Aug. 11, 2022: 'Informant' reports jolt Trump world

There are two stories worth your time this morning: one about Donald Trump in the Wall Street Journal and one about Joe Biden in the Washington Post. They intersect with each other in a way that gets to the heart of the most profound question in American politics. First: There’s a government informant inside Trump’s inner circle. (Awake now?) That’s the takeaway from WSJ’s Alex Leary, Aruna Viswanatha and Sadie Gurman, who retell the tale of the Mar-a-Lago records caper with important new details. Second: The second story worthy of your time is Michael Scherer, Ashley Parker and Tyler Pager’s account of recent meetings between Joe Biden and a circle of policy, political and academic experts from outside the administration. The meetings follow Biden’s promise to do more outreach — to seek “more input, more information, more constructive criticism about what I should and shouldn’t be doing,” as he put it during a news conference in January. Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletter Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.