Leland Vittert’s War Notes: I Don't Like It ‼️

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.

Window open✅: The window to attack Iran is open — unquestionably.

Speak softly🛳️: U.S. Central Command just alerted that the USS Abraham Lincoln and its Carrier Strike Group arrived in its theater of operations.
Look back🔙: This is the same kind of military build and messaging we heard before Venezuela and before the first Iran strikes.
Watch tonight📺: Ambassador John Bolton joins us.

Where's the leadership? ‼️

😡President Trump channeled much of America this weekend when he said, "I don't like it," referring to the shooting of a gun-carrying ICE resistor.

🚨Over the weekend, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

🎤Two weeks ago, Bill O'Reilly told us that if someone else gets killed, it will be a problem — we are NOW here.
- ‼️Bill was right – it's a huge problem.

Insurrection vs. Incompetence⚠️: There are incentives on both sides, which are both staking out highly irresponsible positions.

Insurrection🚨: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz are encouraging those acts of fighting with law enforcement.

Fact✅: We need to be careful with our language.
- 👍🏻Protesting is what happened Friday — 50,000 people with signs, and nobody got hurt.
- 👎🏼Resisting is the roving groups of well-trained and equipped agitators and fellow travelers harassing and trying to stop ICE.
  - 📸They are trying to provoke camera-worthy moments.
  - ‼️There is a BIG difference — namely, one is lawful, and the other is violent resistance.
    - 🤦🏼You can't have one side telling people to fight with ICE and compare illegals to Anne Frank — yes, Governor Walz did this.
    - 🎤Walz: "We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading the story of Anne Frank. Somebody is gonna write one regarding Minnesota."
- 🚨Once you start comparing ICE to Gestapo, then fighting with Gestapo is a righteous act — this is VERY DANGEROUS.

Incompetence 🤦: Secretary Kristi Noem and friends are saying things that are demonstrably false and dangerously misreading the situation.

📱The Department of Homeland Security put out things that were objectively and demonstrably untrue — American people didn't like it when the Biden administration lied to them and don't like it when Trump does.
- ‼️Trump is not being well-served by people lying and being antagonistic –– he knows it.
- ✈️He's sending border czar Tom Homan, once overwhelmingly praised by President Obama, while pulling Noem and Bovino off the front lines.
🤦Others in the administration claimed Pretti was trying to massacre law enforcement and blamed him because he had a gun — wow!
👎The administration has lost the Free Press and many Republican senators and congressmen — they are losing a lot of traditional conservative support on this.
- 🎤Trey Gowdy: "You remember Kyle Rittenhouse and how he was made a hero on the right. I am sure there are people on the conservative side who are saying, 'You mean you can't take a firearm to a protest? Because you were just celebrating the guy for doing it a couple of years ago.' Alex Pretti's firearm was lawfully being carried. He didn't point it at the cops."
- 🎤Ted Cruz: "What I think the administration could do better is the tone with which they're describing this. Immediately when an incident like this happens, they come out guns blazing that 'we took out a violent terrorist. Hooray."

👀A deal? Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said what we have been saying for the past year. If you want to end it, this is how —

🎤Leavitt: "Turn over all criminal illegal aliens currently incarcerated…State and local law enforcement must agree to turn over all illegal aliens who are arrested by local police… Local police must assist federal law enforcement in apprehending and detaining illegal aliens."
- ‼️The local law enforcement and jails are the key issues.
📃Here is the deal — end sanctuary cities and states in return for ICE ending nontargeted enforcement … It's very simple.

Watch tonight 📺: Now is when you have to make sure the insurrectionists don't feel like they won and there isn't a war on the streets of Minneapolis — this is what presidents are for.

Bill O'Reilly on Trump's pivot — which is oddly similar to Greenland.
- Plus ➕: Did Trump and Republicans throw away their chance at a Senate seat and governor's mansion by allowing the conversation to change from Somali fraud in Minnesota?
More tonight 📺: The conversation goes far deeper than how to deal with the situation.
- ⚖️Fair? A former acting ICE director under Obama, John Sandweg, recently described the federal response to the Alex Pretti shooting as "irresponsible." We ask Sandweg about the contrast between how ICE functioned under Obama as deporter in chief.
  - ➕Plus, does he trust Tom Homan, whom Trump just sent to Minnesota?
- Yikes 📰: In his New York Times op-ed, Barry Friedman argues that state and local prosecutors have long had the authority to hold federal officers criminally accountable under state law, a power rarely used in practice.
  - 📺NYU Professor Friedman joins us tonight — can you imagine if Southern states had prosecuted the U.S. marshals who escorted kids to school during desegregation?
  - 🤷What about a local prosecution of the federal officer who killed Ashli Babbitt?

Well-trained!

👀As we watch what's happening in Minnesota, two things are becoming clear.

‼️These are organized and funded acts of resistance — not just protesters.
- 🗣️Some might call it insurrection.
‼️We are learning just how organized they are.
- 💻The training manual is posted online on how to fight and swarm agents. Look.
- 📄There are flyers being posted saying don't resist agents unless you have been trained
  - It's clear the resistance is well-trained and highly motivated.

Good read 📰: The Atlantic went into a training session for ICE protesters — writing, "Welcome to the American Winter"

✏️"I went upstairs to see breakout sessions where people were being trained for direct confrontations with ICE. Inside a classroom, several dozen people ranging in age from 14 to about 70 faced off against three trainers playing ICE agents, in a loud fracas that lasted several minutes."

It's clear we are seeing ICE isn't trained for this — they are trained to grab bad guys.

Watch tonight 📺: Former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and NewsNation's Tracy Walder on the mismatch between law enforcement trained to apprehend criminals and agitators trained to fight law enforcement.

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