Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Reality Check ✅

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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 9 p.m. ET show, delivered straight to your inbox.

Reality Check ✅

👀 We know what's happening.

📺 Jimmy Kimmel is off the air.
🔙 Cracker Barrel's old sign is back.
🎤 Pam Bondi says hate speech isn't free speech.
🚔 Trump wants to send the National Guard to America's crime-ridden cities.
💻 And tech CEOs are falling over themselves to lavish praise on Donald Trump.
- ‼️That's America right now.

🤷🏼‍♂️ Democrats and many in the media want you to believe we have entered a dystopian, crazy land.

🎤"It is outrageous. It's a page right out of Xi's playbook. This is just despicable, disgusting and against democratic values. Trump and his allies seem to want to shut down speech that they don't want to like to hear. That is not what democracies do. That is what autocracies do. And it doesn't matter whether you agree with Kimmel or not, he has the right to free speech," said Chuck Schumer in an interview last night with CNN.
🎤"America is a less free place if late-night comedians cannot do and say what they want," said Brian Stelter, a CNN chief media analyst.

📝 My job is to give you facts. We haven't entered some kind of crazy end of times. How do I know that?

Because during the previous administration:
- 💉 There were vaccine mandates for private employers.
- 💸 Companies said equity and DEI were as important as profits.
- 🤦🏼 Vice President Kamala Harris was introducing herself with her pronouns and what she was wearing.
- 👏🏼 Rioting was not only allowed, but celebrated, because it was considered a legitimate expression of social grievance.
- 👩🏼‍🎓 President Biden bragged about going around the Supreme Court to forgive student debt.
⁉️ You want me to keep going? I can.
- 🤦🏼 Biden allowed six million illegal immigrants into the United States.
- 📱 Social media companies were censoring conservatives for disinformation.
- 🔥 Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded Fox News fire Tucker Carlson, which they did.

So we can tell you what's happening, but anybody who tells you what it means doesn't have the first clue what they are talking about. In America, things change.

🔚The only thing I know is that it isn't going to end the republic.
- 🔥 Schumer calling for Carlson's firing at Fox didn't end free speech.
- 🔥 Kimmel getting fired at ABC isn't the end of the American experiment.

🏟️ This isn't whataboutism. This is just the game of politics and culture — it's a full-contact sport.

😡 The difference is that the referees right now don't like their favorite team losing.
👍🏼 We can argue all day long that it's bad for America – that our politicians should find their better angels.

🧚🏽‍♀️But that's fantasy land — here, we live in reality.

Programming alert 🚨: Mark Halperin joins us tonight to discuss the pendulum swinging back.

Required reading 📚: He has the best read on Kimmel in The Daily Mail.

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Every night during On Balance, Leland Vittert asks "why?" about the most pressing matters of the day, with an intellectual, balanced and sometimes irreverent take on the news.

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