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--:-- John Bickley: The first presidential debate sends shockwaves through the political world as a shaky President Biden suffers a damaging performance while Trump takes control. Without question, the worst president, the worst presidency in the history of our country. We shouldn't be having a debate about it. There's nothing to debate.
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--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Friday, June 28th, and this is Morning Wire. New evidence has emerged suggesting a former Obama official turned CNN analyst colluded to influence past presidential debates. Who was involved and will there be consequences? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Brandon: Hey, guys, producer Brandon here. Black Rifle Coffee is a veteran-founded company that's doing their part to honor both current and former military personnel, as well as first responders. They support such organizations as the Wounded Warrior Project, Adopt-a-Cop, BJJ, and the Burn Institute. Right now, you can get 25% off your first subscription order when you verify your military ID online. Just go to blackriflecoffee.com, create an account, and verify your ID. Visit blackriflecoffee.com to learn more.
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--:-- John Bickley: Last night, President Biden and former President Trump met on the debate stage in Atlanta in the first general election debate of the season. The debate was unique not only for its early timing but also because it featured two men who have already served as president. It also featured a performance by the sitting president that has been almost universally criticized. Here with me is Morris Daily Wire, senior editor Cabot Phillips, who was there on the scene at the event.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hey, thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- John Bickley: So, a long night and certainly a memorable one. Yeah, a long night for the Democrat Party, especially. The bottom line is that we've never seen anything quite like that on the presidential debate stage. There's just no way around it. By every possible metric, this was a disastrous performance from President Biden.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah. So, set the scene for us. The first set of questions centered on the economy. How did Biden and Trump differ in their answers?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, they differed a lot, like they did on virtually every topic throughout the night.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The first question was directed to Biden, who was asked about what he would say to voters who feel they're worse off under his presidency than they were under Trump. Biden spoke shakily and in a hoarse, raspy voice from the start and claimed Trump left him with a, quote, economy in free fall. The economy collapsed. There were no jobs. Unemployment rate rose to 15%. It was terrible. And so what we had to do was try to put things back together again. And that's exactly what we began to do. We created 15,000 new jobs. And we brought out a position where we have 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. But there's more to be done.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And while he boasted about his economy as we discussed on the show, most Americans say they are worse off now financially than they were three years ago. And Trump repeatedly made that point, citing metrics highlighting that his economy set records while inflation under Biden is, quote, killing Americans. The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce back jobs that bounce back from the COVID. He has not done a good job. He's done a poor job. And inflation is killing our country. It is absolutely killing us.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But the moment that was surely talked about the most last night and likely will be for years to come came when Biden appeared to simply freeze. There's no other way of putting it when he was asked about Medicare.
--:-- John Bickley: Take a listen.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the covid, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. Look, if we finally beat Medicare. Thank you, President Biden. President Trump? Well, he's right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death. And he's destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The debate also shifted to immigration, an issue that has really damaged Biden. And Trump really went on the offensive on this. What did he say there? And was Biden able to defend his policy?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, I think it's fair to say that Biden was not able to effectively defend his immigration policy. I don't mean to pile on, but that is the universal consensus from folks left and right.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: He first falsely claimed that the border had become more secure under his watch and then failed to give a compelling answer when asked why voters should trust him to solve that crisis. I've changed it in a way that now you're in a situation where there are 40 percent fewer people coming across the border illegally. That's better than when he left office. and I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban, the total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Trump's response to that featured one of the more memorable lines of the night. I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either. Look, we had the safest border in the history of our country. All he had to do was leave it. All he had to do was leave it. he decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists. We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now, all terrorists all over the world, not just in South America, all over the world.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, that moment really resonated because Trump pointed out what the viewers could not help but witness throughout the night, that Biden was rambling, shaky, and often incoherent. About halfway through the event, Biden's sources told the press that he, quote, had a cold. But as noted by Politico, the president's team, quote, had not mentioned that to reporters until Biden began to answer questions in the debate.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That note, by the way, was in a piece headlined, quote, Biden is toast. Another difficult moment for the president came when he claimed that no American service members have died under his watch. Truth is, I'm the only president this century that doesn't have any, this decade, that don't have any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That claim was quickly fact-checked as false due to the 16 service members who died while serving in Afghanistan, 13 of whom died during the Biden administration's botched withdrawal.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The moderators made sure to ask Trump about January 6th, a question we all knew was coming. How did Trump handle that?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, Trump was quick to turn that question around, saying that on January 6th, the border was secure, the economy was strong, and the country was at peace. We saw similar pivots when Trump was asked about the comments saying he would seek retribution if re-elected.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, as to the main criticism of the evening, Trump did largely stay away from going after Biden age and mental fitness directly. But he did question at one point if he was capable of leading the country. It's a guy that's after his political opponent because he can't win fair and square. He's not equipped to be president. You know it and I know it. It's ridiculous. We have a debate. We're trying to justify his presidency.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, obviously, many more notable moments than we can cover here. But before we let you go, what have we seen so far from the media response to the debate?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, as you alluded to at the top, this performance from Biden just rocked the legacy media, which quite literally was mourning the debate results. We saw headlines with words like disaster, chaos, panic, and freefall. To that point, here's CNN contributor Van Jones, a former advisor to Obama, summing up the evening.
--:-- Van Jones: He had a test to meet tonight to restore confidence of the country and of the base, and he failed to do that. And I think there's a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now. We're still far from our convention, and there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward if he will allow us to do that.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And here's another from MSNBC contributor Joy Reid talking about how her Democrat contacts were responding to the debate.
--:-- Joy Reid: The universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic. The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And one interesting note, you could tell how each side felt about the debate in the spin room afterwards. I was there on the ground, and within minutes of the closing statements, there were 15 or so Trump surrogates gleefully talking with the media. It took about 20 minutes for anyone from the Biden camp to show up, and even then, it was a brief appearance.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: One of those Trump surrogates I spoke with was potential VP pick Doug Burgum, who had this to say of Biden's performance.
--:-- Doug Burgum: We know who else was watching this debate tonight. It was Putin was watching, the Ayatollahs were watching, Xi was watching in China. And I feel like this is a national security risk for our country because what the world saw was weakness from our leader in the White House, the guy who's making the decisions. We're in a real dangerous period between now and November.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But it is worth noting the Trump campaign spokesman that I talked to made it clear that Joe Biden will be the nominee and that Democrats cannot replace him at this stage of the game. Now, that could be interpreted as them simply viewing him as the easiest opponent and not wanting to take the risk of forcing him off the ticket. But if anything, it gives you an idea of their confidence coming out of this debate.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: To that point, here's former Trump campaign manager David Bossie.
--:-- David Bossie: Joe Biden is the nominee. It is too late for them to change. It is virtually impossible to do it without a catastrophe and breaking apart the Democrat coalition.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Really a remarkable event last night, Cabot. Thanks for being there on the scene for us to report.
--:-- John Bickley: And it's going to be really fascinating to watch the fallout from this. We've got a lot more to discuss this week. Yes, we do. Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime. Being in debt is a lot like sinking in quicksand. It's easy to feel trapped and helpless, and the harder you struggle, the deeper in debt you go. If you feel trapped in debt, you need to talk to Done With Debt. Done With Debt stands between you and your bill collectors. They negotiate a plan to end your debt permanently without bankruptcy and without loans. But you need to hurry to see if you qualify because some debt solutions are time sensitive. Go right now to donewithdebt.com. That's donewithdebt.com today.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: James Clapper, former President Obama's National Intelligence Director, worked with the Biden campaign in 2020 to falsely discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story in an effort to help then Joe Biden in his debate against Donald Trump.
--:-- Ash Short: Hey Ash, so what can you tell us about these latest revelations?
--:-- Ash Short: So as you'll recall, on October 14th, 2020, the New York Post published its bombshell report on Hunter Biden's laptop, which contained emails indicating Joe Biden when he was vice president of the United States and through his crack addicted son secured millions of dollars for his family. Just five days later, on October 19th, Clapper and 50 other intelligence officials signed a letter claiming, without evidence, that the laptop story, quote, had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation. Later in that same letter, the officials were more definitive, saying that in their view, quote, the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.
--:-- Ash Short: And conveniently, three days after that letter was released, then-President Donald Trump had his second debate with Joe Biden. And Biden was able to use that letter to counter Trump's mention of the laptop and all the damning evidence it contained. It's a very convenient timing there. But now we're finding that there's new evidence that this was, in fact, coordinated.
--:-- Ash Short: A report from Real Clear Investigations has shown that the Biden campaign was involved in the creation of the letter so that Biden could use it in the debate to shut down anything Trump said about the laptop. One of Clapper's confidants and a signer of the letter, former deputy CIA director Mike Morrell, said in a deposition for the House of Representatives that a top Biden campaign aide had reached out to him to discuss the laptop story. The top Biden campaign aide? Now Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
--:-- Ash Short: Morrell said in his deposition that one of the reasons for releasing the letter was, quote, to help then vice president in the debate. One day after speaking with the Biden campaign, Morel sent a blast email to former intelligence officials to get them to sign the letter. In that email, Morel said, quote, we want to give the VP a talking point to use in response, end quote, to anything Trump said about the laptop. According to Morel, after the debate, Biden campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti called him to thank him for releasing the letter.
--:-- Ash Short: Wow. Now, this story also includes the two CNN hosts who moderated last night's debate, correct?
--:-- Ash Short: Right. Morel said that Jeremy Bash was also involved in coordinating the letter with the Biden campaign. Bash's wife, Dana Bash, was one of the moderators. And as you mentioned earlier, this wasn't the first time Clapper helped a Democrat candidate ahead of a debate. In 2016, just before a debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Clapper issued an intelligence advisory coordinated with the Obama White House claiming the Russian government was trying to help Trump win the election by hacking Clinton's emails. So yet another Russian conspiracy claim from Clapper.
--:-- Ash Short: This brings us to the other CNN moderator for last night's debate, Jane Tapper. It was Clapper who told Tapper that Trump had been briefed on the unsubstantiated allegations in the Steele dossier, which was Clinton campaign oppo used to undermine Trump's presidency. It should also be noted Clapper is now a national security analyst for CNN.
--:-- Ash Short: Notable revelations, particularly as it connects to last night's debate. Ash, thanks for reporting.
--:-- John Bickley: You're welcome. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.
