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THE TOP
Trump, meet Trump
Welcome to The Readback, our weekend digest featuring the best of Punchbowl News — a quick roundup of all our scoops, analysis and Capitol Hill insight you won’t find anywhere else. We’ve also included some of our favorite outside reads and podcasts.
With that, let’s jump into the big story of the week.
The Trump files: It was a split-screen like no other.
Within a few hours Thursday, former President Donald Trump went from hurling invectives and pitching fantastical policy ideas to complimenting his one-time foes and “graciously” accepting Republicans’ advice on campaign strategy.
The former occurred when Trump addressed House Republicans. The latter was during a meeting with Republican senators.
In many ways, Trump’s polar-opposite behavior from the first meeting to the second was symbolic of each chamber’s Republican Conference — one characterized by constant chaos and zero message discipline and another that wanted to send Trump a deadly serious warning.
At the Capitol Hill Club: Here are some quick highlights from Trump’s gathering with the House GOP.
Trump disparaged Milwaukee, the city where he’ll formally accept the GOP presidential nomination next month. He also told a bizarre story involving an imagined relationship with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And he suggested a new tariff idea.
It was vintage Trump, treating the gathering like a campaign rally. The following few hours were dominated by GOP lawmakers and Trump campaign officials haranguing reporters for the portrayal of his comments about Milwaukee.
Trump called Milwaukee a “horrible city,” then some House Republicans claimed he never said it, and then they admitted he said it but that he didn’t mean it.
It felt like we were back in the “clean-up on aisle Trump” news cycles of 2017 all over again.
Over at the NRSC: Trump walked into the NRSC building that afternoon to a room full of GOP senators, including some of his fiercest critics in the party.
Many of them, from the leadership down to the rank-and-file, had suggested at some point over the last few years that the party needed to move on from Trump.
Amazingly, Trump not only tried to bury the hatchet, but the former president also went out of his way to compliment Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and talked with him privately. Trump also acknowledged “our differences” several times and said he wanted to move past them and work together to win in November. This is a notable shift as the two men hadn’t spoken since December 2020.
Shortly after, Trump even backed former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan for Senate. Hogan has long been a fierce Trump critic and has said he won’t vote for him in the November election.
But Trump is aware that Senate Republicans have been generally upset with him over the party’s Senate losses in 2020 and 2022. It’s why the NRSC adopted a new posture toward Trump at the beginning of the 2024 cycle — bringing him into the fold so he can’t undermine them.
As one GOP senator joked to me afterward: “I was like, who’s this guy and what did he do with Donald Trump?”
Of course, Trump could change his tune any time as he’s known to often do.
What I’m reading: Our friends over at Politico had a really smart piece on why President Joe Biden and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have gotten along so well despite their polar opposite domestic politics.
— Andrew Desiderio
You can find The Readback in your inbox every Saturday at 8 a.m. And don’t hesitate to reach out to readback@punchbowl.news with feedback. Enjoy The Readback.
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How a nomination scoop comes together
Capitol Hill reporting has a lot of long days. But sometimes, you get off early.
And so I’m walking home on Wednesday night and enjoying some late day sun when I get a text from Punchbowl News policy editor Dave Clarke at 6:53 p.m. He is wondering if we can nail down exactly when the White House plans to nominate senior officials to key financial positions this week.
Sure! Do I already have plans this evening? Yes! Rock climbing plans. But the nice thing about rock climbing — specifically bouldering — is that there’s a lot of sitting around between the pulling-body-around-obstacles part.
And so what if my hands are covered in climbing chalk (and they are 100% covered in chalk)? Voice-to-text is a thing. And so I start sending texts. Voice to texts. A lot of them.
I bounce between Hill sources and regulatory sources. I’m focused on when the White House will announce Christy Goldsmith Romero to be the next chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Then someone mentions Kristin Johnson could be the next Treasury assistant secretary for financial institutions. “Did you know that was coming?” Uh, not tomorrow, no! But now I do. So I send a couple of texts about that, do a climb (poorly, flop onto the floor mat, groan), check phone, have it confirmed. Nice.
But I don’t have Goldsmith Romero nailed down yet. Jake Sherman is trying to help. At 8:06 p.m., Jake tells me to relax because “it’s early.” I wonder when this man sleeps.
I leave the climbing gym for a karaoke birthday celebration in Navy Yard. Crush a performance of “Zombie.” Check phone, no new confirmations. Gripe. Sing “Jolene.”
9:25 p.m rolls around. Jake saves the day with a final Goldsmith Romero confirmation. Do we send a text? Is 9:30 p.m. too late for a text? John Bresnahan says it’s OK if we go “right now.” “GO,” Bres adds. Great! News, news, news!
What I’m listening to: I’m a big fan of the Normal Gossip podcast. I’m about a month behind in the latest season, but I would highly, highly recommend the “Sexy Mushrooms with Avery Trufelman” episode from mid-May. Come for the online dating woes, stay for the spontaneous matching outfits and hunt for a hidden mushroom grove.
— Brendan Pedersen
The baseball rout
The Congressional Baseball Game is the best of Congress. Democrats and Republicans battle on the diamond for bragging rights while the event raises millions of dollars for charity. Staffers get to let loose and cheer their bosses on. The whole Hill community basically gets Nats Park to themselves for a night.
This year, Republicans won in a 31-11 rout. I was lucky enough to score the coveted Punchbowl News reporting assignment for the event. More than 25,000 tickets were sold for the game. It was a blast. And the atmosphere was far more lively than most Nats games I’ve been to recently.
But the game experienced an early disruption when climate protesters leaped onto the field a couple of innings in. In the section I was in, there were widespread cheers — whether it was for the anti-fossil fuel message or the U.S. Capitol Police officers tackling the demonstrators, I couldn’t tell. The beauty of bipartisanship!
After the protest, cops stationed themselves along the warning track in Nats Park. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen at a baseball game. But then again, many lawmakers would be hard-pressed to hit the ball that far. Thus, the cops were probably safe.
That was until Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) stepped up to the plate in the top of the seventh inning. The Air Force veteran slammed a deep drive over the Democratic center fielder, forcing the Capitol Police officers to run out of the ball’s way. Pfluger sprinted home for an inside-the-park home run that gave Republicans a dominating 21-run lead.
Talk to any Democrat and they’ll blame their baseball woes on the departure of former Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.). Richmond was the Dems’ star pitcher and ever since he left the Hill in 2021, Democrats have lost every Congressional Baseball Game.
What I read: This entertaining baseball game preview from NOTUS, featuring some great anecdotes from Reps. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Roger Williams (R-Texas).
— Max Cohen
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The 2025 tax scramble is on
Around the newsroom, we like to joke that I get really excited whenever someone mentions taxes. It’s a bit of a joke… but it’s also true. (Shout out to all my fellow tax nerds!)
And let me tell you, it’s a great time to love the word “tax.”
For a bit now, I’ve been incessantly asking questions about how everyone on and off the Hill will be prepping for the expiration of much of the Trump tax cuts in 2025. There was some news here and there.
And then this week, it felt like the dam was breaking. The 2025 prep got bigger and busier really fast.
Case in point: Wednesday.
I got some news late Tuesday that Senate Finance Committee Democrats would be holding their first meeting on the 2025 tax debate on June 20. So far, Republicans on the tax committees have been doing most of the visible work to get ready for next year, so we knew this would be a big step forward with Democrats looking to get their own messaging going. We reported that at the top of Wednesday’s AM edition.
Then on Wednesday morning, I heard House Ways and Means Committee Republicans were getting a briefing on 2025 from former Chair Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Mark Prater, a lobbyist and former GOP aide who helped craft the 2017 tax cuts in the Senate. While I was reporting on that, I found out Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign economic adviser now at The Heritage Foundation, was also talking tax at the Ways and Means GOP lunch.
Those scoops — as detailed in our Midday edition — felt like a fascinating snapshot into just how much oxygen the 2025 debate is already taking up. Plus, it’s a window into the different voices Republicans are listening to on tax right now.
To round out the day of tax scoops, Andrew Desiderio had a great piece about what Speaker Mike Johnson said during his closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans. Whenever I get a text from Andrew saying we should chat, I know we’ve got some good Senate tax news brewing!
It was a tax-filled day and to that I say, keep ’em coming.
What I’m reading: WSJ’s Richard Rubin had a great dive into how progressives are thinking about the 2025 tax debate.
— Laura Weiss
Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. Political ads courtesy of AdImpact.
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