Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Pennsylvania Calling 📍

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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.

Dutch update 🐶: Dutch thanks you for all the good wishes and prayers.

He's turned the corner and is on the road to recovery.
- Evidence 🔍: He is back to begging for treats.
- Fallout: For me and Rachel, it's been quite the experience
  - 📱 We just noticed today our text chain is mostly pictures of Dutch's "productions" over the past week.

See you in New York 🗽: Well, Massapequa Park to be exact.

Speaking from the pulpit 📺: Of the nearly 170 interviews I've done for "Born Lucky," "Personally Speaking with Msgr. Jim Lisante" is among my favorites.
- ⛪️ He graciously invited me to address his parish — Our Lady of the Lourdes in Massapequa Park, New York.
- 🎤 I'll speak at 10:30 a.m. ET mass on December 14.
- Nervous 😨: I have never spoken at a church before — yikes!
If you can't make it, "Born Lucky" is still available on Amazon ahead of the holidays. At its core, "Born Lucky" is a message of hope.

Editor's note 📝: Forgive the brevity of "War Notes" tonight — Amanda is out sick, so we have brought Katie, "War Notes" founding editor-in-chief, out of retirement.

Project 2027 ✍🏻: My buddy Juan Williams laid out a Democratic playbook — similar to Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" — in The Hill.

📰 Click here to give it a read.
Williams lays out the concrete steps Democrats promise to take in 2027 that will make Americans' lives better.
- Hint 💭: Promising another performative impeachment is not going to make anyone's life better.
Signal loss 📰: Democrats' organizing principle is hating Trump — other than that, they are just fighting with each other over policy.
- As if on cue, The New York Times published a glowing profile of Kamala Harris, who claims she's not done yet. WHAT?
- Axios says the Democrats face a "Tea Party" moment – huh … where have you heard that before?
- Texas Senator John Cornyn is celebrating that he can now run against Rep Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, who just announced her Senate campaign.

Pennsylvania Calling: 📍🎤 At time of publication, we won't know if President Trump took Bill O'Reilly's advice and made his Pennsylvania speech about the future.

Advance work 📺: Trump's advance team and TV producing skills are world-class.
- 🍟 Think the McDonald's moment or procuring freshly washed garbage trucks during the campaign.
- 🏨 Why is he going to a hotel in Pennsylvania?
- 🔨 Why not go to a massive construction project or a site of new investment under his administration?
In other words, we're looking to see whether Trump focuses on what he promises to do for Americans on affordability rather than complaining about what Biden gave him.
- 🗳️ A new poll from Politico highlights the affordability problem.
  - As MS Now summarizes, "The poll also asked who should be held accountable for the state of the economy, and that's not promising news for Trump, either. While 37% of 2024 Trump voters believe former President Joe Biden holds full responsibility for the current state of the economy, 18% say Trump holds full responsibility for the current economy, and 7% say the responsibility lies mainly with Trump, though somewhat with Biden."
- ✍🏻 Larry Kudlow lays out in RealClearPolitics the message Trump should offer:
  - "Wage income from the latest numbers is up by 5.3 percent. The core personal consumption deflator, that's the Fed's inflation measure, is 2.7 percent."
  - 📺 Listen to him on Fox Business.
- 📺 Brit Hume admitted on Fox News that tariffs are part of the problem:
  - "This is a subsidy. This is 11 or $12 billion that's gonna be paid out is money going into the pockets of these farmers, who are hurting. I don't dispute that for a second. But a president who is otherwise mostly conservative on economic policies engaging in a government program to try to bail out farmers who are hurt by his other program. That, of course, being the tariffs."
- 📰 Axios notes China's trade successes, saying, "Even with Trump's tariffs in place, China said that it had reached an unprecedented milestone — a trade surplus of over $1 trillion so far this year."

Watch tonight 📺: Our super panel of RJ Harris, Batya Ungar-Sargon and Dan Turrentine will break down whether the president met the moment.

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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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