| | | | |  | | By Daniel Lippman, 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 Unlike most of the people headed Saturday to the Washington Hilton ballroom, DEBRA TICE would give everything in the world to not attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. But attend she will, and in the same purple sparkly dress from Macy’s that she wore last year. Tice barely fits in the unaltered gown these days, given that she has lost more than 15 pounds since last year’s dinner. But sartorial matters aren’t a real concern. Her mission is to raise attention among the city’s power set to bring back her journalist son, AUSTIN TICE, who has been held in captivity in Syria for more than 10 years. “It’s okay for me to not look entirely pulled together, because I’m entirely pulled apart,” Tice said in an interview. She isn’t enthusiastic about going, but she accepted the invitation from The Washington Post because “I just do whatever I’m called to do.” She said it was fun walking the red carpet last year, although “none of the photographers got excited” by her presence — she had entered somewhere between KIM KARDASHIAN and another celebrity.
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Debra Tice at the 2022 White House Correspondents' Dinner. | Screenshot/NBC News | Less than two days after last year’s dinner, where then-WHCA president STEVEN PORTNOY recognized her from the podium, Tice returned to Washington to meet with President JOE BIDEN for 45 minutes in the Oval Office about the U.S. government’s efforts to rescue her son. She called it a “very serious” and “amazing” meeting. But she also said she isn’t impressed with what’s been done since. “If my son is not in my arms, it’s not enough,” she said. “Whatever it is.” During her meeting with the president, she said Biden ordered senior officials to meet with Syrian government members to learn what they wanted in exchange for her son. But whatever progress that may have happened since has taken place behind the scenes. Tice said she has been in touch frequently with “all of the initial agencies." She met Friday with White House officials to get an update, according to an administration official familiar with the meeting. Yet, Tice continues to be despondent about her son. While the U.S. government has said it believes he’s alive, the Syrian government claims it doesn’t know where he is. “It’s very difficult to resolve an issue in the absence of communication,” Tice said, urging the U.S. to pursue diplomacy as much as possible with the Syrian regime. Austin Tice, a former Marine Corps officer, was freelancing for McClatchy and the Post when he was kidnapped in August 2012. “The Tice family deserves to be reunited with Austin immediately — every day apart is too long,” National Security Council spokesperson JOHN KIRBY told West Wing Playbook. “We continue to call on Syria to end this and help us bring Austin home. We have repeatedly asked the government of Syria to work with us so that we can bring Austin home, and we will continue to pursue every avenue until we are successful.” Debra Tice said she regrets not flying immediately to Damascus to help locate her son after he disappeared. She later lived for almost three months in Syria to meet as many people as possible to try to bring him back. She hasn’t lost faith that eventually her son will return home safely and said she hears “whispers in the wind that things are happening.” Asked if she wants another meeting with Biden, she said: “I don’t need to talk to anybody else on this side of the pond. I just want my arms around my son.” MESSAGE US — Are you FRANCES MAGGIE THOMAS, chief of staff for the Office of Domestic Climate Policy? 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!
| | | | HAPPENING NEXT WEEK! GO INSIDE THE 2023 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO is proud to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider" newsletter featuring exclusive coverage, insider nuggets and unparalleled insights from the 2023 Global Conference, which will convene leaders in health, finance, politics, philanthropy and entertainment from May 1-4. This year’s theme, Advancing a Thriving World, will challenge and inspire attendees to lean into building an optimistic coalition capable of tackling the issues and inequities we collectively face. Don’t miss a thing — subscribe today for a front row seat. | | | | | | | | | This one is from Allie. Who was the first president to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner? (Answer at bottom.)
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Cartoon | Courtesy/Kevin Kallaugher | | It’s Friday and you know what that means — it’s cartoon feature time! This one is by KEVIN KALLAUGHER. Our very own MATT WUERKER publishes a selection of cartoons from all over the country.
| | WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This column by one of the president’s favorite journalists, the NYT’s DAVID BROOKS. He unpacks Biden’s framing of his first run as “a fight for the soul of the nation” and offers a moral case for a second term. “The contest between Biden and Trumpism,” Brooks writes, “is less Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative than it is between an essentially moral vision and an essentially amoral one, a contest between decency and its opposite.” WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This story by WSJ’s MICHELLE HACKMAN about how U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services found that a small group of tech companies “colluded to increase the chances that their prospective foreign hires will win a coveted H-1B visa for skilled foreign workers in this year’s lottery. Several tech companies entered the same applicant names into the lottery more than once, and the agency said the move was partly why visa demand was at an all-time high.” FYI… West Wing Playbook yesterday included this piece from NYT’s VANESSA FRIEDMAN about how first lady JILL BIDEN didn’t disclose what designer she was wearing to Wednesday’s state dinner. Turns out that wasn’t quite the case. The first lady’s office shared a statement about her attire — “a mauve, long sheath evening gown by Reem Acra” — shortly after the event started. ELIZABETH ALEXANDER, the first lady’s communications director, told us she spent all day trying to get the NYT story corrected. Friedman’s piece has since been updated to acknowledge a statement was shared with the press corps. But she argues it is still notable that the first lady’s office didn’t provide advance knowledge of the designer. LET THE FESTIVITIES BEGIN: Our RENEE KLAHR breaks down some of the most memorable moments from White House Correspondents Dinners’ past:
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A compilation of some of the most memorable moments from past White House Correspondents' Dinners. | POLITICO | RAIN, RAIN AND MORE RAIN: The forecast this weekend won’t put a damper on plans linked to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Our Daniel Lippman and resident weatherman STEVEN SHEPARD dive into how some will navigate around the weather. SNEAK PEEK: WHCD host ROY WOOD JR. gave a very diplomatic answer when asked Friday morning by CNN about who he plans to make fun of on Saturday night: “I’ve got to talk about everything this week. There was a lot of stuff that happened this week … and those things have to be discussed in a fair way, in a very fair way.” But he also admitted he’s “not trying to get in trouble. OK, that’s the most important part of the correspondents’ dinner: Leave employed.” Our MATT BERG has more. (ICYMI: Wood also spoke to West Wing Playbook earlier this week.) AND THE AWARD GOES TO: Aside from the annual White House Correspondents’ Association awards that will be presented at Saturday’s dinner, the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability — at $25,000, one of the most lucrative journalism prizes out there – will be awarded by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. This year’s winners are HARRIET RYAN and MATT HAMILTON of the Los Angeles Times, whose series uncovered failures by the State Bar of California to regulate and enforce regulations for lawyers in the state. Congratulations, guys. This will look nice next to your Pulitzers. BRINGING IN THE DONORS: The president is set to “convene more than 150 of his biggest donors at a lux Washington, DC, hotel over the next two days, a sign, even in the campaign’s earliest stages, of the importance he will place on raising a war chest to take on Republicans in his reelection fight,” CNN’s ARLETTE SAENZ, KEVIN LIPTAK and FREDREKA SCHOUTEN report.
| | COVID, IT’S STILL THERE FOLKS: Energy Secretary JENNIFER GRANHOLM had to drop out of speaking at Friday night's Blue Palmetto Dinner in South Carolina after catching Covid, according to a spokesperson for the state party. North Carolina Gov. ROY COOPER will take her place. TAKING (PART OF THE) RESPONSIBILITY: MICHAEL BARR, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, acknowledged in a report Friday that the central bank didn’t take enough action to prevent the Silicon Valley Bank collapse last month, our VICTORIA GUIDA reports. But the report also “criticizes an overly cautious approach by examiners at the central bank, a problem that it says was worsened by directives from Randal Quarles, the Trump-appointed official who served as vice chair for supervision until late 2021.” PERSONNEL MOVES: NIDHI BOURI has been appointed deputy assistant administrator for global health at USAID, where she starts in June, Daniel Lippman has learned. She is currently wrapping up as senior adviser to the office of the first lady in the White House. — ERIKA POETHIG, the special assistant to the president for housing and urban policy at the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, is leaving her post to head back to Chicago.
| | | | 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. | | | | | | | | | BACKING A BUSH ERA POLICY: Biden administration officials are looking to Congress to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702. They feel the controversial Bush era surveillance policy could help hammer down on fentanyl trafficking from Mexico, our ERIN BANCO and JOHN SAKELLARIADIS report. There’s just one small problem: lawmakers on both sides of the aisle oppose the policy. IT’S ONLY TEMPORARY: The Environmental Protect Agency said Friday it plans to issue a temporary waiver permitting “the sale of fuel blends with higher ethanol content across the country during this summer’s driving season,” to stem concerns of shortages due to the Russian invasion on Ukraine, our KELSEY TAMBORRINO reports.
| | Manchin, fuming about Biden, has some decisions to make (WaPo’s Jim Geraghty) TikToker Kat Abu Is So Happy Tucker Carlson Got Fired (BuzzFeed’s Ellie V. Hall) Fox News Poll: Voters favor gun limits over arming citizens to reduce gun violence (Fox News’ Victoria Balara)
| | | It’s only right that we highlight Biden’s acting in a video for the White House “Snores-pondents” dinner eight years ago. The then-vice president and “Veep” star JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS run around Washington, D.C., get caught eating giant buckets of ice cream, and take over the Washington Post’s newsroom right before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Most notably, however, the pair also get matching tattoos at Tattoo Paradise in Adams Morgan that say “45.” Might as well put a MAGA tattoo next to that now.
| | | | Although the first White House Correspondents’ Dinner was hosted in 1921, CALVIN COOLIDGE became the first president to attend the event in 1924, according to the White House Correspondents’ Association. 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 | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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