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.
“Morning Joe” Warning
On “Morning Joe” today, they repeated, “They are going to elect Donald Trump” over and over at the top of the 7 a.m. hour as they compared 2024 to 1968.
- Historian Michael Beschloss made much the same point later in the segment speaking about the protesters on college campuses across America.
- Their No. 1 viewer: Biden reportedly gets up to “Morning Joe” every day.
The Washington Post is worried: They wrote today, “Trump, GOP seize on campus protests to depict chaos under Biden. Republicans highlight images of turmoil, though most of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been peaceful.”
Biden paralyzed: Biden appears to hope that the protests will go away and avoids talking about them at all costs.
- Newsflash: Hope is not a strategy.
- Press shop intrigue: Once again, a strongly worded statement about the protests came from the deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates, not Karine Jean-Pierre.
- Also on MSNBC: John Kirby delivered what should be his boss’ — the president’s — message every day, yet Biden can’t bring himself to say it: “There’s not going to be an independent Palestinian state with Hamas in control of Gaza. Can’t happen. If they really cared about the Palestinian people, if they really cared about an independent state, they’d lay down their arms, they’d step aside and they’d release those hostages.”
Chaos and disorder, as our good friend George Will pointed out, are bad for Mr. Biden.
- It’s not just disorder on campuses, it’s:
- Disorder on the border
- Disorder from crime
- Disorder in the economy
Read below for full coverage of a new CNN poll that shows Biden down six in the head-to-head matchup.
Go deeper on the protests 📣:
- What they were chanting on George Washington University’s campus, where D.C. police reportedly were not allowed to move the protesters out: “There’s only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the United States of America.”
Fighting back:
- Jewish students are having their own fun:
- Playing the trumpet at 3 a.m. at UCLA.
- Or blasting “Good morning, Vietnam” at 4:30 a.m.
- Or a giant screen showing the atrocities of Oct. 7.
Important reading: From the Jewish Journal, “The Inside Story of How Palestinians Took Over the World.”
Reagan wisdom: Click here for some perspective from former President Ronald Reagan.
“Horror Show” Numbers
The new CNN poll shows Trump up six points on Biden in the general election – oof!
- My friend Guy Benson calls them “horror show” numbers and delves into the Israel side of things.
Watch tonight: We will talk to Trish Regan about the economic side of things.
- Biden has among the lowest unemployment numbers of any president in history but also the lowest approval rating.
- For the first time in over 40 years, the vast majority of Americans can’t afford basic goods.
- Nod to the progressives: To solve his economic problems, President Biden promises to roll back Trump-era tax cuts that helped the middle class most.
Bottom line: America’s economy may be doing well — on many data points it is — but the average American’s personal economy (like their checking accounts) is doing horribly.
The Worst of the White House Correspondents Dinner
Sources who actually went to the White House Correspondents dinner tells your humble correspondent there was an overwhelming feeling that “it might be the last one.”
- If Trump wins, the thinking goes, he won’t show up to “nerd prom” for a night of self-aggrandizing by the press.
- Thought bubble: As if the White House press corps needs more self-aggrandizing.
Look forward: We can only pray that such prophecies of the White House Correspondents dinner ending come true.
The celebration of the First Amendment turned into a celebration of those who fawn over President Biden by President Biden.
- Just watch MSNBC’s response to Biden’s jokes.
Bottom line: The press have no one to blame but themselves for the lack of trust (and scorn) the American people have in them.
Going after Columbia
Programming alert: Famed class action attorney Jay Edelson joins us with his first interview since filing a major claim against Columbia University.
- Some of the claims include our reporting about Khymani James, the protest leader who hates whites and said all Zionists should die.
- Since Columbia administrators won’t do the right thing and can’t be shamed into doing the right thing, will legal action make them do the right thing?
- Where it hurts: Forbes dropped a major piece today: “Employers Are Souring On Ivy League Grads…”
Andrew Ross Sorkin tweeted over the weekend, “Controversial thought experiment: What would happen if companies told universities that they wouldn’t hire ANY of their students unless the schools take decisive action to end blatant antisemitism on campus. After all, no company would use an executive search firm with even one employee who openly engaged in antisemitism.”
- First, why is this controversial?
- Second, look at the replies to the tweet: “But Andrew, why only antisemitism? Why not Islamophobia and anti-Black racism too?” asks Mehdi Hasan.
- And Mehdi, who wrote a book about winning every argument, just proved who he is.
- There are no campuses right now allowing Islamophobia or anti-Black racism.
- There are no protests chanting “death to Muslims” or “hang the Blacks.”
Bottom line: President Biden and liberals in general now engage in the exact same (arguably worse) bothsidesing of hate that they rightly trashed Trump for after Charlottesville.
Big picture: The protesters know what they are doing is wrong, and we know that because they are wearing masks and won’t talk to anyone, like in this video.
- Even during Black Lives Matter, the protesters wanted to talk and show their faces because they believed in the moral righteousness of their protest and even their looting — I interviewed some.
- As we’ve reported for more than a week now, these protests are very different.
Fun fact: The woman who represents Columbia University is the same person who sued Nazis over Charlottesville and talked about the lack of moral courage.
Generation of Weaklings
The protests on campuses expose how Generation Z is completely detached from reality.
- Prediction: This won’t end well.
From a New York Times story about the college class of 2024 being denied graduation after not getting to graduate high school in 2020 because of COVID: “‘Unfortunately, being Gen Z means dealing with repeated states of the world that are in absolute hostility and turmoil,’ Ms. Ongele said, while standing in front of a community guidelines board in front of the encampment, wearing a black face mask. ‘We are the generation of school shootings, the generation that is tasked to deal with climate change. We’ve just been dealt the short end of the stick time and time again.’”
WAIT WHAT?
- You have Uber
- You have iPhones
- You have better and more equitable access to education than any generation in the past
- Yet you, Gen Z, are the victims
Compare to:
- Those coming of age during the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War I, Great Depression, World War II, during the Vietnam War and the draft.
- But no, dealing with climate change is too much for Gen Z
To be fair: This is the same generation denied actual history classes in school, so maybe they actually don’t know what it was like before.
- Thought bubble: Gen Z will soon be responsible for funding Social Security and Medicare — YIKES!
Anxiety among kids has increased to over 13% in the last couple of years. Obesity has increased to nearly 20% among youth.
Vox headlines, “How anxiety became a catchall for every unpleasant emotion.”
From Bari Weiss’ new newsletter, “The Front Page”:
- “One in ten American kids has an ADHD diagnosis: We knew ADHD diagnoses were being handed out freely these days, but a new study finds that more than one in ten Americans between the ages of 5 and 17 have been diagnosed with the condition. To us, at least, that’s a shockingly high figure. Abigail Shrier, whose new book Bad Therapy is about what she sees as the pathologization of ordinary childhood behavior, thinks the study shows that we’re too quick to diagnose the disorder.
- “Here’s what Abigail told us: ‘We should be asking what’s in American kids’ environments that’s making them so hyperactive? Are they spending too much time on the iPad? Is their classroom cluttered and filled with distraction? Are they eating two Krispy Kreme doughnuts for breakfast? Instead, we hand them a diagnosis and put them on speed. But handing kids a diagnosis for a mental disorder is not a neutral act: it’s telling a child there’s something wrong with his brain, something he can’t fix on his own.’”
Be fair: A lot of young kids have real problems. In fact, the mass overdiagnosis is probably hurting them the most.
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.