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--:-- Georgia Howe: The first Republican debate did not disappoint, with the candidates trading blows early and often over the biggest issues facing the country. Do you want a super PAC puppet, or do you want a patriot who speaks the truth? I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here. Now is not the time for on-the-job training. We don't need to bring in a rookie. You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows. And you know what? It shows.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, August 24th, and this is Morning Wire. While the other GOP candidates duked it out on stage, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump instead sat down with Tucker Carlson. Basically, they're suing me and they're saying, you don't have any right to challenge him. If you challenge an election, we're going to indict you and put you in jail. We discussed the interview and Trump's plans to turn himself in today.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And speculation grows after Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Mercenary Group, reportedly died in a plane crash near Moscow. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Eight Republican presidential candidates battled it out in Milwaukee on Wednesday night for the first 2024 GOP primary debate hosted by Fox News. Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Hey, John. So, fun night last night. First, give us a general overview of how things played out there in Milwaukee. Who faced off and what were some of the issues that were discussed?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Hey, Amanda. So, fun night last night. First, give us a general overview of how things played out there in Milwaukee. Who faced off and what were some of the issues that were discussed?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, the candidates on stage last night were Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. But really, those who seemed to stand out were Ramaswamy, DeSantis, Pence, Christie, and maybe to a lesser extent, Haley.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Moderators Brett Baer and Martha McAllen kicked off the debate with questions on the economy, the most pressing issue for Americans right now, certainly, and moved on to abortion and then touched on crime, climate change and energy, funding for Ukraine, China, the southern border, education, and even UFOs right at the end there.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The crowd in Milwaukee was pretty lively. They seemed to boo Christie and Hutchinson when they were first announced on stage, and they also cheered when former President Trump was mentioned.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Now, Trump, of course, was not at the debate despite being the GOP frontrunner, but he still took up some of the oxygen last night. Yeah, to no one's surprise, The moderators asked the candidates if they would support Trump as the GOP nominee if Trump were to be convicted. And all the candidates seemed to signal that they would, aside from Christie and Hutchinson.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Here's a bit from Christie. Here's the bottom line. Someone's got to stop normalizing this conduct. Okay? Now, whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, The conduct is beneath the office of president of the United States. And, you know, this is the great thing about this country. Booing is allowed, but it doesn't change the truth. It doesn't change the truth.
--:-- Georgia Howe: As you can hear, a lot of boos to that answer. And not to belabor the point, but here's Haley also criticizing Trump and getting a similar, though less harsh reaction.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: We have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can't win a general election that way.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Even without Trump, there were a lot of fireworks between candidates last night, far more than I think we expected.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Yeah, certainly. In one such case, there was a lot of contrast when the moderators asked about funding for Ukraine. Many GOP voters have increasingly turned against aid to Ukraine. Ramaswamy took the harshest stance here, and he said he would end all aid to Ukraine and amp up our southern border instead.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: This turned into a pretty intense back and forth with Haley, who was very supportive of our financial support of Ukraine and pointed out that Ramaswamy has also floated ending military aid to Israel down the road. You are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Nikki, I wish you well in your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon. But the fact of the matter...
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Ramaswamy also took aim at Christie and, well, every other candidate, calling them all bought and paid for. That was a line that earned overwhelming boos from the crowd and the stage.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here's the tech billionaire addressing climate change. I'm the only person on the stage who isn't bought and paid for, so I can say this. The climate change agenda is a hoax. The climate change agenda is a hoax. And we have to declare independence for it. And the reality is...
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: DeSantis, though, a long way from Trump in the polls, is battling it out for second right now with Ramaswamy. How did the Florida governor do?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, DeSantis perhaps made less noise than his supporters might have wanted, but he did garner a lot of applause touting his achievements in Florida. There was also a standout moment where DeSantis took a swipe at the former president with regard to lockdown policies. And this might have been the only time a knock on Trump ended with applause. And I can tell you this, as your president, I will never let the deep state bureaucrats lock you down. You don't take somebody like Fauci and coddle him. You bring Fauci in, you sit him down and you say, Anthony, you are fired.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, a fascinating and really entertaining first look at the candidates last night on the debate stage. Looking forward to the next one.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Amanda, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Yeah, thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Coming up, President Trump counter-programs with Tucker Carlson. Former President Trump was absent from the first Republican debate but made sure not to be totally absent from the spotlight. He sat down with Tucker Carlson in an interview released just minutes before the debate began.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here with the recap. So Tim, I was watching the main debate. What happened during the Trump interview?
--:-- Tim Pierce: He was asked some pretty interesting questions, but not necessarily hard ones. But the interview was mostly about counter-programming anyway. Trump was protesting the debate over his high numbers in the polls, and Carlson was probably happy for the chance to steal some of the spotlight from Fox News after the network unexpectedly took him off the air earlier this year.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, did they actually address the debate? Carlson asked him why he didn't go.
--:-- Tim Pierce: If you're leading by 50, 60, I have one problem leading by 70 points, and I'm saying, why am I doing it? And I'm going to have eight people, 10 people, whoever made the debate. I don't know how many it is, but I'm going to have all these people screaming at me, shouting questions at me, all of which I love answering. I love doing, but it doesn't make sense to do them. So I've taken a pass.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And from there, the interview moved into some of those interesting areas I mentioned. For example, Carlson asked Trump if he feared that the Democrats would try to kill him.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Are you worried that they're going to try and kill you? Why wouldn't they try and kill you? Honestly. They're savage animals. They are people that are sick, really sick.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Carlson also asked Trump if he thought the country was headed towards civil war.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I don't know because I don't know what it, you know, I can say this. There's a level of passion that I've never seen. There's a level of hatred that I've never seen. And there's probably a bad combination.
--:-- Tim Pierce: On Biden, Trump's study still has doubts about whether the president will run for re-election. Trump also said Biden isn't actually running the country and that his family's business dealings have compromised him. I believe he's compromised because China knows so much about him. They know where the money comes from. They know where it is, who paid it, and they probably paid it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Trump also said he kept the U.S. out of nuclear war with North Korea and hit Biden for the Ukraine-Russia war, as well as for allowing China to reportedly gain a foothold in Cuba. But Trump's primary issue was still immigration.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's what Trump said he would focus on above everything else his first day in office. Number one is a border and taking hundreds of thousands of criminals that have been allowed into our country and getting them out and bringing them back to their country.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, he said they were nonsense, but he also said that if he is being indicted for leading a conspiracy to overturn the election in Georgia, then Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams are just as guilty. You know, every time you see her on television, she's saying, like, well, she's challenging the election. Do you think that would mean that she should be indicted, But that would mean also that Stacey Abrams in Georgia should be indicted because she still thinks she won the election for governor.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, Trump is also expected to turn himself in tomorrow at Fulton County Jail. Did he talk about that at all? Not so much, but that is true. Trump is expected to turn himself in and possibly have his mugshot taken to go alongside people like Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, who have already been processed. As a legal matter, it seems a bit excessive since Trump isn't a flight risk. But it does give Trump another opportunity to overshadow his competition in the Republican primary.
--:-- Georgia Howe: On the day after the first debate expect most media outlets to focus their coverage on Trump and Fulton County.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All right, well, we'll be watching. Thanks for the recap.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Russian oligarch and founder of the infamous Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was reportedly killed yesterday in a plane crash north of Moscow. Prigozhin was one of 10 people on the passenger list of a small plane, which authorities say was lost with all hands. Joining us with the details is Daily Wire senior editor Joel Needler.
--:-- Joel Needler: Hey, Joel. So first, what details do we know so far about this plane crash and who was on it when it went down?
--:-- Georgia Howe: So reports started streaming in yesterday that the plane personally owned by Purgosian crashed in the Tver region, which is about 200 miles north of Moscow. The flight log showed that there were three crew on board and seven passengers, and one of them was Purgosian himself. And all who were on board, as you said, died from the crash.
--:-- Joel Needler: The Russian authorities say that they've now launched a criminal investigation into what led to the crash. And there's a lot of speculation going on for good reason.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. To that point, remind us why Prigozhin is considered a prime target for assassination by pro-Russian forces.
--:-- Joel Needler: So Prigozhin was a major power broker in Russia and spent years in Vladimir Putin's inner circle. In 2014, he founded the Wagner Group, a private military company backed by the Russian government. As we've reported here previously, Wagner mercenaries have been involved in some of the fiercest fighting in Ukraine, even before the full-scale invasion.
--:-- Joel Needler: But they've also seen action in other war zones across the world and have been accused of numerous human rights violations. Yeah. Now, the turning point was the mutiny in June where the Wagner group briefly marched on Moscow before negotiating a truce. The key question there was what drove Purgosian and Putin apart?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, Purgosian was dissatisfied with the war effort in Ukraine. Wagner soldiers were doing much of the fighting and dying there. Wagner forces were also set to be more directly integrated into the Russian chain of command, which he objected to.
--:-- Joel Needler: Prigozhin's revolt was apparently meant to replace some of Russia's senior military leadership, not necessarily Putin himself. And he apparently had support from other high-ranking officers. But the plot was discovered a few days before it was set to begin, which caused a rushed, chaotic revolt. Now this revolt ended in a negotiation. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko helped broker that deal. Prigozhin was supposed to have asylum in Belarus, but he left.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What do we know about what happened after he left Belarus?
--:-- Joel Needler: Well, he reportedly left Belarus shortly after arriving and largely dropped off the grid, apart from a few scattered sightings. Prigozhin made a rare public appearance in Africa just days before his death, apparently in command of Wagner troops.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So the question driving so much speculation, is there any evidence that Putin himself was involved in the crash?
--:-- Joel Needler: Officially, not yet. Unofficially, well, there's been some rumblings on Wagner's social media channels that Prigozhin's plane was intentionally shot down. Putin's been accused of killing rivals before, and Poghoshin clearly had a massive target on his back.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, clearly. We'll see what details, if any, emerge.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire's senior editor, Joel Needler. Thanks for reporting.
--:-- Joel Needler: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and you stand with our mission, please consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
