Playbook Deep Dive POLITICO

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), one of President Joe Biden’s closest foreign policy advisors, gives his assessment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial upcoming address in front of Congress, the politics of the Hunter Biden trial, why Coons thinks the president’s executive order on asylum is hollow, how our allies around the world are bracing themselves for the coming election, what would happen if China invaded Taiwan in a Trump versus a Biden administration, and his honest assessment of what’s changed about Biden as he’s aged,.

POLITICO’s senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney and legal columnist Ankush Khardori debrief on what happened at the Hush Money trial, how Trump’s team may have hurt its own case, and what their best plan is to win an appeal after Thursday’s massive guilty verdict.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) joins host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza to discuss his entry into the Senate GOP leadership race to succeed Mitch McConnell. They discuss why Sen. Scott is running, what Donald Trump told him about his decision, his relationship with key Republicans such as McConnell and Susie Wiles, his policy agenda on foreign aid, abortion, entitlements, and Israel if he’s elected leader, Trump’s running mate choices, and the importance of having a purpose in life.

On Wednesday morning, Frank Fahrenkopf received a letter from the Biden presidential campaign that ruined his day. Fahrenkopf is co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has produced 33 debates since 1988, the first election year it was in business.

He was planning on four more this year: three with Biden and Trump as well as the quadrennial vice presidential debate. But the Biden campaign told Fahrenkopf that the president would not be participating in any of them.

Instead, the Biden campaign announced that it would negotiate with the Trump campaign and individual media organizations to plan two debates outside of the Commission’s process.

By the end of the day Biden and Trump were set to debate in June on CNN and in September on ABC.

On this episode of Deep Dive, Fahrenkopf joins host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza to discuss the fall-out from this decision, including the roles of Biden, Trump, and Anita Dunn; why he thinks RFK Jr. may have grounds for a lawsuit against CNN and what some of his favorite behind-the-scenes stories are from his decades of producing debates.

Fresh off fending off a hard-right coup attempt, the House speaker opens up about his strategy and his future plans for the GOP Conference.

Topics in this lengthy interview include: Johnson’s victory over the GOP radicals; Israel; Ukraine; January 6th; the Trump trials; abortion; and his relationships with key Washington leaders, such as Joe Biden, Hakeem Jeffries, Kevin McCarthy and, of course, Donald Trump.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, who has represented a big piece of Manhattan since 1992, is one of the longest-serving Jewish members of the House.

He’s also a Columbia University alumnus: he was on campus in 1968 when police cleared Hamilton Hall of anti-Vietnam war protesters.

Nadler is a close observer of the Middle East and the politics of Israel in the U.S. And he’s the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, where he’s long seen himself as a champion of civil liberties.

All of this background helped put Nadler at the center of a swirl of events this week as pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia were ejected from Hamilton Hall, as President Biden made his first public remarks about campus protests, as a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel seemed tantalizingly close and as the House passed, by an overwhelming majority of 320 to 91, the Antisemitism Awareness Act — a bill against which Nadler led the opposition.

On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza talked talks with Nadler about all of this and about Trump’s interview in Time Magazine, the potential for disruption at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the vote Nadler most regrets in his long career and the nature of truth.