NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight’s 7 p.m. ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.
If you watch one thing: The Billy Bob Thornton monologue about oil in the new hit series “Landman.”
- It’s from the same producer of “Yellowstone.”
- Oil is cool again.
- Public service announcement: It’s worth adding “Landman” to your Thanksgiving viewing schedule.
Programming Alert: Robby Starbuck, the man who forced Walmart (among other major Fortune 500 companies) to end its DEI programs, joins us tonight.
- Walmart CEO John Furner was asked about the shift away from DEI on “CBS Mornings”:
- “We’ve been on a journey. We’re trying to ensure everyone feels like they belong.”
- My thinking: The abandonment of DEI proves the executives of these companies don’t believe anything; they just follow the winds of social media — what cowards.
Cease-fire: A humiliated Hezbollah is on the verge of a cease-fire with Israel — in reality, Israel brought the Middle East’s most feared terror group to its knees.
- They decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership.
- They destroyed its military capacity.
- They took thousands of its best fighters off the battlefield with panache — remember the exploding pagers?
- The Israelis destroyed Hezbollah, embarrassed the Iranians … despite President Biden telling, warning and pleading with them not to.
- The Israelis’ disproportionate and overwhelming aggression and violence exposed Hezbollah and Iran for what they are.
- As usual, the Iranians sold out their fellow Muslim fighters to save the regime.
- As usual, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, President Biden and his team were once again proven completely wrong.
- The Israelis’ disproportionate and overwhelming aggression and violence exposed Hezbollah and Iran for what they are.
- Zoom out: The Israelis just did (and won) by running the playbook Donald Trump promises to …
$20 Avocados and Nuclear Brinkmanship
Here we go: $20 avocados and nuclear brinkmanship with someone the KGB kicked out.
- It’s a hell of a game.
Trump and his team promised Round 2 would be Trump unchained, and that’s exactly what we are getting in his foreign policy.
- Newly minted deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, laid out how Trump plans to deal with Russian President Vladmir Putin.
- “I’ll give one tip away that the president (-elect) has mentioned. He will say to that murderous former KGB colonel, that thug that runs the Russian federation, that you will negotiate now or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts.”
- Watch the whole thing here – is this how Trump will handle foreign policy?
- “I’ll give one tip away that the president (-elect) has mentioned. He will say to that murderous former KGB colonel, that thug that runs the Russian federation, that you will negotiate now or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts.”
- What I am thinking: Damn!
- Erick Erickson agrees that this is a good policy.
- “This is actually the best way to force Putin to stand down and end the war. It’s a grown-up policy.”
- Erick Erickson agrees that this is a good policy.
- Be smart: “Escalate to deescalate” is the Russian model — two egomaniacs playing chicken with nuclear weapons could end, well, badly.
Call Trump foreign policy 2.0 the biggest game of chicken.
- Look back: “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his,” Trump once said to Kim Jong Un. It worked – the North Korean strongman backed down.
$20 Avocados: Today, Mexico threatened tariffs on American goods if Trump makes good on his promise to tariff Mexican products 25% unless the country stops drugs and illegal immigrants.
- The notoriously anti-Trump Bulwark headlines, “Dark Times for Guac Lovers.”
- Spare me.
- Please stop — no avocados are going to cost $20.
- The economic freakout by even people like the normally reasonable Chris Cillizza misses the point.
- Yes, yes, we know tariffs raise prices for the consumer — that’s why they aren’t going to happen.
No appetite: It appears Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau folded in less than 24 hours, saying today:
- “I had a good call with Donald Trump. We talked about some of the challenges we can work on together. It was a good call. This is something we can do.”
Trump loves to use tariffs as a stick with allies.
- Is it particularly diplomatic? No.
- Does it work? It did in his first term.
Trump is playing very high-stakes poker – see above … it worked for Israel. Is Russia like Iran? See above — in many ways, yes.
Sword and the Shield: Will America’s military be ready? Watch our interview with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Kamala Harris, the Sacred Cow!
Democrats should be really, really angry.
Vice President Kamala Harris lost because of herself.
- She is/was the same arrogant, unlikeable and unrelatable candidate who dropped out before Iowa in the 2020 primaries.
- She is the same gaffe-ridden interviewee who self-owned in a Lester Holt interview about the border and couldn’t come up with anything she would do differently than Biden on “The View.”
- She is the same progressive who laughed and word-salad her way through by doing whatever the machine wanted but had no ideas of her own.
BUT: Democrats want – to borrow a phrase – to be unburdened by what has been.
- “Pod Save America” — led by the Obama brain trust of Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor — took the mantle of liberal elite zeitgeist from “Morning Joe” a few years ago.
- So it’s no surprise that they got the postmortem interview with Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, among others. Listen to the interview – they view Harris as a sacred cow.
- Among the things they blamed for Harris’ loss:
- She was behind from the beginning.
- Voters wanted change.
- They didn’t have enough time — 107 days between the start of her campaign and the election.
- Harris had a huge favorability deficit — because of negative media, not because she is highly unlikeable.
- Voters didn’t remember how bad Trump was/is.
- Biden was historically unpopular.
- Voters didn’t know Harris.
- She was too loyal to Biden.
- Trump’s campaign was racist by trying to recruit Black men.
- Forty-seven minutes into the podcast, they blamed the Democratic lawyers who wouldn’t let them break the law as they alleged Republicans did.
- I stopped listening.
- Fact check: She got handed the nomination on a silver platter, plus $1 billion dollars and many billions more in fawning earned media.
- Numbers don’t lie: We predicted this from Day 1, but it’s worth revisiting …
- Harris peaked about seven weeks after Biden named her as his replacement.
- What changed? Exposure.
- The American people loved the IDEA of her — but they didn’t like her.
- The campaign couldn’t hide her forever.
- She did interviews — mostly to friendly media.
- She gave speeches.
- She held rallies.
- What changed? Exposure.
- Harris peaked about seven weeks after Biden named her as his replacement.
- Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.
- Trump got the center-right and the center-left: working-class white males.
Why hasn’t the Left figured out that they have to move towards the center?
- To be fair: Biden did — that’s how he won in 2020.
- Then, on his first day in office, Biden ran as far to the left as possible with his executive orders.
- The progressive ideology is inherently un-American. People don’t want it.
- More importantly: Simple math equations, the numbers aren’t there.
- Read this great take from The Liberal Patriot about my home state of Missouri.
Truth bomb: Democrats can’t win in the future without being honest about the past.
- Remember Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who got crushed by his own party for daring to say that he didn’t want his little girls playing on sports teams with boys?
- Watch my interview with Moulton here.
Hold my beer: California Governor Gavin Newsom soft-launched his 2028 presidential campaign by promising California would underwrite the electric vehicle tax credits Trump promised to cancel.
- Fine print: For every electric vehicle except for Teslas, which are made in California.
Remember when Democrats made fun of Republicans for playing to the Fox News audience? Democrats are now doing the same thing, but “Pod Save America” is far, far more liberal than Fox News was conservative.
Tune into “On Balance with Leland Vittert” weeknights at 7/6C on NewsNation. Find your channel here.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.