Good Thursday morning. I'm Anna Palmer and welcome to your Politico Playbook audio briefing, sponsored by SoftBank.

And I'm Jake Sherman. Let's look at yesterday in review. The White House said the trip yesterday to El Paso and Dayton was not a photo op and they completely shut out media. They said it was for good reason. It would have disrupted people in the hospital who were trying to work and heal. but then they said people were going gaga for the president, which would have been a great visual for a leader who's criticized for not being able to handle condolence as well. The president said people who were criticizing him were political people. These are people looking for political gain, and I've tried to stay out of it. Between El Paso and when Dayton, he criticized Joe Biden on Twitter, saying his speech was so boring.

Biden said that Trump should get a life, by the way.

Shortly after, Trump criticized Dayton mayor, Nan Whaley, and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown,

who were with the president for part of yesterday, and were relatively praising of his visit.

He then went on to criticize CNN and Fox News as Shep Smith.

He later turned to Joaquin Castro and his brother Julian, and he ended his day with, quote, fake news Democrats using racism as a tool against him

and a final blast at Bloomberg Opinion executive editor and Trump biographer Tim O'Brien.

All of these missives came in the midst of a trip where he was visiting two communities

that were deeply affected by a series of mass shootings.

The White House and the President's allies will invariably complain about the coverage of this trip.

But no one asked the President to focus on his political foes.

He did it himself. We asked the White House why the President was focus on his political foes. He did it himself.

We asked the White House why the president was upset with the senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown,

and Dayton's mayor, Nan Whaley, and they had no answer. We also asked the White House what

meetings the president has scheduled on gun control because he said he had one scheduled,

but we couldn't find anyone on Capitol Hill who was aware of it. The White House didn't get back to us with an answer.

Here's how it played. The New York Times A1 headline president uses of day a healing to stoke discord,

and the Washington Post leads with on arrival Trump-Stokes divisions.

Breaking over night, President Trump told reporters on Air Force one that he's considering commuting

former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's

sentence. He said, his wife, I think, is fantastic, and I'm thinking about commuting his sentence

...