POLITICO Playbook Daily Briefing
President Joe Biden will arrive this afternoon in Fort Myers, Fla., where he will survey the damage from Hurricane Ian via helicopter and then receive a briefing on disaster response and recovery efforts from state and local officials, including one of his most bitter political rivals: Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The president and the governor have talked on the phone several times. They’ve complimented each other. Florida Playbook author Gary Fineout calls it “a rare moment of bipartisan calm” in his preview from Tallahassee.
So what explains the detente — especially the mature reaction from DeSantis, who has defined himself by an own-the-libs style of politics?
And it looks as though Elon Musk will go ahead with the $44 billion purchase of Twitter that he first proposed in April. Recall that Musk tried to abandon the deal weeks later and soon found himself in messy litigation with the company. The judge in the case has ruled against Musk at nearly every turn and, with a deposition and trial looming, Musk appears to have reversed course yet again.
Twitter is enormously consequential to American politics and media, and the takeover by Musk will have major implications. He’s such a micromanager that when Tesla was having production issues he famously camped out on a factory floor to help solve assembly problems.
Despite all his tweets, we don’t know the full picture of what Musk plans for the platform. But he has made a few things clear.
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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.