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Today on the Playbook podcast, Todd Blanche gets the gig. Trump nominates his acting attorney general for the full-time job. But watch out, White House has another big oil shot coming. We've got the scoop on that. And what a mess in Congress. Voter-rama starts today, but every time they cut a deal, Donald Trump just blows it up. Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard. And I'm Dasha Burns. It is Thursday, June 4th. It is, and they are still counting votes in California, because of course they are, because that's how it works in California. So, we're going to park that story for another morning and talk to you about a ton of other stuff that's
happening. Um pretty exciting news out of the DOJ. I guess not completely unexpected, but still a big deal, Dasha. Todd Blanche has been doing a sort of 2-month audition for Pam Bondi's old job as attorney general, and Donald Trump has now decided to give him the gig full-time. Yeah, that's that's right. This is exactly what Blanche was hoping for when he stepped into the role. He immediately took up the mantle and started to use the position in a way that the Bondi hadn't successfully done in the eyes of President Trump, which is really to go after his enemies. I mean, just weeks into his tenure as acting AG, prosecutors got a fresh grand jury indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. And of course, there's the
weaponization of funds that has now been all but killed that wasn't successful ultimately, but it got the job done that Blanche needed to do, which is really signal to Trump what his priorities would be if he did in fact get the nomination. And now, last night, senior White House officials told me and my colleague Maya Wiley that the president had decided to nominate Todd Blanche to this role. And my source told me that the president informed Blanche of it on Tuesday, which of course was Blanche's big day on the hill. Blanche, of course, was deputy attorney general while Bondi was still in position and was sort of seen by some Democrats, anyway, as the more reasonable one. But since he's been
elevated into this acting role, he's been super aggressive. The whole thing's felt like a bit of a performance, really, to curry favor with Trump. He's been super uh obsequious towards Donald Trump. Listening to him this week saying, "It was such an honor to be nominated as acting. If he was given the full-time job, that would be an honor. If Donald Trump gave it to someone else, that would be an honor, too." He says it's just clearly trying to say all the right things so the president would give him this role, and indeed it has happened. The big question now, Dasha, is can he get confirmed? Because, of course, this is a position that requires Senate confirmation. And as we've been
talking about every morning on this podcast, the Senate is not a very happy place for Donald Trump at the moment because he has almost on purpose fallen out very hard with a series of Republican senators. And of course, the numbers have already pretty bad for the White House at the best of times in the Senate. Now, there's big question marks, you've got to say, about whether this could go through. Yeah, and look, unlike Bill Pulte, who we can talk about, who is now the director of national intelligence with no national intelligence experience, I mean, Todd Blanche is a lawyer. The thing that raises some eyebrows still,
though, is that he does have these very close ties with the president because he was actually Trump's attorney when Trump was battling those criminal cases in the lead-up to the 2024 election. So, it's a very unusual move to put your own personal attorney, one-time personal attorney, um as the attorney general for the United States. Right. And people like specifically Senator Tom Tillis has talked about how he wouldn't allow nominations of anyone who's seen to be using weaponization. He's talked about January the 6th and that sort of thing. Todd Blanche, you'd have to question whether he would meet uh certainly that senator's bar for what an AG should be. Um equally, I was listening to people talk about this last
night and questioning whether you could just carry on indefinitely without the nomination uh being confirmed anyway. Um Joe Biden, of course, had an acting labor secretary for nearly 2 years during his presidency. and there were concerns raised then by senators that this was setting a dangerous precedent for whoever was the next president. Well, here we are and you could well see a world where Blanche struggles to get through the Senate and who knows, maybe he can just carry on anyway. Crazier things have happened. They have. Let's talk about the war um Donald Trump yesterday and I have to say I did slightly giggle when he said this so it's not obviously not a funny subject but he said, you know, we might
get a deal with Iran by the weekend and it was just like, oh my goodness. I see where the giggle came from. Yeah. Yeah, like we've been talking about this and sort of, you know, it's slightly black humor joking about it on this podcast. Well, he said it again yesterday, you know, I don't think I'll be holding my breath for that one but he needs one because really, really important story that's on the Politico website just broken this morning. This is from our Politico energy team Ben Lefebvre and James Bacalles, which is that the oil industry is warning the White House in a very serious way that as the Strait of Hormuz stays closed as it is at the moment, we're going to see another very, very big spike in global
energy prices just in the next few weeks. Multiple executives in the oil industry saying that they've been signaling this to the White House saying essentially that fuel reserves are running out and that this is a very serious problem and it's going to become a very serious political problem very quickly. I mean, the way that our team writes this is these executives, these industry leaders are sounding the alarm. They're trying to like grab the White House and shake them by the lapels saying you got to prepare for this. You got to prepare for practically and of course they need to prepare for it politically. Again, I mean, going into summer driving season, summer travel season and inching closer and closer to the midterms.
Got a quote from one industry executive saying we are at dangerously low levels already. We've shared these concerns at the highest level of government about what's coming in mid to late June. We're hitting what they call tank bottom. White House is denying it saying the sources are wrong. So, we shall see, but obviously another big spike in oil prices at this point, what are we less than 5 months now until the midterm elections would be politically very toxic indeed for the president. What we're talking about around that is a big vote in the house last night. Finally, one of these war powers resolutions passes. It's felt like it's been coming, but it's a real rap on the knuckles for the president from Congress.
Yeah, with a number of Republicans defecting and voting with Democrats here. It's really striking and we've talked about this with other topics, too, but this is another reason why the revenge tour that the president has done is in fact turning out to be a problem for him on the hill whether we're talking nominations or important legislation like this. Yeah, exactly. And we may get another example of it this morning. The so-called vote-a-rama, the big set of amendments votes in the Senate that we've been waiting for and expecting on the government's bill to finally properly fund immigration enforcement is
starting in the Senate this morning. The very first amendment from the Democrats putting down is going to be targeted at that so-called anti-weaponization fund, what the Dems call the slush fund, the thing that the DOJ said they're dropping. Well, there's going to be an amendment put into this straight away. There's going to be a simple majority vote on it. Which means only four Republican senators would have to go along with Democrats for that to pass. And we certainly know that there's at least four grumpy Republican senators right now Yeah. how much they hated this whole idea. Are they really going to back it in the Senate today? All of them? We shall see, but it could be another bruising
moment for the White House. I mean, and it's not even just the sort of standard defectors that were upset with this fund. You heard serious concern as far as, you know, senior leadership including John Thune who of course I don't think he's going to vote with Democrats here, but this is not popular among Republicans period. Um, plus you have some particularly angry members. You certainly do. And there's another fight coming right down the track on the FISA deal. This was the deal to uh to extend the spy powers that's been kicking around Congress for a good portion of the year. The announcement
that Bill Pulte is going to be uh the new acting DNI has just blown that deal up as well. These things just come out of the left field out of the White House and you can see Republicans in Congress who painstakingly made these agreements just about finally got them to a point where they can press forward. And then the White House throws another hand grenade in there and the whole thing falls apart again. It must drive them absolutely wild. I mean they're tearing their hair out. Like they just got past the weaponization fund which by the way the president yesterday didn't say was officially dead but like is essentially officially dead and now he was praising it again of course. And
now FISA's um in trouble because of the Pulte nomination. I mean you just listed how many we were just going through this long list of challenges uh in Congress for the president all happening in one week and it shows no signs of slowing down really. Self-inflicted challenges. It's almost like he's enjoying, you know, annoying John Thune and Mike Johnson. I'm sure it's not the case but it sometimes feels almost willful, doesn't it? The timing of these announcements are just uh extraordinary. Still gives us something to talk about. Um, thank you very much. Thanks all for listening. Uh we got loads more news and analysis including who knows maybe some results from California. I doubt it. Um, in this morning's Playbook newsletter you can find that at
politico.com/playbook. Um, and Adam Wren will be back with you tomorrow morning. Have a great day. Thanks everybody.
