Trump or Tucker ⁉️
Vance represents the same forces that brought WWII.
Editor’s note✏️: Glad to be back with you! This is an abbreviated version of War Notes
✈️Rachel and I spent the weekend in Normandy doing research for a new book, and we’re flying home today
🛜Starlink’s technology is simply remarkable — I filmed and uploaded our First Dispatch from the plane over the North Atlantic — wow!
UFO/Chinese Drone Swarm🛩️: An alarming new report says the American F-15 pilot shot down over Iran reported a drone swarm below him — describing it as a “jellyfish.”
What I am thinking💭: Does this explain why we haven’t seen or heard from either of them?
Look back🔙: One very plausible explanation for all the UFO videos is adversarial new technology
Fair question⚖️: Wouldn’t the Chinese and Iranians shoot down an F-22 rather than an F-15?
Failure to launch📰: “Gen Z’s Great Retreat From Risk” headlines Arthur Brooks in The Free Press, writing:
“Teen drinking has plummeted. So have dating, marriage, childbearing, and other leaps into adulthood. What looks like prudence may signal a dangerous cultural shift.” Hat tip to our senior producer Matt Richards for the pitch.
Watch tonight📺: Yemisi Egbewole on whether Gen Z is seeing something we are all missing?
Vance’s Success‼️
🔙Vice President JD Vance’s takeover of the Iran negotiations represents a move back to the 1930s.
Isolationism
Blaming the Jews
Moral equivalences
Appeasing evil
Fair question❓: Is Vance serving Trump or Tucker Carlson?
👀Tucker couldn’t say anything bad about Vance when he announced he’s leaving the Republican Party
Tucker: “This president has completely betrayed his own voters. And so that leaves the vice president who was the hope of many of those voters including me in a horrible situation. And I every day I feel sorry for JD Vance. Every day I say a prayer for him.”
Must-watch 📺: Batya from last night’s show
Scary⚠️: The (same) mistakes of the 1930s were paid for in American blood and treasure — many on the shores of Normandy. The sacrifice is real.
Excellent read📰: Our buddy Erick Erickson on Vance’s “strategy”
“Crying Wolf” writes Erick Erickson
View👀: Much of the anti-Trump media keeps wanting to show Vance is “failing” against Iran — true, but it totally misses the point
🤷Vance isn’t so much failing to lead with Iran as leading America’s retreat.
It’s not much different than the many on the Left, who now embrace Iran and terrorism and blame the Jews.
‼️Trump appears caught between wanting to move on from Iran and knowing Vance’s solution doesn’t work
📱Sharron Davidson sent this clip from Jon Stewart
It’s part of a MUCH bigger problem.
Regime change‼️: No, not in Iran, but the book that changes nothing but shows a lot.
Be smart🧠: Iran is a symptom of a larger problem for Trump and his presidency — a deep desire to make major changes in America but an unwillingness to do the hard, methodical work for it to happen.
Be fair⚖️: There are places it has — EPA comes to mind, etc.
The problem🚨: Trump’s objectives from the reflecting pool to ending the Iranian threat, confronting China, bringing back manufacturing, eliminating government waste and fraud etc., are all deep and complicated problems
Fight🥊: They each have big constituencies in Washington that don’t want them fixed and will fight Trump because they hate him.
Chris Cillizza on the reflecting pool: “The Reflecting Pool Is the Perfect Metaphor for Trump’s Presidency”
Staying power‼️: Trump’s unwillingness to stay with things and endure pain is stopping him from the legacy wins he wants.
The Wall Street Journal/Fox News📰: The Murdoch media empire continues to rail against the Iran deal and now warns of Vance — it’s something to watch
Watch tonight📺: Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Congressman Adam Smith, D-Wash., on how to reverse America’s withdrawal.
The “Real” Democrats‼️
Conservative media LOVES self-hating Democrats these days — the ones who say a progressive and socialist pivot will end in disaster.
Melissa DeRosa: “They are not Democrats; they are socialists, and they are parasites. They cannot win on their own by creating their own party, so they are going to latch onto the Democratic Party and feed off of it, with the overall goal of taking it over and killing it.”
Look back🔙: I remember all the normie Republicans in 2016 saying Trump doesn’t represent our party
🗣️We told you almost a year ago, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and socialism are the new Democratic Party
👀Just like there were and are Republicans more extreme than Trump, that’s true now for Democrats
Suicide squad💣: These people make AOC look normal
Nithya Raman in Los Angeles
Raman has gone against efforts to stop homeless camps near schools and day cares
Janeese Lewis George in D.C.
Lewis is against expanding youth curfews — even after the teen takeovers we see in D.C.
Graham Platner in Maine
Eating their own🍴: The same Democrats who believed all women, demanded boys in girls sports and declared a genocide in Gaza are now getting eaten by the socialist movement they created.
Wow 😱: A New York coffee shop told Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., that he’s not welcome over his pro-Israel views.
Must watch📺: Democratic nominee for Senate Graham Platner on women’s rights
Platner: “I will never forgive Susan Collins for her vote for Brett Kavanaugh, which resulted in the overturning of Wade...I also will never forgive establishment Democrats…”
🤦Says the guy accused of roughing up his girlfriend —a true fighter for women…
Watch tonight📺: Mike Nellis on his party’s future — Democratic socialists might just be Democrats.
I look forward to these notes every night. You usually hit the nail on the head. O’Reilly used to be like that but too fearful of admitting Iran is a disaster.
My evening routine is now back to normal with War Notes & On Balance, of course with Leland.