Playbook PM:
THE CHASM BTWN THE PRESIDENT and pretty much everyone else in Washington is growing, as DONALD TRUMP seems more alone and isolated with his thoughts, and detached from the overall political conversation in the Capitol, and the rest of America.
THE CHASM BTWN THE PRESIDENT and pretty much everyone else in Washington is growing, as DONALD TRUMP seems more alone and isolated with his thoughts, and detached from the overall political conversation in the Capitol, and the rest of America.
ON CAPITOL HILL, the president’s party is beginning to rally around some overhaul of the laws governing police conduct.
Top lawmakers like Sens. JOHN CORNYN of Texas, MITT ROMNEY of Utah and TIM SCOTT of South Carolina are busy working up a police reform plan. House Democrats are almost ready to pass their own sweeping package.
BUT IN THE WHITE HOUSE, the president is busy broadcasting a conspiracy theory that people find so alarmingly baseless and in poor taste that the party’s top lawmakers are treating it like it’s the physical manifestation of the coronavirus itself.
THE THEORY -- that a 75-year-old man shoved by police amid protests in Buffalo was a violent antifa foot soldier -- is so zany that Republican senators not only find no need to comment on it, but are refusing to physically view the tweet in public.
Gone are the days when lawmakers twisted themselves in pretzels to defend the president. Now they just move on, as if he hardly exists at all.
>@burgessev -- our senior reporter who covers the Senate -- has the tweet printed out, and senators are treating it as if it’s a bar of radioactive substance, refusing to read it in the presence of other human beings, and certainly declining comment on it.
@burgessev SEN. CORY GARDNER (R-Colo.) declined to look at the tweet because he was worried about getting to the Senate floor for an outdoors bill, @burgessev reports.
@burgessev SEN. JOHN THUNE -- the No. 2 Senate Republican from South Dakota -- said, “Well, I mean it’s a, it’s a, it’s a serious accusation, which should only be made with facts and evidence. And I haven’t seen any yet.” (h/t to the Hill pool on this quote)
@burgessev CORNYN -- up for reelection in Texas -- said he wouldn’t comment on the tweet.
@burgessev THE PRESIDENT seems aloof, paralyzed and utterly confused by the moment. And, for the first time in years, Hill Republicans are stepping in to fill the vacuum, crafting policies and embracing politics without the president’s approval.
