Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Travel Nightmare Solved ✈️

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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.

Travel Nightmare Solved ✈️

Whoops🤦🏼‍♂️: I called my mother this morning — just like any good son should on her birthday.

📞But I totally forgot to wish her a happy birthday — instead, I started talking about holiday plans.
It gets worse🗣️: She very graciously let me babble on until…
- 💬Wait for it, my wife texts the family group chat during the call to wish my mother happy birthday.
  - 🤣I can't make it up!
🎂Happy Birthday, Mom — love and respect you beyond words!

Must Read📰: Politico's interview with Steve Bannon warning about the rise of populism on the Left mirrors many of our segments over the past few months.

Ground Them All 🛬

🤷🏼‍♂️Let me solve the coming air travel nightmare

🛬Ground all private jets — every one of them — until the shutdown is over.
- 🛩️Make all people flying private and corporate jets fly commercially.
  - Reality🤷🏼‍♂️: It takes just as much work for an air traffic controller to deal with a private jet as a commercial flight.
    - ✈️Yes, I know often private jets use different airports — but not always.
      - ‼️The enroute centers, departure and arrival controllers are the same.
  - 🤬Senators and House members would get angry phone calls from donors and corporate CEOs
  - 🤷🏼‍♂️Celebrities and CEOs would go through airports like the rest of us for Thanksgiving travel
    - ‼️Yes, they too could experience the ground stops and delays
      - 🕦Today in the Northeast, commercial flights are delayed three-plus hours because of ATC staffing shortages.
  - 🤷🏼‍♂️Grounding private aviation would make up for more than (or go a very long way to) the 10% schedule reductions the FAA needs.

‼️Holiday travel is always a mess, but this year is going to be hell.

✈️40 major airports are going to be impacted by the FAA's reductions
- 🛄Atlanta Airport
- 🛂Reagan National Airport
- 🛅Los Angeles Airport
- 🛃LaGuardia Airport
  - Zoom out🌎: Funny — only one private airport is on that list.
  - More🤦🏼‍♂️: It's not just those airports — it's flights to and from all those airports.
Reality check✅: If Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, etc., plus all the CEOs of major corporations and the 1000s of others with private jets, flew with the rest of us, there would be no need to cancel thousands of commercial flights at the country's biggest airports ahead of Thanksgiving.

Look👀: At any given moment, NetJets and Flexjet have dozens, if not hundreds, of flights in the air. You can see them here

✈️NetJets is the biggest airline in the world by number of planes
- 🛩️At 5 p.m. today, 179 NetJets were flying
✈️Flexjet is another big (private) airline in the world
- 🛩️At 5 p.m. today, 76 were flying

📊Seriously, the next time you are delayed at the airport, just check out all the private flights that aren't. You can see them by aircraft type here:

Gulfstreams
Challengers
Citations
- Note📝: This doesn't count all the corporate flight departments and celebrities that hide their tail numbers from public view.

🤷🏼‍♂️Ground them all — it will free up the airspace.

☀️Especially in the Northeast and Florida
👀The big shots should face a choice
- ⚖️Either use their influence with the Senate for good or fly with the rest of us.
  - ‼️The shutdown would be solved within hours.

📺But it won't — so we'll talk to Shelby Talcott, Semafor politics reporter, about Trump's plan to publicly force pain and still win the PR war.

Trump 2.0

👀It's been a year since President Trump won the presidency — and we've learned the Trump 2.0 presidency is very different from Trump 1.0.

😡Trump 1.0 was messy and chaotic.
👀Trump 2.0 looks different —
- 🧍🏼‍♂️A different person
- 👓A different vision
- 🔥No firings of Cabinet members
- 🔥No firings of chief of staffs
- 📃It's detailed on every level
  - 🤷🏼‍♂️Why? Because Trump had time to plan it.
👀Now, who's Trump's next targets?
- Senator Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
- Liz Cheney
- Jack Smith
- Lisa Cook
- President Joe Biden

Zoom out🌎: 43% of Americans approve of Trump's presidency today

📆At this point in Trump 1.0, 39% of Americans approved of his presidency.
- 👍🏻The administration has been stunningly efficient.
  - ☮️Brokered peace in the Middle East
  - 💸Delivered $4.5 trillion in tax cuts
  - 🔒Secured the southern border
  - 📉Kept inflation flat despite tariffs
  - 📉Lowered gas prices
  - 📈Brought stock markets to record highs

Watch tonight📺: Jonathan Karl, author of "Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America," on how different Trump is this time around.

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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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