Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Trump’s Plan Worked — Perfectly!

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 7 p.m. ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.

State of play :

• 96 days to the election
• 18 days to the DNC
• 40 days to the debate Sept. 10
• 11 days since Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the candidacy, and she still hasn’t had a meaningful interaction with press
• Decision Desk HQ average: Donald Trump +1.2 (and dropping). Click here to see the numbers

Events today:

• VP Harris: Today, she gave the eulogy at Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s memorial service. She will be at Joint Base Andrew with the president for the arrival of those released from Russia.
• President Biden: Today, he spoke after the release of Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and other Americans in a hostage deal with Russia. Will be with Harris at Joint Base Andrew for the arrival.
• Trump: Nothing scheduled.
• JD Vance: Today, Vance tours the U.S.-Mexico border.

It’s Very Simple!

This morning, I turned on the TV and did my usual perusing of news sites to learn that Trump’s a racist who attacked Kamala Harris’ “Black identity.”

• “ Trump’s comments on Harris’s race moves contest into new phas e,” The Washington Post tells us.
• Thank you, Washington Post! That is EXACTLY what Trump wanted. Now, we aren’t talking about cat ladies or JD Vance or them being “weird.” We are no longer talking about how great Harris is doing in the polls … which, by the way, she is.
• Poll du jour : Public opinion strategies show Harris up in PA, WI and tied in MI – a SEISMIC shift in two weeks.

Trump is fine with people talking about whether he is a racist because it’s baked in.

Most of the media lives in New York and spends summers in the Hamptons talking to each other. And the view from there is pretty uniform: Trump is a racist. I am sure you heard it on lots of cable shows last night and today.

But for those of us who have covered him since 2015, been to his rallies and talked to his supporters — you know, actual reporting rather than punditry — something different happened yesterday.

Trump didn’t like the herd narrative of Harris’ rocketlike accession, so he decided to single-handedly change the subject — and all the people in the Hamptons were aghast at their cocktail parties last night.

It worked, and for the zillionth time, all the people who hate Trump and look at his fans as racist hicks took the bait.

It’s really that simple.

Racism Bad, Antisemitism OK!

For a media awfully concerned about Trump’s racism, they are oblivious to the rampant antisemitism in the Democratic Party currently clouding Harris’ vice presidential pick.

To the point that Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., of all people, is calling out his own people on X : “There are several incredible options for vice president. The superb Governor of Pennsylvania, @JoshShapiroPA , is one of them. Singling him out, or applying a double standard to him over the war in Gaza, is antisemitic and wrong.”

A campaign against Shapiro deeply rooted in antisemitism calls him “Genocide Josh.”

Suddenly, Kamala Harris’ words last night of “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us” take on new meaning.

Welcome Home!

With Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan coming home today, the world is a better but more dangerous place.

As someone who spent time in dangerous places with dangerous people, Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich’s homecoming makes me emotional to the point it’s hard to cover …

• Whenever I see their families, I think about my parents if I had been grabbed.
• When I see the first embrace after years of detention, torture, fear, I think what it would have been like to hug my dad for the first time.
• For Whelan, it’s been six years of hell and an equally hard time for his family.

The bigger point is that they shouldn’t have been taken in the first place. Yes, Cold War swaps happened for spies, but this is different.

These were innocent Americans taken as bargaining chips and exchanged for a Russian intelligence officer turned assassin held in Germany for murder on behalf of Russia.

• There are bounties on the heads of innocent Americans around the world now. That’s dangerous.

Last night, we had former Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker on about what President Biden (our president) is doing to prevent all-out war in the Middle East.

He laid out a devastating indictment of the Biden administration’s policy of nonescalation at any price — it simply invites the world’s bad actors to demand higher and higher prices from America.

From The Wall Street Journal , writing about the deal that freed their reporter: “It also offers sobering evidence of the asymmetry between the U.S. and Russia in this new, piratical order. Putin can order foreigners plucked from restaurants and hotels and given lengthy prison sentences on spurious charges—something an American leader can’t do.”

As former Ambassador John Bolton said this morning, when you swap innocent people for bad people, you only encourage grabbing more innocent people.

Watch tonight: Bolton will join us to discuss the rightful credit Biden deserves for bringing together a very complicated deal but also the real blame he deserves for creating an environment that means such deals are necessary.

As often with Biden-Harris foreign policy, they seek credit for good work on problems they failed to stop.

ICYMI — a plea deal will spare the life of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

• The front page of the New York Post calls it an atrocity of justice — that we all learned about in a paper statement.

Tune into “On Balance with Leland Vittert” weeknights at 7/6C 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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