--:-- [Upbeat music fades out, and the host, John Bickley, speaks]
--:-- John Bickley: This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID, and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.
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--:-- John Bickley: Senate Democrats declared victory in Nevada on Saturday after a Republican lead disappeared over the weekend. How did Democrats gain the advantage and what does it mean for the balance of power in Washington? I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, November 14th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right, John. Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- John Bickley: So, let's dive into the news. Senate Democrats declared victory in Nevada on Saturday after a Republican lead disappeared over the weekend. How did Democrats gain the advantage and what does it mean for the balance of power in Washington?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, John, when we last spoke, Republican challenger Adam Laxalt seemed to be in a good spot against Democrat incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. So he was ahead by a few thousand votes heading into Friday, and Republicans were confident that he would end up on top. Senator Lindsey Graham, for example, all but declared victory, saying, quote, there is no mathematical way Laxalt loses.
--:-- John Bickley: That's right. And then a batch of 27,000 votes came in from the state's largest county, which includes Las Vegas, and Laxalt's lead was cut to 800 votes. And then beginning Saturday night and into Sunday, with 98% of the vote counted and Laxalt behind by around 6,000 votes, Numerous outlets, including ABC News, declared the Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto the winner.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, it wasn't all bad news for Republicans in Nevada, as Joe Lombardo was able to unseat Democrat incumbent Governor Steve Sisolak. That was the party's first governor's flip of the 2022 cycle. But obviously, it's bittersweet given the loss in the Senate race.
--:-- John Bickley: Right. Now, the other Senate race that was undecided is out in Arizona, where the vote count really came to a standstill, kind of like Nevada. What's the latest there with the Senate race and also that governor's race?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Republican Blake Masters appeared to be gaining on Democrat incumbent Mark Kelly as votes started to trickle in. But on Friday with about 80 percent of the vote in the Associated Press declared Mark Kelly the winner At the time he had around a five lead The race for governor though is still a true toss We've still got around 10% of the vote left to count. And Republican Kerry Lake is within 30,000 votes of Democrat Katie Hobbs.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, Lake's team says they're confident that the remaining votes are coming from Republican-controlled parts of the state. But again, it's still anyone's guess who actually comes out on top.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And many Republicans are increasingly skeptical when the vote counting gets this delayed.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, to that point, the question on a lot of people's minds, why are some states waiting so long to declare the winner?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, that is the million-dollar question right now. So in Nevada, for example, every voter has issued a mail-in ballot, whether they request it or not. You actually have to opt out of it to not get one in Nevada. And the state will accept ballots that arrive as late as Saturday, so four days after Election Day.
--:-- John Bickley: In Arizona, where, according to the Washington Post, and this is a direct quote, printers used to produce ballots on demand failed at about a third of polling locations on election day. Officials say it could be another 10 days before the vinyl votes are counted, but because of some of those errors at polling places and malfunctions, it's even more backed up than usual. So potentially 10 more days.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah. Now that delay has raised a lot of concerns from voters, especially Republicans.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, there have been a number of incidents that went viral online and drew outrage from Republican voters and officials. For example, beyond that printer outage in Arizona, there was also a live stream camera that had been monitoring vote counting in Washoe County that went black during the middle of the night.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, that county includes the city of Reno and helped swing the election to Democrats at the very end. The county released a statement saying, quote, we know that our election live stream cameras went dark overnight. We investigated what happened and how to prevent it happening again, but not really the answers that a lot of Republicans were looking for it.
--:-- John Bickley: Yes, not a good look. What's been the Democrat response to all this?
--:-- Georgia Howe: So Democrats, for their part, had been warning in the weeks leading up to the election that final results in many states would take a few days. And that the reason Democrats often take the lead at the very end is because their voters are typically concentrated in more urban areas that take longer to send in results.
--:-- John Bickley: And also, remember, they dominate among early voters, but that has done little to alleviate frustration from Republicans.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Republicans say that allowing days for votes to come in opens the door to fraud and undermines the confidence of voters in the final outcome. They point to large states like Florida that reformed their election laws over the last few years and had votes counted within just a few hours on Tuesday.
--:-- John Bickley: Essentially, Republicans say that it should be election day and not election week or month.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, these delays are also impacting the House as well.
--:-- John Bickley: Yep. We'll get into the House more later this week. But the bottom line is we still do not know who's got the majority in the House because about 20 districts are still counting votes.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, well, we'll have you back on as more of these belated results come in.
--:-- John Bickley: Kevitt, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Anytime. That's Daily Wire senior editor, Kevitt Phillips.
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--:-- John Bickley: Coming up, Hollywood's crypto darling collapses amid allegations of fraud. What if I told you that you can make those fine lines, forehead wrinkles, dark spots, and even under-eye bags disappear? Well, you can when you make GenuCell skincare a part of your daily routine. GenuCell uses a proprietary base of clinical levels of botanical extracts, which come together to yield amazing results and fast. GenuCell products are natural, cruelty-free, and made in the USA. Take advantage of GenuCell's early Black Friday sale going on right now. You can get their most popular products package for over 70% off, and you'll get two months worth of their best sellers, plus their hyaluronic acid serum free with your purchase. Plus, when you go to genucell.com slash wire and use code WIRE, you'll get an extra 10% off.
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--:-- John Bickley: FTX, the third largest crypto company in the world, has filed for bankruptcy and is facing criminal investigations. The implosion is bringing up questions about the company's CEO, who was the Democrats' second largest donor in 2022. Here to explain what happened with FTX and what it means politically is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, FTX's CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, was seen as sort of this wunderkind. He's only 30 years old, and he set up both FTX and a separate hedge fund called Alameda that has been making huge loans and donations to all sorts of organizations.
--:-- John Bickley: So on November 2nd, a crypto news outlet obtained a leaked document that showed the close ties between those two companies. And the question became whether Bankman Freed, or SBF as he's known in the crypto world, has been using money that customers had invested with FTX to fund Alameda's financial activities.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, what that did was cause FTX investors to try to pull out their investments. And of course, the cash wasn't there that allowed them to do so. So what you had then was a collapse and a filing for bankruptcy. And since then, it's hit all kinds of other financial companies who were invested in FTX.
--:-- John Bickley: And overall, it's just caused a really sharp downturn in cryptocurrencies.
--:-- Megan Basham: This was Brian Armstrong, CEO of the crypto trading platform Coinbase, talking about it on the All In podcast. I had to scratch my head a bunch of times and I was like, where is this guy getting all this liquidity? Because he was like buying 9% of Robinhood. He was putting like a billion dollars into this. He was donating to all these politicians. and I was like, it did not make sense to me where he was getting all this cash.
--:-- John Bickley: So now the DOJ, the SEC and authorities in the Bahamas where FTX is headquartered are investigating for potential financial crimes. And they've also frozen some of the company's assets.
--:-- Megan Basham: Okay, so a lot of the discussion though about FTX is now focused on its role as a Democrat donor. Tell us more about that.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, you know, a big part of this story is that FTX was considered a respectable crypto. To give you one example, Formula One racing and Major League Baseball both had sponsorship deals with FTX.
--:-- Megan Basham: But as you said, the biggest scandal here is connected to Democrat politics. So Bankman-Fried donated to a number of senators and congresspeople overseeing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That's the CFTC. And that's the agency in charge of regulating the crypto industry.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, a little bit of that money went to some Republicans who also sat on that commission. but the vast majority of it went to Democrats, including, and especially actually, President Biden.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, Bankman-Fried was a huge donor in the midterm elections, the second largest individual donor, in fact. Estimates put his total contribution to Democrat candidates at around 40 million.
--:-- John Bickley: He gave six million to the Democrats' House Majority Pack. He gave more than five million to Biden's 2020 campaign. And that made him the president's second largest individual donor as well, behind only George Soros.
--:-- Megan Basham: And some of the accusations surrounding this are pretty complex, and they're just now coming to light, including connections to Ukraine. But what we're hearing is that only days after Biden pledged to send billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine, FTX partnered with the Ukrainian government to process funds.
--:-- John Bickley: So the issue is whether FTX funneled some of that funding to Alameda. And again, that was Bankman-Fried's hedge fund that was supposed to be a separate company. If he then turned around and used it for political donations then we talking about a whole other level of fraud
--:-- Megan Basham: There still a lot of threads left to pull on in what is turning out to be a very complex story.
--:-- John Bickley: Extremely complex. Well, we're going to continue to monitor it. Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, my pleasure. That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
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--:-- John Bickley: After Glenn Youngkin's surprise win in Virginia last year, many pundits predicted apparent coalition would sweep Republicans to victory in the midterms. While election night did not deliver the overwhelming victory Republicans had hoped for on a national level, conservative school board candidates flipped seats across the country. The GOP victory signaled that parental rights were a big factor in voters' decisions in places like Florida. Daily Wire investigative reporter Maraid Alordi is here with more details for us.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Sure. So first off, in Florida, all six of the school board candidates Florida Governor Ron DeSantis endorsed won their runoff races. This means that of the 30 local education candidates DeSantis backed this year, a total of 24 have now won their races.
--:-- John Bickley: Over the summer, conservative school board candidates, including some endorsed by DeSantis, won their races and flipped school boards to conservative majorities in five counties, including some traditionally blue areas like Miami-Dade, as well as Sarasota.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: All of this points to a larger trend of conservatives gaining the upper hand in the education debate. Keep in mind, Florida has been the epicenter of the education culture war in some ways, after Governor DeSantis signed landmark parental rights legislation earlier this year.
--:-- John Bickley: As we've reported here, back in March, DeSantis signed a bill that prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: So big gains in Florida for GOP-backed school board candidates. That's perhaps not surprising, as we've noted, how DeSantis and his party really swept Florida away in their own sort of red wave. But what about other states? Do we see similar trends in other places?
--:-- John Bickley: Yes. In Michigan, Maryland, and Indiana, Republicans flipped school boards to give them conservative majorities as well.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: That's according to two parental rights groups who endorsed many of the victorious candidates. One of those groups, called 1776 Project PAC, claims to have officially flipped 100 school boards since November last year.
--:-- John Bickley: The group's candidates also won in Oklahoma and Ohio. The other group, Moms for Liberty, said its candidates won in Indiana, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Now, we don't often hear about school board wins after national elections, but this year is clearly different. There's a movement and more of a political focus now on this. Why are things shifting on this issue?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, this is yet another sign that parents are becoming an activated voter block. We got the first indication of this last fall when Glenn Youngkin flipped Virginia, and there was some question as to whether that would fizzle out.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: It's also a sign that conservatives' efforts to regain a foothold in local governance may be paying off. It remains to be seen whether this level of energy will continue through to 2024.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, that'll be an interesting trend to track. Marie, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Thanks, John.
--:-- John Bickley: That's Daily Wire investigative reporter, Mireille Lordi.
--:-- [Music transitions to a commercial break]
--:-- John Bickley: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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