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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire. I'm John Bickley, editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire. Joining me today is Georgia Howe. It's Friday, August 16th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Good morning, John. Thanks for having me.
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--:-- John Bickley: Kamala Harris proposes caps on grocery prices in an effort to take a bite out of inflation. Why do economists say price controls will lead to rationing, not lower inflation?
--:-- Georgia Howe: This would lead to even more disastrous outcomes. It could even lead to grocery stores going out of business and people not being able to get food.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, August 16th, and this is Morning Wire. Donald Trump holds a lengthy press conference on inflation and does his best to define his opponent. People don't know who she is. She's a radical left socialist.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And multiple people are arrested in connection with Matthew Perry's death, including members of his inner circle.
--:-- John Bickley: The fall of 2023, Mr. Perry fell back into addiction. And these defendants took advantage to profit for themselves.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: The Harris campaign has unveiled a new proposal that would ban so-called price gouging and revolutionize the grocery and food service industries. Here with the details of the plan is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So a controversial and really unprecedented proposal from the vice president, and we're expecting more proposals to come today. What can you tell us?
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, so to this point, the Harris campaign has offered surprisingly few details on specific policy proposals. But today, the VP will give a speech laying out her economic agenda. And as part of that plan, she's calling for a historic federal ban on, quote, price gouging in the grocery and food service industries.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The move is part of a broader effort to sort of shift blame for inflation and higher prices away from the Biden-Harris administration and onto corporate America. We are still waiting for the details of what exactly qualifies as price gouging or even where the authority comes from to force businesses to lower prices.
--:-- John Bickley: But in a press release announcing the move, the Harris campaign said they would, quote, set clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can't unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The campaign added that they would impose, quote, harsh penalties on corporations that fix prices and also launch federal investigations into price gouging in the food industry. So still a lot of unanswered questions there.
--:-- John Bickley: What sort of responses are we seeing so far from this announcement?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, far-left progressives have long called for federal price controls across the economy, including for groceries. So as you can imagine, they celebrated the proposal. But economists across the political spectrum have cast doubt on the legality and just as importantly the effectiveness of such a move.
--:-- Carol Roth: The food service industry, particularly grocery stores, they operate on a one to three percent profit margin. And somehow she's blaming them for inflation, which is silly.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the idea that she's going to somehow institute some type of price caps, that would be a price control. And if anybody has studied history or economics, you know that a price control leads to rationing. It is something that is done in socialist types of societies. It always has a bad outcome.
--:-- Carol Roth: Now, if this is passed, and that's a big if, is this proposal something that would actually stand up in court?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, again, we'll have to wait and see the exact details first, but the short answer is probably not. Beyond rent controls in a few areas of the country, there's just very little precedent for the federal government mandating certain prices in the free market, at least to this extent.
--:-- Carol Roth: But this is a campaign pledge. So in the short term, the legality of the plan doesn't really matter. We've already seen the Biden-Harris administration pass things like student loan forgiveness, which they knew were likely to be shot down by the Supreme Court.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But remember, it gave them the chance to essentially argue, look, we're trying to help the country, but the big bad conservatives on the Supreme Court won't let us.
--:-- Carol Roth: And is it fair to say that the message being delivered here from Harris is effectively that inflation is not her fault?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Oh, that's exactly what they're doing. Now, since taking over the nomination, Harris has made a clear attempt to distance herself from the policies of her own administration, which she is VP in, arguing that she was not actually the border czar in charge of the immigration crisis.
--:-- Carol Roth: And now that inflation is not only the fault of big corporations, but not actually as bad as people believe. To that point, the Biden-Harris administration has been celebrating the latest inflation numbers, which did show price increases slowing.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But according to Roth, that will be a difficult sell with voters.
--:-- Carol Roth: I don't think that most individuals, most American citizens are sitting around and hanging on what the CPI report says, nor do they have any context to this. I think what they understand is that they were feeling pretty fit in 2020 before COVID.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And then once Biden got into office after the emergency was over, they're like, oh, wait a second. You know, I'm gaining weight. I gained, you know, five pounds. And then the next year I gained 10 pounds. And OK, well, maybe this year I'm only gaining three pounds, but, you know, I'm still up 18 pounds and now I have to wear elastic pants.
--:-- Carol Roth: Nobody is saying, oh, wow, look, I only gained three pounds this year. So I think that's the kind of analogy that they're seeing in terms of the compound effect of inflation.
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--:-- John Bickley: Trump held a press conference at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey on Thursday, drawing a sharp contrast with Vice President Harris. Harris has barely faced the press since taking over as the presumptive Democratic nominee over three weeks ago. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about Trump presser.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yes, since the media has let Harris skate by with little scrutiny, Trump is attempting to define her himself. This press conference was about highlighting Harris's progressive record while laying out what a second Trump term could look like.
--:-- John Bickley: The economy was a big topic yesterday. Here's Trump on inflation under the Biden-Harris administration. Look at that, up 46 percent eggs. Wow. School lunch is up 65 percent. How can a family afford that? Bacon is through the roof. They're all through the roof. The milk, everything is bad.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And we're going to straighten it out. We're going to bring prices way down and we'll get it done fast. And with her, it's just talk. So she is saying when she gets in, she's in now. And she's still saying, if you elect me, I'll do this. I'll do. Why didn't she do it?
--:-- John Bickley: To help sharpen his attacks on Harris, the Trump campaign has brought back Corey Lewandowski, who managed Trump's 2016 campaign, as well as a few other Trump world veterans.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And is this race still extremely tight in the polls? Trump and Harris are neck and neck. The latest poll from Fox News shows Trump leading by one point, 50 to 49. That's mainly due to Trump's eight point lead with independents.
--:-- John Bickley: Nikki Haley said a few days ago on Fox News that Trump needs to focus on his new opponent instead of complaining. Trump said yesterday he's open to having Nikki Haley on the campaign trail with him.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I appreciate her advice. I have to do it my way. You know, I think she's a good woman. I'd love to have her go around and campaign. I think this is a different kind of a race. All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that's going to destroy our country.
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--:-- John Bickley: Anti-Semitism and Israel are campaign issues that could be particularly damaging to Harris because of the infighting it has caused in the Democratic Party. Just as an example of that, dozens of anti-Israel protesters disrupted the after party of a get out the vote event for Harris in New York City.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The protesters busted barricades, stormed a restaurant and caused thousands of dollars worth of damage. Here's what that sounded like. There are children in body bags. How dare you?
--:-- John Bickley: Now, how is Harris navigating the divide among Democrats over Israel? Well, at a recent rally in Arizona, she appeared to call for a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, a demand of Democrats' left-wing base.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I have been clear. Now is the time to get a ceasefire deal and get the hostage deal done. Now is the time. Military experts have recognized that as the only chance for the terror group's survival, and Israel has rejected a permanent ceasefire over and over again.
--:-- John Bickley: Harris has also tapped Nazrena Bargzi as her Muslim voter outreach chief. Bargzi served in Harris's VP office as a senior advisor and has long been a friend to the more radical wing of the Democratic base.
--:-- Tim Pierce: For instance, Bargzi has supported groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine, which has called Israel's war against Hamas a genocide. But this attempt to court the Democrats' left flank has also backfired.
--:-- John Bickley: A pro-Palestinian activist group said this week that in a private meeting with Harris, she committed to an arms embargo against Israel. Harris' campaign was forced to publicly deny that alleged commitment.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, it sounds like a difficult rift to manage for her.
--:-- Ash Short: Multiple people have been arrested in connection to the overdose death of actor Matthew Perry including his personal assistant and two doctors. Law enforcement sources have told multiple outlets that five people, two of whom were doctors, have been charged with conspiracy to distribute ketamine, which was found at high levels in Perry's system when he died.
--:-- John Bickley: So Ash, what do we know about these arrests?
--:-- Ash Short: So we know five people were arrested for conspiracy and that the two doctors were the original sources of Perry's supply. And these included individuals in his inner circle, including Perry's personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, who appears to have been in cahoots with doctors to extract as much money as possible out of Perry.
--:-- John Bickley: We also know that authorities believe the drug became so expensive that Perry found new sources, including one woman known as the Ketamine Queen of Los Angeles.
--:-- Ash Short: And how much were they charging that Matthew Perry wasn't able to afford it? Prosecutors allege that physician Salvador Plasencia charged Perry $2,000 for a vial that cost approximately $12.
--:-- John Bickley: In one two-week period in October of 2023, Plasencia received $32,000 from Perry's personal assistant, including $21,500 in cash.
--:-- Ash Short: Wow. Now, if these drugs were legally prescribed and Perry took them willingly, what crime were these five individuals committing?
--:-- John Bickley: What made them potentially culpable is text messages between the group discussing how to get more money from Perry. One text sent by one of the doctors read, quote, I wonder how much this moron will pay.
--:-- Ash Short: Here's what U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada had to say at a press conference about the arrests. These defendants took advantage of Mr. Perry's addiction issues to enrich themselves. They knew what they were doing was wrong.
--:-- John Bickley: The defendants also exchanged messages shortly after Perry's death discussing ketamine as the reason he died before the toxicology report came back. They also tried to cover up their involvement in Perry's death, Estrada said.
--:-- Ash Short: On October 28th, after reading news reports on Mr. Perry's death, defendant Sonia wrote a text message to defendant Fleming saying, quote, delete all our messages. Likewise, after Mr. Perry's death, the defendant for sentia falsified medical records and notes to try to make it look like what he was doing was legitimate. It was not.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, for people who don't remember, can you explain how ketamine played a role in Perry's death?
--:-- Ash Short: So when Perry died, the L.A. County Medical Examiner found extremely high levels of ketamine in the actor's system, levels high enough to be used for general anesthesia during a surgery.
--:-- John Bickley: Perry was on a ketamine infusion therapy, but his last session was more than a week before he died, so his death couldn't be the result of that treatment.
--:-- Ash Short: Perry had written in his memoir, released the year before his death, that he was using ketamine as part of an experimental treatment that helps with depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, chronic pain, and more.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, very sad that his inner circle was so predatory.
--:-- Ash Short: Thanks for reporting.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.
