Leland Vittert’s War Notes: One Year of Trump 1️⃣

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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.

Rich Eat Themselves💰: The Davos crowd will agree they have a problem.

📰Axios reports Larry Fink will acknowledge how the fundamental unfairness of the American (and world) economy is a major threat to the rich.
📺Duh! Watch tonight as Philip Wegmann and Shelby Talcott tell us who will win the economic war.
🗞️The New York Times headlines: "Trump Said He'd Unleash the Economy in Year 1. Here's How He Did."

Before He Goes✈️: Trump leaves Tuesday for Davos — he'll sit down with NewsNation's Katie Pavlich at the White House for a wide-ranging interview marking his first year in office.

Watch tonight📺: Katie's show debuts right after "On Balance" at 10 p.m ET.

Bolton Alert🚨: Consistently one of our highest-rated guests is former Ambassador and national security adviser John Bolton.

Watch tonight📺: Bolton joins us on Trump's new foreign policy of doing whatever he wants, however he wants.

Burning It Down! 🔥

🗓️Tomorrow marks one year of Trump's presidency, and nothing epitomizes it more than what is happening in Minneapolis.

Lookback🔙: A year ago, we told you Trump wanted to break things — and he has done it.
- 📰A few of our "War Notes" headlines from the first weeks of Trump 2.0
  - "Violence of Action"
  - "Trump Wants These Fights"
  - "'In Trump We Trust' Is Exploding"

‼️Minneapolis is all of those things:

🚨A massive and aggressive deportation effort that forces Democrats to take the side of illegal immigrants.
📺A fight with the media over "unfair" coverage.
⛪️Democrats breaking into churches and stores.
‼️The DOJ threatening to prosecute those Democrats.
‼️Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, whom Trump beat, is being investigated by the DOJ.
✈️Team Trump is relishing in the fight — look at Stephen Miller's tweet.
- 🎤Miller: "Only federal officers are upholding the law. Local and state police have been ordered to stand down and surrender."
Perspective👀: Over the weekend, an "On Balance" viewer sent me a note that the rioters in Minneapolis are starting to look, sound and act like those on January 6.
- 🤷🏼‍♂️We may not be there yet but could certainly see it getting to that point.

Zoom out🌎: Democrats like to say he's breaking the law — he isn't, at least not according to the courts.

💥He's destroyed the norms and guardrails past presidents said they lived by.
Be fair⚖️: Presidents lived by them to the extent it helped them.

👀Think about where we are — just 25% into Trump's term, and he's continued to crush establishment Washington — it's what he was elected to do.

Flip side🔄: After a year of Trump's presidency, Democrats still can't figure out what to do.

🤦🏼Right as Virginia's governor, Abigail Spanberger, was inaugurated, she said they will no longer cooperate with ICE
- 🗣️Past and future — Democrats say Spanberger is their future
- ‼️Democrats in Virginia want to remake the state — this weekend, they proposed a slew of progressive dreams.
  - 📈Massive tax increases in income, Amazon deliveries, services
  - ‼️Push to redistrict their congress in favor of Democrats
  - ‼️Advance amendments for abortion rights, same-sex marriage and voting rights for felons in the state constitution
  - ‼️Back diversity, equity and inclusion
    - 🤦🏼This is the Democrats' future — and that's not us saying it; that's Democrats saying it.
📊 Democrats' polling is not looking good for them according to Decision Desk HQ's polling:
- 👎🏼52.8% unfavorable
- 👍🏻38.4% favorable

Zoom out🌎: Democrats still don't have an answer to the very basic culture war questions

📰From Axios: "Dems' potential 2028 contenders cautious on trans rights"
- ✏️"Driving the news: Axios quizzed nearly 20 Democrats viewed as possible 2028 contenders. Most didn't want to talk about trans rights.
- "We chose questions based on those that Democratic candidates up and down ballots have encountered in interviews and ads for years.
- "We asked: Should transgender girls be able to participate in girls' sports? Do you believe transgender youths under age 18 should be able to be placed on puberty blockers and hormones? And what is your response to the question: 'Can a man become a woman?'"

Watch tonight 📺: Our Super Panel – NewsNation's Kurt Bardella, Yemisi Ebgewole and Mary Margaret Olohan

Bipartisan Buffoonery 🤪

🤪 Tonight's buffoonery from the Left and the Right.

🐘The winner on the Right tonight is Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles
- 🎤Ogles: "When you look at the footage of those folks who stormed that church, if that was a bunch of conservative, MAGA folks, they would be arrested right. But because they're libtards in a blue city, they get a pass. Enough is enough…If the libtards are gonna side with lawlessness, that's on them."
🫏And on the Left: Former CNN anchor Don Lemon lecturing a pastor about First Amendment rights minutes after anti-ICE protesters stormed a church in Minneapolis.
- 🎤Pastor: "This is unacceptable. It's shameful. It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship…"
- 🎤Lemon: "Listen, there's a constitution, the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest."
- 🎤Pastor: "We're here to worship."
🤦🏼In the ultimate irony, Don Lemon might get prosecuted under a federal law designed to stop the Ku Klux Klan from harassing blacks at church.
🫢But one thing — Don, the First Amendment protects your right to protest and spew racist BS on public property — not inside a private church.

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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