The Playbook Podcast

Lara Seligman has a breathtaking account from inside the Pentagon that is based on detailed notes of three classified calls in the hours leading up to Thursday’s terrorist attack outside Abbey Gate at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport that killed almost 200 people.Lara documents the Pentagon’s deepening frustration with reliance on the Taliban to provide security in Kabul (and even drive buses for evacuees), as well as Biden officials’ growing conviction that an attack was coming and a fateful decision to keep the airport’s Abbey Gate open in order to process British evacuees. And, add Hurricane Ida and North Korea to the list of crises President Biden is facing this week. August was supposed to be devoted to highlighting pieces of the Biden economic agenda that is now being assembled by congressional committees into a $3.5 trillion bill.Biden hasn’t held an event devoted to a piece of that bill since the evacuation crisis began.Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

When Kabul fell to the Taliban several days ago, rocking President Joe Biden's pullout operation, the White House made a strategic choice: They doubled down, didn’t apologize and crossed their fingers that the nation would move on quickly.Now, 13 U.S. service members are dead following a pair of suicide bombs — the first U.S. troops to be killed in Afghanistan in 18 months — as are 95 Afghans. The attack, carried out by ISIS-K, is the deadliest assault on U.S. troops in the country in a decade.Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Today is the kind of day that candidate Joe Biden said he was uniquely prepared for.Congress is gone, domestic policy has been momentarily pushed aside, and global crises are colliding. President Biden awakens to the burden of his promises with a busy public schedule completely focused on foreign policy.He receives an update on the situation in Afghanistan from his national security team in the morning, has two bilateral meetings with new Israeli PM Naftali Bennett before noon and hosts a late-afternoon Zoom with governors who have volunteered to help resettle Afghan refugees.Here's what to expect in the day ahead.Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

We try our best around here to sift through the competing narratives each day and present our dear listeners with a coherent story. But this is one of those weeks in American politics when it’s best to lay out some possibilities, especially across the three great challenges that President Joe Biden is facing right now: Afghanistan, the Covid-19 pandemic and Build Back Better.Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

“How dare you?!” … “I’m pissed off!” … "Please, everybody vote for the damn thing.”Those were just some of the choice phrases being thrown around in the House Dems’ caucus meeting Monday night as tensions over the budget standoff between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and moderate Democrats reached a boiling point.The chamber broke shortly after midnight without any deal in place to advance the fiscal blueprint vital to passing President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

A pair of must-reads on Afghanistan overnight:— A WSJ scoop that casts perhaps the harshest light yet on the administration’s performance, by Vivian Salama: “An internal State Department memo last month warned top agency officials of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the U.S.’s Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the document.— A POLITICO tick-tock on “five days of panic” inside the Biden administration as Afghanistan unraveled and crisis ensued, by Alexander Ward, Lara Seligman, Andrew Desiderio, Alex Thompson and Bryan Bender: “[B]y Thursday morning in Washington, more population centers were falling to the Taliban by the hour, including the provincial capitals of Ghazni and Badghis.And, did Barack Obama ruin the party in D.C.?His over-the-top 60th birthday party in Martha’s Vineyard first drew criticism for the size of the guest list during the Delta surge — and then after he slimmed it down, the former president was blasted for throwing an opulent party during a pandemic. It didn’t matter that he was following CDC protocols for an outdoor event.The bashing of the bash is having a chilling effect on the D.C. party scene as (especially Democratic) pols and their staffers scramble to figure out when and where — or even if — they can party again. Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Republicans universally agree that President Joe Biden's bungled handling of the Afghanistan pullout has given them fresh ammunition to attack the commander in chief. Many Democrats think the same. But a major rift is starting to emerge in GOP messaging, as the Donald Trump wing of the party seeks to turn the matter into a base appeal with anti-immigration rhetoric.Over the past week, most GOP lawmakers have lambasted Biden for abandoning interpreters and Afghan civilians who put their lives at risk to help U.S. troops — and are now trapped as armed militias block their escape.But a not-insignificant chunk of the party is using the Afghanistan disaster as fodder for their campaign against immigration. The unsubstantiated charge: that Biden intentionally fumbled the withdrawal in order to flood the U.S. with Afghans. Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

President Joe Biden's average approval rating is below 50% for the first time this year. 538: 49.8% … RCP: 49.4%The dip has been driven by a slow erosion among independents that seems tied to the Delta surge and predates the problems in Afghanistan.It also may be inevitable. FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley: “We don’t know the range in which Biden’s approval will ultimately settle, but if the past two presidents are any indication, it’ll be a narrow one: Donald Trump’s approval mostly hovered between 40 and 45 percent during his presidency, while Barack Obama’s approval tended to fall between 45 and 50 percent.”And, in the coming days we’re going to be picking out the most consequential proposals in the infrastructure plan and digging into the politics of these policies. But first we want to hear from you. What policies do you most want to see unpacked? What are the political crosscurrents that you’re witnessing from your perch at, say, a House committee, Cabinet agency or outside interest group? What policies are the most vulnerable and unlikely to survive the sausage-making process? What are the hidden land mines in Build Back Better?Send us your scoops, insights, requests and tips at playbook@politico.com. We’ll keep it all confidential, and it will help us cover this unprecedented period of legislating in Washington.Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Before President Joe Biden took the podium to address the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan on Monday, senior Obama White House advisor David Axelrod was on CNN giving him some free advice: “You cannot defend the execution here. … This has been a disaster,” he said. “He needs to own that failure. … He’s the commander in chief.”As Axelrod said after, Biden did anything but. Even as he asserted that “the buck stops with me,” Biden pointed fingers at everyone but himself: Donald Trump tied his hands with his deal with the Taliban, the Afghan army wasn’t willing to fight, and some civilians didn’t initially want to leave.Most of all, he defended the pullout he’s been advocating for years.Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Every biography or deep profile of President Joe Biden emphasizes his stubbornness, the chip on his soldier, his lifelong desire to prove doubters wrong — whether it was overcoming a stutter, or demonstrating his intellectual bona fides or entering political contests the experts said he couldn’t win.This is what the right gets wrong about Biden. Many conservatives see Biden’s Afghanistan blunder as evidence of a president who is detached and a plaything of his strongest advisers. Nothing could be further from the truth.Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.