Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Notes from the Field ✏️

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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.

Notes from the Field ✏️

Editor's note📝: We will have a full Election Day viewers' guide tomorrow.

☀️Rachel and I just returned from a few days on the West Coast for "Born Lucky" — stay tuned for a few exciting announcements.

On the Road 🚙

📱Aside from posting myself taking ginger shots every morning to Instagram, my four days in California were delightful and enlightening.

🍵By way of explanation — my wife ordered a "ginger shot" at breakfast and suggested I join her to experience the "health benefits."
- 📹I then videotaped myself taking a ginger shot every morning during the trip.
  - 🤮YUCK!

🏈Yesterday, I spent much of the day watching football in Los Angeles, waiting for our flight to New York for NewsNation's election special.

📺Ads for Prop 50 (redrawing California's congressional districts) filled every commercial break — at the end of the later games, I could repeat the ads that solely centered on fighting Trump.
- - Follow the money💰: The campaign committees for Prop 50 have raised a combined $118 million.
  - Takeaway‼️: The only thing I heard was California was going to be the state to stand up to Trump.
- 💪🏼Gavin Newsom's "Yes on 50" brought out the big guns
  - President Obama
  - Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
  - Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
  - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
  - Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas

📺Watch some of the ads:

Obama: "California, this November 4, the whole country is counting on you"
Obama: "Make a plan to vote yes on Prop 50"
Ad targeting Trump
Ad targeting Newsom
Ads from local and national groups
"California: Stick it to Trump on November 4th. Vote on 'Yes' on Prop 50"
- Make it stop🛑: By the end of football, I could recite the lines from "You Have The Power."

💬The ad is both explicit and implicit: YOU California voters have the power to stop Trump — this is the Democrats' entire national message right now.

🤷🏼‍♂️ It's working:
- 📰Cal Matters headlines: "California Democrats made Prop. 50 about Trump. Polls show it's working as voting ends"
  - 👍🏻56% of likely voters say they would support the measure.
  - 👎🏼43% say they would oppose it.
  - 😳Seven in 10 Californians, regardless of party, said the outcome of the special election was "very important" to them. That's a record-high level of interest in a ballot measure.
- Look back🔙: Kamala Harris won California by 58.5%.
Takeaway‼️: America is divided, and almost every economic and political incentive revolves around dividing us even more.

About Tomorrow 🗳️

🗳️Tomorrow, the anti-Trump crowd will cast Democrats' likely victories in Virginia and New Jersey as some type of repudiation of Trump.

🤷🏼‍♂️Proof that Trump is unpopular and Democrats fighting against him is a winning strategy:
- 📊CBS polling shows that on immigration, Americans approve of Trump's plan 52% to 48%.
  - 🤷🏼‍♂️That's not huge, but it's roughly four times his margin of victory.

Perspective🧐: Maybe tomorrow doesn't mean that much for Trump.

🗳️In 11 of the past 12 elections, the party NOT in power won Virginia.
🫏New Jersey is an unquestionably blue state.
- 🤦🏼‍♂️Oh please — unless the Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey win by FAR greater margins than Harris did in their respective states, all the extrapolations should stop.
  - 👀Yes, The Economist, I am looking at you
  - 🗞️The Economist headlined today: "Elections this week will show how unpopular Donald Trump really is"
🤷🏼‍♂️Mamdani's likely victory has nothing to do with Trump
- 👀Rather a reflection on the Democratic Party and the over-promised and coddled podcast class.
Look back🔙: Mamdani posted THIS video to X of him trying to talk to voters a year ago.
- Lesson📝: Things change

👀That doesn't mean everything is rosy for Trump.

📉Trump's approval rating is at 41%, down three points from April — but what's more important is the question, "Are you better or worse off financially than a year ago?"

👎🏼51% of likely voters answer "no."
🤦🏼‍♂️Trump gave a different assessment —
- 🎤"No, you're wrong. They went up under Biden. Right now they're going down. Other than beef, which we're working on, which we can solve very quickly…Our groceries are down," said Trump on "60 Minutes."
  - 👀Voters elected Trump to lower prices — tomorrow, we'll see if they still think he can.

Watch tonight📺: Bill O'Reilly on how what tomorrow will actually tell us.

Civil War on the Right 🤜🏼🤛🏼

😳We said it last week: There is a civil war in the Republican Party over Tucker Carlson and others embracing and defending Hitler-loving, Jew-hating losers.

🤷🏼‍♂️Some Republicans found the moral clarity and courage to step up — something Democrats have yet to find for two years.

📺Last weekend, Tucker Carlson embraced and platformed Hitler-lover Nick Fuentes.
- 🗣️Thankfully, the response was what it should be — overwhelming and harsh.
  - 🎤"We cancel stuff all the damn time. Hitler admirers, Stalin admirers, Jew haters. American haters, Churchill haters. You're damn right we're going to cancel them and deplatform them … if they're your friend, there's something wrong with you. No Hitler admirer, Holocaust denier, platformer should be anybody's friend," said Mark Levin.
    - There were also some vocal elected officials.
- 👀Other Republicans appear to have the moral courage of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
  - 🎤"But when actual Republican members of Congress and senators and influential figures take to calling us 'dangerous threats' or even dare to call Tucker 'Hitler' and publicly announce to cancel us, they are not only doing exactly what Democrats did by calling Republicans 'Nazis' and Trump 'Hitler,' but they are also trying to get us killed," said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

Read📰: The Wall Street Journal headlines: "The MAGA Right's Antisemitism Problem"

✏️"By failing to draw a clear line, JD Vance and the Heritage Foundation put conservatism in jeopardy," wrote WSJ.

My take‼️: The Tucker apologists are creating a false equivalency out of cowardice.

🗣️They argue that denouncing Tucker and Fuentes is akin to "canceling" them.
Reality🤷🏼‍♂️: It's a cop-out.
- 🗣️One can condemn someone.
- 🗣️One can disavow them.
- 🗣️One can say they should forever be banished from polite company and any place in their party.
- WITHOUT‼️: Saying they should be deplatformed or have their show taken away.
🤦🏼‍♂️I have heard zero calls to "cancel" Tucker, but the cowards on the Right are fighting against cancellation to curry favor with someone Joseph Goebbels would have loved.

Watch tonight📺: Jack Posobiec on how Republicans lost the moral clarity they (rightly) demanded Democrats have.

WATCH ON BALANCE WEEKNIGHTS AT 9P/8C

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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