Today on the Playbook podcast, the White House is talking about affordability again, but this time it's J.D. Vance who's dispatched to talk to the voters.

Senior Trump administration officials will brief Congress on the controversial boat strikes in the Caribbean and love is in the air in Maga World

and Dasher is going to tell you all about it. Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard. And I'm Dasha Burns. It is

Tuesday, December 16th. Hello, how you doing, Dasha? Great to have you back. I'm so glad to be

back. I missed you. I missed our playbook fun. You've been busy hobnobbing with the president and whatnot, I know. So it's more important people to speak to than me. It's been a bit of a whirlwind, but you know, this is a little more low key than what I've been up to. So it's good to dig back in. An early morning chat over Zoom is about our sort of level of happiness, right? This is like a chill way to start the day. That's right. It's good to dig back in. An early morning chat over Zoom is about our sort of level of happiness, right? This is like a chill way to start the day. That's right. It's like a nice warm bath. A nice warm bath. I don't know if anyone would describe a JD Vance speech as a nice warm bath, but that is the main event on the White House calendar during the day to day. He's being dispatched to Pennsylvania to talk about affordability. And this is super interesting to me, Dash, because Donald Trump was dispatched to Pennsylvania to talk about affordability just a few days ago. And now J.D. Vancey's at the vice president's off to do the same thing. He needs a little backup. Well, see, there's different ways of looking at this. I don't want to say he needs a little backup,

but certainly that's what Democrats are saying, because Trump's speech sort of didn't quite pull off exactly what the White House wanted. He said the lines about making America affordable again, but then he also said the other stuff about affordability being a hoax as well, and that's the sort of clips that everyone picked up from it. So I feel like the message didn't quite go out as they wanted less time.

Do you think Vance is going to do a better job? as well, and that's the sort of clips that everyone picked up from it. So I feel like the message didn't quite go out as they wanted last time.

Do you think Vance is going to do a better job?

One thing that White House officials keep saying about the whole affordability hoax language

is that people are not understanding what Trump is saying.

He's trying to say that Democrats are hypocrites because they cause the affordability problems, but that's not

necessarily how your average American is reading it. And Vance has a lot stronger a connection

to actual working class America. I mean, that's been the really fascinating part of Trump's

rise with blue collar workers in general, because that is not

what he grew up as whatsoever. J.D. is intimately familiar with what it's like to be paycheck

to paycheck and to see your parents struggle and all of that. And so in many ways, he might be able

to tell a very different version of the affordability story than the president. Yeah, I agree. And also, he's just better at staying on message. Like, Donald Trump's an amazing message deliverer, and he says things so emphatically and memorably and repeatedly, but he doesn't stay on message. He doesn't just say the thing he's supposed to say. Whereas I think J.D. Vance is actually a lot better at that.

You know, he's a more disciplined speaker, right?

And so it might be that the only things we hear are from J.D. Vance today, the things that we were meant to hear.

I think that's exactly right.

He's going to staying on message, certainly in a scripted speech.

He's good at it even in tough interviews. Or let's remember when the president was out on the trail and when he first got elected

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