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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire. I'm John Bickley, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, and I'm joined by my co-host Georgia Howe. It's Monday, September 11th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with us, everyone.
--:-- John Bickley: Today, we're going to cover the latest developments in the COVID pandemic, the Republican presidential primary, and the Biden brand scandal. But first, let's take a moment to remember the 22nd anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right, John. We honor the 2,977 innocent people who lost their lives that day and all the first responders who risked and often gave their lives to protect others.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for joining us, everyone. Now, let's get to the news. As COVID cases and hospitalizations increase, some students from kindergarten through college are now being required to mask up yet again. Meanwhile, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are battling over a bill that would, in many cases, ban mask mandates.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Joining us to discuss these current COVID trends is Johns Hopkins' Dr. Marty McCary. Dr. McCary, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: Great to be with you.
--:-- John Bickley: So first, let's address the mask mandates up front. They're once again being floated in some schools. Can you talk to us first about the Cochran Review of Mask Studies?
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: The Cochran Collaborative has been around for decades, and it's considered the gold standard authority in summarizing the medical literature. Everything they've put out my entire career, it's automatically considered the gold standard in medicine.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But this review actually gave people results that some didn't like. They concluded very definitively that there was zero evidence that masking on a community level had any impact whatsoever. And they cited many good randomized controlled trials to support that.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: Now for kids going back to school, how dangerous is COVID compared to some of the other viruses that are typically circulating this time of year?
--:-- Georgia Howe: There's no evidence that it's any more dangerous. We don't see any more pathogenic behavior in the laboratory. And in the real world, we see the same mild common cold-like symptoms for nearly every young person who gets COVID, with the rare exception of a child who may have lymphoma or an immunosuppressed condition.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: And what about for teachers? Has the risk lessened over the last few months?
--:-- Georgia Howe: The virus has not changed a lot, but our immune systems have changed. They've evolved to recognize the virus. And although the virus may sort of jump into the nose quicker than the immune system can respond, in other words, you can get infected even though you have immunity, which prevents you from getting very sick with COVID in almost every age group.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, cases do seem to be rising again. Some media outlets are making a lot of this. There isn't much reporting and tracking cases from the CDC, though. So how are we getting these numbers?
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: Yeah, we don't get daily case counts or weekly counts like we used to. The CDC doesn't even track it. And so we have wastewater data that gives us a bit of a signal as to how common the infection is. And it's believed that based on wastewater data, for the last seven or eight weeks, we've seen about half a million new cases per day in the United States, roughly.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So it's very prevalent.
--:-- John Bickley: New vaccines have been produced and will likely be approved soon. What sets these COVID vaccines apart from what we've seen in the past?
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: So Pfizer, Moderna, and even the company Novavax have created a new COVID vaccine that's designed to be a booster designed for a variant strain that circulated earlier this year. And the idea was that it would be more updated.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We don't have any human trial outcomes data on it. The pharmaceutical companies convinced the White House and the FDA, let us just reprogram the RNA in the vaccine, and we're not going to do a human trial because there's no time to do it.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: Others have argued we've had COVID for seven weeks circulating at large. Pfizer made $100 billion during the pandemic. They could afford to do a rapid trial. And if they did so, there'd be better adoption if it's effective.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If you remember, last fall, there was a new bivalent COVID booster. There was no human outcomes data that came out when they pushed it, and only 17% of Americans said it, including those forced to take it.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: Now, the flu vaccine doesn't go through trials every year either, so is there a correlation here?
--:-- Georgia Howe: You're right. The flu shot is the one carve-out where the FDA does not require human outcomes trials year to year. Now, some have argued that's probably not a good system. If we did, we'd have a better feel for how good of a match it is.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: But the flu shot has a 50-year safety record. The mRNA vaccines have a much higher complication rate, including myocarditis in young, healthy males. And people are hesitant. When you have such low adoption rates, doing some evidence first would help with the overall uptake.
--:-- John Bickley: Dr. McCary, thanks so much for joining us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: With the Republican presidential primary in full swing and debate season upon us, the GOP field is beginning to come into focus, with just six months to go before the first votes are cast.
--:-- John Bickley: Here with more on the state of the race is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, it's always a dangerous game making predictions the summer before a primary. This far out, early state polling is fairly scant and there's still plenty of time for movement. But we are definitely starting to get a better idea of who the serious players are and who the future also-rans will be.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Based on the latest polling, the candidates with a serious shot at winning right now are Donald Trump, obviously, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: A half dozen or so other candidates are polling at or under 2 nationally and could still make a late surge but they're running out of time.
--:-- John Bickley: As we discussed at length former President Trump is the odds favorite and is currently drawing over 50 in every major poll.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: DeSantis is the only challenger in double digits averaging around 15%, while Ramaswamy, Haley, and Pence are each in the 5-7 range on average.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So nothing has changed at the top. Trump is still the man to beat.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, that is becoming increasingly clearer. Trump and his team have said that his lead is so massive that no one else can beat him. They've actually called on other candidates to drop out and coalesce around the former president.
--:-- John Bickley: But for obvious reasons, that's unlikely to happen.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For more context on Trump's lead, I spoke with Alex Conant, a veteran GOP strategist and partner at Firehouse Strategies.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Certainly historically, no one has fallen when they're this far ahead this late in the game. However, our politics have never been more dynamic and there's never been more uncertainty given Trump's legal challenges.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I think if another candidate begins to gain momentum and coalesce the non-Trump vote, we could see a competitive race. And if that candidate beats Trump in either Iowa or New Hampshire, which if you look at the polls, it's certainly possible. Trump's in real trouble.
--:-- John Bickley: One of the candidates hoping to coalesce that support against Trump is Ron DeSantis. What's the latest on his campaign?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, by most metrics, DeSantis has just had a rough start to his campaign. Before announcing his run, he was polling in the high 20s within 10 to 15 points of Trump. But since then, he has fallen steadily and begun to lose the support of a number of important high-profile donors.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, many strategists still believe he has the best chance of beating Trump, but there's no question that he has stumbled out the gate.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: While his campaign itself has struggled a bit with fundraising, his super PAC has brought in enormous amounts of money. At last count, they had nearly $100 million cash on hand.
--:-- John Bickley: So the campaign is going to be relying on the PAC for crucial ad buys and infrastructure in early states like Iowa.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to Conant, that, along with his broad name ID, means he's not out of the race yet. It's really, really hard to turn around a presidential campaign after Labor Day.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That said, he continues to have a lot of name ID and a lot of money. And if he can coalesce the opposition to Trump, he could still potentially make it a competitive race.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, the second debate is fast approaching. What are we expecting to actually see there?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, there's a good chance the stage will be a bit smaller this go-around. As candidates must reach 3% in a combination of national and state polls to qualify, which will likely disqualify Governors Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We also don't expect to see Trump on the stage, but that does not mean that he'll be quiet on debate night.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Last month, he opted to appear in an interview with Tucker Carlson that aired the day of the debate. So there's a good chance he'll do something to stay in the news come September 27th.
--:-- John Bickley: Right, we'll expect more counter-programming from Trump. He'll do something.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, we've seen some of what looks like legitimate momentum for Nikki Haley's campaign since the debate, but one other candidate who got a lot of attention last month was political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So Vivek really came out of nowhere this summer, jumping to third place in many national polls. And he seemed to benefit from his youth and the fact that people knew very little about him.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And that meant his unfavorable ratings have also stayed quite low. It's hard to dislike someone you don't actually know.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But as he's risen in the polls, other candidates, including DeSantis and Nikki Haley, have started to take aim at him for the first time.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And by the same token, the media has also gone after him hard in the last few weeks, attacking his business record and calling out apparent contradictions that he's made on the campaign trail.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, for his part, Ramaswamy has responded by taking the media firestorm head on. He knows that people watching those shows likely won't vote in a GOP primary but the clear goal is to score viral moments that he can use to earn support on the right.
--:-- John Bickley: It's a high-stakes game with risk and still potential reward. But we'll see if it pays off.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- John Bickley: That was Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. New polling shows that a strong majority of Americans now believe that President Biden was indeed involved with his son Hunter's controversial business deals.
--:-- Georgia Howe: President Biden has maintained for years that not only was he not involved in Hunter's business deals, but that he never even spoke to his son about them, a claim that has been losing credibility with recent revelations in the Biden brand scandal.
--:-- John Bickley: Here to discuss is Daily Wire contributor, David Marcus.
--:-- David Marcus: Hey, David.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So where exactly does the American public stand on this?
--:-- David Marcus: Good morning. A recent CNN poll found that 61 percent of voters think that Joe was involved in Hunter's foreign deals, with 42% saying they believe that the then vice president acted illegally.
--:-- John Bickley: These are big numbers, and they show that it's not just Republican voters with concerns about this anymore. Clearly, many independents and even some Democrats think Biden lied about this.
--:-- David Marcus: It's a big problem for Biden because obviously he needs some of those 61% to vote for him next year, so either he has to continue his denials, which increasingly fall on suspicious ears, or admit that maybe he fudged the truth, but it's really not all that bad.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right, not at all.
--:-- David Marcus: Now, do we know exactly when the sentiment shifted or what caused that shift?
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, as we've covered extensively here on Morning Wire, in the last several weeks, Representative James Comer has unearthed mountains of evidence.
--:-- David Marcus: We had testimony from Devin Archer, Hunter's associate, that Joe attended dinners with business partners, along with almost two dozen phone calls to them. We have emerging evidence of emails from Joe to Hunter in which Joe used a pseudonym and discussed Ukraine policy.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And very importantly, with the appointment of David Weiss as special counsel looking into all of this, the mainstream media had to report on it. And honestly, a lot of Americans heard the sketchy details for the first time.
--:-- David Marcus: Meanwhile, the reaction from Democrats has been a frantic moving of the goalposts to find some innocent explanation for basic facts that the president has apparently lied about.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, this polling comes as Speaker Kevin McCarthy is set to possibly announce a vote on a formal impeachment inquiry.
--:-- David Marcus: Obviously, bringing an impeachment is a political risk, particularly with independents. Are those numbers going to make McCarthy more confident to move forward?
--:-- Georgia Howe: I suspect that these polling numbers will be a green light for McCarthy and will certainly be used by those in favor of impeachment to push the speaker in that direction.
--:-- David Marcus: This is especially true when you take into account other recent polling that now shows most Americans think Hunter broke the law.
--:-- John Bickley: In effect, majorities already believe some basic elements of the GOP case.
--:-- David Marcus: If there is one hesitation that Republicans might have, it's that a formal impeachment inquiry could harden partisan positions and make it harder to sway Democrats and even some independents.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It'll also allow Democrat politicians to ignore the meat of the allegation and focus on the process of impeachment where they may stand on sturdier ground.
--:-- John Bickley: David, thanks so much for joining us.
--:-- David Marcus: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
