Sorry, Crate and Barrel. You can't beat this.

The power players, latest policy developments, and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing.

Apr 03, 2023 View in browser   By Eli Stokols and Lauren Egan Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice.   Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren In the annals of unexpected wedding toasts (a topic of personal interest for your author), the one JOHN FRANK delivered at the recent wedding of his daughter, CARLA FRANK, and ROB FLAHERTY was probably unique. The father of the bride went on for several minutes – about a chair. He wasn’t discussing a metaphor but, in fact, a real piece of furniture. And not just any piece: it was a speech about a long lost White House antique he’d recovered. The couple, who both worked in the Biden White House at the time of their November nuptials, had brought together a room full of family and friends. Their colleagues from the West Wing, seated together at one of four long tables on one side of the room, delighted in Mr. Frank’s lengthy description of the roughly 200-year-old French chair he’d discovered, bought and donated to the White House in honor of the wedding. “That wasn’t on my bingo card for the night,” one staffer said. Others joked that their own wedding gifts had just been rendered lame. “I just got them some salad plates,” senior Biden adviser ANITA DUNN told those around her. But at the long table on the opposite side of Union Station’s Grand Hall, where the friends of Frank’s parents were seated, guests couldn’t have been less surprised. When Carla was 3, her parents moved to Paris. Over the next several years while living there, her father, now a senior vice president at Microsoft, developed an interest in French art and furniture – in particular, the work of PIERRE-ANTOINE BELLANGÉ, a Parisian ébéniste (cabinetmaker) of some notoriety at the beginning of the 19th century who made furniture for Napoleon I and other European courts. After an 1814 fire that destroyed much of the White House, Congress gave President JAMES MONROE $20,000 to refurnish the residence. In 1817, he spent nearly all of the money on 53 mahogany Bellangé chairs and sofas, upholstered in crimson, according to the White House Historical Association. Twenty years later, when President MARTIN VAN BUREN refashioned the oval drawing room as the “Blue Room,” the pieces were re-done in blue. But in 1860, desiring something more modern, President JAMES BUCHANAN had the chairs auctioned off and replaced with a Victorian Rococo Revival suite. Even with presidents, there’s no accounting for taste. Only a century later, under first lady JACQUELINE KENNEDY, did the White House begin to reacquire the Bellangé chairs, returning them to the Blue Room alongside several replicas. In 2005, the White House curator’s office began a 10-year initiative to restore the Blue Room to its original grandeur. Part of the restoration focused on finding and restoring more of the original Bellangé chairs using all of the traditional fabrics, silks and even horsehair filling for the cushions. In 2018, first lady MELANIA TRUMP revealed that 10 of them had been painstakingly refurbished — at a cost of $450,000 to the White House Historical Association. In 2020, John Frank got an alert from an auction site that another Bellangé chair might be available for sale in Harrisburg, Pa., and called the White House curator’s office, which went up to inspect the item. Once the chair’s authenticity was confirmed, Frank decided to purchase it (he declined an interview request; the cost remains unclear) and donate it to the White House. With his daughter working on JOE BIDEN’s campaign at the time, he decided to wait until the election had ended before turning it over to the White House after Biden’s inauguration. The chair, which will be the 11th original Bellangé piece returned to the Blue Room once it’s fully refurbished, is currently in the custody of a Baltimore furniture restoration firm that specializes in historical gilding and painting. It could be another two years before the chair is ready for its return (it takes that long to restore). With Carla having left her post as deputy political director in February and Flaherty, Biden’s digital director, in the mix for a job with the president’s likely reelection campaign, it’s possible neither of them will still be at the White House when the chair donated in their honor arrives. But like diamonds, some chairs are forever. MESSAGE US — Are you IN POSSESSION OF A BELLANGÉ CHAIR? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!    JOIN POLITICO ON 4/5 FOR THE 2023 RECAST POWER LIST: America’s demographics and power dynamics are changing — and POLITICO is recasting how it covers the intersection of race, identity, politics and policy. Join us for a conversation on the themes of the 2023 Recast Power List that will examine America’s decision-making tables, who gets to sit at them, and the challenges that still need to be addressed. REGISTER HERE.     POTUS PUZZLER This one is from Allie, for the pop culture nerds. Actor PAUL GIAMATTI won an Emmy award in 2008 for his role in an HBO miniseries named after which president? (Answer at bottom.) The Oval JOECHELLA BEGINS: The president and his allies kicked off the administration’s “Investing in America,” tour Monday, with Biden’s first stop in Minneapolis. On his way to the Cummins Power Generation Facility to promote his economic and green energy agenda, one spectator waved a “Let’s go Brandon” flag, per pooler and NYT reporter ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS. Biden posted an announcement of the tour over the weekend, which looks an awful lot like the Coachella setlists: Tweet by President Joe Biden | Twitter ROUTE DIVERTED: First lady JILL BIDEN was dispatched to Michigan on Monday as part of the tour, but her plane was diverted to Denver due to “an aircraft issue,” according to her press secretary, VANESSA VALDIVIA. Having to endure the Denver airport is an indignity no one deserves, let alone the first lady. Her Michigan trip, meanwhile, will be rescheduled to a later date, Valdivia said. Free ideas for killing time in Denver: El Taco de Mexico, Uncle (spicy chicken ramen is what you want), Our Mutual Friend. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This NYT opinion piece by DAVID FIRESTONE arguing that Republicans can’t agree on what they want in exchange for “dropping their threat to cause a default, beyond a fuzzy shared goal of cutting federal spending. Even if Biden and the Democrats were inclined to negotiate with them to lift the debt ceiling — which would be a serious mistake — it’s not clear who their negotiating partners would be.” White House deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES tweeted out the piece Monday morning. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This article by NBC News’ COURTNEY KUBE and CAROL E. LEE about how the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. in February “was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so. … The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images.” ALSO PROBABLY THIS … The Nation’s JEET HEER writes about the implications of White House chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS’ management style, after reports that Democrats have felt out of the loop on Biden’s decisions on the D.C. crime bill and the Covid-19 public health emergency. Zients’ “background as a political centrist who ran predatory health insurance companies didn’t bode well for the progressive agenda,” Heer writes. “It would take a lot to dampen the fighting spirit of the party. But if anyone can do it, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients can.” THE BUREAUCRATS PERSONNEL MOVES: JACLYN ROTHENBERG started Monday as a senior adviser for communications in the office of domestic climate policy at the White House, DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. She is on detail from FEMA, where she was director of public affairs. Agenda Setting CENTRISTS TEAM UP: Moderate Democrats are working behind-the-scenes on a plan with centrist Republicans to tackle the debt limit. There’s just one small problem — the White House and party leaders don’t want anything to do with it, our SARAH FERRIS, ADAM CANCRYN and BURGESS EVERETT report. The move comes as talks between Biden and House Speaker KEVIN MCCARTHY have hit a standstill and the debt ceiling deadline becomes imminent. ZOOMING IN ON WEST VIRGINIA: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives’ only gun tracing center, located in the mountains of Martinsburg, W. Va., faces some big challenges — it’s understaffed, underfunded and relying on stacked boxes of paper records and unsearchable digital copies. The tracing center’s hurdles are emblematic of the difficulties Biden faces in his push to curb gun violence, our MYAH WARD reports. TO THE MOON: Astronauts CHRISTINA KOCH, VICTOR GLOVER, REID WISEMAN and  JEREMY HANSEN will participate in NASA’s upcoming lunar expedition, NASA announced Monday. “With the naming of the crew, NASA’s Artemis campaign now has human faces attached to it — some of the best and brightest of the astronaut corps — which the space agency hopes will help solidify its support among members of Congress as it prepares for its next flights,” WaPo’s CHRISTIAN DAVENPORT reports.   DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID.     What We're Reading Someone Photoshopped President Biden Wearing Rolex’s New Bubble Watch on April Fool’s Day (Robb Report’s Rachel Cormack) Biden’s Reluctant Approach to Free Trade Draws Backlash (NYT’s Ana Swanson) Justice Dept. said to have more evidence of possible Trump obstruction at Mar-a-Lago (WaPo’s Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey and Perry Stein) The Oppo Book LOUISA TERRELL, the director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, previously worked in the same office under the Obama administration. And she confessed in March 2022 to The Tufts Daily, her alma mater’s newspaper, that the second time's the charm. “It’s always good … to do a job twice because then you’re not totally clueless on round two,” she said. POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER Giamatti won an Emmy for his performance as the title character in the HBO miniseries, “John Adams.” The show, which aired for one season, detailed the president’s life and role in American history. A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it. Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.   Follow us on Twitter Eli Stokols @EliStokols Lauren Egan @Lauren_V_Egan Allie Bice @alliebice   Follow us

To change your alert settings, please log in at https://www.politico.com/_login?base=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com/settings This email was sent to rouf@idiot.cloudns.cc by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA Please click here and follow the steps to unsubscribe.