--:-- John Bickley: With both conventions now behind us and the first debate ahead, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris ratchet up their campaigns. Let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told. We will put America first and we will take back our country and together we will make America powerful again. With just 70 days until the election, where does the race currently stand?
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, August 26th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children and my friends. But I have the certainty that this is what I'm going to do.
--:-- Georgia Howe: [pauses] That to do.
--:-- John Bickley: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shakes the political world by dropping out and endorsing Trump. Could his efforts to get Trump elected make the difference? And Israel launches widespread strikes against Hezbollah terrorist positions.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned with the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: With 70 days remaining until Election Day, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s endorsement of Donald Trump could shake up the race for the White House and put an end to the Harris honeymoon. Here are the latest on a number of campaign shakeups and the path to victory for each side is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the DNC is complete and fall is nearly upon us. How are things looking at this stage?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, we are now just over two months out from election day, and this race is a true toss-up. At the moment, Kamala Harris is ahead on average by 1.5 points nationally. That is within the polling margin of error, though, meaning things are still essentially tied. At the moment, there are reasons for optimism on both sides. So for Democrats, they can point to the polling surge enjoyed by Harris in recent weeks. Remember, when Biden first dropped out, she was trailing Trump by around six points nationally. So she's definitely gained significant ground. Democrats have also enjoyed a staggering fundraising haul since Harris took over. They've raked in, get this, $540 million. That is a number unheard of in political history. Yes, it is. And they're using that money to blanket the airwaves in battleground states.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here's a bit of their newest ad post-convention. We must create an opportunity economy where everyone has a chance to get a car loan, buy a home, start a business. But most of all, that instead of being focused on the politics of the past, we need to be thinking about the future.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, it's worth noting, Republicans have taken issue with that politics of the past message, reminding voters that she is currently in power and has been for the last three and a half years. They're optimistic that sooner or later, Kamala Harris will be forced to finally go off script, something she still has not done since taking over the nomination a month ago.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The Trump camp has also noted that while Harris has gained support in the polls despite that honeymoon and a month of largely one press coverage Trump has not actually lost any support His share of the vote is still almost identical to what we saw when Biden dropped out, while his favorability ratings are just as high as they've ever been. The Trump campaign has also been saving up their money for after the DNC and are now ready to finally dip in to their $327 million campaign war chest. So they've got plenty of money of their own.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Trump will be holding four events this week in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. That is on top of the five rallies he held last week, most notably the enormous rally in Arizona, where he was joined by former opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped out Friday and formally endorsed him.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, and that's another big reason for optimism among Republicans, and we'll be hearing more from him in the next segment. But first, how much of an impact could that RFK endorsement have? So nationally, Kennedy was only in the mid-single digits. But in a race this close, that could make all the difference. For example, in the latest polling from Pennsylvania, Trump was down one, but Kennedy was at 5%. We see almost that exact same trend in every other battleground state. So now the big question becomes where those 5% of Kennedy voters will go. Republicans say most of them will switch to Trump. And there is good reason to believe they will. Kennedy, who has built up a devoted following, is now campaigning for Trump.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here he is on stage in Arizona with the former president. Don't you want a president who's going to get us out of the wars and who's going to rebuild the middle class in this country?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the big question remains, who was supporting Kennedy and who will those voters go to? Well, if you look back to when Harris first took over, polling showed that Kennedy polled more or less evenly from both her and Trump. But in the last month, Harris gained around 3% to 5% nationally, while Kennedy lost 3% to 5% nationally. So up until last week, when RFK was included on the ballot, it clearly was benefiting Harris and indicated that she had won over a number of disaffected Democrats who had been going with Kennedy over Biden. Again, in a race this close, even 1% to 2% of a swing could make all the difference.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For his part. Kennedy said yesterday that he'll be spending the next 70 days campaigning on behalf of Donald Trump. He's always been the wild card in this race and remains so even now.
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--:-- Tim Rice: In addition to announcing he was pulling out of the race and endorsing Trump, RFK also took time in his Friday speeches to slam Democrats for, among other things, their censorship of free speech. Daily Wire deputy managing editor Tim Rice has more on RFK's Democrat takedown.
--:-- Tim Rice: So Tim, is this the most heated we've ever seen RFK?
--:-- Tim Rice: It very well may be. Kennedy was never one to pull punches, but he really let Democrats have it on Friday, both in his solo address to the nation and his appearance at Trump's Arizona rally. He said that Democrats who say they're working to save the country are actually destroying American democracy and have fought to hurt his campaign from the beginning. In an honest system I believe that I would have won the election In a system that my father and my uncles thrived in a system with open debates with regularly scheduled debates with their primaries and with a truly independent media untainted by government propaganda and censorship.
--:-- Tim Rice: After all, the polls consistently showed me beating each of the other candidates both in favorability and also in head-to-head matchups. At one point, Kennedy pointed out the irony of President Biden mocking Vladimir Putin for claiming to have secured 88% of the votes in his most recent election, when Biden and the Democratic Party were, according to Kennedy, actively working to tip the scales in their own election. Here in America, the DNC also prevented opponents from appearing on the ballot. And our television networks exposed themselves as Democratic Party organs over the course of more than a year in a campaign where my poll numbers reached at times in the high 20s. The DNC-aligned mainstream media networks maintain a near-perfect embargo on interviews with me.
--:-- Tim Rice: In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Kennedy said that after months of Democrats and the mainstream media working to sabotage his campaign, he realized he no longer had a shot at the White House. And that, he said, is what made him bury the hatchet with Donald Trump and start seriously thinking about dropping out. 16 months of censorship, of not being able to get on any network, really, except for Fox. When Ross Perot ran, in the 10 months that he ran, he had 34 appearances on the networks. I had two appearances in 16 months. I was blocked out of the networks. I was blocked out of the debate. I had no path to victory.
--:-- Tim Rice: Now, pretty notable for a Kennedy to engage in this level of friendly fire. So censorship has been an issue that we've focused on a lot on this show. Did Kennedy address that directly on Friday night?
--:-- Tim Rice: He certainly did. Kennedy spoke for a much shorter time at Trump's rally than he did in his own address, but devoted a majority of his time to continuing his attack on what he sees as a massive censorship regime at work in the country.
--:-- Tim Rice: Can you think of any time that you can look back in history and say that the people who were censoring were the good guys? They're always the bad guys because it's always the first step down that slippery slope to totalitarianism.
--:-- Tim Rice: Kennedy got another chance to warn of the dangers of censorship on Saturday after French police arrested Pavel Derov, founder and CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram. Kennedy condemned the arrest in a post on X, writing that the need to protect free speech has never been more urgent.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Israel and the terror group Hezbollah traded fire over the weekend in clashes that reportedly left at least four dead. The exchanges marked the most intense combat between the two sides since tensions jumped after the Hamas October 7th attack. Here to update us on the situation in the Middle East is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey, Tim. So what's the latest now between Israel and Hezbollah?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Israel struck first of the weekend after it gathered intelligence that Hezbollah was about to launch a mass attack. So the Israeli military sent about 100 jets into Lebanese airspace and took out dozens of Hezbollah launch sites.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari announcing the attacks on Sunday morning. A short while ago the IDF identified Hezbollah terrorist organization preparing to fire missiles rockets towards Israeli territory In a self act to remove these threats the IDF is striking terror targets in Lebanon from which Hezbollah was planning to launch their attacks on Israeli civilians We are operating in self-defense from Hezbollah and any other enemy that joins in their attacks against us. And we are ready to do everything we need to defend the people of Israel.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Lebanese health officials said three people were killed in the strikes, though it's not clear whether those people were militants or civilians. Right. Lebanon doesn't make those distinctions in their announcements.
--:-- Tim Pierce: What kind of response did this spark from Hezbollah? Right. Hezbollah moved forward with a planned attack anyway. The terror group started to prepare for this attack about a month ago after Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut. After Israel's operation, the terror group launched its attack. Israeli officials said the attack was made up of about 200 rockets. Hezbollah claimed it fired and launched 350 rockets and drones. Whatever the actual count was, Israel's defense was near perfect.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The IDF did suffer one fatality, though, a 21-year-old sailor who seems to have been killed by a failed Iron Dome interceptor. Hezbollah's chief, Hassan Nasrallah, claimed success in a speech after the attack. But as Foundation for Defense of Democracy's senior research analyst, Joe Trusman, pointed out on X, His address served merely as damage control. Truesman said Hezbollah's main accomplishment here was to force Israel and the U.S. to brace for an attack for weeks. But of the attack itself, he said it was a drop in the bucket.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Of course, this comes after months of Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel. Here's Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani explaining that during a press briefing Sunday. Just recently, a few weeks ago, they targeted the Druze community called Mats L'shams. in the tragic event where they killed children playing soccer on a Saturday evening. And that's not the only incident. There have been many incidents where Hezbollah has been firing rockets, ammunition that is not accurate towards Israeli communities, towards Israeli civilians. And due to these attacks, we had to evacuate over 60,000 Israelis from their homes, Israelis that will not start the school year because they're not home, because they have to evacuate because of the risk of a terror attack, just like the one we saw this morning carried out by Hezbollah.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, what about the U.S.? What kind of response have we seen to this attack? Well, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yov Galant, about the attacks. Out of that conversation, Austin said he voiced support for Israel's right to defend itself and that two U.S. carrier strike groups would remain in the region.
--:-- Tim Pierce: For his part, former President Donald Trump posted about the fighting on X over the weekend. Trump questioned whether the Biden administration had anyone at all trying to calm tensions in the Middle East. And he suggested that the chaos there could spark another world war.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Even with tensions cooled after this weekend, it remains an unstable situation.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks for joining us. Good to be on.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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