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Thursday, November 21

Playbook: Why Congress could sleepwalk into a shutdown

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By on Opinion

With help from Eli Okun and Garrett Ross

DEBATE WINDFALLS — Florida Gov. RON DeSANTIS raised more than $1 million in the 24 hours after Wednesday night’s GOP debate in Miami, we’re told by his campaign. So, too, did NIKKI HALEY in what her campaign says was the former South Carolina governor’s best small-dollar fundraising day to date. Stay tuned as the two camps battle for the mantle as the DONALD TRUMP alternative in the GOP field.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: TWO BUZZY BITS FROM KARL’S NEW BOOK — ABC News chief Washington correspondent JONATHAN KARL’s new book on the Trump, “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party” ($32), publishes Tuesday. This morning, we’re bringing Playbook readers a first look at two buzzy scoops straight from the book.

1. TRUMP, HITLER & CROWD SIZES: Karl reports that Trump boasted that former German Chancellor ANGELA MERKEL had complimented his ability to draw crowds — repeating a comment that implicitly compared him to ADOLF HITLER, the murderous antisemitic leader of Nazi Germany.

At least twice, Karl writes, Trump gloated to a prominent member of Congress that Merkel — who detested the 45th president privately and had trouble hiding her scorn publicly — told him she was “amazed” by the number of people who came to see him speak, and Trump said “she told me that there was only one other political leader who ever got crowds as big as mine.” The Trump-allied congressman knew who Merkel was comparing Trump to, but couldn’t tell if Trump, who took Merkel’s words as a compliment, himself understood.

Asks Karl, “Which would be more unsettling: that he didn’t or that he did?”

In a statement to Playbook, a Trump campaign aide denied the account and called Karl “disgraceful and talentless.” “This filth either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper,” the spokesman said.

2. DID MNUCHIN MISLEAD THE JAN. 6 COMMITTEE? Karl reports former Treasury Secretary STEVEN MNUCHIN wasn’t straight with the House Jan. 6 committee about his involvement in discussions to invoke the 25th Amendment and forcefully remove Trump from office in the days after the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

During testimony before the Democrat-led panel, the former Trump Cabinet official was asked about reporting in Karl’s previous Trump book, “Betrayal,” which revealed that Mnuchin and other Cabinet officials (including Secretary of State MIKE POMPEO) discussed invoking the amendment after the Capitol riot. While Pompeo told investigators that he didn’t recall those conversations, Mnuchin told the panel the reporting was “completely inaccurate.”

“What I told [Karl] — he asked me about the 25th Amendment,” Mnuchin testified, “I said that I was not going to make any comments on the 25th Amendment, that I didn’t think it was appropriate in that format, and that he shouldn’t take that as meaning that there were conversations or there weren’t conversations.”

Now Karl brings receipts — and says he has audio to prove what Mnuchin initially told him. “I was aware of all these discussions,” Mnuchin told Karl of the 25th Amendment. “It would not be an unreasonable assumption to think that people were calling me, okay, and talking about it, whether they were pushing it or not pushing it.”

Mnuchin did not respond to a request for comment.

T-MINUS SEVEN DAYS — We’re one week out from the government again running out of money and it’s not looking pretty. No one wants a shutdown before Thanksgiving, but no one can tell you right now how this will all end.

This morning, we thought we’d break down what we DO know — or what we can pretty easily surmise based on the state of play.

1. There are growing pains in the speaker’s office. New House Speaker MIKE JOHNSON is having a hard time getting up to speed on the worst job in Washington. Despite vowing to move appropriations bills, he’s had to pull not one but two funding measures from the floor amid GOP infighting. (Sound familiar?)

While he wants to avoid a shutdown, we’re told by senior Republicans that he’s struggling to decide what he wants a continuing resolution to look like. If he passes a “clean” CR without partisan provisions, he lets down the GOP base and conservatives. But if he demands concessions and embraces a showdown, he could undercut his majority-makers.

Johnson, we’re told, is still trying to win support for this “ladder CR” idea. His most recent pitch is to tell skeptical members that he’s not talking about a bunch of deadlines — just two: passing one tranche of appropriations bills into January and the second into February or so.

It’s unclear that the argument will work in his chamber. And Democrats in the Senate flat out hate it. “That’s the craziest, stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of,” Senate Appropriations Chair PATTY MURRAY (D-Wash.) said.

2. The Senate isn’t waiting any longer With Johnson still mulling his options, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER has filed cloture on a shell bill that will eventually be the vehicle for moving a continuing resolution. Yesterday, Sen. BEN CARDIN (D-Md.) said Democrats want a clean CR that expires before Christmas, a pre-holiday deadline conservatives will loathe.

That timeline, we’re told, is still fluid. Schumer also hasn’t decided whether he’ll try to add the White House’s $106 billion national security supplemental to the CR to make a point — though if he does, it wouldn’t pass. Which leads us to…

3. The White House supplemental request is out of the picture — at least for this round. While talks have ratcheted up between Senate Republicans and Democrats over a possible compromise linking Ukraine funding and a border security package — a strategy Johnson has said he’s open to — neither side appears anywhere close to a deal.

4. Israel aid is probably stalled for now — or is it? House Republicans’ $14 billion assistance package for Israel was always DOA in the Senate — not necessarily because it wasn’t tied to Ukraine money as the White House wanted, but because it cut Democratic plans to hire more IRS agents.

But what happens if Republicans agree to strip out the pay-for, then add Israel assistance to a clean CR?

That’s one interesting idea being discussed among House GOP leaders, we’re told. If Republicans are going to have to swallow a clean CR, the thinking goes, they might as well notch a win on something else.

After all, with Ukraine money now being solidly linked to what’s shaping up to be a long, drawn-out negotiation over border policy, why not let the Israel money move in the meantime?

One problem: The White House firmly opposes moving Israel assistance without Ukraine money, as we reported yesterday. Some Republicans, however, insist the administration is bluffing. The big question is, however, if Johnson’s own rank-and-file will view such a move as a win — or just another CR cave.

Happy Friday. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza.

MANCHIN DISAPPOINTS DEMS (AGAIN) — For the first two years of JOE BIDEN’s presidency, JOE MANCHIN relished his reputation as a thorn in the side of Senate Democratic leadership. Progressives assailed the West Virginia centrist for wanting to work with Republicans and pumping the brakes on liberal priorities — even single-handedly sinking critical pieces of Biden’s agenda. (Though, to be fair, he would later help pass landmark Biden achievements, like the Inflation Reduction Act.)

As Democrats face a brutal 2024 Senate map, Manchin emerged as perhaps the single most important incumbent in the party’s bid to maintain control of the chamber.

Or, at least, he was until yesterday.

With his surprise retirement announcement, Manchin is once again leaving his party in a lurch — this time putting their entire majority on life support, as our colleagues Burgess Everett and Ally Mutnick write.

Since he’s almost certainly the only Democrat who could win in deep-red West Virginia, Republicans are on track to flip his seat, putting the chamber’s partisan makeup at 50-50 come 2025 — and that’s if Democrats manage to hold their seats in Montana, Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. A single Republican win in any of them — or in the presidential race — would give the GOP a majority.

To be sure, we’re not suggesting Manchin is retiring to stick it to his party. In fact, West Virginia Metro News’ Hoppy Kercheval writes that he struggled mightily with the decision. Still, there’s no denying that it puts Dems in a bind.

On the other side of the aisle, Manchin’s retirement is welcome news in an otherwise rough week for Senate Minority Leader MITCH McCONNELL, who saw his Kentucky protégé DANIEL CAMERON defeated in his state’s gubernatorial race and whose push for Ukraine aid has been waylaid by his own party.

For more than a year, McConnell played a critical behind-the-scenes role pushing Manchin to retire, as Burgess and Ally write. He personally flew to West Virginia to lobby popular Republican Gov. JIM JUSTICE to challenge Manchin. Then — since McConnell isn’t exactly on good terms with Trump — he leaned on his NRSC chief, Sen. STEVE DAINES (R-Mont.), to convince the former president to endorse Justice.

In that regard, Manchin’s sudden exit may not be the last headache he causes his own party. He hasn’t ruled out joining No Labels’ so-called “unity ticket,” which Democrats fear would complicate Biden’s reelection and boost Trump. The Times reports that even Manchin’s close aides don’t know what he’ll do, while the Wall Street Journal reports that a new committee has formed seeking to draft retiring Sen. MITT ROMNEY (R-Utah) to run for president alongside Manchin as VP.

TALK OF THIS TOWN — Michael Schaffer’s latest: “The Biden Administration’s Internal Dissent Over Israel Shouldn’t Stay Secret”

SMART READ — “Why Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy Can’t Stand Each Other,” by Curt Mills