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IN THIS EDITION

Biden had a terrible debate. Trump made things up. 2024 reality sets in

SALT is back in style on the trail

Will House Republicans ever pass a farm bill?

Gottheimer on bipartisanship, Netanyahu and accepting election results

THE TOP

Biden had a terrible debate. Trump made things up. 2024 reality sets in

Happy Friday morning.

We watched what you watched.

Presidential debates are about optics as much as substance. If you’re a Democrat running in a tight down-ballot race or a donor spending millions of dollars to defeat former President Donald Trump, you have to be very alarmed by President Joe Biden’s Thursday night debate performance.

It was bad. Biden’s answers were rambling, his voice was raspy and he committed repeated verbal flubs that will be clipped thousands of times between now and Election Day. Democrats wanted Biden to show voters that he’s capable of serving another term. Many Democrats now fear they got the exact opposite.

Biden started off poorly and he ended poorly. He had some good moments in between, but nowhere near enough. The debacle of Biden’s opening 20 minutes — and the uproar it caused on social media — may be all anyone remembers. It doesn’t matter if you believe Biden was right on the issues if he was unable to express his views in a consistently coherent way.

In the post-debate analysis on CNN — the network that aired the debate and likely drew tens of millions of viewers — veteran anchor John King expressed alarm at the performance and said some senior Democrats were wondering whether Biden should step aside as the party’s nominee.

Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s former communications director, called her old boss’ performance “disappointing” on CNN. Bedingfield said Biden’s “biggest issue was to prove to the American people that he had the energy, the stamina — and he didn’t do that.”

Vice President Kamala Harris later told CNN that Biden had a “slow start but strong finish.” Biden campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu had the same spin.

Yet you could tell the Biden camp thought the president was doing poorly when word leaked out about 30 minutes in that he was suffering from a cold. That’s a tell if there ever was one.

It wasn’t that Trump was great, either. Many of his answers were rambling, wildly unfocused and filled with falsehoods. Trump wouldn’t say whether he’d accept the results of the election. Trump simply ignored the final year of his presidency — when the Covid-19 pandemic gripped the country and hundreds of thousands of Americans were sick and dying — as if it never happened.

Trump tried to blame former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, portraying himself as a bystander instead of the driving force behind the insurrection.

The problem was that Biden was often unable to exploit Trump’s false statements or distortions. The opening was there, but unlike during their 2020 debates, Biden couldn’t take advantage of it.

Biden repeatedly pushed Trump on the former president’s alleged quote that Americans who died fighting overseas were “losers” and “suckers.” Trump has vehemently denied saying this, although former Marine Gen. John Kelly — who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff — confirmed it to CNN in 2023.

“My son was not a loser, was not a sucker,” Biden said of the late Beau Biden, an Iraq war veteran who died of brain cancer in 2015. “You’re the sucker. You’re the loser.”

But Trump was able to get off many of his key lines and seized on Biden’s mishaps.

“This is the worst presidency ever,” Trump said at one point. He slammed Biden for inflation and the economic distress that a huge majority of Americans feel right now.

“We shouldn’t be having a debate about it,” Trump said. “There’s nothing to debate.”

This is the crux of Trump’s campaign message. Things were much better when I was president — if you just ignore 2020, Jan. 6, all the lies and the myriad legal problems.

Biden’s age and health — always major liabilities for his reelection — are now the focus of this race coming out of Thursday night.

Biden’s campaign and his Democratic allies on the Hill hate this narrative more than anything. Especially since it’s questionable that Biden and Trump will ever meet on a debate stage again, which would potentially give the incumbent a chance for a rebound.

Here’s a perfect example: Biden said, “We finally beat Medicare.” Biden presumably meant to say that he beat PhRMA in his quest to lower prescription drug prices for Medicare enrollees, a major legislative achievement.

Trump immediately retorted that Biden was “right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death. And he’s destroying Medicare.”

After another Biden gaffe, Trump countered “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

There were some wildly inane moments too. Trump noted he “won the club championship” when asked about his own age. Then Biden said he could outdrive Trump. Trump responded, “I’ve seen your swing.”

But the reality is this: No matter what Democrats say on the record today, they’re privately alarmed and many will want Biden out. They’re worried he will drag them down with him on Nov. 5.

“To call it a disaster is too kind,” a House Democrat said to us after the 90-minute session ended in Atlanta.

Shortly before midnight, another House Democrat weighed in with this text: “It’s over.”

— Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Andrew Desiderio

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SALT is back in style on the trail

Ahead of the 2025 tax bonanza, Democratic candidates in swing districts are increasingly talking taxes on the trail.

High-tax states hit hard by the 2017 Trump tax cuts’ limit on deducting state and local taxes — like California, New York and New Jersey — are playing a starring role in November’s fight for control of the House. So it’s no surprise that pols in those states are trying to position themselves as the right choice for voters itching for tax relief.

Both parties have failed to bring constituents any respite from the $10,000 SALT cap in the years since 2017. A contingent of New York Republicans most recently mounted an unsuccessful push to raise the SALT cap just slightly for married couples. And that contingent is touchy when presented with Democratic criticism.

“The party that couldn’t get it done is upset that it hasn’t yet been done?” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) retorted. And Molinaro pivoted to attacking Democrats on the rising cost of living.

“The people that I represent know that they’re paying a lot more for a lot less, whether it’s the grocery store or their taxes,” Molinaro said.

Republican SALT allies worked hard to try to show they’ll fight their party on the issue this time. But some Democrats see an opening. They’re looking to run on SALT, a topic they found success on during the 2018 midterms.

On the trail: In Southern California, we heard from Democrats eager to highlight the cap. Will Rollins, who’s running against Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) in a toss-up seat, said the SALT issue is an effective campaign line.

“I always ask people when there’s a Republican-leaning crowd in front of me, ‘Why is it that our member of Congress from Southern California is giving tax cuts to people in Wyoming and the rest of us are stuck here holding the bag?’” Rollins recounted.

The issue set gives the left an opportunity to portray Republicans as tax increasers. This isn’t something that Democrats can normally do, we’ll note.

“SALT was a major tax increase for many, many people I represent,” state Sen. Dave Min, the Democrat running to succeed retiring Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), told us. “Meanwhile, the benefits of that tax policy went almost entirely to the wealthiest investors out there who don’t need it.”

The playbook: Many of the Democrats are following the lead of Rep. Tom Suozzi’s (D-N.Y.) February special election victory, where the New Yorker hammered home a SALT-based economic message.

Here’s what Suozzi told us about talking SALT on the trail and addressing GOP efforts:

Another Democrat who’s no stranger to running on SALT, New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill, told us she believes people in her district are well aware that the cap came from former President Donald Trump’s tax bill and Hill Republicans.

“I don’t think it’s really effective for Republican colleagues to suggest that they can defeat that when the standard-bearer for the Republican party is all in on this and we know it expires next year, which makes it even more important that Democrats get a majority if SALT is your issue,” Sherrill said.

Of course, the push on SALT hasn’t been without its stumbles for Democrats like Suozzi and Sherrill either.

The stakes: Some bipartisan SALT allies are already strategizing together to defeat the cap next year, as we scooped in Thursday’s PM edition. There’s some optimism among SALT cap opponents that they’ll have more leverage because it’s set to disappear.

But recent fights underscored that the issue is deeply regional and politically painful. Whoever wins the House in November, SALT allies will be readying to fight.

— Max Cohen and Laura Weiss

THE AGENDA

Will House Republicans ever pass a farm bill?

There is deep skepticism in House Republican leadership that the chamber will consider the party’s version of the FY2025 farm bill on the floor before the lame-duck session of Congress.

The majority of policies in the farm bill expire at the end of this year. The House Agriculture Committee passed the legislation out of the panel late last month.

But the bill hasn’t been scheduled for a floor vote. And most key figures in House Republican leadership think the legislation will be extended on a short-term basis after the election.

Why? Because passing a farm bill is hard. The legislation includes not only agricultural policy but also nutrition provisions such as SNAP and other social safety net programs.

House Republicans have called for deep cuts to such programs, boxing out Democrats who would traditionally vote for the package and giving pause to GOP lawmakers who don’t want to be seen messing with low-income benefits. The GOP leadership is skeptical of putting bills on the floor that divide Republicans — especially with a single-digit seat majority.

House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) said Republican leaders haven’t given him a date for considering the bill on the floor. He acknowledged that July is a busy month with little time to consider legislation.

“’I’m always hopeful,” Thompson told us. “We got good, decent bipartisan support. We even got folks in committee that voted against it, they called me the next day, just talking about how good the bill was.”

Here’s what House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said when we asked him if the bill would get a vote before the election: “We’re told that’s the plan, but we haven’t seen it.”

— Jake Sherman

PUNCHBOWL NEWS EVENTS

Gottheimer on bipartisanship, Netanyahu and accepting election results

Did you miss our event on Thursday with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.)? The co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus discussed the importance of bipartisanship in a divided Congress. He also weighed in on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to Congress and more.

You can watch the full video here.

— Elvina Nawaguna

THE MONEY GAME

News: House Assistant Minority Leader Joe Neguse hosted a members-only fundraiser at Officina on Thursday featuring House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene. The event hauled in more than $2.5 million for the DCCC.

Neguse has now raised $10 million for the DCCC this cycle and a further $1.7 million for Frontline and Red-to-Blue candidates.

Here’s the invite:

— Max Cohen

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