--:-- [Upbeat music fades out]
--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm John Bickley.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I'm Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: It's Wednesday, June 1st.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And we're here to bring you the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: President Biden shifts his messaging on the economy and inflation. How will the White House tackle pocketbook issues like rising food and fuel prices? And will it change voter opinion of his handling of the job?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Unfortunately, the prescriptions that he has teed up aren't really going to fix the problem. I think they could make inflation even worse.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And this is Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: The first test of John Durham's investigation into the origins of the debunked Russia collusion narrative ends in acquittal for a Clinton campaign lawyer.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We discussed the key evidence and why Durham's case against Michael Sussman came up short.
--:-- John Bickley: And Top Gun Maverick soars into the box office record books.
--:-- Georgia Howe: To have an audience respond that way is just a dream. That's what I want. What led to Tom Cruise's biggest box office success?
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: With your order. As record high inflation and gas prices continue to drive President Biden's approval rating to new lows, the White House has launched a month-long campaign to shift the national conversation on the economy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here with more on the messaging shift and how the president will look to regain support among voters dismayed by his handling of the economy is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cabot, messaging shifts for the White House aren't rare, but this one stands out. What's different here?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, this is a bit different. Presidents do often look to control messaging on key issues. But what makes this case unique is just how blatant the White House has been with their intentions.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Multiple administration officials have signaled this week they're aware that the state of the economy is costing them support ahead of the midterms, and they want to shift the conversation.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So there's been some clear signals from the White House about the urgency on this issue. Very clear.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: It started Monday with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from President Biden touting what he called the most robust economic recovery in modern history.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: In that op-ed, he said he wouldn't meddle with the Fed, but then yesterday met with Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to discuss record inflation.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And then it was announced that throughout the week, members of the president's cabinet will be making more than 20 appearances on cable networks, pushing the new White House message on the economy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So bottom line, after months of being on the defensive as the economy struggles, look for them to really shift to more of an offensive standpoint this week.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So what can we expect that messaging to sound like?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, the main message is going to be that President Biden is helping not hurting the economy and also that things are actually much better than they appear.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That's what they'll be claiming, at least. They'll be pointing to the 8 million jobs added since he took office, as well as the strong job market and relatively low unemployment, as signs that things aren't as bad as most people think they are.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: To give you a better idea of how they're portraying the economy and rising inflation, here's White House economic advisor Brian Deese on CNBC.
--:-- Brian Deese: The economy we have right now is in a transition from this period of historic economic growth to a period that can be more stable, resilient growth.
--:-- Brian Deese: That requires focusing on inflation and doing so from a position of relative strength.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But critics say that message of economic strength is misleading especially given that our economy shrank last quarter for the first time in years
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And there are also fears it going to shrink again a second quarter in a row which as we talked on the show would be a recession
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And also the stock market is down considerably on the year
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They've also pointed out that of the 8 million jobs added during Biden's first term, the vast majority were jobs that had been erased during COVID and simply came back when lockdowns were lifted.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So not really creating new jobs, but just restoring old ones.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Exactly. That is an important distinction, and many economists say it's a bit disingenuous to take credit for creating jobs that had already existed before.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They also point out that while the federal deficit is being brought down, as Biden has pointed out, the main reason here is that COVID relief spending is no longer necessary, so government spending is down as a result, meaning the deficit is shrinking.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But again, critics say it's a bit misleading to take credit for that as well.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: To that point, I talked to Brandon Arnold, the executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union.
--:-- Brandon Arnold: This administration hasn't done anything to reduce the deficit. They're taking credit for trillions of dollars in spending that have just fallen off the books because that was what was in statute.
--:-- Brandon Arnold: That was what was planned by the Congress and the previous president. What they've tried to do is spend trillions of dollars more.
--:-- Brandon Arnold: They've tried to spend more in the way of the Build Back Better plan, which would have absolutely exploded the deficit.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And what about the timing here? What does the timing of this shift in messaging tell us?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: More than anything, it tells us the White House is just deeply aware of how much frustration is built up among voters when it comes to the economy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We've talked on the show about how 8 in 10 Americans say the president is not doing enough to combat inflation, while a similar number say the country is heading in the wrong direction.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And with midterms just five months away now, this is part of them trying to stop the bleeding, politically speaking.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The timing also has to do with the fact that now that it's summer, economic problems are just being felt more personally.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: More Americans are driving, so gas prices are felt on a more regular basis.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And as vacation season picks up, more Americans are feeling the price spike on flights and hotels, which are both 30% more expensive than last summer.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And as a result, 58% of Americans in one recent poll said they've changed their vacation plans.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, we'll have to see if any of this stops that downward trend the president's seeing in the polls.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Thanks for the reporting.
--:-- Tim Pierce: A D.C. jury acquitted former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussman on Tuesday.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Sussman was charged with intentionally misleading the FBI ahead of the 2016 election by claiming not to be acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and a tech executive.
--:-- Tim Pierce: During the meeting, Sussman gave then-FBI General Counsel James Baker supposed evidence of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia's Alpha Bank.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Sussman's trial was the first major courtroom test of Durham's investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here to talk about the verdict and recap the trial is Daily Wire's Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So, Tim, is this the end of the Durham investigation?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks, Georgia. It's unclear how this not guilty verdict will affect Durham's larger investigation, but it definitely is a setback.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The special counsel issued a prepared statement after the verdict saying, while we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury's decision.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Sussman, of course, celebrated his victory in a statement from the courthouse steps.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I told the truth to the FBI and the jury clearly recognized that
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now do we have any information right now about what swayed the jury?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Not yet First off there a lot of confusion around what Sussman was actually charged with
--:-- Tim Pierce: He's charged with lying to the FBI during one specific meeting.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But legally, lying to the FBI is only a felony if the lies germane to a relevant investigation.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The defense argued that the FBI was aware that Sussman was a partisan, and they factored that knowledge into their handling of his information.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So even though Sussman falsely presented himself as a private citizen, not connected to any political campaign, the FBI knew otherwise.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It's also important to note that the scope of the charge was pretty narrow.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It only included communication that occurred during one specific meeting, whereas some of the false information was communicated via text message before that meeting.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The statute of limitations for the crime had already passed when prosecutors obtained those text messages, though, so they couldn't add them to the indictment, which weakened their case.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The prosecution also expressed concern that the jury would struggle to separate their own partisan leanings when they were evaluating this case.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Right. The prosecution had concerns from the start about their ability to convict a Clinton ally in D.C.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Keep in mind, the jury pool is coming from a jurisdiction that voted more than 90% for Clinton.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And in fact, there was evidence that the jurors largely favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump politically.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The jury's political leanings shouldn't matter in a criminal trial, but people are human.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And we do know that at least one juror said that they would try their best to be unbiased, but acknowledged that it would be difficult.
--:-- Tim Pierce: D.C. is also a really small world, so it is difficult to find jury members that don't have interpersonal connections with people associated with political campaigns.
--:-- Tim Pierce: For example, at least one juror discovered after jury selection that her daughter played on the same high school sports team with the daughter of the defendant.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But the judge allowed her to remain on the case despite protests from prosecutors.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All that said, legal analyst at the National Review Andrew McCarthy had doubts about Sussman being convicted.
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: He's confident that the case is going in his direction.
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: And it's odd to say that under circumstances where the proof is overwhelming that the statement was false.
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: But there's a difference between the statement being false and the FBI being fooled by it.
--:-- Andrew McCarthy: And I think the statement at this point is better understood as a kind of a cover story so that the FBI could take information or feel comfortable taking information that was obviously political opposition, research.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So what the Sussman defense, I think, has been able to show is that the government has big trouble trying to prove the materiality of the false statement, which is an essential element of it, because the FBI really wasn't fooled and because they went to great lengths to conceal the fact that they had accepted information from a partisan political source.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All right. Well, Tim, thanks so much for breaking that down for us.
--:-- Tim Pierce: No problem.
--:-- John Bickley: Top Gun Maverick, the sequel to the 1986 action hit, debuted to a stunning $156 million in the box office this past weekend.
--:-- John Bickley: This marks a record for star Tom Cruise.
--:-- John Bickley: The film also took the record for the highest Memorial Day opening of all time, surpassing 2007's Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End.
--:-- John Bickley: Here to discuss what made Maverick such a success and what that success tells us about the mood in Hollywood is Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Megan, I guess this proves that it's actually possible to get people to come to theaters for something other than superheroes.
--:-- Megan Basham: It does. It really does. But you have to say, in this case, Maverick is kind of a superhero when he's flying those planes.
--:-- Megan Basham: So maybe this falls into that category a little bit
--:-- Megan Basham: But the other thing we can note here is just how much pent demand was on display for this film
--:-- Megan Basham: First from people who been wanting to see a sequel to Top Gun for 36 years, but also from the production and COVID delays the movie experienced.
--:-- Megan Basham: So it was first supposed to hit theaters in the summer of 2019, but it was delayed so the team could work on those phenomenal aerial sequences.
--:-- Megan Basham: But then the pandemic also pushed it first to December 2020. than July 2021, than November 2021.
--:-- Megan Basham: At one point, there was actually talk about it being released to streaming, but star Tom Cruise promised that that was never going to happen.
--:-- Megan Basham: He said it was going to be the big screen or nothing for Maverick, and I'm sure he's feeling very good about that decision right now.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, I'm sure he is.
--:-- Megan Basham: Looking at audience reaction, it seems like a lot of people agree it was totally worth the wait.
--:-- Megan Basham: Oh yeah, absolutely. The cinema score for this movie is just through the roof.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, if you're not familiar with the cinema score, that's a rating based on exit polls of audience members.
--:-- Megan Basham: Maverick earned the first A-plus grade of 2022.
--:-- Megan Basham: So what that means is that audiences liked it more than a number of other very big releases this year, including the latest Marvel movie, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, and The Batman.
--:-- Megan Basham: All right, so Megan, you're also a film critic.
--:-- Megan Basham: You saw the movie before it came out.
--:-- Megan Basham: You've written a review that's linked over on Rotten Tomatoes.
--:-- Megan Basham: For fun, what was your opinion of Maverick?
--:-- Megan Basham: And I'll say that when I came out of my press screening early last week, I was pretty sure that it was going to put up some really big numbers.
--:-- Megan Basham: And not just because it offers incredible fan service, which it absolutely does, but also because, you know, pardon the pun, it does fire on all cylinders.
--:-- Megan Basham: The action sequences are mind-blowing.
--:-- Megan Basham: It's got a great cast.
--:-- Megan Basham: And, you know, noteworthy for me, there's nothing politically divisive here.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right. This really, very much like the original movie, was fairly patriotic.
--:-- Megan Basham: It celebrates America's military skill.
--:-- Megan Basham: And related to that, I'll just note that before Maverick came out, it made some fairly negative headlines when some footage showed that Paramount had swapped out a couple of patches on Maverick's iconic jacket, specifically the Japanese and Taiwanese flag patches.
--:-- Megan Basham: Those had been replaced with something sort of generic that a lot of people took as a bid not to offend China.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, that offended a lot of Americans.
--:-- Megan Basham: Paramount seemed to hear that outcry because when you see the movie now, the original flag patches, they're back in.
--:-- Megan Basham: So to me, that's the latest proof that maybe the era of studios bending over backwards to make Xi Jinping happy is coming to an end.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, it looks that way, and I'm sure a lot of Americans are cheering that.
--:-- Megan Basham: Speaking of cheering, we resist giving our opinions much on this show, but full disclosure, I watched Maverick this weekend.
--:-- Megan Basham: I came in with super high expectations. Totally surpassed them.
--:-- Megan Basham: It's just terrific.
--:-- Megan Basham: That's a very hot take, John.
--:-- Megan Basham: I know. I'm risking a lot here.
--:-- Megan Basham: Thanks, Megan.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation.
--:-- John Bickley: 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.
--:-- John Bickley: That's all the time we've got this morning.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
