In today’s edition of “The Inner Circle with Rachael Bade”: Donald Trump, Marc Caputo, Zohran Mamdani, The Washington Free Beacon, Abdul El-Sayed, Sarah Jukaku, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Mike Rogers.
🎬LIGHTS, CAMERA… — When President DONALD TRUMP announced
Monday that he’d deliver a prime-time address Thursday night, all of Washington was left guessing: What was the big news? Would he address Iran? The midterms? A new, major policy push?
Turns out, the answer was much simpler … The president just wanted to use his bully pulpit to command attention on whatever was on his mind, according to Axios’ Marc Caputo — and he plans to do so more often.
While the president enjoys entertaining (and sparring with!) the media during regular Oval Office appearances, senior administration officials hope to “get into the rhythm” of direct-to-camera speeches because, as one senior adviser put it to Caputo, “it’s powerful when you give prime-time speeches that give a sense of importance to what he’s saying.”
Most revealing line from the piece: “You never know what Trump’s going to talk about. He just wants to talk. And he wants to do more of it.”
Thursday’s address could be a grab bag — “potpourri,” as the advisor called it. Iran. Perhaps the SAVE America Act. Trump himself leaned into the mystery in the Oval Office yesterday, teasing what he called a “very big announcement”:
“It’s really big news. It’s really, really big news,” he said. “And our country has to shape up. But that’s what we’re going to be talking about Thursday... It doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”
HERE’S THE MAJOR QUESTION❓: Is doing a regular cadence of these addresses really a good idea – particularly if there isn’t major breaking news?
Even Trump loyalists aren’t sure — including his onetime press secretary from the first term.
“The schtick wears off quick,” as my co-host on The Huddle SEAN SPICER warned on our show yesterday. “The reason that prime-time addresses are what they are is because it’s like Christmas — it only happens once a year... Once we start making it not unique, it takes the lore away from it. People aren’t going to cover it. The networks aren’t going to give you the prime time.”
Sean added: “You’ve got to be very careful how you pick and choose … and I hope the president’s getting good sound advice because… if [the networks] start telling you ‘no’ and the president gives this address, and no one covers it? I’d be very concerned if I were the staff — because he’s going to say, ‘Why didn’t you know they weren’t going to cover it?’”
My unsolicited advice? — not that I’m in the business of giving political advice… Get the president back on the campaign trail. Trump is at his best when he’s working a crowd and feeding off his loyal followers — or even jousting with reporters in the Oval. Put a teleprompter in front of him facing a lonely TV camera? He looks stiff by comparison.
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ICYMI: THE LEFT’S REALITY CHECK 🫠— The lofty ideals of the left are crashing into the tough realities of Economics 101, with a pair of new stories grounding some of those grandiose ambitions of redistributing wealth in this country.
👉In New York, a millionaire exodus is underway as high earners flee rising taxes —surprise, surprise. “Even before Mamdani took office, the Empire State’s share of the nation’s millionaires dipped from 12.7% to 8.7% between 2010 and 2022 – the largest decline of any state, according to the [Citizen Budget Commission]’s Competitive NYS: Value Proposition Tracker dashboard,” the New York Post writes.
That cost the state nearly $11 billion worth of tax revenue in a single year… And that was before Mayor ZOHRAN MAMDANI got elected on a tax-the-rich platform.
👉Over in Michigan, meanwhile, the left is buzzing over a conservative Washington Free Beacon scoop: The wife of progressive candidate ABDUL EL-SAYED, a psychiatrist, doesn’t accept Medicare or insurance — despite being married to a candidate demanding Medicare for All.
“Dr. SARAH JUKAKU appears to have scrubbed an ‘FAQ’ from her practice’s website reading, ‘Do you accept my insurance? No,’” the story reads.
My co-host DAN TURRENTINE said on The Huddle yesterday that stories like this
are “devastating” for progressives.
“I’ll equate it to GAVIN NEWSOM having dinner at the French Laundry during COVID, or NANCY PELOSI getting her hair cut during COVID — which is this, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ … Authenticity is one of the greatest assets to have as a candidate. And if your wife is a doctor who makes a good living and does not take Medicare, why?
He continued: “In New York City [where I live], a lot of doctors don’t take Medicare. They don’t even take health insurance because the reimbursement rates are so low. Okay, fine. That’s your choice. But to then say, ‘We’re going to advocate that everybody has to have this system and we’re going to try to use the government to force rates down on doctors,’ it just paints the picture of an elite that doesn’t really play by the rules that they’re asking me to play by. And in a state with working-class people — like Michigan — … this will spread, and it is a huge problem of authenticity.”
Republicans, of course, are loving these stories — Sean was no exception. (“You tax people? Guess what happens: They leave!” he barked.) His one beef? The timing of the El-Sayed story, which he would have preferred to run after El-Sayed won the nomination, for maximum political damage.
“If you’re MIKE ROGERS, you want to face El-Sayed,” Sean said. “This is the hit that we want during the general election.”
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