Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Better than Expected

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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.

Dot-connecting 🔴: Remember, after 9/11, we spent years talking about missed dots and connecting the dots and a new chief dot-connector — the director of national intelligence.

🚨Over the weekend, we learned the Detroit jihadist who drove his explosive-laden car into a Jewish synagogue and day care came by his terrorist tendencies honestly — his brother was a Hezbollah commander.
- 🤷How many more brothers of Hezbollah commanders are in the USA right now?
- 🚓Maybe a good idea is to find them all and arrest them.
🚨The Old Dominion University shooter jihadist was convicted of providing material support to ISIS
- 🤦Yet he got out of jail after a substance abuse program
More‼️: Wild how the jihad preachers just continue to preach the ayatollah and get to keep their visas
- 🤦Have they just learned they will never get arrested for providing information to terrorists?
- 📺Memri TV is worth a follow— they clip and translate the best of the best hate preachers

Watch tonight📺: Amb. Alberto Fernandez and FBI Special Agent Chris Swecker on whether the problem is connecting the dots or just dealing with the dots already in the USA.

Not covered🚨: Watch Cuba — for a variety of reasons, it's not getting covered.

If the regime falls or wildly moderates and starts aligning with the U.S., President Trump will have accomplished something every president since Kennedy could not.

Guns for me, not for thee 🔫

Democrats in Virginia passed a slew of new gun control laws — among other things, they cited the ISIS shooter at Old Dominion University

- Thought bubble💬: The shooter used a strawman to purchase weapons, which is already illegal, and the Biden Department of Justice declined to prosecute the man.

But no❌: More laws are the answer
- SB 749: "Outlaw the import, sale, manufacture, purchase, and transfer of assault firearms while also banning magazines holding more than 15 rounds."
- SB 727: "Prohibits carrying guns on public property"
- HB 40: "Preventing the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer, or possession of 'plastic firearms' and unserialized frames, receivers, and firearms."
- SB 27 & HB 21: "Mandates that firearm industry members enact "reasonable" controls when it comes to manufacturing, selling, or marketing firearm-related products."
Eye on the ball👀: Abigail Spanberger won the Virginia governor's race by promising to make life cheaper
- 🤦Since getting sworn in, she and the Democratic majority legislature have focused almost entirely on Democratic social causes.
Guns and abortion‼️: Guns are much like abortion; no cable news segment will change someone's mind — and that is fine.
Morally bankrupt‼️: For all of the passion from Democrats about the need for gun control, they specifically exempted any member of the legislature from the laws.
- "The provision of this section shall not apply to any member of the General Assembly."
Congrats🤦: The first legislature to actually codify that the laws apply to everybody else and not themselves.

Ground Truth Matters🚨

‼️The war with Iran isn't going nearly as badly as Democrats or Trump haters in the media say but not as well as White House wants us to believe.

Be smart🤓: Nobody knows how this will end — here is what determines it:
- ❓Can Trump reopen the strait faster than the political cost of being at war hurts and closes off options?
- ‼️Wars take on lives of their own — in Venezuela and with Midnight Hammer, Trump controlled everything.
  - The "unknown unknowns" — hat-tip Donald Rumsfeld — often control the future.
- ❓Does China or Russia create mischief or significantly help Iran? Our enemies have a say
  - 💸Russia loves this — they are making bank!
    - 📰Bloomberg headlines: "Moscow Rushes to Reap Reward of Oil Price Surge, Sanctions Pause"
  - 🗞️Niall Ferguson in the Free Press writing: "This is How the Iran War Goes Global"
- ❓How strong is the IRGC's hold inside Iran? Reports of defections or uprisings will change everything
- ❓Can the coalition of Arab states, Israel and America stay together?
  - 📱Israel is planning to call up 450,000 troops to invade Lebanon — that is three times higher than the force for the second Iraq War.
TBD🤷: Trump's war with Iran is going better than expected — if that momentum continues:
- 👍He gets a win on many fronts.
- 👎If it doesn't end well, that won't be good for America.
Here we go🗣️: Trump today pushed allies to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz
- 🤷So far, there are very few in this coalition of the willing — says a lot about our friends
  - Be fair⚖️: Many of our European allies have their own homegrown jihadi problem, and going to war with Iran isn't that popular.
- 🗣️His invite to China was exceptionally well done.
  - ✏️Trump: "Many Countries, especially those who are affected by Iran's attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe. We have already destroyed 100% of Iran's Military capability, but it's easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile somewhere along, or in, this Waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are. Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated."

Huge miss❓: Why wasn't a Marine Expeditionary Unit or two already in the theater — the USS Tripoli is now heading to the Middle East
More to come➕: The amount of U.S. air and sea power in the Middle East is impressive —
- 🌊Sea power:
  - Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers
  - Nuclear-powered submarines
  - Guided-missile destroyers
  - Refueling and supply ships
- ✈️Air power:
  - B-1 bombers
  - B-2 stealth bombers
  - F-15 fighter jets
  - F-22 stealth fighters
  - And much more.

‼️The Iranians win by simply holding on — giving part of the Iranian leadership, like regular army generals, et cetera, an option will be critical.

Watch tonight📺: Retired Brig. Gen. John Teichert and Ret. Vice Admiral John W. "Fozzie" Miller on how we give the Iranians no choice

Podcaster Problems 📹

🤦The war in Iran has Republicans lining up with the ayatollah and Democrats ignoring gang rapes of women.

🤷Call it the weirdness on both sides of this.
‼️The Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin feud now involves insults to Levin's manhood I am not comfortable saying on TV.
- Congrats to Megyn on staying relevant.
- Trump took Levin's side against Tucker Carlson and Kelly
- 🗣️NewsNation's Batya Ungar-Sargon says the voters nor Trump care what Kelly and Tucker say:
  - ✏️"Trump's war on the Islamic Regime of Iran hasn't just taken out the Ayatollah Khameini and Iran's nuclear ambitions. It's nuked the anti-Israel obsession that's taken hold of the podcaster sphere. It turns out, the influencers have no influence—not with President Trump and not with his voters."
Thought💭: The media's obsession with Tucker and Kelly way overstates their importance with voters.
- 📱Aka X isn't real life.
Flip side 🔄: The reverse is true on the Left
- When millions protested in Tahrir Square, took up arms against Gaddafi or when Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people, America's left reacted … President Obama told them to
  - 😡We as a country were morally outraged.
- 😶Iran's secret police shoots people in hospitals and gang rapes nurses treating the wounded — crickets.

Watch tonight📺: Shelby Talcott and Christina Pascucci on the strange bedfellows Iran is creating — or maybe exposing is a better word.

Politics over Security 🚨

🚨The threat from Islamic terror is the highest it's been since 9/11 — we are at war with Iran, and Democrats have a new idea:

🤦Don't pay TSA workers and cut funding to the military
- ‼️Even the airlines think it's dysfunctional
  - "Once again, air travel is the political football amid another government shutdown," writes airline executives.
🤦But no – let's make TSA workers drive DoorDash so ICE doesn't wear masks.
✈️Airport security lines were out the door this weekend after more than 300 TSA agents quit since not receiving their first full paycheck.
- 🤷If Democrats want to stop paying TSA to force ICE to wear masks, why not say so — today, Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, showed up at the Austin airport to deliver cheeseburgers
  - Answer: Nobody ever won an election by inconveniencing the American people
Huh: The coverage is blatantly dishonest with both ABC and NBC playing very cute with WHY TSA agents aren't getting paid.
- 🤦Seriously — how dumb can we be to not pay people whose job it is to watch for bombs and hijackers?

Watch tonight📺: Mike Nellis on his recent Substack, "If You Fund the War, You Support the War"

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