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--:-- John Bickley: As the southern border sees record levels of illegal crossings, Americans in both parties increasingly say it qualifies as a form of invasion. We discuss the changing public sentiment and the latest on the battle between state and federal officials. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, August 24th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Former President Donald Trump's new legal team took action this week attempting to counter the DOJ's investigation. We talk with a former federal prosecutor about the case. And the shakeup at CNN continues as several high-profile personalities are let go by the legacy outlet. What's driving the purge and how will the changes affect the media credibility crisis?
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: According to recent polling, more and more Americans are beginning to think of the immigration crisis at the southern border as an invasion. Half of Americans also see a link between the border crisis and the rising number of deaths from illegal drugs in the United States. Here to discuss the public opinion of the border crisis is Daily Wire's Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So, Tim, how are Americans' views on immigration changing?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Hey, Georgia. Americans are beginning to see the flood of illegal migrants crossing into the United States more and more like some sort of invasion from the South. Now, that's a charged word that strong border advocates, typically Republicans, have been using to describe the immigration crisis. But new polling data from NPR and Ipsos says that Americans generally agree. Research released last week shows that 53 percent of Americans believe that it is at least somewhat true that the border crisis qualifies as an invasion. Roughly half of those said the qualifier is completely true.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, what about the political breakdown of the poll? Any surprises there?
--:-- Georgia Howe: So it doesn't matter whether you're a Democrat, Republican, or Independent. If you have an opinion about the border crisis, you're more likely than not to associate it with an invasion. 41% of Democrats said calling the immigration crisis an invasion is at least somewhat accurate. 34% said the opposite. On the Republican side, about three out of four respondents associated the border crisis with an invasion versus just 8% who did not. And independents are more than twice as likely to associate the immigration crisis with an invasion. 47% called the characterization at least somewhat true versus 18% who rejected it.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, the poll also had some data on Americans' thoughts on how the immigration crisis is impacting illegal drug use in the U.S. What were those results?
--:-- Georgia Howe: So exactly half of respondents said migrants coming across the border with illegal drugs such as fentanyl is at least somewhat responsible for a rise in deaths from illegal drugs in the U.S. 24% of respondents called that connection completely false.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, over the past few months, we've also been seeing some growing tension between those border states and the White House. What's the latest there?
--:-- Tim Pierce: It really has been Texas Governor Greg Abbott out in front pressuring the Biden administration on immigration. Under the governor's direction, Texas has bussed thousands of migrants to the nation's capital and recently began bussing migrants to New York as well in a pretty direct challenge to Democrats' dismissal of strong border policies. Officials in Washington, D.C. and New York City have begun to complain about the strain that the migrants, who often show up poor and hungry with nowhere to go, are putting on the social welfare systems there. Abbott has said that their complaints are essentially a form of nimbyism. Democrats are fine with loose immigration enforcement until they're the ones footing the bill for the thousands of destitute people crossing the border.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Tim, before you go, I want to catch up on a story that you brought us yesterday about the two men in Michigan who were accused of conspiring to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Those two men received a verdict Tuesday. Tell us about that.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, so the jury convicted Barrycroft and Adam Fox on charges of conspiring to kidnap Whitmer and conspiring to obtain a weapon of mass destruction. Croft was also convicted on a separate explosives charge.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All right. Well, Tim, thanks so much for reporting. Thanks for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: That's Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. Former President Trump's legal team has filed a motion to appoint a special master to oversee the ongoing FBI investigation. In a separate motion, the DOJ has until Thursday to request redactions from the affidavit used to justify the raid before it is released to the public. Joining us to discuss the unfolding case is former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: Thanks for joining us, Andy. So let's start with the lawsuit filed this week by Trump's legal team. They're calling for a special master. Was this the right move?
--:-- John Bickley: It was the right move. I think it was late. And more experienced defense lawyers, if they were in place, I think would have asked for a special master at the very beginning, if not the day of the search, the day after.
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: And just so people understand, the idea of a special master is you need someone to go through the mass of documents that the FBI sees pursuant to this very broad warrant in order to sort out what might be privileged information. That's a big problem if you're going to do a search warrant of a former president, because the president has executive privilege with respect to any of his consultations with his advisors.
--:-- John Bickley: So what the Justice Department proposed to the court is the Department of Justice's usual procedures when you have a situation where your target is someone who has a lot of privileged information, where they have a what they would call a filter team that has no involvement in the actual prosecution in the case. They're not the prosecutors and the agents who are going to proceed with the prosecution, take the case to trial, etc. These are people who are not involved in the investigation, and their only job is to go through what is seized and identify what they believe may be privileged information. And they're supposed to withhold that from the prosecution team.
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: You don't want the FBI and the Justice Department to do this on their own because they're trying to prosecute you. So obviously what former President Trump would have wanted was to have judicial intervention and have the court supervise that process rather than the Justice Department do it on its own. And that's what they asked for in the motion.
--:-- John Bickley: What about the search process? Did agents have access to documents that are potentially protected just through that process?
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: I think that's a really important point. You know, it's common sense, actually, that if you're going to do a search warrant in a criminal case, the people who are mainly involved in the search tend to be the agents who have been doing the investigation. You know, they're the ones who are in the best position to say, once you're doing the search, this is the relevant evidence.
--:-- John Bickley: A new revelation that came out this week is that the White House was indeed involved in the early stages of this inquiry by the National Archives, and that President Biden said he would waive Trump's executive privilege. From what we know so far, what charges could the Justice Department bring here?
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: What the Justice Department very interestingly, I think, did was it used the new statutes that have been enacted over the more recent decades to essentially criminalize the Presidential Records Act, which Congress didn't put any criminal law provisions in. So what they're saying is the National Records Act, even though it doesn't have criminal law sanctions in it, makes it illegal for Trump to be holding presidential records. And now over here, we have these other penal provisions that say if you illegally remove or destroy or convert to your own use government records, that's a felony under federal law.
--:-- John Bickley: If they're correct about that interpretation, and literally it looks like they probably are correct, even if this is not what Congress intended, then that would make this a pretty easy case.
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: Now, even if the DOJ could bring charges, should it bring charges? Well, my initial reaction to that is and has been no. Since we've never had a prosecution in the history of the United States of a former president, much less a search of a former president's home, I think it really needs to be a very egregious offense before you would bring the charge, especially when you're dealing with someone who may actually run for president and again and be the opposition to the incumbent president in the next election.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, Andy, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Shakeups continue at CNN this week, as yet another familiar face has been let go from the struggling news network. New leadership, though, is looking to restore the legacy news brand to its former glory days with ongoing changes. The latest victim of the apparent turnaround at CNN is media critic Brian Stelter, whose show "Reliable Sources" netted some of the lowest ratings on the channel. Here to discuss is David Marcus.
--:-- David Marcus: So, David, why Stelter and why now?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Morning. Stelter was really the face of the approach to news that CNN took under former chairman Jeff Zucker in the Trump era. It was a confrontational approach not just towards Trump and his sometimes loose relationship with the literal truth but eventually to all Republicans at least those who refused to renounce the entire GOP What critics saw was a lot of hypocrisy They saw Stelter calling out conservative media particularly Fox News Channel for bias And meanwhile, CNN basically refuses to put conservatives on their panels who actually represent GOP voters. Watching the Republican pundits on CNN, you would think that Liz Cheney should have won her primary in a landslide, not lost in one.
--:-- David Marcus: Now, this is part of a broader shakeup since Discovery took over the network. CNN's new chairman, Chris Licht, has indicated he wants to point the network in a new direction. What changes have we already seen?
--:-- Georgia Howe: In the past year, anchor Chris Cuomo left the network after a few incidents in which he was helping his brother, then-governor Andrew Cuomo, with PR advice. CNN Plus, the much-vaunted streaming service, was an abject disaster that barely lasted a month. It turned out nobody wanted to watch Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper and Cardigans discussing their favorite books.
--:-- David Marcus: The main thrust from the new leadership has been a desire to return to what they think of as straight news, which seems like it should be easy, but it actually isn't. You say it isn't easy for CNN. Why is that?
--:-- Georgia Howe: So Margaret Sullivan, the longtime media columnist for The Washington Post, just ran her final column, which is advice to journalists going forward. She says this, and I think it's apt, quote, journalists shouldn't shill for Trump's 2024 rivals, whoever they may be, but they have to be willing to show their readers, viewers and listeners that electing him again would be dangerous. End quote. Those two things are contradictory, but it's exactly the line that CNN and so much of the news media has tried to walk.
--:-- David Marcus: Licht wants to pull back on opinion content like Stelter's and do more straight news or reporting. But if the underlying animosity to Republicans remains, then little will change.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Where does the new leadership see the value in the brand? How will they bring back viewers? CNN's value in large part owes to one huge advantage, which is its size, scale, resources, and access. The start of the Ukraine war was a great example. CNN saw a spike in ratings because that's the kind of story you tune into CNN for. They have more reporters in more places who know more details than any outlet. So when a story like that happens, they really are the go-to.
--:-- David Marcus: And what about the future of Brian Stelter? Any thoughts?
--:-- Georgia Howe: I don't know the guy. You know, I've gone after him pretty hard in some columns. I wish him well and trust he'll find a place for his voice. As the Sullivan quote that I mentioned makes clear, his advocacy-driven idea of what the news is remains in vogue pretty far and wide on the left. I suspect we hear more from him in the years to come. Maybe if only because so many people on the right so love to hate him. But yeah, I think he's still a player on the field.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, David, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: Other stories we're tracking this week. Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will spend five days in jail after pleading guilty to driving under the influence, a charge stemming from his involvement in a May crash. The White House is reportedly considering a plan to forgive $10,000 in student debt for borrowers who make less than $125,000. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
