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--:-- Host John Bickley: President Biden gave an unplanned address to the nation Thursday night after a special council report said he won't be charged for mishandling classified documents, but called into question his memory and cognitive ability. How bad is your memory? And can you continue as president?
--:-- Host John Bickley: My memory is so bad, I let you speak. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, February 9th, and this is Morning Wire. A skeptical Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday on whether Colorado can keep Donald Trump off the state's presidential ballot.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Colorado was way out of line here. It'll probably be 8 to 1 and maybe 9 to 0, which is pretty rare these days with a highly polarized court. And Mandalorian star Gina Carano is suing Disney for wrongful termination with a little help from Elon Musk.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. February is the month of love, and everybody loves bacon. But what we really love is when it's free, which means you're going to love getting free bacon from Good Ranchers.
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--:-- Host John Bickley: Special Counsel Robert Herr has filed his report on Joe Biden's handling of classified documents, in which he does not recommend criminal charges, but does acknowledge that the president willfully retained classified documents.
--:-- Host John Bickley: But that wasn't all. The long-anticipated report clears the president of charges for classified materials he mishandled as a U.S. senator and as vice president, but it came with some shocking revelations about the president's ability to remember basic facts.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Here to help make our way through this is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. Hey, Tim. So let's start with this press conference the president abruptly called last night What did the nation see there?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey, John, as you mentioned at the top, this was impromptu, called last second. It was brief, less than 15 minutes. And during that time, he emphasized that the special counsel would not bring charges and push back on the claim that he willfully retained the classified documents.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Basically, he repeated mostly word for word the statement issued earlier in the day. But where things got interesting and contentious was when he addressed the special counsel's alarming statements about his memory and cognitive decline.
--:-- Tim Pierce: In particular, the president focused in on the special counsel, noting that Biden appeared to forget the year of his son's death. Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any other damn business.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Let me tell you something. Some of you have commented, I wear it since the day he died. Every single day, the rosary he got from our lady of... Every Memorial Day we hold a service remembering him attending my friends and family the people who loved him
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now when the president opened it up for questions things were instantly contentious Tell us about those exchanges
--:-- Tim Pierce: The initial questions were all about the president's mental decline During questioning, he was angry, combative, and short at times. He got key details of the report wrong, and then he fought with reporters over his mischaracterizations.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I did not share it. With your ghostwriter. With my ghostwriter. I did not. Guarantee you did not. But the special counsel said it. No, he did not say that. OK. He did not say that. But, Mr. President, let me answer your question.
--:-- Tim Pierce: When asked about what he would have done differently, he appeared to put the blame on his staff. I didn't know how half the boxes got in my garage until I found out staff gathered them up, put them together, and took them to the garage of my home.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And all the stuff that was in my home was in filing cabinets that were either locked or able to be locked. It was in my house. It wasn't out in, like, in Mar-a-Lago, in a public place, and none of it was high classified.
--:-- Tim Pierce: A note on that, the report included photos of a mangled cardboard box which held highly classified files in his garage. Also in the press conference, Biden misidentified Abdul Fattah el-Sisi as president of Mexico, not Egypt.
--:-- Tim Pierce: As you know, initially, the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him. I convinced him to open the gate. And then when he had to change topics at the end of the presser to field a question about Israel and Hamas, his response was slow and halting as he seemed to struggle to transition.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I'm of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in the Gaza Strip has been over the top. Now, as far as the special counsel's report, what were some key takeaways there?
--:-- Tim Pierce: The report did say that Biden mishandled these classified materials, both as senator and vice president. but maybe the most substantial bad news for the president was about his mental capacity. A quote that people pointed to was her saying Biden's memory was significantly limited during his deposition with investigators.
--:-- Tim Pierce: House GOP leadership put out a joint statement from Speaker Johnson, Steve Scalise, and Elise Stefanik, concluding, a man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Morning Wire also spoke to Senator Marsha Blackburn. Here's what she had to say. If Biden is too mentally incompetent to stand trial, then he is most definitely too mentally incompetent to be commander in chief.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Now, there were already plenty of concerns about Biden's health, but whatever you thought of Biden's performance last night, you can count on questions about his mental capacity to come up again and again as we get closer to the 2024 election.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Host John Bickley: The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Thursday in Trump versus Anderson, a case about whether or not a state, in this case Colorado, can keep the leading GOP candidate Donald Trump off the ballot.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Here to discuss the case is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo. Hey, Amanda. So before we really dig into these arguments, tell us first how things seemed to go overall yesterday.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Hey, John. So most legal experts agree that things went really well for Trump. There were even predictions that this could come back 9-0 in his favor. Before arguments took place, though, there did seem to be this expectation that the more liberal justices would lean in favor of Colorado removing Trump from the ballot.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: But at times, it really felt like the strongest pushback to that proposition came from the liberals on the court including Justices Kagan and Jackson Most of the justices did seem uncomfortable with the consequences of allowing Colorado to remove a national candidate from the ballot
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Here's Justice Kagan expressing that concern. It sounds awfully national to me. If you weren't from Colorado and you were from Wisconsin or you were from Michigan, and it really, you know, what the Michigan Secretary of State did is going to make the difference between, you know, whether candidate A is elected or candidate B is elected.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: I mean, that seems quite extraordinary. So what were the main legal arguments from the Trump side? They argued that Colorado's rationale for kicking Trump off the ballot, namely Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, doesn't apply to Trump.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Attorney Jonathan Mitchell, who argued on behalf of Trump, he noted that Section 3 doesn't mention president, but an officer of the United States. He said that includes appointed officials, not elected officials.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Another argument centered around Colorado adding a qualification to Trump by deeming him an insurrectionist and then disqualifying him before the election. Mitchell said that would be a job for Congress, as spelled out in Section 3, post-election, not the job of an individual state before the election.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Morning Warrior spoke to Roger Severino, vice president of policy at the Heritage Foundation, and here's how he viewed that matter. The whole 14th Amendment is about Congress and the Constitution limiting the ability of states to act after the Civil War.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: You can't use this as a backdoor way to say the states have even more power to get ahead of Congress and deprive them of the ability to say who should or should not qualify to be president of the United States.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: What about the other side? How did the attorneys for Colorado argue that Section 3 actually does apply to Trump? So Jason Murray, who argued on behalf of these Colorado voters, he claimed that Trump is disqualified from the moment he committed an insurrection, which Colorado determined he had done, and therefore it doesn't belong on the ballot.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: He also argued that the nation would be worse off if Congress had to deal with this question of Trump being an insurrectionist or not post-election versus before the election. Here's a frustrated Justice Kavanaugh suggesting the Colorado team has the cart before the horse.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Some of the rhetoric of your position seems to suggest, unless the states can do this, no one can prevent insurrectionists from holding federal office. But obviously, Congress has enacted statutes, including one still in effect, Section 2383 of Title 18 prohibits insurrection. It's a federal criminal statute.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: And if you're convicted of that, you are, it says, shall be disqualified from holding any office. And so there is a federal statute on the books, but President Trump has not been charged with that. So what are we to make of that?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: So wrapping things up here, did we hear reaction from either Trump or the White House following arguments? Yeah, I mean, Trump was very quick to address the public.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: He gave a press conference immediately following arguments and said that they were a beautiful thing to watch. I hope that democracy in this country will continue because right now we have a very, very tough situation with all of the radical left ideas, with the weaponization of politics.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: They weaponized it like it's never been weaponized before. He also expressed confidence that the court would rule in his favor. Well, the court reconvenes next week, so we'll see if we end up with a quick turnaround on this decision like many are hoping.
--:-- Host John Bickley: They dehumanized me. And basically what Disney and Lucasfilm said to the rest of everybody by making that statement is, hey, don't work with this person. And who's not going to listen to Disney, their most powerful entertainment company in the world?
--:-- Host John Bickley: That was actress Gina Carano explaining to Morning Wire why she filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Disney this week Carano decided to pursue the suit after an offer of legal help from ex Elon Musk
--:-- Host John Bickley: Here with more is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. So Megan, Disney fired Carano from the hit Star Wars series The Mandalorian three years ago. Why is she pursuing this case now?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, a lot of it comes down to that open offer of legal help that Elon Musk had posted on X way back last August. So he said that he would foot the legal bill of anyone unfairly treated by their employer for something they had posted or liked on his platform.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he said there would be, and this is key, no limit to that funding. So Carano, who I will note has starred in Daily Wire Entertainment Films, told me that was the deciding factor for her because potential costs were the primary thing that had been holding her back.
--:-- Megan Basham: I had to completely move my life out of California. Where am I going to put my funds in trying to battle Disney for years and years? Or am I going to just try to restart my life? I had spoken to some lawyers and they said how expensive it was going to be.
--:-- Megan Basham: And I was like, oh my gosh, well, I need to get stable and in a safe place first. So after these lawyers emailed me and I started sending them over my stories and getting them really brought up to date behind the scenes, they were like, oh my gosh, yes, We want to take this on.
--:-- Megan Basham: So listeners may recall that she was at the height of her career when she was cut from the hit show. And she says she lost millions of dollars in income as a result. So now she's seeking compensation for that and asking Lucasfilm to recast her.
--:-- Megan Basham: Do we know if there are any other individuals that are partnering with Musk to go after Disney? She didn't definitively know of any specific cases right now, but she does sound pretty convinced that there's a lot of potential cases from current and former Disney employees.
--:-- Megan Basham: For a long time, it's like, well, we're Disney, we're Lucasfilm. You should just be honored to be here. And that kind of mentality really led into a disrespect of people from every single department, not just actors. We're talking about everybody.
--:-- Megan Basham: There's a problem and it needs to be fixed. And it's just coming to a head now. Now, Karana was fired for sharing a meme. Can you refresh listeners on what exactly that meme was?
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, she had posted a screenshot of another social media post that warned that Nazi Germany should be a lesson to curb our political hatred of one another. And she asked how hating someone for their political views is different from hating someone for their religious identity.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Carano told me that the post was wildly mischaracterized by Disney, who called it abhorrent and unacceptable. And it was subsequently mischaracterized by large media outlets like the New York Times.
--:-- Megan Basham: But she believes that the tide is now turning against extreme cancel culture, and she does hope that her suit is going to help further bolster free speech protections. These people are telling such lies. You know, how are they getting away with this?
--:-- Megan Basham: And, you know, you're just this one person. For X's part, the platform's head of business put out a statement this week saying it is proud to provide financial support for Carano's lawsuit and hopes to see her free speech rights vindicated.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Well, this case could set a very important precedent. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- Host John Bickley: We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know. NetSuite turns 25 this year. That's 25 years of helping businesses do more with less, close their books in days, not weeks, and drive down costs.
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--:-- Host John Bickley: That's netsuite.com slash morningwire.
