Hey, good morning Playbookers. I'm Rugged Monovalin. It's Wednesday. We're halfway through September,

and this is your Politico Playbook Daily Briefing.

Alrighty, before we get into it, Gavin Newsom survived the recall election in California.

Survived slash decimated. The recall election in California, Survived slash decimated.

The recall election in California, early estimates Wednesday morning had the margin that'll keep Newsom in office by over 20%.

Exit poll numbers from Edison Research had some interesting nuggets.

More than 4 in 10 Democrats called coronavirus their top issue.

That's compared to one in five Republicans.

Republicans were three times as likely as Democrats to call the economy their top issue.

Stephanie Grisham writes in her upcoming book that she did not believe that the election was stolen

and tried to convince Melania Trump

there was no grand conspiracy to unfairly deny her husband a second term.

But, as senior Trump aide provided text messages to Playbook, suggesting that Grisham was sympathetic

to, and in one instance, tried to assist efforts to stop the certification of the election

and her home state of Arizona.

On November 5th, after Arizona's Attorney General Mark Bernovich refuted claims from Donald Trump's

supporters that voters who used Sharpies had their ballots improperly disqualified,

Christian forwarded his tweet to a Trump aide and wrote of the AG, told you, useless.

The following week on November 12th,

Grish texted the same aide with a Washington Post report about Bernovich telling Fox News that there was, quote,

no evidence of fraud that would change the results in Arizona.

She wrote, such an ass.

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