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.
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Editor's note✏️: I am in Las Vegas today speaking to the Council of Autism Service Providers about “Born Lucky.”
- 🙏Thanks to Amanda for organizing more than usual.
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My thoughts💭: This weekend exposes a number of sad truths:
- ‼️We have gotten lucky now three times in a row — eventually, that luck will run out.
- 😬Perhaps having the entire U.S. government in one hotel ballroom is no longer a wise idea.
- 🚨The political violence from the Left is real, growing and inflamed by the very people who profess to dislike it
- 👀Even Chuck Todd says he is so concerned by the threat — he won't go to Trump events.
- Todd: “I'm not going to any more events where Trump is at them. I don't feel safe.”
- 🤦For people who say they are protecting democracy, the White House and D.C. press corps are very easily traumatized
- 🗣️Here is today’s White House press briefing:
- Reporter: “Forced to dive under tables and fearing for their lives on Saturday night, including many of the people in this room, myself included. What is the president’s message to those people who experienced that terrible trauma and maybe are still fearful today?”
- The message to the press about his assassination attempt?
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‼️Let's go through the weekend simply:
The good👍: Trump's speech after the shooting.
- 🙏Trump Saturday night said what we’ve all been waiting for —
- Trump: “I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts in resolving our differences peacefully… You had Republicans, Democrats, independents … you had everybody in that room … There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together”
- 🤦And yet nobody is listening to him.
The bad👎: Secret Service agents and uniformed officers fired a number of rounds that missed.
- Zoom out🌎: The Secret Service prides itself on marksmanship, as its mission requires shooting into crowds.
- ❗The gunman should be dead.
- ❗This was not a stellar performance
- ❗Had this been a coordinated attack or the gunman just wanted to kill lots of people, the results would have been tragically different
The ugly😬: The response by the media and Democrats continues to ignore the loud voices on the Left calling for violence.
Bad standard👎: When political violence happens on the Right, it’s named and shamed — every Republican must pay penance — when it’s violence from the Left, it is a “bothsides” issue, and we must deal with security failures.
- Look back🔙: Post-Charlottesville in 2017, the media demanded six months of soul-searching… President Joe Biden talked about it in the present tense years later.
- Yesterday🤦: President Obama said the motivations of the shooter were not clear after his public manifesto laid them all out
- 📰Just last week, The New York Times hosted Hasan Piker for their opinion podcast — not to mention a few glowing profiles of him
- ❗Here is one of Piker's many clips celebrating violence
- Piker: “Kill the motherfu**kers. Let the streets soak in their red, capitalist blood!”
- 🗣️A leading Democrat Senate candidate in Michigan — Hamas enthusiast, America-hating Arab — said this at a rally:
- Abdul El-Sayed: “When they go low, we don’t go high. We take them to the mud and choke them out.”
- 🤦Can you imagine if a leading Republican Senate candidate talked like that — it would be THE national issue — and it should be
- 🤦Then there is CBS’s Norah O'Donnell, who asked if Trump’s own assassination attempt should change his relationship with the media.
- Norah: “Do you think this will change your relationship with the press?”
- 🤦I don't know — Norah?!?!
- What I’m thinking💭: Shouldn't the media’s relationship with Democrats and the far Left change?
- Real question❓: What is the media going to do differently? Like ignoring the calls for violence on the Left and accepting Governor JB Pritzker calling the president a “fascist”?
- Bonus➕: Do we really want the president weighing in on the hiring and firing of private corporations?
- 🤷We know where this is going to go — it never ends well.
- 🤦We all know Jimmy Kimmel is a dope. He is predictable, not that funny and clearly has very difficult feelings towards Trump. He is sanctimonious and self-righteous. He looks down on most Americans.
- His joke before the shooting about first lady Melania with the glow of a soon-to-be widow wasn’t just unfunny, it's offensive.
- 📺Watch it HERE
- 🤦What woman wants her husband to die?
- 🤷Then again, Kimmel doesn't really treat women with much respect
- 👎But the Left gives him a pass because he hates Trump
- I don't spend much time thinking about Kimmel.
- But why does he occupy such an enormous space in Republicans' minds?
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To Mars🪐: I know who should go on the one-way mission to Mars — the 18% of Americans who don't think their pets are part of the family.
- 🐶This weekend showed us a very divided country — but we are united about our pets
- 📊81% of Republicans and 82% of Democrats and independents say their pets are “part of the family”
- 🚀Leaving 18% who we should banish to another planet — safe travels!
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A sponsored message from: Center for the Environment and Welfare
- 👀 Humane World for Animals (formerly the Humane Society of the United States) is trying to woo DC lawmakers.
- 🐕They operate pet shelters, right?
- ❌Wrong! Humane World does not operate a single pet shelter and is not affiliated with local humane societies.
- 🤑Humane World spends almost $200 million a year, but gives less than 1% of its budget to local pet shelters via financial grants.
- 💰The group spends tens of millions of dollars on executive pay, fundraising, and travel.
- 🏝️Humane World even stashes over $100 million in offshore Caribbean accounts.
- To find out more, visit EnvironmentAndWelfare.com
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The Truth about Rhetoric☑️
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🤷Secretary Karoline Leavitt was not wrong when she asked at the White House briefing for people to point out the differences between the shooter's manifesto and the rhetoric from Democratic politicians.
- Leavitt: “When you read the manifesto of the shooter, ask yourselves how different is the rhetoric from this almost assassin than what you read on social media and hear in various forums every single day? The answer is that there is no difference at all.”
Inbox📥: This morning, our friend Mike Nellis emailed out, “I Will Not Be Lectured by the Modern-Day Republican Party About Political Violence and Rhetoric”
- 😬OK, Mike — maybe if Democrats policed themselves, it wouldn't be a problem
- More ➕: Even CNN pushed Rep Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and he played dumb
- CNN: “You and your fellow Democrats have used some heated rhetoric against the president. Do you think twice about that when something like that happens?”
- Raskin: “What rhetoric do you have in mind?”
- CNN: “That he’s terrible for this country and so on and so forth”
Moral clarity‼️: The vast amount of recent political violence is coming from the Left, and in the case of the third Trump assassination attempt, it wasn't a loon by common standards
- 🧑🏫The shooter was well educated, even a teacher who participated in social media
- 🤦That is the system “working,” and it produced a terrorist
☑️Yes, members of the Right and Trump say inflammatory things — but last time I checked, there haven't been three assassination attempts on Kamala Harris, Governor Gavin Newsom, Secretary Pete Hegseth, etc.
🚨The violence is coming from the Left — polling shows why
- 📈Political Polls reports, “22% of liberals under 44 say it’s okay to feel happy when a political opponent dies, compared to just 6% of conservatives their age.”
- Wow😱: Young liberals are four times more likely to say violence is okay than among young conservatives
Perspective✏️: Adam Carrolla wrote, “I said it before, Ted lieu, Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff don’t believe what they are saying but the young dudes who do all the shooting do.”
- Sign of the times⏲️: Young progressives dislike Schumer and Schiff because they are too nice
Watch tonight📺: Mike Nellis on why that is — and why is the Left okay with it?
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🤦For the people who say they are protecting democracy, the White House press corps is easily terrified and traumatized.
- ‼️For many, Saturday night was their version of “Black Hawk Down.”
- 🗣️After the events that unfolded this weekend at the White House correspondents' dinner, within minutes, most of the attendees made the story about themselves and their experience
- 📱Many posted videos taking cover under the tables
🤦The first rule you learn in journalism is “never make the story about yourself” — and over the weekend, we saw the exact opposite at the White House correspondents' dinner.
- ♥️They loved being the story.
- CNN’s Wolf Blitzer claimed he was worried the assassin came for him.
- Others decided to pose with champagne bottles and take them home.
- Then there is CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, who asked Trump if this would change his relationship with the media
- O’Donnell: “Do you think this will change your relationship with the press?”
- Few heroes‼️: Media agent Michael Glantz showed more grace under fire — he just sat there and ate his salad
🤦The media also wanted some sympathy from the president since they are traumatized — as I showed you up top.
🤷This is a new low point — you either want to be victims or want to be reporters
- Reality: You can’t protect democracy by running around asking if everyone is okay.
- Decision time‼️: For so long, the press had it both ways — they played in the game while claiming to only be referees
Performative🎬: The trauma, like the daily outrage, turned out to be largely performative.
- 🪩We know that because the parties continued on —
- MS NOW, the Swiss ambassador, NBC News, Telemundo, CNN and the British ambassador all continued to host parties hours and into the next day.
🤷Washington clearly has its priorities.
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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.
Make sure to let us know your thoughts on social media and by replying to this email.
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This NewsNation email is written by Leland Vittert.
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