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.
White Rural Rage
Amazon sells the new book “White Rural Rage” as “A searing portrait and damning takedown of America’s proudest citizens — who are also the least likely to defend its core principles.”
Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman write a damning indictment of the people former President Barack Obama said “cling to their guns and religion” and Hillary Clinton called “deplorables.” Evidently in the authors’ minds, the people in the flyover country have gone downhill from 2008 and 2016.
The response:
- Fox calls the authors morons.
- MSNBC says they are patriots.
Watch tonight: NewsNation and I will not do that — we’ll have the authors on to discuss.
Attacking Our Institutions
In the next few days:
- We’ll likely get the Supreme Court’s ruling on Colorado taking Donald Trump off the ballot.
- We’ll see if a judge disqualifies Fani Willis from being the prosecutor in Trump’s Georgia trial.
- We might get a date for Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida.
We have no idea how the courts will rule, but we do know how the Left will react unless they get exactly the verdict they want.
They previewed their reaction Wednesday night when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump’s appeal over presidential immunity.
- The Supreme Court taking the case makes sense.
- The Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, the co-equal branch of government to the executive branch, hearing a case about the Constitution, is how the founders designed it…unless you work at MSNBC.
Rachel Maddow for example said, “For you to say that this is something that the court needs to decide because it’s something that’s unclear in the law is just flagrant, flagrant bullpucky, and they know it and they don’t care that we know it. And that’s disturbing about the future legitimacy of the court.”
There is the word we will hear over and over and over — legitimacy.
The court is an institution in America. It’s the last protector of the Constitution. And it’s the last institution and branch of government that continues to do its job in the way the founders imagined.
- Congress gave up most of its power to the executive
- And the executive regardless of power keeps
- The supreme court just keeps doing its thing.
Yet, even before they rule, MSNBC says the justices will throw the case because then they can retire.
Elie Mystal said on MSNBC, “Clarence Thomas needs Trump to win again so Clarence Thomas can retire. And most likely, Sam Alito needs Trump to win again so Alito can retire instead of having to die on the bench. And so that’s at least two of the nine who have a vested, professional interest in seeing continued Republican hegemony over this country.”
So there you go, by the Left’s standard, either the court rules their way or it is illegitimate, which is interesting because all during the Trump administration, we kept hearing about the danger in attacking institutions.
- Institutions they say are what keeps the country stable in rocky seas, things like trust in the Supreme Court. The whole idea of institutions is you accept them even when you disagree…
The Left is right — there is a danger in tearing down our institutions.
DVR ALERT: The Hill on Sunday
My friend Chris Stirewalt’s Saturday nights will never be the same. His new show “The Hill Sunday with Chris Stirewalt” premieres Sunday at 10 a.m. E.T. He’ll have Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., and Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., on and will have a panel with Christine Rosen, Bob Cusack, David Drucker and David Swerdlick.
Stirewalt is with us tonight. We’ll discuss whether Biden can turn it all around in the State of the Union Address after Newsweek declares February his worst political month.
Bonus: We’ll get Stirewalt’s thoughts on this post from Eric Hovde, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, trying to prove his Wisconsin bona fides amid attacks over owning and living at a mansion in Laguna Beach, California.
Immigrant Crime
Friends and family gathered in Woodstock, Georgia to say goodbye to Laken Riley, the 22-year-old nursing student allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant.
Our reporting shows multiple arrests in the past few weeks of illegal immigrants for sexual assault, crimes against children and the like, not to mention the videotaped beating of New York City police officers a few weeks ago. In many of the cases, without sanctuary city laws, these people wouldn’t be in the United States.
Open border enthusiasts love to quote “studies” showing “immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native born americans.”
Somehow TV anchors and journalists accept those findings as a fact of life — much like the sun rising in the east.
While there are studies showing this, Google brings back only a few including this one from the CATO Institute by Alex Nowrasteh.
They are few and far between, the data is difficult to come by and the results questionable, especially since there is incomplete raw data about the immigration status of all those arrested.
Watch tonight: Nowrasteh joins us with why the “studies show” argument might be true, but not entirely fair.
Thought bubble: Are tonight and tomorrow the last times we will ever hear of Laken Riley?
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.
