--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire. I'm Georgia Howe, and I'm here with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The suspicious bag of white powder that prompted an evacuation of the White House on Sunday has been confirmed by the Secret Service to be cocaine. Where this was discovered is a heavily traveled area where many White House West Wing visitors come through.
--:-- John Bickley: What's being done to identify the culprit and how could the incident further test the transparency of the Biden administration?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Joining us to talk about it is Daily Wire contributor David Marcus.
--:-- David Marcus: Good morning, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So Dave, how much do we know about these misplaced drugs, and most importantly, who might have misplaced them?
--:-- David Marcus: We don't know too much. We do know it was found in the cloakroom of the West Wing, leaving almost a game of clue with cocaine in the cloakroom. But as to who put it there, nobody knows.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I think anyone playing word association with Biden and cocaine is going to come up with the word Hunter, the president's son who has been known to use it. But though he has recently been to the West Wing, there's nothing tying him to this particular Bolivian marching powder.
--:-- David Marcus: So the search, we assume, is ongoing.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, it's impossible not to bring up Hunter's name in this, though, as you mentioned, no direct evidence at this point. If we assume it's not actually the president's son, who are some of the other suspects that investigators could pursue in order to find the culprit?
--:-- David Marcus: The potential suspect list is long, but not infinite. Obviously, there's a record of anyone who enters 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. So there's speculation it could have been a guest, perhaps a member of the staff.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So the pool of people with access is limited. And the possibility exists that fingerprints could be found on the baggie.
--:-- David Marcus: I mean, it's almost amusing to imagine whoever it was realizing, like, where'd that bag of blow go? I know I had it. Let me retrace my steps. Where was I? Oh, right. The White House.
--:-- Georgia Howe: How important is it that this investigation be taken seriously and that the American people get some answers about how this happened?
--:-- David Marcus: A bag of cocaine isn't exactly the case of the century, but I do think it matters, especially at a time when Americans have real and reasonable concerns about a two-tiered system of justice, comparing, for example, how the Department of Justice handled Donald Trump versus Hunter Biden.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Look if you or I are caught with a stash of nose candy in a government building let alone the White House we face consequences. And so if this was someone who works there Americans are going to want to see those consequences meted out.
--:-- David Marcus: Yeah, indeed. Could this be a test of the transparency of the Biden administration, which has been criticized in the past for not being forthcoming with the press on these kinds of internal matters?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, I think so. Well, we have a press secretary in Corrine Jean-Pierre who every other day says from the podium that she won't discuss Biden's classified document scandal or his dealings with Hunter.
--:-- David Marcus: You can go back to the summer of 2021 when then press secretary Jen Psaki refused to answer how many breakthrough COVID cases had been discovered at the White House.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So there is a sense that this administration feels it's somehow above answering many questions about topics that put it in a bad light.
--:-- David Marcus: Am I going to be shocked if in two weeks we still have no answer and the story just fades away? No, I won't be.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But there's a cumulative effect here. And this is just another example.
--:-- David Marcus: Yeah.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, I'm sure officials were relieved that the powder was not a poisonous substance like anthrax. But these days, with so many drugs cut with fentanyl, could cocaine in the White House actually be a real tragedy waiting to happen?
--:-- David Marcus: Yes, 100 percent. I mean, today it's impossible to know whether any drug is cut with fentanyl. So absolutely, an overdose or even death is possible, even just from one use of a drug.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Obviously, the White House should be working very hard, not just to find out how it got there, but really to make sure it doesn't happen again.
--:-- David Marcus: Yeah, let's certainly hope that's the response.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Dave, thanks for joining us.
--:-- David Marcus: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The battle for social media dominance enters a new stage as the world's largest social media company launches its so-called Twitter killer.
--:-- John Bickley: Joining us with the details is Daily Wire researcher Michael Whittaker.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Good morning, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So Michael, what can you tell us about Threads?
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Well, it certainly seems to be the most formidable competitor Twitter has ever had, and the company is in a time of turmoil as we speak.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Twitter has been at the center of numerous controversies since Elon Musk purchased it last October.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Twitter greatly expanded the kinds of political speech allowed on the platform and publicized previous collusion between it and the government to censor certain viewpoints.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It opened up verified status to the hoi polloi so that now anyone can get a blue checkmark for $8.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: And since Musk took over, he's fired more than 80% of the company's employees.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Some users love the new changes. Full disclosure, The Daily Wire has been a major supporter of Twitter's new free speech policies.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: But other users have been quite vocally opposed. Advertisers have also pulled back from Twitter, setting concerns about the kinds of content their ads might appear next to.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Dissatisfaction with Twitter is far from new. In the pre-Musk era, many right-wing alternatives were created in response to censorship or outright banning of conservative users.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: But none of the other rivals to the bird, old or new, left, right, or center, have achieved liftoff.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But people are saying threads could. Potentially. To put things in perspective, Gab, Mastodon, Blue Sky, half a dozen other websites that most of our audience has probably never heard of, all have less than 1% of Twitter's user base.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Truth Social, former President Trump's favorite domain, has about 2 million monthly users. Twitter has more than 300 million.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Meta, on the other hand, dwarfs Twitter by an order of magnitude.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Instagram, which will be closely connected with Fred's, has over 2 billion monthly users. While the company's flagship application, Facebook, has nearly 3 billion users.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And Meta's accounts are very easily linked. You can log into Instagram using Facebook and vice versa and Fred will be connected the same way.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: The competitors have a massive shared user base. According to data more than 50 million Americans have Twitter and Instagram downloaded onto their phones.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If Meta can convert even a fraction of those users to threads, it would be the largest rival to Twitter by far.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Instagram has successfully imitated stories from Snapchat and Reels from TikTok, so they've already proven that they are more than capable of copying their competitors.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So it sounds like Threads has a lot of things going for it already, more so than some of those other alternatives.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: How is Twitter responding? You mean aside from the chief twit challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, despite all of Meta's advantages, building a new social media platform isn't easy.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Remember, most of the value is in the network. People use these sites because other people they're interested in use them, meaning the best way to attract new users is to have a lot of users already.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Reaching that critical mass can require a Herculean effort.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: For Twitter specifically, making a profitable alternative is more complicated by the fact that Twitter itself has not been profitable for most of its history.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It reported net losses for most of the years it was publicly traded, and lost $220 million in 2021 before Musk bought it.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: For context, Facebook made more than $39 billion that year.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The model can be inherently difficult to monetize, and Meta has financial issues of its own.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: The entire tech sector has seen massive layoffs and setbacks over the last year or so.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Facebook saw profits dip by more than 40% from 2021 to 2022, and it's reduced its headcount by almost a quarter since the end of last year.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: So taking on new projects could be difficult.
--:-- Georgia Howe: On the other hand, Twitter dropped more than three quarters of its staff over the same time frame, and it's been chugging along just fine, barring a few hiccups.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: So anything's possible. While information is harder to come by since Musk took the company private, it seems like some of his initiatives are starting to pay off.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Twitter's new CEO, Linda Iaccarino, is a veteran advertising executive who could bring ANSI customers back to the site.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Twitter Blue has also attracted roughly 850,000 subscribers and counting.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So that $8 a month fee could start editing up fast.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Well, just the fact that users can convert directly from Facebook does seem like a huge advantage to me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Michael, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Michael Whittaker: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: A meeting between the State Department and Facebook parent company Meta was canceled yesterday.
--:-- John Bickley: The move comes after a federal judge blocked the administration from working with big tech to censor speech.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Biden administration has been accused for years of pressuring social media platforms to silence conservatives.
--:-- John Bickley: Daily Wire investigative reporter Maraida Lordi is here with the details.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Hi, Georgia. Yes, so this is an important ruling in a case that could have huge consequences for First Amendment rights.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This preliminary injunction comes down from federal judge Terry Dowdy in Louisiana, a Trump nominee.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Dowdy ordered certain Biden federal agencies and more than a dozen top Biden officials not to communicate with social media companies about taking down, quote, content containing protected free speech.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The ruling is a win for red states, Missouri and Louisiana. Their attorneys general sued the government in 2022 for censoring content it considered to be COVID misinformation.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: The judge said the two GOP attorneys general produced evidence of a massive effort by the White House and federal agencies to suppress speech based on its content.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The judge will still have to issue a final ruling on the case, but this preliminary injunction signals he may rule that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: So which Biden agencies and or officials does this apply to?
--:-- Georgia Howe: The agencies mentioned in the ruling are the HHS the CDC the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases which was run by Anthony Fauci until recently, the Justice Department and the FBI.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: The ruling also targets Biden's Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So specifically, what this ruling says is that these agencies and officials can't flag content or posts on social media platforms and forward content to social media companies, quote, urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: The judge went on to say, if proven true, the allegations are the most massive attack against free speech in the United States history.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The judge did allow for some exceptions, including posts about criminal activity or criminal conspiracies, national security threats, and threats to election security, but they can't ask the platforms to take down content they don't like.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Now, conservatives have been saying for years that the Biden administration pressured social media companies to suppress them, and there's evidence to suggest that that was happening, correct?
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right. According to the Twitter files and at least one congressional report, there is some evidence to suggest the Biden administration did in fact pressure major social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to suppress content, especially content about COVID or the 2020 election.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: The Twitter files, which are internal Twitter documents that were released last year, showed that, for example, Twitter censored the Hunter Biden laptop story after the FBI pressured Twitter to do so.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Also, just last month, GOP House lawmakers accused the Biden administration in a new report of colluding with big tech to surveil and censor Americans leading up to the 2020 and 2022 elections.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: So there's definitely a case to be made that the Biden administration has consistently pressured big tech to censor Americans with opinions or information it doesn't like.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, speaking of the Biden administration, how have they responded to this ruling?
--:-- Maraida Lordi: A White House official said it is reviewing the course injunction and will evaluate its options in this case.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The White House official defended the Biden administration and said they have promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: The official also said that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So the White House is calling out the social media companies, but it'll be interesting to see how the judge in this case rules and whether he decides the Biden administration really did pressure social media platforms to stifle content about COVID.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Well, we're certainly going to be watching to see how this case unfolds.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Mairead, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Thanks, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Another story we're tracking this week. Earth's temperature spiked on Independence Day to what officials say is the hottest day in at least 44 years.
--:-- John Bickley: According to a University of Maine climate reanalyzer tool, the globe's average temperature reached 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In the U.S., 57 million people were exposed to dangerous heat that day, according to the Washington Post's Extreme Heat Tracker.
--:-- John Bickley: And on Wednesday, Beijing experienced 104 degree temperatures.
--:-- Georgia Howe: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials say it's likely the hottest day in several hundred years that we've experienced.
--:-- John Bickley: All right, well, stay cool, everyone.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
