Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Popcorn 🍿

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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.

Must watch📺: Over 30 years after she sat next to her husband on "60 Minutes" fighting for *their* political future, Hillary Clinton will sit next to her husband and fight for their legacy.

‼️Hillary Clinton threw down a challenge to House Republicans and demanded an on-camera deposition.
- Go deeper: The Clintons will testify as part of the House Oversight Committee's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
- Follow the money 💸: Epstein was a major and founding donor to the Clinton Global Foundation — in return, Bill Clinton provided him endless legitimacy.
  - The New York Times cataloged their relationship back in 2019
‼️Crystal ball — I have no idea who to bet on in the hearing
- Young, aggressive Republicans
- The battle-hardened Clintons
  - 💭Imagine how alone they feel, abandoned by Democrats who used to protect them
- 🤦Funny how that works — for decades, Democratic women protected the philanderer in chief and didn't mind Hillary Clinton's bare-knuckle tactics against women he allegedly victimized.
🤦Now that Bill Clinton looks like a milquetoast Republican in his political views, they abandon him on the field of battle.
- 🎤Churchill said nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests.
- 🤷That is true of politicians — their permanent interest is always themselves.

Nancy Guthrie update 🚨: The search for Savannah Guthrie's mom is entering its fifth day, and there is still no suspect or lead.

‼️The Pima County sheriff says they aren't ruling out anyone —
- 🎤Sheriff: "Everybody is still a suspect in our eyes. That's just how we look at things as cops. Does that mean we have a prime suspect? No. "
  - Thought bubble💭: If these were professionals or semiprofessional kidnappers, they must have factored in a head start because of a small-town police department.
📱Last night, Savannah Guthrie and her siblings posted a heartfelt video pleading for the safe return of their 84-year-old missing mother, Nancy Guthrie.
- 💔 Heartbreaking — as I said last night on TV, at a certain moment in life, our roles shift — as children, we look out for our parents.
  - Savannah's pain that she couldn't protect her mother would break anyone.
⏱️Authorities today gave a timeline of Nancy's disappearance:
- 📅Saturday:
  - 9:48 p.m. - Family dropped Nancy at home, and the garage door opens
  - 9:50 p.m. - Garage door closes
- 📅Sunday:
  - 1:47 a.m. - Nancy's doorbell camera disconnected
  - 2:12 a.m. - Camera software detected a "person on camera"
  - 2:28 a.m. - Nancy's pacemaker app lost connection to her phone
  - 11:56 a.m. - Family goes to check on Nancy
  - 12:03 p.m. - Family calls 911
📝A ransom letter sent to local Arizona news outlets mentioned two deadlines:
- First deadline of 5 p.m. today
- Second deadline is next Monday.
💸There is a $50,000 reward for this case.
Watch tonight 📺: NewsNation's Brian Entin in Tucson, Arizona, with the latest
- Plus ➕: Private investigator Toby Braun and former FBI agent Jodene Weber.

Hours away⏱️: The U.S. and Iran are meeting tomorrow in Oman for high-stakes nuclear talks.

🗣️Iran's military says it is ready for war and warned that any conflict would spread across the entire region.
Spare me ‼️: Both the U.S. and Israel exposed Iran's military as a paper tiger.
- But they are good at slaughtering their own unarmed people.
- Must watch 📺: Last night, retired Vice Admiral John W. "Fozzie" Miller said it best when he told us that "it couldn't get worse" for the Iranian people.
  - RIGHT 🤷: All of the people warning of what might happen if we help expedite the ayatollah's visit to hell should either go to Iran or stop talking.
Foreshadowing ⏩: Iran knows the end is near; it's really just a matter of when
- 🎤Scott Bessent: "We have seen the Iranian leadership wiring money out of the country like crazy. So the rats are leaving the ship, and that is a good sign that they know the end may be near."
‼️The ayatollah continues to kill protestors — one video shows regime forces on a motorcycle shooting at a group of people walking.
- The rows and rows of body bags with executed protesters speak to an evil Westerners don't fully understand.
- Go Deeper‼️: If you want to understand the modern-day atrocities, you must understand the spread of Islam starting in the 7th century.
  - Read 📗: "After the Prophet" by Lesley Hazleton. The fabulous narrative history of the Shia-Sunni split.
Watch tonight 📺: Former Ambassador Kurt Volker joins us.

Economy & Immigration

‼️A Biden-paroled immigrant in Indiana killed four people, an entire Amish family, after driving on the wrong side of the road and hitting their car head-on.

🗣️The Trump administration says this is just another example of their immigration crackdowns:
- 🎤Leavitt: "It again exemplifies why the Administration must continue and will always continue to fully back and support ICE and Border Patrol and law enforcement in their removal of illegal alien criminals from our country."
👎Yet Republicans are still losing the immigration debate
- ❌We told you last night — it's not a fair fight
  - 🤷The four killed as a direct result of Biden's open border policy will receive 1/10,000th the coverage of the two killed in Minneapolis.
    - ‼️All were killed as the direct result of government policy — except the two in Minneapolis put themselves in that position, the Amish family did not.
Republicans are on the wrong side of the immigration public relations war —
- 💭Trump knows it instinctively
  - 🎤Reporter: "Speaking of Minneapolis, what did you learn?"
  - 🎤Trump: "I learned that maybe we could use a little bit of a softer touch."
- 📉And he knows it by the poll numbers
  - 🎤Rasmussen Reports: 41% approve and 57% disapprove
  - Look back 🔙: This was the same poll that was one of the only ones to predict Trump would win the last election — now, it shows he's polling at his lowest numbers yet.
‼️The Department of Homeland Security is trying to personalize the immigration issue by posting press releases with names and charges highlighting the worst of the worst … it's tough to break through.

Watch tonight 📺: George Will on if any of this matters given the state of the economy.

📰Will headlines, "One path to U.S. fiscal disaster is most alarming — and most likely," writing:
- ✏️"The national debt is nearing $39 trillion. Dire consequences are coming."

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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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