Daily Kickoff
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik about his new song about Oct. 7, “OK,” and interview the Polish-British PR specialist behind the Visegrad24 X account. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Calvin Trillin, Tamara Cofman Wittes and Elon Musk.
Nikki Haley wrapped up her New Hampshire campaign Monday in a packed hotel ballroom on the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border — in Salem, the hometown of Haley-boosting Gov. Chris Sununu, but lately a stronghold of former President Donald Trump’s since his political rise in 2016, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes from New Hampshire.
Haley’s rousing campaign finale ahead of today’s primary wasbriefly interrupted by a heckler who expressed his love for the former South Carolina governor, only to declare he’s voting for Trump. The episode was reflective of the long odds Haley faces in defeating Trump — in a state that will end up being a make-or-break contest for her underdog candidacy.
New Hampshire is as hospitable a primary for the Trump-skeptical forces: It’s an open primary allowing independents to participate. The New England state’s GOP electorate is a notch more moderate than its early state counterparts. And without a competitive Democratic primary taking place, there will be a smattering of anti-Trump Democratic voters looking to make a statement against the former president in the GOP race.
But in a one-on-one contest pitting Trump against voters looking for a change, polls show Trump with a substantial advantage. A new CNN/University of New Hampshire survey found Trump widening his lead over Haley to 11 points (50-39%), while a pre-election Washington Post/Monmouth University poll found Trump with a significant 18-point edge (52-34%). And the final Boston Globe/Suffolk University tracking poll shows Trump opening up a whopping 22-point lead (60-38%).
Any benefit Haley received from former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dropping out of the race was overcome by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy’s withdrawals and endorsements of Trump. Her third-place showing in Iowa failed to give her the necessary momentum in the Granite State.
With expectations downgraded, perhaps a close second-place finish could give Haley a chance to be the comeback candidate — and move on to South Carolina. But a double-digit defeat would signal we’re close to the end of the GOP primary campaign — and at the beginning of the Trump nomination coronation.
Donors are alreadycoming to grips with the likelihood of Trump’s nomination, while once-resistant lawmakers are rallying to endorse him.
It’s possible the more intriguing contest will be on the Democratic side, which is holding an unsanctioned primary without President Joe Biden on the ballot — but one where his allies are encouraging backers to write his name in. If the Biden write-in effort fails to secure a healthy majority of the vote (against Rep. Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson), it would be an embarrassing showing for the sitting president.
One dynamic to watch: Anti-Israel activists are encouraging voters to write in “cease fire” on their ballots as part of a protest against Biden’s support for the Jewish state. The New Hampshire secretary of state’s office originally indicated it wouldn’t separate those write-in votes from other random write-ins, but later said it would count the cease-fire votes separately.
Democratic Majority For Israel, the pro-Israel Democratic group, called on New Hampshire’s secretary of state not to separately tally votes for “cease fire,” arguing state law doesn’t allow for the tallying of non-persons in the count.
visegrad view
The man behind one of the most popular pro-Israel social media feeds

Users of X (formerly Twitter) who follow news from Israel may have noticed an account called Visegrad24 frequently popping up on their feeds in recent months with headlines and videos about the war between the Jewish state and Hamas. Tweeting a dozen or more times per day, Visegrad24 can go from posting videos of the IDF dropping leaflets over Gaza, to marking the death of “one of the bloodiest mass-murderers in history…dictator and…psychopath” Vladimir Lenin, to noting that Miss America 2024 is an active-duty U.S. Air Force servicemember. One of the men behind Visegrad24, Stefan Tompson, 30, stepped out from the shadows and gave Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov a rare interview this month in which he pushed back against the accusations. Tompson discussed the mission of his social media operation, his support for Israel and how it fits with his Polish patriotism, and his view of the West as a civilization under threat.
Presenting Israel: Tompson spoke during a visit to Tel Aviv this month to create content in support of Israel, his second-ever visit to the Jewish state after a prior Catholic pilgrimage. In addition to visiting sites of the Oct. 7 massacre and Hostages Square, Tompson and his team set up a studio in his hotel on the shore of the Mediterranean to interview survivors of the Nova Party massacre, Holocaust survivors, politicians, activists, singer Matisyahu and more. His team has also traveled to Ramallah and Jerusalem to film content and conduct interviews. “I’m not as interested in the war as I am in showing what this country is,” Tompson said. “I don’t think the war is this country…Israel presents itself through the wrong lens. It has to present itself as strong because it’s surrounded by states that don’t wish it well – but Europe, the U.S., especially the left, look at the world through a different lens and judge the world by their own metrics.”
Polish perspective: Tompson’s lens is that of a conservative and self-described “Polish patriot.” He grew up in London and Paris in a Polish emigre family – his great-grandfather left in 1933 – and made “my own version of aliyah,” he said, returning to his family’s country of origin as an adult. He’s very bullish on the country, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, due to a “great energy” he says Poland and Israel share, “a sense that millennials and Gen Z will do better than their parents and grandparents. That’s not the same as the West.”