Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Who Wins Thanksgiving 🦃

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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.

Who Wins Thanksgiving 🦃

Houdini ✈️: Hating airlines is the go-to story every Thanksgiving — now, airlines have figured out a way to say, "Not my fault."

😡 The anger that used to be focused on airlines is now focused on the Trump administration.
- 🎤 "We'll be able to ramp up as quickly as the FAA. The FAA is gonna be the constraint," said United CEO Scott Kirby.
Look forward ▶️: We're one bad snowstorm away from nobody making it home for Thanksgiving.

Autism Speaks 👋: See you on November 22 at Hearth & Soul in Ladue, in my hometown of St. Louis, as the "Born Lucky" journey continues.

📚 I'll be signing books and have something special for anybody who purchases a book there.
- 🎫 Tickets are $10, and all proceeds go to the St Louis chapter of Autism Speaks.
- ☑️ RSVP at BornLucky.com.
  - 🥤 Food and drinks will be served.

Two Weeks 2️⃣

State of political play 🗣️: Donald Trump will spend the next two weeks barnstorming the country because he is so worried about affordability — yet Democrats are focused on a meaningless vote about the Epstein files that will accomplish nothing.

🦃Two weeks from tonight, America will gather for Thanksgiving.

🏈At tables and while watching football or shopping over the weekend, America will collectively take stock.
- 💰Poll after poll tells us the most important issue is prices.
  - 💸Thanksgiving is all about prices — Food prices. Black Friday prices.
🗣️Donald Trump is so worried about winning Thanksgiving, he's spending the next two weeks touring America touting the economy.

🤷🏼‍♂️Democrats won the elections last week on affordability.
- 🚎A socialist won in New York City focused on free buses.
- 👀Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won Virginia and New Jersey by bigger-than-expected margins.
📈 Their shutdown focused on the coming increases to health insurance costs.
🤦🏼‍♂️Yet D.C. Democrats, best evidenced by the programming at MSNBC and The New York Times, are focused on the Epstein files.
- ‼️AKA "Orange man bad"
- 🤦🏼‍♂️They are all obsessed over a vote next week that will mean nothing.
  - 🤷🏼‍♂️ Don't ask me — here is Jon Stewart and Mark McKinnon
    - 🎤 "It could be the pictures of him and illegal sex trafficked women from Epstein in a, like, forced human caterpillar in Bora Bora, and they'd find a way to say, well, but Hunter Biden's laptop was worse and Burisma and it's fake and none of it ever happened," said Stewart.
    - 🎤 "How many people out there are surprised today that Donald Trump is in these emails? I think very few. And I think the thing Democrats have to be careful with is to prosecute this to the fullest extent, get them on their heels, but get back to affordability," said McKinnon on MSNBC.
- 🔎Go deeper: What do they hope the files show?
  - 🤦🏼‍♂️Democrats love the fight over Epstein — yet they fail to recognize the story won't help them.
    - 🤝The American people know Epstein and Trump were friends.
    - 🗣️They also know the most vocal Epstein victim testified UNDER OATH that Trump didn't even flirt with her — much less have sex.

Faceplant🤦🏼‍♂️: When will Democrats learn? Nine years after the "grab her by the p---y" tape — Democrats should learn
- 🗣️ Telling America Trump is a misogynist, racist, homophobic pig doesn't work.
- ‼️ Because he is not — that's not what the American people see.
- Democrats' entire argument in 2016 = don't vote for that guy
  - 🤦🏼‍♂️How does Epstein help you retake the House in 2026?

🥇Biden is the only person to beat Trump — he did it focusing on something vitally important to America: COVID.
- 🗣️The media unfairly blamed Trump for COVID.
- 😡Biden exploited it.
- ✅Biden won.

Watch tonight📺: Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., on the mistake of focusing on Trump's personality over his policy.

Racist, Misogynistic, Pro-Hitler Young Men 🤦🏼‍♂️

🥊Young men are fighting back against the woke orthodoxy that demonized them for years.

👎🏼That sounds like a good thing — until you realize their leader is a Hitler-loving hype man who thinks women want him to rape them: "They want me to beat the shit out of them," he says.
- 📱This hype man has a million followers on X and 1,300 episodes of his America First" show on Rumble.
Be smart💭: The Left spent 20 years telling young men they were the problem and declaring anything manly toxic — don't be surprised when someone "celebrating" manhood, however deplorably, gets traction.

🎤We said it the other week: There's a civil war in the Republican Party.

😧The issue is dark
- 😳It started with a group holding tiki torches in 2017 in Charlottesville.
- 😳Now, it's the millions of followers of Hitler-lover Nick Fuentes.
  - 👀Nobody knows who Fuentes is besides the millions of young men who listen to him — he's their religion.
  - 📱His audience is mostly men in their late teens to early 30s.

🎤Tucker Carlson brought Fuentes on his show.

😳The interview now has over 6 million views on YouTube.
- Look back🔙: Carlson stood up for Jewish Americans after former Reagan White House communications director Pat Buchanan constantly spewed antisemitic rhetoric.
  - 📺Listen here.
- 💰Tucker changed for obvious reasons — he craves money and relevancy.

🎤"If our reaction to the Tucker–Fuentes–Heritage story is to say 'Eh, Tucker shouldn't have been so soft on him' — we're failing young men," said Mark Halperin.

‼️The scary part about Fuentes (and Tucker) isn't what they are saying — it's that people are listening!

Watch tonight📺: Rob Smith, senior fellow at the Rainey Center for Public Policy, with why young men are so drawn to someone so evil.

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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