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.
It appears unlikely President Joe Biden will go to Dover to meet the caskets of the three Americans Iran killed, which is ironic and sad considering Biden is at Dover almost weekly transiting to and from his weekend home.
Policies have consequences: Much like the border (see below), the killing of three Americans was not a failure of the Biden administration’s policy, but a direct result of the policy; giving Iran billions and treating them as honest partners. We’ve predicted as much in War Notes many times. This was entirely preventable and sadly we must predict it will happen again.
- Look forward : The same foreign policy team that got us here (Antony Blinken, Lloyd Austin and Jake Sullivan) will lead the response. They are driven by the view of the Middle East and Iran as they want it to be rather than as it is.
- Evidence: Our response against the Houthis which so far has annoyed some camels, but has not stopped the attacks on our ships in the Red Sea.
What happened: It took Iran and its proxies 159 times to finally get “lucky” in their attacks on U.S. military bases since Oct. 7. A (likely) Iranian made and supplied drone hit a U.S. barrack at the logistics base in the north east corner of Jordan.
Weakness is provocative. Rather than say his first priority is protecting Americans, Biden says his first priority is “not escalating” into a war in the Middle East.
- National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby said on Morning Joe this morning, “We don’t want a wider war with Iran, we don’t want a wider war in the region, but we gotta do what we have to do.”
Thought bubble: It might help to tell Iran what we are going to do to defend our troops and punish those who kill them rather than all things we don’t want.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board put it thusly: “Mr. Biden vowed Sunday to ‘hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing,’ though that stock line rings increasingly hollow. He has no choice now other than to approve strikes in retaliation, but targeting the responsible militia is insufficient. Mr. Biden and the Pentagon are playing Mideast Whac-a-Mole.”
The administration is obsessed with fear of retaliation from doing something rather than fear of perceived weakness from not doing anything.
As we have said over and over: Weakness is provocative.
- Ground truth: If Team Biden desires to restore deterrence they will have to use far greater force than if they established it in the first place.
- Things the White House loves to worry about: A report in the UK Mirror about Iran speeding up its nuclear weapons program if the U.S. attacks.
- Thought bubble: This was laughable in the time of Trump. After killing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps head Qasem Soleimani, Iran got in line. Iran knows Biden and his team so badly want to prove their worldview correct they will allow Iran to embarrass and humiliate America in front of its allies. The Middle East plays by different rules.
- Remember all the warnings to Iran?
- A couple weeks ago, Sullivan warned of “severe consequences” if Iran targeted American citizens.
- Remember all the warnings to Iran?
Biden’s Middle East policy gets worse:
- Carol E. Lee (@carolelee) and Courtney Kube (@ckubeNBC) reported to NBC, “The Biden administration is discussing using weaponry sales to Israel as leverage to convince the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to heed long-standing U.S. calls to scale back its military assault in the Gaza Strip, according to three current U.S. officials and one former U.S. official.”
Pressure from the administration on Israel to wrap things up demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the Middle East.
- Nobody actually cares about the plight of Palestinians. They are just using them as political weapons. Thus, wrapping up things in Gaza will not make Iran behave better.
- Pressure only makes the Israelis more suspicious of the Biden administration and less likely to step back in Gaza.
Bottom line: Success in the Middle East requires both moral clarity and violence of action, both things Biden’s foreign policy team finds uncouth and his political team finds dangerous.
The Next Ross Perot
Suddenly Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is interesting. All he needs is the media to turn him into the next Ross Perot or will it be Joe Manchin who, as Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) at CNN reports, might jump on the “No Labels” ticket.
- Either way the White House is worried. Dovere writes, “(The White House knows) that a Democratic senator traveling the county warning that Biden has been pulled too far to the political left would be a problem, particularly as the president and his aides try to stitch back their 2020 coalition that ranged from (Bernie) Sanders supporters to anti-Trump Republicans.
Much of the third party talk comes from polling by Mark Penn. Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) points out in Politico, “The man producing those polls is Mark Penn, best known for two things: His devotion to centrist politics and his longtime role as the top pollster and strategist for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Penn’s wife Nancy Jacobson runs No Labels and frequently uses Penn’s data to support her project.”
Polling says there is demand for a third party.
Come March, the election story will get boring. As much as the media wants a Biden-Trump rematch, there won’t be anything to say, and it will be time for RFK Jr. or Manchin to become the Ross Perot of 2024. No, seriously.
RFK Jr. can take up the populist banner and say stuff that is both interesting and crazy enough to warrant coverage. Plus, the political reporter types love talking about all the possibilities:
- None of the candidates receive 270 electoral votes.
- RFK Jr. gets picked as a VP candidate, though he says the Trump team reached out to him and he said no. (Trump’s team has disputed that this happened.)
- RFK Jr. gets some electoral votes but then makes a deal with either Trump or Biden.
- How will he get on the ballot…maybe the Libertarian ticket?
Looking back: 1992 was the first presidential race I remember. I sat in the audience for the Town Hall debate at Washington University in St. Louis where Bush checked his watch and Clinton delivered his famous answer about the national debt.
America in 1992 has a lot of similarities to America today:
- A sitting president with a primary challenge
- Real economic uncertainty
- Tectonic changes in foreign policy
Vox is already reminding folks of Perot’s legacy. So is USA Today.
Watch tonight: Rather than wait for all the other media to do it in March, we’ll do the story tonight with Bill O’Reilly.
Let’s hope RFK Jr. or Manchin pick a vice president that knows who he is and why he is here.
The Border Makes Everybody Look Bad
Both Republicans and Democrats care more about the border as a campaign or political issue than they do about solving the very real national security crisis; there is no other way to look at their actions over the past few weeks.
Biden could effectively close the border this afternoon. He doesn’t need a deal with Republicans as the current deal would be (in large part) to use the powers he already has.
- Thought bubble: Is Biden now embracing the border deal because he knows Republicans will fight over it?
At the same time, as Stef W. Kight (@StefWKight) writes in Axios, “Trump, GOP Plot to Kill Border Deal.”
Republicans want to keep the border open so Trump will run on it as an election issue.
Newsflash: Impeaching Mayorkas won’t solve anything, writes former Republican Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in the Wall Street Journal.
Never underestimate Republicans’ ability to screw things up.
- Rather than focus on the Biden administration’s parole policy that encourages millions to come here illegally, the Oklahoma governor, among other Republicans, says states should be able to ignore the Supreme Court if it “gets something wrong.”
This is weird. A tweet from Customs and Border Protection, an account I don’t follow, keeps showing up in my feed. It says, “Criminal smuggling organizations prey on migrants – lying about U.S. immigration laws and the dangers of the journey. Asylum laws do not provide for relief solely for economic reasons or for general violence.”
- While technically true it leaves out that with a little coaching, getting parole status into the United States is very, very easy.
- And…why is a CBP post suddenly showing up?
- Thought bubble: Who is the audience here — journalists or people coming to America?
“We Will Burn Your Homes”
This video of people attacking Jews leaving Henry Kissinger’s funeral says a lot about the vast double standard in America’s media.
- If these were Black people followed by Klansmen, there would be mass protests tomorrow not to mention the rightful immediate identification and shaming of those who did it.
- But since they are Jews, nobody cares, especially not The Washington Post which had a long Instagram post and a nearly 5,000 word article written by Ruby Cramer, who chronicled the difficult time of Ashish Prashar who an angry woman confronted in a New York City playground most likely because he wore a keffiyeh (a scarf made popular by Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian terrorists).
- To be clear, the 47 second video that horrifies the Washington Post and clearly shows deep problems in America is nothing compared to the thousands of videos of American Jews threatened, chased and surrounded.
- The double standard is clear — attack a minority (especially a Palestinian) the Internet will name and shame you, but attacking Jews is just part of the political dialogue.
It gets worse. Will Ripley from CNN writes on X, formerly Twitter, “A ‘hornet’s nest’ of antisemitic hate is going unchecked on Chinese social media, largely ignored since Oct. 7th by the government’s usually heavy-handed online censors. Some believe China may be allowing antisemitism to thrive to undermine the US.”
- For a news organization so concerned with Russian interference in the 2016 election this is worth following.
- Nancy Pelosi seems concerned too, telling anti-Israel protesters to “go back to China.”
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.