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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire. I'm John Bickley, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Wire, and I'm here with my co-host Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, October 25th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with us, folks.
--:-- John Bickley: Today, we've got a lot to cover, including Donald Trump's latest legal battles and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. But first, let's talk about the New York Times' latest embarrassment.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right. The New York Times admitted on Monday that it relied too heavily on claims by Hamas when it parroted the false accusation that Israel had bombed a Palestinian hospital.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, and it's not the only major media outlet to print that misinformation. But more on that later.
--:-- John Bickley: Let's start with Trump's latest legal battles. Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer, testified against him in a New York court on Tuesday.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right. Cohen testified in the civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who says Trump falsified his business's asset valuation so he could secure better loans.
--:-- John Bickley: Cohen told the court that he and Alan Weisselberg, the former CFO of the Trump Organization, played key roles in the fraud.
--:-- Tim Pierce: [Guest] Well, it went about how you might expect. Cohen testified in the civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. James says Trump falsified his business's asset valuation so he could secure better loans.
--:-- John Bickley: Cohen told the court that Trump would give them a dollar figure and then leave it up to them to reverse engineer an assets valuation or worth to hit that number.
--:-- Tim Pierce: He said Trump would then use the false value to secure a higher loan than he should have qualified for.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, Trump was in attendance today, even though he's not obligated to attend this trial and he's in the middle of a primary campaign for president.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It was the first time in about five years that the two men met face to face.
--:-- John Bickley: Cohen spoke outside the courthouse later on Tuesday.
--:-- Tim Pierce: This is not about Donald Trump versus Michael Cohen or Michael Cohen versus Donald Trump. This is about accountability, plain and simple, and we leave it up to Judge Angoran in order to make all the determinations on that.
--:-- John Bickley: And Trump is denying the charges that Cohen's making, correct?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Right, and Trump accuses James of prosecuting him for political reasons.
--:-- John Bickley: Over the years, he's also had a fair bit to say about Cohen, who he's called a rat.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's what Trump had to say on Tuesday. They have no case. The witness is totally discredited already and having to start. And if you're somebody that's a talent, that's it, you're going to squeeze.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, refresh listeners on Trump and Cohen's relationship. How far back do they go?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Cohen began to work for Trump as an attorney in the mid-2000s.
--:-- John Bickley: Cohen was a loyalist and close to the former president for over two decades, even through Trump's campaign and part of his presidency.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The pair split in 2018 when Cohen was targeted by federal investigators over his role in the Stormy Daniels hush money affair.
--:-- John Bickley: Since then, Cohen has sat for interviews with media and investigators and testified in courtrooms and in front of members of Congress about Trump's conduct.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Trump has dismissed Cohen as attention and a serial liar.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, let's talk about the case in Georgia. What's going on there?
--:-- Tim Pierce: The case in Georgia is being prosecuted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
--:-- John Bickley: It's a RICO case or an organized crime case in which Trump is accused of leading a supposed criminal enterprise that tried to illegally change the outcome of Georgia's 2020 election.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Willis indicted 18 others alongside Trump in the case.
--:-- John Bickley: And what has become a growing problem for Trump, some of those people are starting to turn.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Four of the defendants charged in Trump's alleged conspiracy have pleaded guilty to the charges, the most recent being former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis.
--:-- John Bickley: She agreed to a plea deal on Tuesday.
--:-- Tim Pierce: In return, she will receive five years of probation, pay $5,000 in restitution, and perform 100 hours of community service.
--:-- John Bickley: Here's some of what Ellis told the court.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I failed to do my due diligence. I believe in and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges.
--:-- John Bickley: I look back on this whole experience with deep remorse.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Ellis' plea deal came after two other attorneys, Kenneth Cheesebro and Sidney Powell, took deals last week.
--:-- John Bickley: Another defendant, Scott Hall, pleaded guilty last month.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, Trump's legal team is going to have their work cut out for them, given how many people are flipping.
--:-- John Bickley: Right.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, let's talk about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Israel continued its bombardment of Hamas on Tuesday, demanding the release of all hostages amid growing calls for a ceasefire.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: [Guest] Hey, Cabot. First, what are the latest updates out of Israel?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, in the last 24 hours, Israel has continued to step up their assault on Hamas strongholds throughout Gaza, launching hundreds of airstrikes as they prepare for that imminent ground invasion.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: As part of those preparations, Israeli intelligence reportedly formed a special operations force tasked with tracking down every Hamas terrorist who took part in the attack earlier this month.
--:-- John Bickley: That group has reportedly poured over hundreds of hours of footage and surveillance data to identify every single man who Israel's defense minister gave two options, quote, be killed or surrender unconditionally.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We've also seen some movement with regard to the 200 plus hostages being held.
--:-- John Bickley: Throughout the last day, there have been ongoing talks between the U.S., Israel, Qatar, Egypt, and Hamas regarding a deal to release a larger number of those hostages.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Remember, we've already seen four let go so far.
--:-- John Bickley: Right now, the sticking point in those conversations appears to be Hamas' demand for fuel in exchange for their release.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, obviously, the war has dominated the global conversation, but we've seen two different positions beginning to emerge.
--:-- John Bickley: So it's interesting. We have now started to see fissures forming with regard to what Israel should do now.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: On one side are those who have vowed to support Israel's effort to wipe out Hamas entirely.
--:-- John Bickley: And on the other are those now calling for a ceasefire as well as peace negotiations.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: With President Biden saying negotiations cannot and should not happen until all hostages have been released.
--:-- John Bickley: He has repeatedly affirmed Israel's right to defend itself.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Secretary of State Blinken has echoed those claims earlier in the week, telling the United Nations that a ceasefire would simply allow Hamas to regroup.
--:-- John Bickley: Here he is on CBS expanding on that point.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Freezing things in place where they are now would allow Hamas to remain where it is and to repeat what it's done sometime in the future.
--:-- John Bickley: No country could accept that.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the Biden administration holding firm so far in support of Israel.
--:-- John Bickley: What about those calling for a ceasefire?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, this week a number of Middle Eastern leaders along with some European leaders as well as two international bodies the World Health Organization and the United Nations called for a ceasefire which they say will allow for more civilians to flee more aid to enter and hostage negotiations to continue.
--:-- John Bickley: On Tuesday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced the terror attacks from Hamas, but did make a point of warning Israel against, quote, collective punishment, accusing them of violating international humanitarian law in their war on Hamas.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: He also went on to make these comments, which really ruffled some feathers.
--:-- John Bickley: It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, as you can imagine, those comments and the broader sentiment that Israel should stand down, even temporarily, have outraged Israeli leaders.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They say they have a duty to their people to wipe out the terror group no matter the cost.
--:-- John Bickley: To that point, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen spoke directly to Guterres at the UN with this pointed message.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Mr. Secretary General, in what world do you live? Definitely, this is not our world.
--:-- John Bickley: So it got a bit testy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cohen went on to compare the current situation to World War II, calling on the, quote, civilized world to unite in opposition against Tomas, who he referred to as the new Nazis.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, pointed indeed.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, let's talk about the polls coming out of this conflict.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, we've talked about some of those massive protests in support of the terror groups' war on Israel.
--:-- John Bickley: And now we are starting to see some hard data showing that a significant portion, especially young people and Muslim Americans, do seem to agree with those demonstrators.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to a poll from Single, for example, 58% of Muslim Americans agree with the statement, quote, Hamas was justified in their attack on Israel.
--:-- John Bickley: And while the vast majority of adults nationwide do say the attacks were not justified, young people feel differently.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to a Harvard poll this week, 51% of 18 to 24-year-olds say the attacks from Hamas were, quote, justified by the grievances of Palestinians.
--:-- John Bickley: We saw similar findings in the CNN poll, which showed that just 27% of 18 to 34-year-olds feel Israel is justified in their military response against Hamas.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, again, it is worth noting those findings are quite different among the vast majority of older Americans, as well as Christians and Jews.
--:-- John Bickley: But there is a noticeable disparity in support of Israel and views of Hamas based on age and religion.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, a stark and alarming disparity.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, let's talk about the New York Times' latest embarrassment.
--:-- Megan Basham: [Guest] So Megan, like John said, last week the astonishing claim that Israel bombed a Gaza hospital and killed 500 people was everywhere, including leading publications like the Times.
--:-- John Bickley: That story turned out to be untrue.
--:-- Megan Basham: How did so many outlets get such a big story so wrong?
--:-- John Bickley: You know, that's a really good question because this was the biggest and most prestigious names in journalism.
--:-- Megan Basham: The New York Times as John mentioned kind of led the way but Reuters Politico The Washington Post CNN I actually reading off of a list here MSNBC, Axios, the BBC, they all quickly followed suit, repeating what I think we can really only call propaganda.
--:-- John Bickley: By the following day, however, both Israeli and U.S. intelligence had conclusively demonstrated that not only had Hamas vastly inflated the number of casualties, but it was a misfired Palestinian rocket that caused this explosion.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, that has prompted a lot of conversation about why these so-called mistakes seem to only run in one direction in favor of Hamas.
--:-- John Bickley: You have critics asking whether these outlets are susceptible to misinformation for possibly ideological reasons.
--:-- Megan Basham: I talked to Drew Holden, a staff writer with the Washington Free Beacon, and he's been covering this issue pretty closely.
--:-- John Bickley: He said this was not a one-time mistake.
--:-- Megan Basham: One thing that the media keeps doing is they're running with the death tolls that Hamas is giving them, both about the conflict more broadly and then specific to the hospital bombing as well.
--:-- John Bickley: They keep repeating these figures that are disputed by U.S. intelligence, they're disputed by Israel.
--:-- Megan Basham: And in a lot of cases, it's many factors higher than what all other evidence seems to suggest.
--:-- John Bickley: And yet the media is saying, oh, well, you know, the Palestinian health ministry is telling us these are the numbers.
--:-- Megan Basham: When in so many cases, there's no actual facts grounding those numbers.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, another data point is AP style guidelines on this war.
--:-- Megan Basham: So even though the US, the EU and dozens of other countries classify Hamas as a terrorist organization, the AP says reporters should not describe them as terrorists.
--:-- John Bickley: Instead, it suggests using the terms fighters, combatants or militants.
--:-- Megan Basham: So once it was clear that the story had been massively bungled, how willing were these outlets to correct their course?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, that's been a pretty big part of the controversy here because a lot of them have seemed to sort of drag their feet on admitting that they got it wrong.
--:-- Megan Basham: As John said, it took The Times nearly a week to put out an editorial statement.
--:-- John Bickley: And even then, they only partially owned the mistake.
--:-- Megan Basham: Others have been resistant to acknowledging that they screwed up at all.
--:-- John Bickley: Here's what Holden told me about that.
--:-- Megan Basham: So like they're kind of holding up themselves as these fact finders.
--:-- John Bickley: And then when we get a lot more information that seems to run entirely counter to the direction they wanted this narrative to head, they go quiet.
--:-- Megan Basham: They drop out of this conversation. They're no longer interested in talking about this.
--:-- John Bickley: And so this is another instance of perceived bias that seems to be leading to broader distrust in the media, which, if you look at polling, is already at all-time lows.
--:-- Megan Basham: So not only did they run claims from a known terrorist organization, but their misreporting had very public consequences.
--:-- John Bickley: Countries across the Arab world issued statements condemning Israel after these reports came out.
--:-- Megan Basham: Some members of Congress did the same.
--:-- John Bickley: We saw riots over the weekend at U.S. and Israeli embassies all over the world.
--:-- Megan Basham: And all of it was based on a lie.
--:-- John Bickley: So as Holden pointed out to me, these media outlets gave an enormous amount of ammunition to people who hate Israel to begin with.
--:-- Megan Basham: And it also gave them an excuse to go out and cause violence.
--:-- John Bickley: Right.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks for waking up with us, folks.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for tuning in to Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
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