0:04

Good morning everyone, I'm Playbook co-author Ryan

0:06

Lizzo. It's Friday, April 5th. Here's what's

0:08

driving the day. First up,

0:11

it's Friday when we try to catch you up on

0:13

Trump trial news. This week there

0:15

was a theme across three criminal

0:17

cases, three losses for Trump from

0:19

three different judges. First,

0:21

there was Judge Juan Marchán in the New

0:23

York Hush Money case who tightened

0:26

a gag order on Trump that

0:28

now prohibits the former president from

0:30

attacking family members of the judge,

0:32

court staff, and lawyers in

0:34

the case. Next was Scott

0:36

McAfee, the judge overseeing the Georgia racketeering

0:39

case, who yesterday dismissed Trump's

0:41

motion to throw out the case

0:43

on First Amendment grounds. McAfee

0:46

easily slapped away that argument by

0:48

pointing out that there is no

0:50

relevant First Amendment defense for speech,

0:54

in quote, furtherance of criminal activity.

0:57

Finally, and the most surprising decision of

0:59

the week, Judge Eileen Cannon,

1:01

who has made a series

1:03

of favorable rulings for

1:05

the former president denied Trump's

1:08

motion to have the Florida

1:10

documents case dismissed by

1:12

arguing, this is Trump's argument, that

1:15

the Perleone documents were his to

1:17

keep under the Presidential Records Act.

1:21

Notably, in that decision, Cannon

1:23

made reference to, quote, the

1:25

upcoming trial, even

1:27

though she has not yet scheduled

1:29

a trial date. Next up, make

1:32

sure you tune into this week's episode

1:34

of Playbook Deep Dive. I sat down

1:36

with Anna Hochamer, one of the leaders

1:38

of the Amendment 4 campaign in Florida.

1:40

That's a November ballot initiative to enshrine

1:43

abortion rights in the Florida Constitution. Specifically,

1:46

Hochamer's job is

1:48

to convince Republicans and Independents to

1:50

back the Amendment. We discussed how

1:53

national politics and pressure from the

1:55

Biden campaign are complicating that

1:57

job. You can listen to that episode wherever

2:00

you get your podcasts. And

2:02

finally, the biggest story today is

2:05

the fallout over Joe Biden and Bibi

2:07

Netanyahu's phone call yesterday afternoon, in which

2:09

the president warned the Israeli leader that

2:12

U.S. policy towards Israel would change

2:14

if Netanyahu didn't take immediate steps

2:17

to relieve the humanitarian catastrophe in

2:19

Gaza and finalize a

2:22

ceasefire. Joining me now to talk

2:24

about that is national

2:26

security reporter Alex Ward. Good morning,

2:28

Alex. Yeah, good morning. So

2:31

Alex, you've got some details about

2:33

the Bibi Biden phone call. Tell

2:36

us what you learned. Yeah.

2:38

So Biden basically made two general demands

2:40

of Netanyahu. One was to make sure that

2:42

there's an expansion of the humanitarian aid

2:44

into Gaza to improve the situation there.

2:46

And then also to empower his negotiators

2:48

to strike a ceasefire and hostage deal

2:50

really as soon as possible, but particularly

2:52

as soon as this weekend. In

2:55

terms of the humanitarian issue, that means opening

2:57

the eras, land crossing into Gaza, right, there

2:59

have been a dearth of land openings

3:01

and that's how you get the most aid

3:04

into the country. It's opening up the Ashdod

3:06

port so more can get in to

3:08

Gaza and be brought in by sea

3:11

and then allowing more trucks to come

3:13

in from Jordan, which has been another

3:15

contentious issue and that's among many demands

3:17

and really within hours, Israel delivered on

3:19

all three, which is quite

3:21

impressive. And the White

3:23

House confirmed this in a statement from the

3:25

National Security Council last night. And then you

3:28

get to a pretty stern part of the

3:30

conversation, which is, you know, Biden

3:32

saying, look, the strike on world

3:34

central kitchen has made humanitarian organizations,

3:36

you know, pause their operations, which

3:38

is only imperiling the lives of

3:40

2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza. So

3:43

it's time to broker a ceasefire, get a

3:45

deal done at least a

3:47

temporary one. And so that could also

3:49

see hostages returned home. And so that

3:51

would both improve the humanitarian crisis there

3:53

and bring around 100 or so hostages

3:55

back from captivity. And

3:58

there's both their meetings now and they'll be meeting. of

4:00

this weekend and Biden's basic message was

4:02

no more delay, no more holding out

4:04

for maybe more leverage or whatever it

4:06

may be, get a deal done, let's

4:08

get this done, let's move forward. Just

4:10

to summarize, so first part of the

4:13

call, some very specific requests on humanitarian

4:15

aid that the Israelis abided by within

4:17

hours of the call. The other part

4:19

of the call is the request

4:21

on the ceasefire, which is also a,

4:23

if not long standing, at least a

4:26

standing request by the Biden administration. What

4:29

do you think the Biden administration

4:31

timeline is on that, Alex?

4:34

Well, John Kirby, the National Security Council

4:36

spokesperson said, really, it was hours and

4:38

days. So I think what we've

4:40

just seen, those three things we just laid

4:43

out, I think those were the

4:45

requests within hours. And I think within days we'll

4:47

see some more action, or at least the US

4:49

will expect to see some more action. On the

4:52

ceasefire. On the ceasefire, right. Or maybe

4:54

something else in terms of the humanitarian. There were

4:56

more humanitarian asks, but I wasn't able to get

4:58

concrete specifics on that. But I was told that

5:00

those three were for sure, but there

5:02

may be some others. There is no

5:04

concrete timeline, but you could expect us

5:07

reporters to go, well, yes, they did

5:09

some stuff after the first hours, but if there's been no

5:11

movement elsewhere, where is

5:13

this deadline? We have no concrete deadline yet,

5:15

but the administration is signaling it's sooner rather

5:18

than later. What

5:20

is the universe of policy options

5:22

that Biden is actually threatening to

5:24

trigger here when he says that

5:27

US policy could change if B.B.

5:29

doesn't listen? Well, the White House

5:32

has studiously avoided saying anything concrete

5:34

about that. But what's in the universe

5:36

could be conditions of military aid, and it could be

5:39

sort of Ukraine-like in the sense of, hey, we're going

5:41

to give you bombs, but you cannot use them in

5:44

certain cities or whatever it may be. It

5:47

could be sanctioning certain members of the

5:49

Israeli government for inciting

5:51

settler violence in the West Bank. It

5:54

could be a cut

5:56

of economic aid. It could be a whole host

5:58

of things. We're not exactly sure. or knowing

6:01

Biden, knowing how incrementally likes to

6:03

go on issues like this, I would not

6:05

expect it to be a massive reprimand if

6:08

we ever get to that point. But any

6:10

reprimand at all really would

6:12

be big in and of itself because that

6:14

just doesn't happen in the history of the

6:16

US Israeli relationship, really. There are

6:18

always threats to and there are occasionally some

6:21

punitive actions taken, including the Biden

6:23

administration sanctioning for violent West Bank

6:25

settlers. But historically speaking, we're

6:28

not even supposed to be having this conversation

6:30

at all. The fact that we're

6:32

having it and has been threatened directly and

6:34

they buy into Netanyahu call the fact that

6:36

a punitive measure could come already

6:38

shows the breaking point we've reached. Finally,

6:40

Alex, do you see this whole

6:43

episode that really played out

6:45

in a very short period of

6:47

time this week affecting the debate

6:50

on Capitol Hill when Congress

6:52

is back next week as

6:54

this long delayed supplemental finally

6:57

makes its way through the House? What

6:59

strikes me is the

7:01

administration has said, look, we need to give aid here. It's

7:04

important for Israel to defend itself. The

7:07

question is if Israel were to run

7:09

afoul of American demands, does that number

7:11

shrink? In which case

7:14

you could see a bunch of Republicans

7:16

go against it. It could empower, say,

7:18

Speaker Johnson's case or at least floated

7:20

case to separate the bills, right, to

7:22

have Ukraine and Israel separate. So I

7:25

don't exactly know what the immediate politics

7:27

of this is on that. But what

7:29

I can say is the politics of

7:31

D.C. on this have changed on just

7:33

Israel in general, have changed in ways

7:35

I would really never expected to see

7:37

so soon. I mean,

7:39

yes, we knew that there were general divisions

7:42

among Democrats, but you are now

7:44

seeing staunch Israel defenders, centrist

7:46

establishment figures calling on Biden to

7:48

condition aid to sanction members of

7:50

the Israeli government to punish Israel

7:53

effectively for its actions in Gaza.

7:55

And that just does not happen.

7:57

This is a whole new political

7:59

environment. And if you're sitting in Israel

8:01

right now, the lights are blinking red because

8:03

it's never, or at least in recent

8:06

times, never been this bad in the relationship. Yeah.

8:08

Alex, thanks so much for breaking that

8:11

down. Excellent work. Thanks for having me. And

8:15

for your schedule today, the House and the Senate are out

8:17

and President Biden will visit Baltimore

8:20

where he will receive an aerial

8:22

tour of the collapsed Francis Scott

8:24

Key Bridge with Maryland Governor Westmore

8:26

and others. Biden will

8:28

then receive a briefing on recovery efforts and

8:31

meet with the families of the men who died

8:33

in the bridge collapse. The

8:35

music in today's show was composed by the

8:37

mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Callen

8:40

Tansel-Suddath is our podcast producer.

8:42

Annie Reese is managing producer. Mike

8:44

Debonis and Zach Stanton are

8:46

our editors. I'm Ryan Lizza. Thanks for listening.