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.  

Close Out

Ground truth from Charleston: Trump appears ready to rout Nikki Haley in the state that the eventual nominee won every time since 1980, with the one exception being Gingrich in 2012. 

Nikki Haley said on “Meet the Press,” “I don’t think it necessarily has to be a win, but it certainly has to be better than what I did in New Hampshire.”

• That means she needs to lose South Carolina by less than New Hampshire’s 11-point margin. In the latest Decision Desk HQ polling average she is down 30. 
• Thought bubble: Haley said she wouldn’t run against Trump. Haley said she needs to do better in South Carolina than New Hampshire. What’s the plan? 

Haley maintains that even with a monumental loss in her home state, she still has a path to the nomination. As Politico Playbook notes today, how to navigate that has much more to do with voters, where she has a problem, than it does with donors, who continue to support her.

Not a cash problem: 

Haley’s enormous popularity with big-dollar Republican donors means she doesn’t have to drop out and can continue making a strong case against Trump for as long as the cash keeps flowing. 

A state divided:   

• Donald Trump will spend the last day before the primary focused on rural and working-class Southern voters in the northern part of the Palmetto state while we spend the day with Nikki Haley in the more affluent and traditionally conservative Charleston and vacation areas.
  • Bad news for Haley: There are a lot more working-class rural voters than rich retirees and Charleston professionals. 
• Jonathan Weisman (@jonathanweisman) reports in The New York Times that nearly 10% of likely Republican voters weren’t even here during Haley’s successful time as governor. 

What about Democrats and independents? 

• The elusive mass turnout of Democrats and independents who can vote in South Carolina’s open primary remains elusive. Early voting data shows an increased Democratic turnout, but South Carolina experts tell me it’s not enough to materially win the game. 

Losing your home state:

• Haley points out at every stump speech she went into the state legislature as a Tea Party conservative. Tea party conservatives say that she has left them not the other way around.
  • “We didn’t abandon her. She abandoned us,” Allen Olson, former head of the Columbia Tea Party told Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) with Politico. 

Delegate math:

• George Will last night made the point that anything can happen until Trump gets the needed 1,215 delegates. So far, there have been 92 delegates “up for grabs.” In the contests where Haley has been on the ballot, she has gotten one in four. If the math continues at this rate, Trump will close out the nomination by March 19, the second “Super Tuesday.” 

Watch tonight: We’ll join Nikki Haley on her bus tour. 

Irrational EV enthusiasm 

Here in South Carolina, David Wren headlines in The Post and Courier, “EV battery supplier Albemarle puts SC project on hold amid lithium price meltdown.” The $1.6 billion factory cancellation joins a long list of EV projects that are not panning out — that’s a lot of construction work in the American South without work. 

Zoom out: Electric dreams die and kill American jobs. 

Mercedes just announced they would move away from their all-electric vehicle plan. 

Bottom line: People aren’t buying EVs even with huge government subsidies. Wealthy urbanites who are going to buy EVs already have — as we’ve reported — the rest of us aren’t, even with subsidies. 

2,000 Phone Calls, 12,000 Texts

New filings from Team Trump raise serious questions about the credibility of the two prosecutors going after the former president in Georgia.  

Both Fani Willis and Nathan Wade swore their “personal relationship” started after Willis hired Wade for $650,000 of taxpayer money to bring the Trump Georgia Case. 

Wade’s phone records show 2,000 phone calls and 12,000 texts between the two in 2021…before Willis hired Wade. The cell phone location data strongly suggests Wade spent time at Willis’s condo. 

Read more from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “On one occasion, on Sept. 11, 2021, Wade’s phone left the Doraville area and arrived in the vicinity of Willis’ Hapeville address at 10:45 p.m. The phone remained there until 3:28 a.m. and could later be seen arriving in East Cobb at 4:05 a.m., shortly before Wade sent a text to Willis, the affidavit said.”

Watch tonight We’ll talk with Steven Krakauer about how long the media can brand Willis the victim of a racist witch hunt before they give up. 

Rolling in the dough

Nancy Pelosi’s remarkable stock market success continues. Our friends at @unusual_whales report the former speaker of the house made eight times her annual salary with an options trade on chip maker NVIDIA. 

• “This is getting ridiculous. Nancy Pelosi’s $NVDA calls have made her $1,700,000 in 92 days, more than eight times her annual salary of ~$223,500. With NVDA’s all-time high, her $NVDA ITM calls are now up 82%. An American making $60k/year requires ~30 years to make that amount.”

It’s no surprise that Congress refuses to pass legislation stopping members from trading securities over which they have unusual insight and regulatory power. 

As predicted

We told you the Alabama Supreme Court would allow the media to brand Republicans as anti-family hypocrites — MSNBC wasted no time. 

Two years later, still no end game

Two years ago tomorrow Russia invaded Ukraine.

Let’s sum up the Biden administration policy based on domestic political concerns:

• Keep Russia from winning
• Keep Ukraine from winning
• Keep spending American taxpayer money (that we don’t have)
• Implement sanctions that sound impressive but don’t hit the Kremlin where it hurts
• Keep allowing Vladimir Putin to get richer

Evidence: Despite said “severe consequences” that President Biden bragged about extracting on Russia, Putin and team is richer than ever, so says CNN. 

None of these sanctions meaningfully cut off Putin’s ability to raise cash or punish those who keep the money flowing to Moscow. 

The domestic angle to this: Truly punishing Russia would raise gas prices in the United States and put additional pressure on Biden to increase domestic oil production…two things he doesn’t want before an election.

Today a State Department statement says they are “sanctioning three individuals in connection with the death of Navalny in Russian Penal Colony IK-3: the prison warden, regional prison head, and deputy director of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia.” 

• Spoiler alert: The warden of Penal Colony IK-3 doesn’t care. He isn’t coming to America. He doesn’t have a U.S. bank account. 

Why it’s dangerous: Given the Biden administration’s track record of tough talk coupled with toothless measures, it’s hard to imagine the Kremlin really cares about our “warning” not to deploy their new anti-satellite weapon.

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.