Principals

☞ White House: A slow week in Washington kicks off with Biden pardoning the Thanksgiving Turkey on the South Lawn. The president also celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday with coconut cake, and the milestone triggered more will he/won’t he speculation about a 2024 reelection bid.

☞ Chuck Schumer: The majority leader won’t be the only member of leadership from Brooklyn if all goes as planned and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. succeeds Nancy Pelosi. The New York Times spoke to some Brooklynites who are already imagining it.

☞ Mitch McConnell: There’s been plenty written about Sen. Rick Scott’s, R-Fla. unsuccessful leadership challenge to McConnell, but last week’s drama also spawned new fissures between McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., per The Hill.

☞ Nancy Pelosi: The speaker gave a glowing endorsement to her presumptive successor and the rest of the incoming leadership team as she prepares to wind down her tenure as leader of congressional Democrats.

☞ Kevin McCarthy: The Republican leader’s vowing — once again — to remove Democrats from their committees, namely Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, Adam Schiff, D-Calif and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. McCarthy objected to Democrats removing Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. over incendiary social media posts.

A mass shooting at a Colorado LGBTQ night club that killed at least five people over the weekend has spurred calls from Democrats for more gun control measures. Biden pushed for an assault weapons ban, while other Democratic leaders have issued vague calls for more action. Police said that the suspect, who was ultimately subdued by patrons, opened fire with a long rifle. Authorities are still looking for a motive and investigating it as a possible hate crime. The shooting occurred on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance and LGBTQ advocates see a connection between the carnage and an uptick in bills restricting gender-affirming care and classroom discussions about gender identity as well as the widespread use of “groomer” as a slur.

The new Robert Mueller? Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of a special counsel — veteran prosecutor Jack Smith — to take over the Trump investigations has many feeling like it’s 2017 all over again. Smith is no stranger to high-profile investigations, including those involving politicians of both parties, and most recently was serving as a war crimes prosecutor at The Hague.

Still, Smith has his work cut out for him. “One challenge is that although the theory of special counsels is sound — impartiality and calm in the midst of partisanship and chaos — the reality can be different,” said Jack Sharman, an Alabama criminal defense attorney who has served as a special counsel in a handful of sensitive investigations. He cited two challenges: Modern special counsels ultimately still report to the Attorney General, making their independence less obvious. And second, “we may be entering an era of special counsel fatigue” as a polarized public gets numb to their regular appointments.

— Morgan Chalfant

Punchbowl News: The White House is trying to find jobs in the executive branch for Democratic officials who lost their seats in the midterms and their aides.

Playbook: Moderate House Republicans who won in districts that Biden carried in 2020 are “dreading the prospect of overly aggressive” GOP probes into the president.

The Early 202: Some labor unions are “quietly” raising concerns about Rep. Ami Bera’s, D-Calif. run for DCCC chair due to a trade bill he supported in 2015 during the Obama era.

Donald Trump isn’t scaring away his 2024 rivals

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Donald Trump got applause talking about his record at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual gathering. But then the crowd also cheered when Nikki Haley said she’d “look at” running for president. And they jumped to their feet when Ron DeSantis said he was “just getting started.”

It was the first showcase event of the 2024 election cycle, and Trump’s appearance alongside Republicans who might challenge him for the nomination revealed how last week’s midterm elections had weakened him. Some rivals blamed him personally for losing seats; others simply grabbed the ex-president’s spotlight. When the hosts of the conservative podcast Ruthless asked the audience who it favored in 2024, the cheering for DeSantis was twice as loud as the applause for Trump.

DAVID AND SHELBY’S VIEW

Trump wasn’t down and out yet, at least among the influential attendees wandering the Venetian Hotel. The high-profile event’s guest list includes a number of prominent Jewish donors, many of whom still have warm feelings for the former president thanks to his unflagging support of Israel, among other issues.

“We’re all confused … we’re trying to figure it out,” one attendee told Semafor. “The GOP is unsettled,” another said.

Haley and DeSantis were joined by at least six other Republicans who have made moves toward a White House run or been urged to do so — former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Sen. Ted Cruz, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and outgoing Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.

None of them waved off the speculation.

“I don’t know what the future holds for my family or yours,” said Pence.

“The next time we’re together, we could be on a stage, multiple podiums — who knows?” said Pompeo.

“The reason we’re losing is because Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else,” said Christie.

Only Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who’d run anti-Biden ads in Iowa in 2020 and appeared at a New Hampshire GOP fundraising dinner in 2021, clearly ruled out a 2024 presidential bid.

Trump’s record as president was praised again and again, but Republicans no longer gave him all the credit for what worked. Pence ran down the highlights — tax cuts, crushing ISIS, accords between Israel and Arab nations — but made himself and other Republicans larger figures in the story. He even pointed out Cruz in the Friday night Shabbat dinner crowd and thanked him for helping confirm Trump’s three Supreme Court justices.

Still, a crowded field could be an advantage for Trump by splitting votes, RJC board member and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters on Saturday. If there are only one or two anti-Trump candidates, he said, then “it’s a fair fight.”

Even among those who say they want a new 2024 nominee, the former president is still largely viewed in a positive light. When speakers focused on how to fix the Republican Party’s problems, they generally received a rousing round of applause. Comments that directly attacked Trump garnered a far more muted response.

Speaking during a live stream on Saturday afternoon, Trump reminded the split crowd that his administration “fought for Israel and the Jewish community like no president in history.”  That prompted some respectable cheers from the room.

The full version of this story can be found here.

— David Weigel and Shelby Talcott

Abortion is the GOP’s new elephant in the room

Another big thing we noticed at the RJC this weekend: There was no agreement in Vegas on how the party’s next nominee should tackle abortion ahead of the first presidential election since the end of Roe v. Wade.

Trump declined to even bring up the topic directly, saying only that Democrats over-performed expectations because a “specific issue,” which he did not name, had driven up turnout.

“It was unfortunate, because in many ways, it was such a great achievement,” Trump said, talking (or not talking) about perhaps his single biggest policy legacy as president. “There was a specific issue that made it more difficult, but it was the right thing.”

Other potential contenders seemed to suggest Republicans wouldn’t pursue a national ban. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told Semafor that “federalism” would sort out legal abortion rights. “In bright blue states like California and New York, you’re going to continue seeing unlimited abortion on demand,” he said. “I wish that weren’t the case, but that’s what the citizens of those states want.”

Pence, who has backed a national abortion ban, told the crowd that it “must not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the land.” But in an off-campus interview with a Wisconsin TV station, Pence said that while “talking about a minimum standard on abortion at the national level is useful,” the issue was “likely to be resolved one state after another.”

— David Weigel and Shelby Talcott

Uncomfortable Journalism

Ben Smith said President Trump’s 2024 presidential bid speech sounded boring. Maggie Haberman responded, “I don’t think his heart is quite in it, but this might change.” GETTR CEO and occasional Trump spokesperson Jason Miller said Trump was focused and committed. These people, all accomplished and plugged in to DC as committed Trump observers, saw him differently. While Trump being exciting or dull may feel trivial, these kinds of differences of perspective are what makes producing journalism that will be seen as broadly fair such a tricky task in 2022.

Semafor, with support from the Knight Foundation and Gallup, hosted a number of former White House spokespersons from both parties  to talk about the strengths and wobbliness of media when it comes to accuracy in reporting.

There were plenty of disagreements. Miller said “it’s hard to take seriously fact-checking because everyone brings a bias to it,” and suggested using multiple arbiters of truth on social media, including community moderation. Joe Lockhart, White House Press Secretary under Bill Clinton, said later: “There’s a bias in those who want to be held to the truth and people who don’t,” but he also criticized media groupthink that led to the missing Democrats’ strong midterm results. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. suggested the government could step in if platforms couldn’t get their act together. Current White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president was broadly concerned about platforms that “spew hate” and “spew violence,” pointing to the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville.

MSNBC show host and former VP Kamala Harris spokesperson Symone Sanders talked about having Republicans on her show—”I don’t believe that everyone should be or is a progressive,” she said—and emphasized the power of the media to raise up different perspectives. “I’m a bald millennial black woman from North Omaha, Nebraska…I am not the cookie cutter Washington DC demographic…and what we should be focused on here is the facts. When you tune in to my show…do I tell the truth? Do I present a multifaceted story?  Do I challenge what it is that we all think we know? And I would venture to say the answer is yes.”

That sounds right to me, and that’s what Semafor is working to do as well.

— Steve Clemons

One Good Text With ... Eric Wilson

• President Biden turned 80 on Sunday and the White House probably preferred the Washington Post’s take on the milestone — that Biden joins a surging number of octogenarians remaining in the workforce. Census data shows that number grew to 693,000 last year as compared to around 110,000 in 1980.
• A Politico analysis found that ticket-splitting in the Nov. 8 elections declined to the lowest point of any midterm since at least 1980. But in the few key races where ticket-splitting was a factor, it was absolutely crucial — such as the New Hampshire Senate race — and may have been the difference in Democrats retaining control of the Senate.
• The Biden administration started notifying approved student loan relief applicants Saturday even as the program has been blocked by lower courts. CNN reports that the approvals going out under the signature of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona acknowledge the legal limbo and says the administration will “discharge your approved debt if and when we prevail in court” and promises to provide further updates.

WHAT THE LEFT ISN’T READING: Federal investigators are scrutinizing Sen. Bob Menendez’s, D-N.J. wife, according to the Wall Street Journal, as part of a probe first reported by Semafor.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: Rev. Rob Schenck, an evangelical leader and anti-abortion activist, alleged that he learned of the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2014 Hobby Lobby contraception case before it was made public.

— with our partners at Ground News

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— Steve Clemons