senior members to the committee last month: ‘I have never publicly shared information I knew to be classified and take my obligations to protect classified information seriously.’ He said he relied on publicly available information, including news articles.” The White House has stood by Kahl’s nomination.

• Boehner, who in his new book accused Trump of inciting “that bloody insurrection” at the Capitol, told Time magazine he voted for Trump last November. “I thought that his policies, by and large, mirrored the policies that I believed in. I thought the choices for the Supreme Court were top notch. At the end of the day, who gets nominated to the federal courts is really the most important thing a president does,” he said.

• “With leaders like Mitch McConnell, they are helpless to fight. He didn’t fight for the Presidency, and he won’t fight for the Court,” Trump said in a statement released by his Save America PAC. “If and when this happens, I hope the Justices remember the day they didn’t have courage to do what they should have done for America.”

• “Trump’s insult-laden diatribe against McConnell this weekend signals that the GOP could splinter badly in primaries next year — and raises the question of whether McConnell and Trump can work together at all,” Politico’s Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine report.
• “ ‘We’ve got issues as a party, with the demographic trends going against us, and we don’t have a lot of margin for error,’ said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), observing that the Trump-McConnell feud is still in ‘full flare’ at the moment. ‘When it comes to the infighting politically, I don’t know how that can help — when you’re scrapping on the margins, when you’re trying to win states, and especially national elections.’ ”
• “Several high-ranking senators said on Monday evening that Trump and McConnell need to reach an understanding of some sort or perhaps even resume speaking to each other, which at the moment seems unthinkable.”

• “The law, known as the Trust Act, allows the state to share the president’s tax information with a congressional committee that asks for it,” Bloomberg News reports. “Trump sued the House and Ways and Means Committee to block it from requesting information.”
• “But the committee lawyers say Trump has it wrong. … They urged [U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols], who was appointed by Trump, to dismiss the lawsuit and let Trump pursue whatever remedies he wishes in an appropriate court.”

“The most important thing has to be the truth, and we have to be willing to speak the truth, and the truth is that the election wasn’t stolen. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t irregularities,” said Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), warning that Republicans could lose more voters if they stick to falsehoods over policy. “For us as a party, we have to be clear what we stand for; we have to be clear that we’re going to always tell our constituents and our voters that truth, that we owe them that.”

Brett McGurk, who is currently running Biden’s Middle East policy, helped Silicon Valley make millions. “In April 2020, Primer [a San Francisco-based artificial-intelligence company] brought Brett McGurk onto its board. A senior adviser in the past three U.S. presidencies, McGurk knew the software products that national-security agencies might want. He helped the company through the pandemic. Primer’s founder described his perspective as ‘invaluable,’” the American Prospect’s Jonathan Guyer writes. Today, “Primer is winning multimillion-dollar contracts and aggressively hiring new employees with security clearances. The fact that the Silicon Valley startup chose to hire McGurk for ‘strategic advice’ is a case study in how former officials sign up to advance corporate agendas while simultaneously holding other roles that influence policy.”

The U.S. should win over Iran with vaccines, not cash, writes the Bulwark’s Shay Khatiri: “Iran’s government mishandled the pandemic from the get-go, and things worsened with time. Even as things have gotten better in many other countries, new COVID cases in Iran keep peaking — including a record-breaking surge this month. This puts the United States in a unique position: Give the Iranian people an olive branch. Last week, Dalibor Roháč made the case that the United States should vaccinate the world — and that we should understand vaccine diplomacy in the context of great power competition with China and Russia. Those countries are trying to vaccinate others in exchange for influence. The United States should too — and Iran should be part of that effort.” 

Biden and Harris will meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus today at 2 p.m.  

Seth Meyers reviewed the details of the Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) case: