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.  

Welcome back: Our intrepid Editor-in-Chief Katie Oglesby is BACK. Despite an understandable desire to extend her vacation and stay on the West Coast, she has returned to fix my misspellings, bad grammar, incomplete sentences and half-finished thoughts. Special thanks to Hayley Turner for pulling double duty last week of making sure “On Balance” aired and editing War Notes. 

Days until the RNC: 63 

Days until the DNC: 98

Days until the election: 176

Days since Oct. 7, and how long the hostages have been in captivity: 219

A Stormy Tape You Can Watch

Bill Maher’s researcher could teach Donald Trump’s lawyers a thing or two.

• He unearthed a 2018 tape of Stormy Daniels delivering a far different version of her evening with Donald Trump than she did on the stand. 

Important questions: Why is this the first time you are hearing about it? Why isn’t a video impeaching the testimony of a key witness in the first-ever criminal trial of a former president playing everywhere? 

Look forward: Convicted felon Michael Cohen took the stand today as the prosecution’s star witness against Trump. Trump must hope his lawyers did a better job combing through Cohen’s TV appearances and social media posts than they did that of Daniels.

Rallies vs. Fundraisers

Weekend split screen: Joe Biden attended private fundraisers on the West Coast while Trump headlined a rally on the Jersey Shore. 

• More to come: Team Biden just announced a fundraiser in Los Angeles with former President Barack Obama, George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
  • Expert: We can expect campaign fundraising emails from “Barack,” “George” and “Julia” offering a chance to win coffee or ice cream for a small donation. 

Biden’s message in Seattle: “Hello, Seattle! And thank you for the warm welcome. But please keep it down because Donald Trump is sleeping. ‘Sleepy Don!’ I kind of like that these days.”

Plus: “Clearly unhinged,” said Biden of Trump after the 2020 election. 

Thought bubble: Biden should check with Marco Rubio and Chris Christie on what happens when you out-Trump Trump. 

Dream on: Trump claimed Saturday that New Jersey is “in play.” Biden won it by 16 points in 2020.  

“Absolute disaster”: CNN broke down a New York Times poll showing Trump leading in five of six swing states. 

• Wisconsin: Biden up two points
• Pennsylvania: Trump up three points
• Arizona: Trump up seven points
• Michigan: Trump up seven points
• Georgia: Trump up ten points (with a margin of error)
• Nevada: Trump up twelve points (with a margin of error) 

Watch: Fareed Zakaria explains on CNN. 

Working class divide: Perhaps the most interesting data point we’ve seen in a few weeks comes from the Financial Times:

• “Fifty-two percent of university graduates said Biden better represented blue-collar interests, compared to just a third of non-college graduates.”

In other words : The elites think Biden is doing great for working-class Americans, but working-class Americans disagree. 

Hence Penn warning: “The Simple Math That Could Swing the Election to Biden,” writes Mark Penn in the New York Times. 

• Penn says, “If Mr. Biden wants to serve another four years, he has to stop being dragged to the left and chart a different course closer to the center that appeals to those voters who favor bipartisan compromises to our core issues, fiscal discipline and a strong America.”

Watch tonight: Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) from Axios will discuss whether the White House gives these numbers any credence — and is there any thought from Democrat donors on moving Biden out? 

• Bonus points: Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted she miswrote, aka blatantly rewrote, history in her book. Thompson has the fact check of her claim that Biden didn’t look at his watch during the dignified transfer of 13 U.S. service members killed during the Afghanistan withdrawal.  

Worth questioning: Why spend two years writing a memoir to advance a lie and have that be the focus of all your effort?

“Super Size Me” 20 Years Later

The documentary “Super Size Me” once awoke America to the “dangers” of fast food. Twenty years later, as Brian Gallagher expertly lays out in the New York Times, fast food is doing better than ever. 

• Super size the money: McDonald’s stocks are up 1000% since the documentary came out … that’s two times the S&P 500. 

Fact check: McDonald’s still has the best fries. 

Zoom out: Americans don’t like being told what to do. 

Proud Boys in the National Security Council 

See, I got your attention. In fact, there is not a member of the Proud Boys in the National Security Council, but there is a former organizer of Students for Justice (SJP) in Palestine.

• Click here for background on SJP from the Anti-Defamation League.

Journalist Daniel Greenfield (@Sultanknish) first exposed Maher Bitar back in 2021 in Front Page Magazine, yet Bitar still serves on the National Security Council at the White House as coordinator for intelligence and defense policy.

Important question: How did this guy get a TS/SCI security clearance? 

Zoom out: SJP parrots Hamas talking points and widely organizes the antisemitic, anti-Israel protests sweeping America’s college campuses. 

Zoom in: Even the New York Times admits the mass protests help and embolden Hamas. 

• They write, “Israeli and U.S. intelligence officers say that Mr. Sinwar’s strategy is to keep the war going for as long as it takes to shred Israel’s international reputation and to damage its relationship with its primary ally, the United States.” 

Look back: Anti-Israel sympathizers and activists are nothing new in Obama and Biden world:

• The White House staff nicknamed Obama confidant and former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes “Hamas” for his anti-Israel leanings. 

CNN finds the real problem: Dana Bash spent the weekend bashing TRUMP for being antisemitic because Nick Fuentes (a truly loathsome antisemite) attended dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

• Fact check: Biden has an anti-Israel organizer working at the White House. 

Thought experiment: If Trump had a Proud Boy on the National Security Council and Biden, as presidential candidate, had dinner with Ilhan Omar … what would the press cover? 

Mic drop: From Scott Jennings of CNN about Biden’s newly reported calls to Benjamin Netanyahu: “So Biden made private calls to a US ally to threaten the withholding of congressionally authorized military aide because he’s worried about the impact on his reelection campaign. Seems vaguely familiar. Can’t put my thumb on it.” 

“Get Out of Gaza”

Big picture: The Biden administration is still living in a bizarre worldview where Dearborn cares about the Palestinians. They don’t — they care about destroying Israel. 

• BUT, desperate times (terrible poll numbers) call for desperate measures, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised the pressure on Jerusalem, telling Israel to “get out of Gaza” after delivering a number of harsh criticisms.

Click here for reporting from Peter Baker in the New York Times.  

• Triple speak: Baker reports National Security spokesman John Kirby said, “We’ve never told them they can’t operate in Rafah…What we’ve told them is that the way they do it matters and that we won’t support a major ground operation and invasion smashing into Rafah with, you know, multiple divisions of forces in a ham-fisted, indiscriminate way.”

Again, the world doesn’t care “the way they do it.” If only Israel were just a little bit nicer, people would defend them. Please — as John Spencer and others, including Kirby, have laid out, Israel does more to prevent civilian casualties than any army in the world. 

Cruelty continues: The depravity of Hamas knows no ends — releasing a video of a hostage, then saying he is dead.  

Important update: The United Nations halved the number of “women and children” killed in Gaza. 

Hamas still intact: Interesting point…the media has stopped reporting on attacks AGAINST Israel…

The Institute for the Study of War writes, “Palestinian militias conducted at least 17 attacks targeting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Zaytoun on May 10, suggesting that Hamas was able either to preserve or reconstitute military capability in Zaytoun despite IDF operations there.”

We are hungry! Moral courage: Princeton students ended their hunger strike for Gaza after 10 days  — perhaps because they were hungry and nobody cared. 

Is the West Lost? 

In a speech Monday, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Rishi Sunak said, “The dangers that threaten our country are real. They’re increasing in number. An axis of authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China is working together to undermine us and our values. War has returned to Europe, with our NATO allies warning that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, they might be next.”

• During the speech, Sunak also said,  “… More will change in the next five years than in the last thirty. I’m convinced that the next few years will be some of the most dangerous yet most transformational our country has ever known.”

Watch tonight: “World on the Brink” author Dmitri Alperovitch joins us.

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.