JDs Presidential Try Out

Trump picked Vance to save his 2024 campaign — can he do it again

Our weekend snapshot📸:

Thanks to GeminiAI

Last day‼️: We’ve heard from over 1,000 of you in our War Notes survey.

• 🙏Thank you as always for your candid responses — we hear you!

• Today is the last day for your responses to be counted.

  • ‼️Click HERE to let us know what we are doing right and what needs to change — we read every one!

Holy week⛳: Yes, I know the actual Holy Week was last week — this is the holy week of golf.

• 🏌️Masters Sunday might be my second favorite holiday of the year after Thanksgiving

• Truth🤷: Ok it’s equal to Thanksgiving in my book.

  • ☀️This is the unofficial start of summer…you can now feel it.

  • 👫Rachel and I will be hosting friends — hope you get to enjoy the weekend with people you love.

    • 🥓We are serving bacon wrapped dates — recipe here

      • For the golf snobs: Yes, I know we use Manchego cheese rather than goat cheese like Rory McIlroy did for the Champions Dinner.

Programming Alert🚨: The Artemis II mission with its four astronauts splash down at 8:07 p.m. ET off the coast of San Diego — live coverage all night.

• 🫣This will be an abbreviated version of War Notes — because I spent most of the day celebrating golf holy week.

Scary🗣️: The treasury secretary called a meeting of America’s largest bank to discuss the cyber security threats from a new AI!

• 📰You can read more from CNBC and others

• ‼️Things are changing rapidly — it may not be fundamentally different than how things changed in the various other technological revolutions of the past — but this is happening MUCH faster

• Reality👀: One of the few things the government is good at is regulation in moments like this and they are failing us.

• Prediction💭: Something really really bad is going to happen — then Congress will finally act.

  • Hope: The really bad thing shuts down an airline or hacks a bank rather than a powerplant or hospital.

Can Vance Save Trump Again❓

‼️This is the second time Trump picked JD Vance to save him — the stakes couldn’t be higher.

State of play👀: It’s hard to know who has more to lose over the weekend — Vice President JD Vance or President Trump.

• ‼️Trump ends the worst week of his second presidency with compounding problems

  • The weaker he is at home with inflation and MAGA infighting —

  • The weaker America’s hand at the negotiating table with Iran

  • The worse deal he gets with Iran or the more Iran continues to take advantage of him

  • The worse inflation and MAGA infight get.

• 🤝Vance now must negotiate a deal with a weak hand that will define his run for presidency

  • Yikes😬: What a damning headline “Iran wanted to negotiate with Vance. They got their wish”

  • 🤦Even if things go well, Vance will get none of the credit — Trump will take that.

  • 🤷If things go badly, he will get blamed.

  • Worst job‼️: The job of vice president was once described as “you die, I fly” — as in flying to people’s funerals.

    • 🪦Vance might be attending a funeral for his own presidential hopes.

• What I am thinking💭: For all the jobs Secretary of State Marco Rubio has — he somehow escaped this weekend’s trip to Islamabad — nice work

Be fair⚖️: None of the above is Vance’s fault — by all accounts, he argued against starting the war with Iran.

What changed🤷: Last weekend, it became clear Trump wanted out — we don’t know why.

• ❓Polling? MAGA infighting? Boredom? Anger at Israel for promising it would be easy?

• 🤦In typical Trump fashion, he escalated rapidly and then backed down getting nothing.

• Look back🔙: That didn’t really matter when he did it with Greenland — everybody was in on the joke

• Embarrassed😬: The Iranians saw Greenland and took it a step farther.

  • They got Trump to back down (ceasefire) and took something — between $1 and $2 million per ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

  • By any fair reading, the Iranians have and continue to embarrass Trump.

Next⏩: It’s clear Trump hopes the two-week negotiating period — that can always be extended — will give Americans time to move on.

• Look back🔙: Remember when anti-ICE demonstrators dominated the news?!?! Something new will capture America’s attention.

• Big picture📷: Unlike somewhat meaningless domestic political fights — whether ICE wears masks — who controls the Strait of Hormuz, Iran and the credibility of America matter a great deal.

Hope🙏: In the past, Trump has escaped moments like this before with little cost and America continues to prosper.

• Look back🔙: Many at the Republican National Convention (myself included) questioned his pick of Vance as vice president — it turned out to be genius and helped save Trump’s floundering campaign.

Now Vance must save Trump’s floundering presidency — we would be wise to not count either man out.