What’s Happening at the First Republican Debate

On the eve of the first Republican debate, Team Trump had a large dinner with reporters at a steakhouse in Milwaukee. Journalists from an assortment of major outlets—including CNN’s Dana Bash, NYT’s Shane Goldmacher, CBS’s Bob Costa, NBC’s Kristen Welker and Dasha Burns, WaPo’s Josh Dawsey, and ABC’s Rachel Scott—were among the attendees at the off-the-record dinner. Trump’s team—Chris LaCivita, Jason Miller, and Steven Cheung—used the occasion to brutally mock Ron DeSantis; Politico’s Playbook, which was first to report the gathering, even had photos of the pudding snack packs and debate bingo cards passed out to the table.

I’m told it was quite a scene at the restaurant, with DeSantis’s team at another table a few feet away, and longtime Mitch McConnell adviser Josh Holmes dining outside with folks from the Ruthless podcast. Sources familiar with the Trump–press dinner said it was the kind of gathering you’d expect at a debate or convention, but noted it was emblematic of how the Trump campaign engages with traditional media (even if the ex-president is quick to bash them publicly). Meanwhile, DeSantis’s team, which has only just begun to do so (and not exactly consistently), looked on nearby. The dinner, one source said, seemed less an effort to court reporters—whom, I’m told, paid for their own meals—than to project confidence and establish their presence, despite Trump’s absence and the four criminal indictments he’s facing.