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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 pm ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.
Vacation time ✈️: War Notes is on summer break starting tomorrow!
- 🏖️Rachel and I are headed to a friend’s wedding and will tack on a few days of R+R.
- War Notes will be back on Monday, August 3rd.
- ‼️Be sure to upgrade to a paid subscription to receive our daily First Dispatch video, which you’ll continue (as news warrants) while I’m away.
Earn it🏆: In TV, you have to earn fun — we’ve talked about this before.
- Example📈: When ratings are up, I get to do golf segments
- 🤷Vacation is similar — you need to earn it.
- Congress is heading out on vacation having gotten nothing done but fighting with each other.
- ⬇️See below for more.
Never caught on your first time👀: New Jersey “found” 6,600 noncitizens on its voter rolls.
- https://x.com/markmeadows/status/2079612385623453979?s=10
- Cue the endless stream of Democrats saying it wasn’t a problem.
Who knew🤦: Politeness is now a sign of white supremacy — no seriously.
- One of the most bizarre moments in a congressional hearing happened today between Texas Rep. Brandon Gill and the director of the Smithsonian, who testified that politeness is among the many traits of white supremacy taught in our nation’s museums
- https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/2079592872962101361?s=20
- What I am thinking💭: All that time my parents taught me to say “Yes, sir” and “No, sir,” they were secretly members of the KKK — an unusual position for my Jewish father.
Health alert🚨: It’s been a long time since anyone has tried to make the case for nicotine products being good for your health — but what is old is new again.
- Look back🔙: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI
- 💨From research labs to Silicon Valley — a new breed of doctors and finance bros are declaring nicotine a lifehack?
- Tech startups are even handing out nicotine pouches to employees — saying it helps with focus and creativity
- Look back🔙: For almost all of modern history, most of the smartest people in the world had one thing in common — smoking
- NASA engineers and mission specialists who sent Neil Armstrong and the company to the moon smoked
- Einstein puffed on his favorite pipe as he worked out his theory of relativity
- Churchill is said to have smoked up to 10 cigars a day
- Tonight📺: Jillian Michaels on whether nicotine — gum, patch, pouch — really is the way of the future
How to Know Trump Is Serious About Iran‼️
💣U.S. forces carried out their 10th consecutive day of strikes against Iran, hitting “Iranian military command centers, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and air defense systems,” says CENTCOM.
- It’s the same statement we hear every day
- 🗣️Today, Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked in front of the Senate how Iran is still bombing us if their capabilities were “functionally destroyed”
- 📰The Wall Street Journal reports, “Iran’s Missiles Have Gotten Faster and Deadlier,” writing:
- “The ballistic missiles Iran is now using seem faster and able to maneuver as they streak toward the earth. This reflects a military that is adapting, not necessarily crumbling.”
- What I’m thinking💭: If we keep attacking their missile and drone launch sites, how are their missiles getting faster and deadlier?
- ‼️This weekend two service members were killed after an Iranian strike hit a U.S. base in Jordan — and Trump pointed fingers at Jordan
- Trump: “They did slip something through in Jordan, and if we had other operators, you know, it would have not happened, unfortunately…When you let other people do your job with the United States, we let other people do the job and sometimes it doesn’t work out so well.”
‼️New intelligence says the latest U.S. strikes won’t do much to change Iran’s behavior.
- “Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep inside a mountain last fall,” reports The Wall Street Journal
- 💣Trump said he will bomb Pickaxe Mountain where they moved the uranium
Tonight📺: Brig. Gen. John Teichert on what a real strategic bombing campaign is and what it would look like.
🗣️No impact? Trump claimed today Iran wouldn’t impact him — he might be right … damn the torpedoes.
- 👀Fox News isn’t so convinced
Midterm reality‼️: Neither side really has a “winning message”; they just want you to be scared of the other side.
- Democrats are counting on Trump to be so awful that voters won’t care about their socialist left.
- Republicans are counting on voters not caring about how expensive things are because they are scared of the socialist left
- Speaking of🤦: The socialist left sounds less and less serious — Congressman and nepo-in-law Ro Khanna promises
- https://x.com/reprokhanna/status/2079304152543306160?s=12
- This sounds like a guy running for student council president
- Ice cream at every lunch
- Beer in the soda machine
- Park wherever you want to
- Plus, Hasan Piker just praised Mao Zedong as “one of the great leaders of this world”
- https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/2079205206869307549?s=20
- Mao killed far more than Stalin — and the socialists claim to care about genocide
Watch tonight📺: The 2Way trio — Mark Halperin, Larry O’Connor and Kevin Walling
Do Your Job!!!
🤦Usually you go on vacation because you earned it, and it’s a reward — yet Congress is doing the complete opposite.
- ✈️The House and Senate soon leave for a summer vacation that they haven’t earned in any way
- The National Defense Authorization Act isn’t done
- The SAVE America Act isn’t done
- No agreement on the annual budget & funding bills
- Dealing with Social Security hit a dead end
- No agreement when dealing with health care
- They have done absolutely nothing and yet are still going on vacation
- 🚨This isn’t a Republican or Democrat problem… it’s an American problem
- Sen. Mitch McConnell is MIA
- Congress members are just getting rich trading stocks
- Everyone is old
- Nobody cares anymore
- “What are we doing here?” is the main question my old Fox News office mate Juan Williams says he’s hearing most often right now on Capitol Hill.
Real issue⚠️: Without a functioning Congress, it makes the president, no matter the party, more powerful
- Look at the numbers👀: Only 10% of Americans approve of Congress
- 86% disapprove, hitting a record high
📰CBS’ Robert Costa headlines, “What’s wrong with Congress?”
- What I’m thinking💭: We should’ve written a piece about what’s right with Congress … it would be a blank piece of paper
Tonight📺: Rep. Jim Jordan on the refusal to compromise that would actually get stuff done
Tune into “On Balance with Leland Vittert” weeknights at 9/8 CT on NewsNation. Find your channel here.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.
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