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.  

2024 Is Weird

This weekend, Donald Trump will rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the first assassination attempt and his iconic photo. 

• He will (likely) lean into the rhetoric of divine intervention saving him so he can save the country.
• After all, as Trump says: “They’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in their way,” referring to the Left. 
• Trump loves flirting with the benevolent dictator language and fully embraces the savior complex.
  • Fun fact: Trump’s on-again-off-again best friend who is a world leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is more vocal about these things. 
• With him will be Elon Musk, another man who views himself as the savior of humanity
  • Just ask the three women he’s fathered 12 kids with. 
• New savior: The Republican Party now views their savior not as God but as Trump and increasingly Musk.
  • For people who claim to be focused on family values, these are peculiar choices. 
• End of America: Musk now parrots Trump’s rhetoric that his defeat will end the American experiment, recently writing on his own social media platform, “Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election.”
• It’s scary: The founders very specifically said our rights came from God, not man.
  • They created America to secure rights given to us by God.
  • George Washington turned down “king” — he was the first and last person to ever do that. 
• Men who sell themselves as messianic, especially those with enormous wealth and power, should terrify us 
• Look back: As our buddy George Will likes to say, one of the things that makes America “exceptional” is the lack of an entrenched aristocracy — that is in serious question now. 

Zoom out: We don’t really do philosophy in War Notes, but we are unapologetically American exceptionalists.

• The founders would find a man running for president by putting himself above and beyond the Constitution to save the country appalling — why Trump is now leaning into that only speaks to his own insatiable ego. 

Scratching my head: I can’t figure out the Trump supporters who pound their chest about traditional, Christian values yet find their savior in both Trump and Musk.

• They should be careful — it’s pretty clear Musk is as power-hungry as Trump, if not more. 

Go farther: Trump’s embrace of the whole “America is going to hell” language gives Kamala Harris a huge opening — that she walked through at the DNC.

• Her speech last night talked a lot about American exceptionalism and the American idea. 
• I am not saying she believes any of it — by any objective measure, her true policy beliefs are far closer to neo-Marxist than representative republic capitalism. 

2024 is weird. 

Can Obama Rescue Harris?

The betting markets just flipped in Trump’s favor for Pennsylvania. 

• Betting markets are a leading indicator — the polling will follow.
• As we’ve told you for a few weeks now, more bad things (in the country and world) can happen for Harris — and they are.
  • CNN says the crosstabs data would make a Harris win “historically unprecedented.”

What I am watching: Four weeks out, two of the three blue wall states show troubling signs for Democrats.

• Chris Cillizza lays out why Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania will decide everything. 
• Axios reports that Democrats now worry about what they thought was a safe Senate seat in Wisconsin.
  • Hint: Bad Senate numbers mean worse presidential numbers 
  • “Wisconsin parents don’t think their daughters should have to play against boys,” opines James Freeman in The Wall Street Journal. 
• Axios also reports Elissa Slotkin, running for Senate in Michigan, told donors Harris is underwater in the must-win state
  • It could be spin, but it seems real. 

Off the beach: If you don’t believe any of this, why else is former President Obama coming out of retirement for a 27-day barnstorm? 

• Politics is personal: Obama viewed Trump’s election in 2016 as a personal insult.
  • Especially after Trump’s birther crusade
  • He returned the favor with his joke during the DNC about Trump’s, uh, crowd size. 

Remember when: In 2016, then-President Obama famously warned his confidants (privately) of Hillary Clinton’s weakness — and then leaked about it aggressively after the election.

• Politico: “Obama suggests Clinton didn’t work as hard as he did.”
• Politico: “How Clinton lost Michigan — and blew the election.” 

Internal warning: Now, the leaks are coming ahead of time

• From NBC: “Harris is playing it safe. Some Democrats worry that could doom her campaign.”
  • “‘The campaign is taking a chance that they can run out the clock and Trump’s weaknesses will be enough to win,’ said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist. ‘But the danger in that is if you don’t define your own candidacy well enough, people will start defining it themselves.’” 

What I am thinking: How does Obama keep from reminding voters what it was like to have a talented candidate?