Leland Vittert’s War Notes: After Davos✈️

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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.

✈️President Trump is leaving Davos riding very high.

💪🏼He's feeling he broke Davos and asserted his will over NATO.
- 🧊He got Greenland
- ‼️Captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro
- 🙌🏻President Zelenskyy praised him as finally shaming the Europeans into taking action on Greenland
  - 🎤Zelenskyy: "Europe loves to discuss the future but avoids taking action today. Action that defines what kind of future we will have. That is the problem. Why can President Trump stop tankers from the shadow of fleet and seize oil but Europe doesn't."
Watch tonight📺: George Will is warning that Trump has turned a global economic summit into another stage for personal grievance.
- 📰Will writes in The Washington Post: "Greenland, Minnesota, Army-Navy game: Another day, another emergency"

Confusing messages💭: Lots of U.S. military hardware is moving to the Middle East for a possible strike on Iran — so says The Wall Street Journal.

BUT🎧: Listen to envoy Steve Witkoff at Davos:
- 🎤Witkoff: "Iran needs to change its ways…if they indicate that they're willing to do that, I think we can diplomatically settle this."
  - 🤦🏼After 50 years of "Death to America" chants and suddenly they are going to be nice and we are going to believe them???
  - ‼️IF THEY INDICATE?!??!? What on earth is he talking about??
- Fool me once📱: Reports from Iran indicate the regime continues to hang, execute and torture despite the promises to President Trump.
- Watch tonight📺: U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Trump celebrating the Iranian regime isn't killing people anymore.

Off the sidelines🏈: Michele Tafoya enters the Senate race in deep blue Minnesota as a Republican.

🏟️You may know her from the football sidelines — now, she is getting off the sidelines and into the political fray.
👀The last Republican Senate candidate lost by 16 points and that was with Trump on top of the ticket — why does she think she has a chance?
🤷🏼‍♂️Why not run for governor where she could clean up the Somali fraud disaster?
Watch tonight📺: Michele Tafoya joins us.

Mr. Messenger 💬

✈️Vice President JD Vance is in Minnesota today to reaffirm the administration's support for ICE — but it looks like more of an attempt to rewrite the narrative.

Thought bubble💭: Is this Vance's new job — Mr. Messenger?
Zoom out🌎: What does sending Vance out to Minnesota mean for his political career — it's either an audition for presidential candidate or political suicide
👍🏻He was the guy forced to own the response to the Renee Good shooting
👀Meanwhile, Speaker Marco Rubio gets to bask in the glory of the Maduro raids and about to overthrow the Cuban regime — even getting a shoutout from Trump in Davos.
🤷🏼‍♂️You don't send Vance there unless you've got a story to fix.
- 🎤Vance: "We have so many people here that we do not want to have here. I do not want so many ICE officers in Minneapolis right now. I mean, good lord, it's really, really frickin' cold outside. But they're here not even to enforce immigration laws but to protect people from the rioters. That's an absurd state of affairs."
‼️The immigration crackdown is spiraling into open confrontation, and neither side is pulling back —
- 🤦🏼The Left can't get enough of the optics
  - 🚔ICE is continuing to carry out its mass deportation plan
    - Reminder❗️: Majority of Americans voted for this in 2024
  - 🚨Dangerous rhetoric coming from state officials
    - 🎤California Governor Gavin Newsom: "Greg Bovino -- dressed up as if he literally went on eBay and purchased SS garb. Secret police, private army, masked men, people disappearing quite literally, no due process ... so is it surprising that the Trump administration didn't like my commentary and wanted to make sure I wasn't allowed to speak? No."
  - ‼️Today, Trump's Department of Justice arrested people in the anti-ICE mob that stormed a church Sunday —
    - 🤷🏼‍♂️Teaching them a valuable "mess around and find out" lesson.
Watch tonight📺: Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino on whether the orders have changed to deescalate — plus what it's like to throw "gas."
- Plus➕: Mike Nellis and Mark McKinnon on Vance's new job — is it a certain path to the nomination or career-ending?

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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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