Principals

☞ White House: “Don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative,” Joe Biden likes to say. The president’s Twitter feed responded to Trump’s announcement with a video featuring his defeated rival’s lowlights, while his administration launched a new website touting their own record.

☞ Chuck Schumer: The New York Democrat said Tuesday he would attempt to lift the debt ceiling in a bipartisan manner during the lame-duck.

☞ Mitch McConnell: McConnell is widely expected to win a Republican leadership election slated for this morning, despite a protest challenge mounted by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.

☞ Nancy Pelosi: As the Speaker contemplates her future in 2023, the New York Times speculates she could leave her leadership position without leaving Congress, taking on a kind of emeritus role within the caucus.

☞ Kevin McCarthy: The Republican leader was just nominated for Speaker of the House by his party. Now he has to start negotiating over rule changes that the House Freedom Caucus has demanded in exchange for their support.

Biden told reporters that initial information indicated it was unlikely that Russian was responsible for a missile that crossed into Poland’s territory, after convening an emergency meeting about the blasts on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali. Poland’s president said today that the explosion seemed to be an accident and that it was “very likely” caused by Ukrainian air defense. NATO and Group of 7 leaders offered “full support” for the investigation into the blasts, which killed two people near Poland’s border with Ukraine on Tuesday. Russia denied responsibility, while a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted that “only Russia is responsible for the war in Ukraine and massive missile strikes” and called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

The White House is asking Congress to approve $37.7 billion in additional emergency assistance for Ukraine as part of an omnibus government funding bill lawmakers are aiming to pass before a Dec. 16 deadline. Officials expect the funding to last through the fiscal year, meaning passing the package would avert a Ukraine aid fight with what’s expected to be a Republican-controlled Congress – at least until next fall.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endorsed a bipartisan Senate bill that would codify protections for same-sex marriages, citing its carveouts for religious liberty. While the church reiterated its doctrine opposes same-sex unions, it thanked the bill’s supporters for “preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.”

— Morgan Chalfant

Punchbowl News: Republican senators who spoke to Punchbowl predicted that Sen. Rick Scott would get between 6 and 10 votes in the leadership election later this morning.

Playbook: There is a last-ditch effort afoot among some House Democrats to try to use the 14th amendment to bar Trump from returning to office.

The Early 202: Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., who spearheaded negotiations around a bill codifying same-sex marriage rights, predicted the legislation will “squeak through” a procedural vote later today but that more Republicans would support the measure on the final vote.

President Trump announces he’s running, Fox cuts away

MAR-A-LAGO, Florida — “In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Donald Trump officially declared roughly twenty minutes into what would turn into an hour-long speech Tuesday.

The announcement came as Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which ended in a deadly riot at the Capitol, were back in the spotlight — this time, because top Republicans blamed Trump-backed candidates running on a January 6th-inspired message for losing critical midterm races around the country.  He also faces his biggest internal threat in the party since his second impeachment in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who many conservatives have rallied around after a blowout win on Tuesday.

Some advisors had pushed him to delay his presidential announcement until after a runoff in Georgia, which features yet another Trump-backed candidate who underperformed on Tuesday, retired football star Herschel Walker. Trump was already widely blamed for costing Republicans two runoffs in the state in early 2021 by baselessly casting doubt on whether their votes would be counted. The losses handed Democrats a Senate majority.

Trump has threatened to make a presidential announcement since last year, though, and would not be deterred a moment longer. After “Do You Hear The People Sing?” from Les Miserables warmed up the crowd, he strode out promptly at 9 P.M. to a friendly crowd at the resort he owns.

A Trump advisor previewed the speech as a forward-looking contrast between his record and vision and an unpopular Biden administration. It was a mix of Greatest Hits — he touted the economy under his administration, a strong border with Mexico, moves toward energy independence, and even claimed he went “decades” without a war during his four years in office — and meandering riffs on the news, including a discussion of a missile that landed in Poland that morning. “People are going absolutely wild and crazy and they’re not happy,” Trump said.

He repeated his now-familiar call to execute drug dealers, citing China as a model, and defended himself from a federal investigation into his possession of highly classified records stored at the same compound where he delivered his speech. “Obama took a lot of things with him,” he said, sending fact checkers spinning into action.

SHELBY’S TAKE

While Trump did largely focus on comparing his time in office to America under President Joe Biden, his “very big announcement” largely fell flat. Trump, many noted during and after the speech, appeared subdued at times — a point that the DNC War Room quickly jumped on, dubbing him “Low Energy Trump” just after the evening wrapped up.

What’s more, Trump’s speech wandered as it dragged on, to the point that even Fox News cut away from its live broadcast. (Trump has chafed this week at critical coverage from Rupert Murdoch’s news empire.) It’s hard not to see the differences between Tuesday’s announcement and that of his very first presidential bid back in 2015, when he descended down the golden escalator at Trump Tower to deliver a speech that was forceful, passionate, and at the time, extremely transgressive.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

While the muted tone was what stood out for many viewers, to some Republicans it was the kind of Trump they preferred — one who seemed more in control, and less prone to wild outbursts that they worried distracted from his core policy message.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. a Trump ally, tweeted that “he will be hard to beat” if he “continues this tone and delivers this message on a consistent basis.” Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wrote that Trump is “unbeatable” so long as he continues to focus “on the American ppl and the future, not the past.”

Trump being ridiculed by his critics is also a familiar position, although the reasons are different than in 2015, when few elites in either party took his run seriously. He has a tendency to force them to take him seriously, whether they want to or not.

A cranky, deflated Republican Party picks its leaders

Reeling from their disappointing midterm performance, Capitol Hill Republicans spent Tuesday gearing up for a series of leadership fights likely to be more nasty than suspenseful.

In the Senate, Florida’s Rick Scott, who guided the party’s failed attempt to retake the chamber as chair of the NRSC, announced what is widely considered a longshot bid to replace Mitch McConnell as minority leader.

“It’ll be a chance to crash and burn twice in the same year,” retiring Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C, quipped to Semafor.

Scott says the GOP should put forward a detailed policy agenda — which likely isn’t helping his chances. This past spring he released a campaign blueprint that called for sunsetting federal programs like Social Security and Medicare every five years and imposing a minimum income tax on Americans. McConnell immediately disavowed the plan, but Scott kept promoting it anyway, and Democrats exploited it relentlessly in attack ads as part of their closing pitch to voters.

But the clash is also yet another proxy fight for the GOP’s slide into Trumpism. Scott has lashed his brand to the former president, who vocally wants McConnell gone. McConnell on Tuesday blamed Senate losses on Tuesday on MAGA nominees and unnamed party leaders who “frightened independent and moderate Republican voters” with “chaos” and “negativity.”

McConnell sounded unperturbed by the challenge. “I have the votes,” he said at a Tuesday press conference.

Over on the other side of the Capitol, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy won his party’s leadership race 188 to 31 over Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., but still faces fierce opposition from the House Freedom Caucus, who are withholding the votes he needs to become Speaker of the House.

“We need someone who has broad credibility with conservative and centrists and moderates throughout the conference and I think that what you just saw is that Kevin doesn’t have that,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. told reporters after the vote.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. has emerged as McCarthy’s top advocate on the far right. She emerged from Tuesday’s meeting saying she was “very excited” by the results and that McCarthy “is listening to all of our voices.”

On a podcast, Gaetz warned Greene not to trust McCarthy. “At the first opportunity, he will zap her faster than you can say ‘Jewish space laser,’”  Gaetz said, a reference to Greene’s since-disavowed belief in an antisemitic conspiracy that claimed a Jewish banking family used orbital weapons to start wildfires in California.

Even if McCarthy secures the votes to become Speaker, it may require accepting rules that allow the House Freedom Caucus to continuously threaten his removal if he steps out of line — a tactic they previously used to oust Speaker John Boehner. With few votes to spare and a divided caucus, McCarthy faces a tough task navigating the party through a difficult stretch that may include high stakes negotiations over the nation’s debt limit.

“We have our work cut out for us,” McCarthy told reporters after the vote, citing their expected small majority. “We’ve got to listen to everyone in our conference.”

— Joseph Zeballois-Roig and Kadia Goba

A delegation of former very senior Chinese government officials spent the last week in New York quietly meeting with former US officials, business leaders, think tank types and journalists.

The mission was the first of its kind since before COVID and was described by one Chinese diplomat as “Track 1.5” — somewhere between official diplomacy and more informal “Track 2” contacts.

The former officials came carrying a conciliatory message and a plea for “steady and stable” bilateral relations. One said in a meeting with journalists Tuesday that the current U.S. attempt to squash Chinese tech and decouple the economies will lead to “a lose-lose situation, or at best a Pyrrhic victory.”

The conversations took place before and after a cordial face-to-face meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden. And while the message from Beijing was conciliatory, the Chinese delegation heard in return a lot of pessimism about the direction of relations. The hard line on China is a rare bipartisan issue, and the 2024 presidential campaign will feature a Republican race to the most hawkish position.

— Ben Smith

One Good Text With ... Henry Paulson

• “Utterly captivating — and equally unsatisfying.” That’s how The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta describes Mike Pence’s book, So Help Me God. Pence offers some illuminating tidbits, Alberta writes, but the book is also “singularly frustrating, tortured in its appraisal of so many history-making moments and reluctant to reflect meaningfully on the author’s view of them.”
• The U.S. has intelligence that Russia may have delayed announcing its withdrawal from the Ukrainian city of Kherson in part to avoid giving the Biden administration a political win ahead of the midterm elections, according to a CNN report.
• In a barometer of conservative views on the apparently Russian-made missile that landed inside Poland and killed at least two people, National Review quickly urged caution and restraint by NATO. Writes Jim Geraghty: “There is no reason for the U.S. and its allies to get into a shooting war with Russia over what was, as far as we know at this point, bad aim on the part of the Russians.”

WHAT THE LEFT ISN’T READING: Republicans want to flip Sen. Joe Manchin’s, D-W.Va., seat next election cycle. Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W. Va. is planning to run.

WHAT THE RIGHT ISN’T READING: Former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg testified at the Trump Organization’s criminal trial in New York on Tuesday.

— with our partners at Ground News

Join me in Washington DC or online Nov. 18 for our third event on the future of news.

Semafor Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith will be speaking with the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, author of “Confidence Man,” the definitive new portrait of former President Trump. I will be chatting with former presidential spokesfolk Symone Sanders, Jason Miller, Joe Lockhart and Anthony Scaramucci as well as Senator Amy Klobuchar. Semafor Executive Editor Gina Chua will be sitting down with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

RSVP here to join us virtually — or to join us in person for the event and the happy hour that follows.

— Steve Clemons

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