| | | | |  | | By Garrett Ross | Presented by the Brennan Center for Justice | |  | THE CATCH-UP | | BIPARTISAN BAJA BLAST — “JD Vance and Tim Walz Dew Agree: Diet Mountain Dew Rules,” by WSJ’s Natasha Khan
|  Donald Trump painted Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as a "radical left" ticket in his first public comments since Walz's selection. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO | TRUMP AUDITIONS ATTACK LINES — This morning, DONALD TRUMP took his first swing at defining the KAMALA HARRIS-TIM WALZ campaign — painting the duo as the most “radical left” ticket in history while mostly steering clear of policy contrasts to instead focus on the culture war fights to which he often returns. “He’s a very, very liberal man, and he’s a shocking pick. I could not be more thrilled,” Trump said during a phone interview with “Fox & Friends” this morning, per Fox News’ Bailee Hill. “This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner. We want no security. We want no anything,” Trump said. “He’s very heavy into transgender. Anything transgender he thinks is great, and he’s not where the country is on anything.” He also took a swipe at Harris not selecting Pennsylvania Gov. JOSH SHAPIRO, furthering a baseless GOP attack line trying to characterize Harris as antisemitic: “I think it’s very insulting to Jewish people.” Trump also recalled a time when he claims Walz phoned the then-president during Covid when protesters had showed up to Walz’s home. “He called me and I said, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ I was in the White House. He said, ‘If you would put out the word that I'm a good person,’ and I did, I put out the word I said, ‘He's a good person. I hope everything's good.’” What Trump didn’t mention is the fact that the protests outside Walz’s home came after Trump had tweeted “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” — an episode that Walz detailed in a previously unreleased interview with Alex Burns and JMart back in 2021. “Just to be very candid, the rhetoric that the president engaged in, and then was amplified by others, changed the whole dynamic especially in a state like Minnesota where I could be out by myself without folks around and it would be fine,” Walz told them. Over in Michigan shortly after Trump’s interview this morning, Sen. JD VANCE (R-Ohio) set up an entirely different contrast, hitting Walz over his military service record. “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him — a fact that he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with. I think it’s shameful,” Vance said at a sparsely attended appearance in Macomb County. This issue became a point of GOP attacks against Walz during his gubernatorial race in 2022. At the time, Walz defended his record, saying: “We all do what we can. I’m proud I did 24 years.” As the Star-Tribune’s Rochelle Olson noted in a story at the time: “Along the campaign trail, Walz does not tell dramatic accounts of his time in the National Guard. He most often frames himself as a former high school teacher and football coach from Mankato.” Vance’s own military service gives the Trump campaign a direct foil on this point — though we’d note that Trump himself famously did not serve in the military during the war in Vietnam. Whether Republicans can get this criticism to stick this time around will be something to watch. WHAT BROWN CAN DO — Ohio Sen. SHERROD BROWN was almost in Walz’s shoes. Well, sort of. Chris Cadelago reports that back in 2020, Harris aides on her presidential campaign had tabbed Brown as a potential running mate for many of the same reasons that she went with Walz this time around. Good Wednesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at gross@politico.com.
| | | | A message from the Brennan Center for Justice: Supreme Court reform is an issue whose time has come. Public trust in the Supreme Court has plunged to the lowest level ever recorded, and term limits for the justices has broad bipartisan support. Congress must take action to establish 18-year term limits and bring regular turnover to the bench. The result? A Court with more legitimacy that better reflects American values. No one should have that much power for life. Learn more about term limits. | | | FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — As the Harris-Walz campaign continues to spark a renewed energy among the Democratic Party, it is translating to the prognosticators. Sabato’s Crystal Ball is moving its ratings in three states toward Harris. The details: In less dramatic news, both Minnesota and New Hampshire are moving from “Lean Democratic” to “Likely Democratic.” But the significant one comes in Georgia, where the rating is tilting from “Leans Republican” to “Toss-up” — a move that will reignite a potential path for Harris in the Sun Belt. The rationale: “While Biden had basically been stuck in the low-40s in Georgia for at least the last few months of his campaign, Harris’s numbers have typically been higher and she has run close to Trump in recent surveys,” J. Miles Coleman writes. “For his part, Trump has, at minimum, likely not helped his standing in Georgia by re-airing some of his long-running grievances against two of his favorite intraparty foils: Gov. BRIAN KEMP (R) and Secretary of State BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R), both of whom are broadly popular in the state.” The big picture: “These changes mean that all of the electoral votes that Trump carried in 2020 continue to at least lean to him, although we do wonder if North Carolina may become a true Toss-up if Harris’s upward trajectory continues. All of the electoral votes in places where Biden did better than his 4.5-point national popular margin at least lean to Harris. The 6 states that Biden won by smaller margins than his national margin are Toss-ups.”
| | 8 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW | | |  Text exchanges with JD Vance from his time as a senator offer new details on his thinking back then. | Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1. TEXT TO SPEECH: After Vance was elected to Congress in 2022, CHARLES JOHNSON, a right-wing blogger who has promoted doubts about the Holocaust, struck up a text chain with the new senator. The monthslong correspondence over Signal, which was shared with WaPo’s Isaac Stanley-Becker and Beth Reinhard, “offers a glimpse of the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s off-the-cuff musings, often matching his public expressions but voiced with much less polish. Vance was just as casual in discussing America’s foreign alliances as he was in evaluating his own private alliances with the GOP’s moneyed class.” The response: “In response to questions about his correspondence with Johnson, Vance spokesman WILLIAM MARTIN said the two were never close and don’t share the same politics. ‘Chuck Johnson spam texted JD Vance,’ Martin said. ‘JD usually ignored him, but occasionally responded to push back against things he said.’” 2. TRUMP 2.0: “Trump Dangles New Tax Cut Proposals With Real Political Appeal,” by NYT’s Andrew Duehren: “Repeatedly during the campaign, Mr. Trump and Republicans have embraced new, sometimes novel tax cuts in an attempt to shore up support with major constituencies. In a series of social-media posts, at political rallies, and without formal policy proposals, Mr. Trump has casually suggested reducing federal revenue by trillions of dollars. While policy experts have taken issue with the ideas, Mr. Trump’s pronouncements have real political appeal, at times putting Democrats on their back foot.” 3. FOLLOWING THE MONEY: “Kamala Harris donated last year to defund police group backing DC ‘sanctuary city’ law,” by the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky: “Legal Aid DC, a nonprofit organization in the district that works on housing law and represents low-income clients in other areas, received a $1,000 donation from Harris and [second gentleman DOUG] EMHOFF in 2023, according to a copy of their joint tax return. In 2021, the couple also directed $1,000 to Legal Aid DC, a Washington Examiner review of financial disclosures found.” 4. AD WARS: The DSCC is kicking off today with TV ads in four battleground states, marking the official start of its fall ad campaign, Ally Mutnick reports. “The spots will target four GOP candidates: KARI LAKE in Arizona, ERIC HOVDE in Wisconsin, DAVE McCORMICK in Pennsylvania and MIKE ROGERS in Michigan. They are part of a $79 million ad blitz from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. All the ads focus on specific attacks against the four Republicans.”
| | | | Breaking News Briefing: Where Tim Walz Stands on the Issues — The Democratic ticket is set now that Vice President Kamala Harris has named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Join POLITICO Pro on Friday Aug. 9 for a detailed discussion with specialist reporters on what Walz's track record says about the policies he and Harris will embrace in the final stretch of the 2024 presidential campaign. Register for the Briefing | | | | | 5. THE POST-ROE REALITY: Abortions in the U.S. in the first three months of 2024 were more common than they were before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a new report released by the Society of Family Planning today, AP’s Geoff Mulvihill and Kimberlee Kruesi write. By the numbers: “The survey found that the number of abortions fell to nearly zero in states that ban abortion in all stages of pregnancy and declined by about half in places that ban it after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. … Numbers went up in places where abortion remains legal until further into pregnancy — and especially in states such as Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico, which border states with bans.” 6. LEFT BEHIND: “Two Russians Who Didn’t Make It Into the Historic Prisoner Swap Face Uncertain Future,” by WSJ’s Dustin Volz, Louise Radnofsky and Angus Berwick: “When news of the deal began to leak online last week, multiple media outlets, blogs and social-media posts in the U.S. and Russia erroneously reported that Russian nationals ALEXANDER VINNIK and VLADIMIR DUNAEV, both notorious cybercriminals currently held in American prisons, were involved. It isn’t clear how much the Kremlin values either man, but their exclusion from the swap could allow the U.S. to offer proposals for a follow-on deal in exchange for Americans still in Russia.” 7. THE STRANGE NEW WORLD: “What Do Conspiracy Theorists Do When Proved Wrong? Double Down or Move On,” by NYT’s Stuart Thompson: “NewsGuard, a company that monitors online misinformation, identified 19 prominent accounts on X that in July shared the idea that Mr. Biden was potentially dead or close to death. The New York Times followed those accounts to see how they handled news that Mr. Biden was alive and found that most ignored it or stoked more conspiracy theories. Only a few admitted they had gotten it wrong.” 8. POLITICAL VIOLENCE WATCH: “Virginia man charged with threatening to torture and kill Harris, DOJ says,” by WaPo’s Daniel Wu: “FRANK CARILLO, 66, of Winchester, Va., wrote thousands of posts and replies over the past year on the conservative social media platform Gettr, targeting several public officials such as Harris, President Biden and FBI Director CHRISTOPHER A. WRAY, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia. Carillo allegedly made numerous violent comments and graphic death threats directed at Harris on Gettr after she had started running for president.”
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