--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm John Bickley.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I'm Georgia Howe. It's Monday, November 20th.
--:-- John Bickley: The NFL is back, and FanDuel's got everything you need to play your game. From same-game parlays to live betting. Right now, new customers bet $5 and get $300 in bonus bets if you win. 21-plus in president select states. 18-plus in Kentucky and Wyoming. Must be first online real money waging. $5 deposit required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at FanDuel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
--:-- John Bickley: House Speaker Mike Johnson has promised to release tens of thousands of hours of footage from January 6th and has already posted the first installment. What new information has the footage revealed? And why are some pushing back against its release?
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: Elon Musk has announced what he's called a thermonuclear lawsuit against left-wing media watchdog group Media Matters. And as the Iowa caucus approaches, the once-crowded race for the GOP nomination continues to shrink, while President Biden faces growing headwinds.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has pledged to release over 40,000 hours of footage from the events of January 6th, 2021.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hi, I'm Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
--:-- John Bickley: Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce joins us now to talk about the tape's release.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So Speaker Johnson released only an initial tranche of footage on Friday. He says that the rest of the footage will be released on a rolling basis. Now, the footage already released has raised some issues.
--:-- John Bickley: So the official story from the Democrat-led January 6th committee characterized the events at the Capitol as a violent uprising that threatened the Republic. Vice President Harris even likened January 6th to 9-11 and Pearl Harbor.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But what's clear from the footage released is while, of course, there were pockets of violence, many of the people who entered the Capitol that day appeared to have been peaceful.
--:-- John Bickley: The video released Friday shows dozens of protesters walking the Capitol, greeting or just passing by police.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But nobody would ever have known that just based off the footage the January 6th committee released, which really highlighted the moments where things got more violent and chaotic.
--:-- John Bickley: All right, so to that point, speaking of the January 6th committee, why did it not release these tapes?
--:-- Tim Pierce: That's a good question. One of the Democrats on the committee, Jamie Raskin, appeared on CNN Sunday and said the committee held the footage because of security concerns.
--:-- John Bickley: The reason why the Capitol Police have opposed releasing tens of thousands of hours from every House office building, every Senate office building, every part of the Capitol is because it's like giving a diagram to future insurrectionists and terrorists and anybody who wants to invade our body.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I should note that Johnson is sympathetic to those security concerns, but evidently he thinks the committee took them way too far.
--:-- John Bickley: Now this was a highly contested and controversial move but obviously Johnson and Republicans are saying it's really important.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, that really gets to the heart of the issue Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah says there are serious questions around what happened on January 6th that weren't investigated thoroughly.
--:-- John Bickley: One he pointed to specifically is the number of undercover agents that the FBI or other law enforcement agencies had in the crowd.
--:-- Tim Pierce: A New York Post report in September said the FBI actually had to do an audit to find out how many plainclothes agents were in the crowd because the agency had lost track.
--:-- John Bickley: And FBI Director Christopher Wray has also refused to answer the question every time it's been posed to him, which has just heightened the scrutiny.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Aside from that, Congressman Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who led the Republican audit of the January 6th committee's work, has said there are issues that haven't been addressed with the Capitol Police.
--:-- John Bickley: Politicization of the police force, as well as serious failures in the intelligence division added to the chaos.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But according to Loudermilk, those issues were ignored by the committee.
--:-- John Bickley: Will the release of these tapes have legal implications? Will they impact any court cases over January 6th?
--:-- Tim Pierce: We'll have to see. It should help the public to better understand what each person charged did that day.
--:-- John Bickley: And maybe it'll drive some sort of public pressure in response.
--:-- Tim Pierce: There are concerns that the release of the tapes could be a disaster for, as of yet, uncharged people associated with January 6th.
--:-- John Bickley: Internet sleuths could identify more people and bring the Department of Justice down on them.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But Johnson says part of the reason the tapes are being released on a rolling basis instead of all at once is because the faces of private citizens are all being blurred.
--:-- John Bickley: Of course, for a skilled investigator, a blurred face may be a hurdle, but it's still not impossible to come up with likely suspects based on clothing or some other detail.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Right. That said, the blurring appears to be the compromise Johnson made between the protesters' interests and the public interest in the tapes.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll see what happens as the rest of the tapes are released.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Meanwhile, 40,000 hours is a lot. It's going to take a long time.
--:-- John Bickley: Tim, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: Elon Musk announced this past weekend that he plans to file a thermonuclear lawsuit against the left-wing media watchdog group Media Matters.
--:-- Megan Basham: Hi, I'm Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- John Bickley: The group had published an investigation claiming that ads on X, formerly known as Twitter, are appearing next to racist content.
--:-- Megan Basham: Essentially, what they're saying is that X is running ads for major clients like IBM, Oracle, Apple, a number of others, alongside content that praises Hitler and some other neo-Nazi posts.
--:-- John Bickley: And because of that report, IBM, Apple, Disney, Discovery, just a whole host of major companies have announced that they're suspending ad buys on the platform.
--:-- Megan Basham: But Musk and X executives say Media Matters created and rigged several accounts specifically to attract this kind of content.
--:-- John Bickley: In essence, they say these accounts sought out that neo-Nazi and white supremacist kind of posts and then engaged with them.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then, according to Musk, they just repeatedly refreshed their feeds to find what he called rare instances of ads next to that kind of objectionable content.
--:-- John Bickley: And one ex-exec explained that ads follow the people and that in this case, Media Matters research team was going to actively look for this content.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he said, that's how user targeting works.
--:-- John Bickley: And Musk says Media Matters is deliberately misrepresenting what happens on his platform.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he posted on Saturday that the split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and all those who colluded in this fraudulent attack.
--:-- John Bickley: Right. But I mean this isn't the first time groups like Media Matters have made accusations like this.
--:-- Megan Basham: Why did this particular report spark such a big backlash from advertisers?
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, that very true.
--:-- Megan Basham: And I do think we have to look at the subtext of Media Matters reports as well as some of the subtext from a lot of those bigger news outlets.
--:-- John Bickley: And that's that they disagree with Musk's position on free speech.
--:-- Megan Basham: He has said that even if something is distasteful, provided it's not illegal, X is going to allow it.
--:-- John Bickley: They may limit its reach, but they're not going to ban it outright.
--:-- Megan Basham: And in fact, in response to the Media Matters report, Musk said, and I'm quoting, for speech to be truly free, we must also have freedom to see or hear things that some people may consider objectionable, and we will not allow agenda-driven activists or even our profits to deter our vision.
--:-- John Bickley: So that was interesting.
--:-- Megan Basham: But I think the reason this last Media Matters report really struck a chord is that it came out just as Musk himself said something that was pretty controversial.
--:-- John Bickley: So on Thursday, a user posted, quoting, Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
--:-- Megan Basham: And Musk responded that this was, quote, the actual truth.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, in a follow-up post a short time later, he clarified that he was talking about the Anti-Defamation League.
--:-- Megan Basham: Though that civil rights group was once primarily focused on anti-Semitism, it has been pretty widely acknowledged that it often now functions more as an all-purpose progressive activist group.
--:-- John Bickley: And for example, it has aligned with Black Lives Matter, which argued that the wealth and success that some white people possess is due to racial privilege.
--:-- Megan Basham: And that's also a charge that anti-Semites have leveled against Jews as well.
--:-- John Bickley: So Musk has said in the past that the ADL are, quoting again, ironically, the biggest generators of anti-Semitism on X.
--:-- Megan Basham: But Musk's clarification didn't stop some massive coverage of his comment, including a statement of condemnation from the White House.
--:-- John Bickley: But I do think it is also worth highlighting that Media Matters are not really objective analysts here.
--:-- Megan Basham: They define themselves as political progressives whose mission is to police specifically conservative misinformation.
--:-- John Bickley: And the group has rejected what Musk says about his own motives being free speech, and they impute their motives to him.
--:-- Megan Basham: And in fact, this is what Media Matters president and CEO Angelo Carrison told MSNBC about that on Saturday night.
--:-- John Bickley: And that's not what it's about at all.
--:-- Megan Basham: None of his conduct suggests that that's what his ownership and his execution of Twitter of X really is.
--:-- John Bickley: It really is about taking these ideas and leveraging the power of a social media apparatus to help evangelize them and spread them.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, as you said, not surprising Media Matters is going after Musk here.
--:-- John Bickley: And again, not surprising he's fighting back.
--:-- Megan Basham: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime.
--:-- John Bickley: With less than two months remaining until the Iowa caucus, the GOP primary field continues to narrow as candidates look to gain ground on frontrunner Donald Trump.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hi, I'm Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- John Bickley: Here with the latest from the campaign trail and where President Biden stands in his reelection effort is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: All right, so we'll start nationally and then work down to the state level. The GOP primary field has narrowed since we last spoke with South Carolina Senator Tim Scott dropping out last week.
--:-- John Bickley: His departure makes this essentially a four-man race right now between Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now to this point the big story of this race has been the lack of a race as former President Trump has continued to dominate the polls in historic fashion pulling in well over 50 of GOP voters nationwide.
--:-- John Bickley: The Harvard poll this week saw him climb even higher hitting 67 nationally.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: No one else in that poll even garnered double digits.
--:-- John Bickley: And it's also worth noting in the last week, Trump did pick up two very big endorsements from Texas Governor Greg Abbott and also new House Speaker Mike Johnson.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So there's not much movement at the top, but we have seen an increasingly competitive battle for second place, correct?
--:-- John Bickley: You're absolutely right.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, while Ron DeSantis came into the race widely considered the top challenger to the former president, his grip on second place has become a lot less secure.
--:-- John Bickley: Since kicking off his campaign, DeSantis' polling numbers on average nationally have been cut in half and influential donors have begun wavering.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: While Nikki Haley has appeared to pick up some steam in recent weeks, the former UN ambassador is making a similar argument as DeSantis, saying, basically, I'm a Trump alternative who can beat Biden.
--:-- John Bickley: To that point, her team has touted a number of polls that show her beating Biden in a general election by wider margins than any of her GOP counterparts.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Haley and DeSantis are now actively battling for second in Iowa, while in the next two states on the schedule, New Hampshire and then her home state of South Carolina, Haley has climbed into a solid second place.
--:-- John Bickley: Her strategy now appears clear.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Pull off a second or third place in Iowa, and then hope the field starts to narrow out before New Hampshire and South Carolina, where she'll look to consolidate the support among those looking for a Trump alternative.
--:-- John Bickley: The question, though, is just whether there will be enough non-Trump voters to secure a victory.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Right, as base continues to stand pretty firmly with him.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, let's get to President Biden, who is no doubt watching the GOP race closely.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Where does he stand now in the polling?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, we've talked extensively about the uphill battle he's facing.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: There's just no doubt he's limping into this re-election campaign.
--:-- John Bickley: The president was already getting failing grades on all the most important issues to voters, inflation, immigration, national security, etc.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But this ongoing war in Gaza is now providing another stumbling block to his re-election odds.
--:-- John Bickley: While Biden has, to this point, stood with Israel in their war on Hamas, that position is increasingly unpopular with two crucial Democrat voting blocs, young people and progressives on the party's far left.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And all of those struggles have become clearly evident in just every bit of polling data we have.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, let's get to some of those polls, which have really raised eyebrows among Democrats in Washington.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And for good reason.
--:-- John Bickley: Biden's approval rating has not been above 50 since August of 2021.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: He's currently sitting well underwater with approvals in the high 30s and low 40s.
--:-- John Bickley: Historically, very few incumbents have secured a second term with numbers like that.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And in head to head polls against his most likely opponent, it's more bad news.
--:-- John Bickley: In nine of the last 10 national polls, Biden is trailing Trump.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And importantly, Trump is now regularly crossing the all-important 50% threshold, something he'd failed to do throughout the summer.
--:-- John Bickley: And for his part, Biden has yet to secure more than 50% in any poll since, get this, July.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Not exactly where you want to be coming into a re-election campaign.
--:-- John Bickley: And then, of course, the X factor here is a potential third-party candidate.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We still don't know exactly how many states RFK Jr. will be on the ballot.
--:-- John Bickley: But polling does indicate he could bring in double-digit support nationally, then throw in someone like Joe Manchin running third party and things get even crazier.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We just don't know what it's going to look like come November.
--:-- John Bickley: Could be a real mess.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
