Joe Manchin

Welcome to Thunderdome. For the past several cycles, Donald Trump has been an anchor around the necks of Republicans running for federal office across the country, forcing them to respond to his every statement of wavering obnoxiousness. “Will you denounce” was practically an autofill statement from journalists, with exasperated Republicans having to suddenly come up with spin on the fly about whatever their top candidate was on about at the moment. This time around, that weight seems far heavier on Democrats. Witness the reaction to Kamala Harris’s endorsement, after previously calling for getting rid of the filibuster for climate issues and voting rights, to codify Roe v. Wade.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky just stopped by an ammunition factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania — which CNN points out is President Joe Biden’s hometown.Now, a group of House Republicans is demanding answers about what taxpayer dollars and US resources were used in what they allege was essentially a campaign event for Democrats.The Hill reports that this past Sunday, Zelensky “was flown to Pennsylvania in an Air Force C-17 plane.” He was also protected by the US Secret Service.

Does anyone else feel like an entire year has happened in the last week? Last Monday, former president Donald Trump arrived at the Republican National Convention after being a quarter-of-an-inch away from assassination (and losing part of his ear in the process), Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Trump was thrown out by a federal judge, President Joe Biden caught Covid and, finally, yesterday Biden announced that he is not running for re-election and endorsed his vice president Kamala Harris to be the new nominee. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Today’s edition of the DC Diary includes multiple items that will hopefully help you feel more prepared for what may come next.

Former president Donald Trump railed against the “rigged” trial that saw him convicted on thirty-four felony charges during a forty-minute press conference at Trump Tower in New York on Friday. In addition to speaking about the case and the individuals he believed to be responsible for corrupting it — DA Alvin Bragg, Judge Juan Merchan and his former lawyer Michael Cohen, among others — Trump went on offense against the Biden campaign and administration and tied this latest trial to the years-long investigation into alleged Russian collusion and the three other cases pending against him. He claimed the United States is now officially a “fascist” country, flipping the term that Democrats have long used to describe him and and his plans for a second term.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where the consensus view is that Ronna Romney McDaniel is a disaster. The longest tenured RNC chair in a century, McDaniel has navigated the Republican Party through one disappointing election after another, holding on to power simply because Donald Trump wants her to have the job and no one strongly qualified has chosen to challenge her for it. On the podcast today, we talk about McDaniel’s prospects, whether the RNC should ditch her, Nikki Haley’s social media botch and the rise of third-party threats to make 2024 even more chaotic. Subscribe and listen here! The blame for the off year falls on Ronna Is this the one thing Vivek got right?

Immediately after longtime West Virginia senator Joe Manchin bowed to political reality and called it quits on his re-election, Republicans celebrated that it virtually guarantees their party an elusive win next year.  In fact, some were already proclaiming that the state’s First Pup, Babydog, and her owner, Governor Jim Justice, are cruising to victory next November.  But that’s not necessarily the case — it’s not next November that Justice should be concerned with, but rather next year’s GOP primary. Justice, who finally secured Donald Trump’s valuable endorsement, faces Congressman Alex Mooney and a field that may now swell given the GOP’s virtual certainty to pick up the seat.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where you might think that today would be focused on the off-year election (many lessons on that below) or the debate last night (a few takeaways to be sure), but the breaking news has overtaken all of this: Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator and former governor, has announced that he will retire rather than run for re-election. Manchin has been at the focal point of one fight after another in the Senate during his tenure, wavering back and forth between working with Democrats and Republicans depending on the issue. His announcement means Republicans are assured of picking up his seat. But there is also a strong indication to it that he does not consider himself done with politics yet.

Utah senator Mitt Romney is not holding back in an upcoming biography set to be released Tuesday, Romney: A Reckoning. According to one publishing source, McKay Coppins's book offers Romney's lively and at times devastating take on nearly every major political figure of the last twenty-five years. After reading several titillating and tantalizing excerpts from the biography, Cockburn fears he may be dethroned as DC’s cattiest gossip columnist. Unsurprisingly, the two biggest victims of Romney’s snark are Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Romney doesn’t try to hide his resentment at the two politicians' success and instead wastes no time calling them both authoritarians and Trump a fool.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where you should never let a crisis go to waste, and Donald Trump isn’t wasting any time bashing Ron DeSantis even in the midst of hurricane recovery efforts, hoping to stomp on what could be an opportunity to show off his good governance chops. The White House, meanwhile, is struggling not just with frustration over their delayed response to the Maui disaster and the president’s insistence on repeatedly telling his exaggerated anecdotes about a house fire, but also the anniversary of another, different kind of disaster: the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which brought Gold Star families to bear against the administration this week. The guys discuss all this and more on the latest Thunderdome podcast — listen and subscribe here today!

The centrist group No Labels held a coming out party for itself in New Hampshire this week. In an event at St. Anselm College — a regular stop for presidential hopefuls — West Virginia senator Joe Manchin and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman talked up the prospects of a third-party run and the market for a ticket that appeals to the exasperated and underserved middle ground of American politics.  Meanwhile, No Labels is getting more specific about what its approach to 2024 will be. Until this week, the group had been noncommittal about exactly which Democratic and Republican candidates it would challenge, and when it would make a call on entering the race.

Things are looking up. Today began with some very good economic news in Washington: Labor Department data shows inflation falling to a two-year low. The consumer price index rose 3 percent in the twelve months to June. That is a steep fall from the 9.1 percent price rise in the twelve months to June 2022, and perhaps the clearest sign yet that the US is on course to tame inflation while avoiding a recession — the soft landing that Joe Biden, Jay Powell and every other policymaker in Washington has been praying for.   Core consumer prices increased by 0.2 percent in June, the smallest single-month increase since August 2021 and an indicator that the pressure on prices is easing.

Welcome to Thunderdome! For the latest edition of our podcast, head over here — this week, we talked about steel manning the legal woes of Trump and Biden, DeSantis’s plateau, Christie’s surge, the Kamala problem, what’s a Uighur and, in a new tradition, named our King of the Week. Listen here and subscribe today!  Republicans can’t quit Donny Try as they might, and much as many of them want to, Republicans just can’t quit Trump. Everything about this moment suggests that nominating a candidate in 2024 who has just a modicum of likability would be a genius play. Joe Biden’s job approval hovers around 40 percent, and only a quarter of voters are positive about the direction of the country.

After multiple rounds of negotiations to raise the debt ceiling with President Biden's team — not the president himself, of course, because he was busy eating his ice cream — the House Republican leadership announced an agreement in principle, subsequently putting up language up over Memorial Day Weekend for members to consider. There are hurdles to overcome, but based upon initial reactions, majorities of Republicans and Democrats are agreed on this deal, with opposition coming from fiscal conservatives and progressives: particularly environment-focused progressives angered by the inclusion of energy policy priorities for Republicans and for Senator Joe Manchin.

Philadelphia will choose its next mayor tomorrow. The election isn’t until November, but Republicans don’t stand a chance in the City of Brotherly Love these days. So tomorrow’s Democratic primary is all that matters.  In this big-city race, crime and public safety has dominated the campaign, pitting moderate Democrats against progressives. If you feel like you’ve read that sentence before, it’s because you probably have, in relation to any number of major US cities in the last three years.  Since 2020, America’s metropolises have been the scene of blue-on-blue political fights over the interlocking issues of crime, homelessness, public order, criminal justice and Covid restrictions.