Welcome to The Point with Chris Cillizza – a brand new nightly newsletter that builds on everything you loved about CNN Politics Nightcap. This new addition to your evenings will cut through the day's news and get right to The Point with analysis from Chris Cillizza and co-author Saba Hamedy. See something you like -- or don't? Or something that we can do better? Let us know. Send your thoughts to cillizza@cnn.com. Enjoy!
'We're going to have a great, great surprise.'
That's President Donald Trump this afternoon on the chances of Senate Republicans finding the 50 votes they need to pass their version of health care reform. (Trump promised this bigly surprise during a photo op with the World Series champion Chicago Cubs. A semi-related thought: Cubs manager Joe Maddon looks like Guy Fieri. And an observation: The Cubs stink this season.)
Here's the thing: There is no "great, great" surprise out there.
Is your world rocked????
Trump doesn't know something about the math of the Senate that we all don't. And absolutely nothing has changed on that math between when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to delay a vote Tuesday and the very second you are reading this. Nine Republican senators – roughly evenly divided between conservatives who think the bill doesn't do enough to repeal Obamacare and centrists who think it does too much – oppose the bill. McConnell is pushing for changes and a new score from the Congressional Budget Office to make it more palatable. Might it work? Sure. Is it likely to work? Still no.
What Trump is doing here is what he has done his entire adult life: Faking it until he makes it. Project optimism. Suggest that "things" are happening. Hope that by doing so you somehow create actual, real life momentum.
He's selling. Pure and simple.
What happens if the Senate bill goes sideways, which is still a highly possible outcome? Trump will blame Democrats for their unwillingness to play ball. He might throw a GOP senator (or two) under the bus. Then he'll move on to something else. It's what he does. It's who he is.
Inside Mitch McConnell's math From CNN's Phil Mattingly
Chris asked Phil, CNN's intrepid congressional correspondent, this: So the big question everyone wants answered is which way does Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell go – more toward the center to pick up, say, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, while appeasing Rob Portman, Shelley Moore Capito etc.? Or does he move to the right to try to lock up Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee?
What they're gunning for – and why this is so, so damn difficult – is to thread the needle between everyone else. Use the deficit savings for opioid and Medicaid/rural hospital funding to lock in your Medicaid expansion senators (or, say, a certain Gov. Sandoval) and/or those with significant populations in the program, while providing some kind of state option to ratchet back more regulations to bring Lee and Cruz on board. Then let everyone else address their various concerns during the amendment process. If there's a sweet spot that actually exists, that's likely where it would be. The question is whether one actually exists.
"Legislative dog food" is how CNN's White House correspondent Jim Acosta described the current state of the Senate bill.
And that wasn't the best quote on the bill today. That honor goes to Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts who, when asked how you can get a bill that makes moderates and conservatives happy, replied: "Even porcupines make love." So, so true. Really. It's true!
ICYMI
Seeing double? Us, too. The Chicago Cubs visited D.C. on Wednesday, which led to this glorious photo of Sen. Ted Cruz and Cubs owner Tom Ricketts.
FYI: It isn't the first time people have mistaken the two guys. Last May, Ricketts said a Cruz fan walked up with a pen and notebook asking Ricketts for his autograph. When he said he was the Cubs owner, the fan walked away. (Must have been a Cardinals fan.)
"Apparently, I wasn't cool enough for his collection of autographs," Ricketts told reporters. "I've had people walking up really believing I'm Ted Cruz. I think from a lot of the photo angles it may look that way, but in person you can see the difference."
Cruz, in a follow-up tweet, said: "For some reason, ppl keep insulting Tom by saying he looks like me. Poor guy."
Give your eyes a break and your ears a treat. Here's Chris' music pick of the day: Jeff Tweedy's "Together At Last" album. Listen here on Spotify.
#2020 WATCH
During the White House press briefing Wednesday, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said "of course" Trump is running for re-election in 2020. Coincidentally, her comments come the day of the first re-election fundraiser for Trump at, natch, a Trump hotel.
More from CNN's Liz Landers: The President heads a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue tonight for a fundraiser for the Republican National Committee ... being held at his very own namesake hotel. Trump International, which has become a watering hole for members of the administration and hangers-on alike, will transform into a Trump Pence Victory Fund dinner tonight, It's a whopping $35,000 a person for dinner and $100k if you want to be on the host committee.
The big headline this morning was that only 17% support the Senate GOP's health care plan, but there are some serious red flags for Democrats as well in today's new NPR/PBS/Marist poll.
Core groups that make up the Democratic base are lukewarm on their legislative leaders. Only 45% of liberals and 44% of blacks — two groups that overwhelmingly backed Hillary Clinton in November — say they approve of Democrats on the Hill. Meanwhile, only 36% of soft Democrats and 33% of adults under 30 years old give Democrats in Congress a thumbs up.
It's not a whole lot better for Republicans, though. The congressional GOP doesn't even receive majority support from conservatives, hitting only 48% approval from that group. They fall short among evangelicals and soft Republicans, hitting only 44% and 42% approval respectively. And on health care, the core issue of the week, only one in five adults approves of the job of the congressional GOP. Only 41% of Americans who approve of Trump say they back congressional Republicans' handling of health care on the Hill.
WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS?
Trump accepted an invitation from French President Emmanuel Macron to visit Paris on July 14.
From CNN's Liz Stark: Looks like Trump followed Energy Secretary Rick Perry's advice from Tuesday's press briefing.
Q: This morning, President Macron of France called President Trump and invited him to come to Bastille Day, July 14. Do you see this as a way that the French are taking up his suggestion for negotiating a new climate change agreement? And would you urge him to make the trip?
Perry: I would always look at an invitation to a party as a good thing. (Laughter) Trump's "oui" to the invite comes as something of a surprise, given all his more recent comments about France. After the President pulled out of the Paris climate accords, he said in a statement in the Rose Garden: "We don't want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won't be. They won't be. I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."
But even before he was a presidential candidate, Trump was critical of the country. "France is losing its businesses and wealth rapidly and day by day," he tweeted in 2012.
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