Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Boat Strikes Explode 🧨

Encourage friends and family to subscribe to War Notes here.

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.

Last day📗: Today is the last day to get 25% off "Born Lucky" on Amazon — join us on the "Born Lucky" journey giving hope to every family with a kid having a hard time.

Lines vs. limes🤣: Many of you have rightly questioned my food judgment from our pre-Thanksgiving "War Notes" where I unequivocally stated my love for "cranberry sauce with limes."

🍋‍🟩I have never eaten cranberry sauce with limes — although maybe it's something like a vodka cranberry with lime wedge? I digress.
🥫I love cranberry sauce with LINES — that is the Ocean Spray cranberry sauce from a can rather than any organic, homemade or otherwise unprocessed cranberry sauce.

ICYMI📰: Last week, we pointed you to Michael Green's must-read piece "My Life Is a Lie."

💸The investment manager lays out how the needed income in America to feel "comfortable" is far more than the income of most Americans.
👍🏻No surprise, his interview was one of the best we've seen on the economy and prices.
💰He showed us how government subsidies and handouts effectively make moving up in America too expensive for many middle-class families.
- 📺Click here to watch.

Speaking of prices🌲: Rachel, Dutch and I got our Christmas tree today — it's one of the best traditions we have as a couple.

🫣Our tree cost an amount of money I am embarrassed to write here — my dad reads "War Notes" daily.
- Mark my words👀: Prices and the feeling Americans have about a lack of fairness and ability to get by even after a hard day's work plus overtime is not going to end well for America's elite.
Happier note☕️: We will decorate the tree tomorrow night, and I'll share my God Loves You Hot Chocolate recipe

You might have heard🏈: Lane Kiffin's new $13 million a year contract at LSU (after skipping out on Ole Miss) shows everything wrong with college sports.

Insult👎🏼: That's before we learned the state's governor broke his pledge to never give a massive taxpayer-funded buyout to another coach.
- 🏈Don't hate the player, in this case, the coach… hate the game.
  - 💰Hate that we all foot the bill for college coaches making millions a year.

Venezuela watch 🔍: The continued military pressure on Nicolas Maduro to leave Venezuela is about three things — none of them is fentanyl deaths in America.

🛢️#1 Oil — Maduro giving massive amounts of oil to the U.S lowers the price of oil, which helps Trump and hurts Putin.
📰#2 Politics — The anti-Castro and Maduro political lobby in Congress and South Florida is key for Republicans.
💊#3 Drugs — Yes, Maduro provides safe harbor for lots of drug traffickers and gangs (who mostly specialize in cocaine, not fentanyl)
- ‼️It's especially important for a Marco Rubio presidential run and Trump's popularity in his home state.

Go deeper📰: Politico's must-read about the MAGA political calculation to take Maduro out.

Watch tonight📺: Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., on why Republicans in Congress are not overtly pushing regime change and or an authorization of military force to do it.

Follow the Narrative 🧭

🤦🏼‍♂️Much of the media could not contain their glee that a "double tap" boat strike might be the end of Pete Hegseth's time as secretary of war.

🎤"We know who the fall guy is going to be," said Chuck Todd.
🎤"Trump and Hegseth Think They'll Never Be Held Accountable — Let's Prove Them Wrong," writes Mike Nellis.
🎤"This genie is out of the bottle … the evidence is there, and there's no circling back," said Joe Scarborough.
🎤"I don't think there's any question that that's a war crime, if it happened in that way," said former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

Freakout😬: HORRORS say Washington establishment — President Trump is killing drug runners.

Unsaid‼️: We finally have HIM — Hegseth to many in D.C. is more objectionable than Trump himself — but their logic goes get Hegseth, and Trump becomes more vulnerable.

🤷🏼‍♂️Trump haters tried this during the transition — first they got Matt Gaetz, but Trump refused to back down on Hegseth.
- 👀The first year of Trump 2.0 shows a new Trump who refuses to play the Democrats' game.
- 📊Thus, with one month to go, the betting markets put an 80-plus percent chance of nobody getting fired from his Cabinet/senior staff.
  - 🔥By this time in his first admin, he'd fired
    - ‼️Health Secretary Tom Price
    - ‼️White House chief of staff Reince Priebus
    - ‼️White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci
    - ‼️White House chief strategist Steve Bannon
    - ‼️National security adviser Michael Flynn
Same gameplan🗺️: Let's check the rules, laws, treaties, international law, law of armed conflict and the regulations

Warning⚠️: Nobody liked the hall monitor in high school or the RA in college.

🤦🏼‍♂️When Democrats attempt to bring down Trump and Hegseth on process, it's a losing argument.
- Look back🔙: Remember when Democrats were losing their mind over the "Maryland man" deported to El Salvador?
  - Then👎🏼: Democrats lost badly when they appeared to champion MS-13 members.
  - Now🤦🏼‍♂️: Trump has Democrats championing drug runners.

Reality🤷🏼‍♂️: It doesn't work.

🚫We can opine all day that it should matter — but it doesn't.
Go deeper🤷🏼‍♂️: The American public (in the middle) no longer cares when one side or the other argues about the rules.

Be fair⚖️: For years, this show said to treat drug runners like terrorists.

👀So if Team Washington gets their way, maybe "On Balance" is their next target … but this isn't about me.

Watch tonight📺: Bill O'Reilly on the coming effort to take down Trump on process and the reality of Trump's vulnerability.

America's Worst Mayor 👎🏼

🎄America's worst mayor finally found a problem he can solve — shoplifting and pickpocketing at a beloved, popular and successful Christmas market.

🤦🏼‍♂️Easy, says the mayor — all but shut it down by limiting the number of people allowed to less than COVID levels.
- ⁉️Why is COVID important? That's when Johnson's predecessor put the city into an economic tailspin to save everyone from themselves.

🎄The city of Chicago is limiting the number of people who can visit its Christmas markets at a time.

#️⃣Under the new restrictions, about 1,550 visitors are allowed in.
🤦🏼‍♂️That is less than half the roughly 3,500 people who were allowed under the COVID-19 restrictions back in 2021.
⏰Vendors were informed about the changes just 12 hours before opening day.
✈️People travel from across the globe to sell their products at this Christmas market.
📉Some vendors have said their sales have fallen by more than 40%.

Remember🤔: Why he is doing this … pickpockets.

🤦🏼‍♂️Oh, it's pickpockets — yes … because the cops are demoralized.
How about this🚔: Run sting operations at the market and actually throw the pickpockets in jail
- 🤷🏼‍♂️Policing like that might have prevented a career criminal from setting a woman on fire while waiting for one of the city's "EL" trains.
- 🗣️Back then, Johnson called the incident an "absolute failure of our criminal justice and mental health systems."
- 🚨Meanwhile, four dead and 13 hurt in weekend shootings in Chicago
  - ‼️Holiday (armed) robberies are a growing problem
    - Pro tip🤷🏼‍♂️: Easier to stop robberies when you arrest and jail the robbers
But no🤦🏼‍♂️: Chicago will solve its problem the truly progressive way by punishing all the law-abiding citizens rather than the few criminals.
Results✈️: No wonder dozens of major employers have left and continue to leave Chicago.
Update🤦🏼‍♂️: After the uproar from a city that loves Christmas, Mayor Johnson's office says it will ease but not eliminate some of the restrictions — bah humbug.

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.

Make sure to let us know your thoughts on social media and by replying to this email.

See the latest videos and coverage from On Balance