--:-- [Upbeat music fades out, and the host, Georgia Howe, begins speaking]
--:-- Georgia Howe: Loudoun County parents are demanding the resignations of school board members amid allegations of school sexual assaults and cover-ups. What is worse than a child being raped at school? The cover-up by those who are entrusted with the safety and well-being of children.
--:-- John Bickley: We have the latest from law enforcement, a response from the school district, and we hear from the father of one of the alleged victims. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, October 14th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The DEA is warning that Americans are dying from taking counterfeit prescription pills laced with a lethal dose of fentanyl. How are these pills getting into the U.S., and what are officials doing to combat it? And comedian Dave Chappelle is under fire for making jokes about transgender women and declaring that gender is a fact.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll look at what exactly he said and whether or not Netflix is standing behind him. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This show is sponsored by Podium. If you own a business, you know there aren't enough hours in a day to waste playing phone tag. That's why local businesses everywhere turn to Podium.
--:-- John Bickley: Podium makes every interaction as easy as sending a text. So everything that makes your business great can get done faster. Get started free today at Podium.com slash wire. That's Podium.com slash wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yesterday, we covered a developing story about a Loudoun County father who was arrested for disorderly conduct at a school board meeting where parents were protesting a new transgender bathroom policy.
--:-- John Bickley: That father made national news as a potential, quote, domestic terrorist. It was later revealed, though, that that man was actually the father of a ninth-grade girl who was allegedly raped by a male student in a girl's bathroom in May.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, parents are demanding accountability for the school board for allegedly concealing that alleged assault. Joining us is the investigative reporter who broke the story here at The Daily Wire, Luke Rosiak.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: So, Luke, there have been some new developments in this situation since we last spoke. What's the latest on the Loudoun County School Board and the sexual assault and battery cases?
--:-- Georgia Howe: A lot has happened in the days since I broke this story. On Tuesday, there was a school board meeting and more than 60 parents and residents spoke, most of them demanding the resignation of Superintendent Scott Ziegler.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: My reporting showed that Ziegler told the public the schools had zero bathroom assaults on the record three weeks after this one occurred. Hiding evidence from every parent in LCPS about a heinous sexual assault of a student that occurred in a bathroom so you could pass radical policy 80-40 is more important to you than protecting the dignity and safety of our children against the likelihood of a repeat occurrence.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And as you reported Monday, allegedly the male student accused of sexually assaulting Scott Smith's daughter was transferred to another school where he assaulted another female student.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah. After our original story came out, the sheriff did confirm on the record to other outlets that the second alleged attack was in fact committed by the same male student, just as we reported.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Smith family had been assured that the student was placed on house arrest following the initial sexual assault, but apparently he was being allowed to go to school again.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: They were never notified that the student had allegedly struck again.
--:-- Georgia Howe: How has Loudoun County Public Schools responded to all this?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: They put out a carefully worded statement on Wednesday which essentially reiterated the school policy on sexual assault. They said they did report the May 28th rape to the police and said school board members generally aren't told about disciplinary problems.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So effectively just a restatement of their policy and insisting they followed it.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Right. And as my story said, though, Smith said the reason cops got involved was because the schools called them on him for making a scene.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In fact, the principal sent out an email, which we have a copy of, right after the event, saying the reason students may have seen police at school that day was because there was a, quote, incident in the main office area today that required the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office to dispatch deputies to Stonebridge.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The principal told parents that the incident was, quote, confined to the main office area and the entrance area to the school, and that, again quoting here, there was no threat to the safety of the student body.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So no mention of an incident in the bathroom and a claim that there was actually no threat to any student.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Correct. The fact is LCPS never told the public when alleged rape occurred in the school, and it appears the student was simply transferred.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The second assault became public only because the sheriff put out a public statement. What's often lost here is the human element. Two young girls were allegedly assaulted and traumatized at school.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Smith spoke to Laura Ingram on Tuesday about how his daughter handled it. My wife and I had to spend the entire summer rebuilding our daughter. It was hell.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for updating us on this story, Luke.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Absolutely, John.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was investigative reporter Luke Rosiak. Coming up, federal and state officials sound the alarm over the growing fentanyl crisis.
--:-- Georgia Howe: You can get this show and all of the content you love wherever you are, all on the Daily Wire app. Even if you're not a Daily Wire member, you'll be the first to know what's trending with mobile notifications for the latest news, and you'll get content from all your favorite Daily Wire shows. Download the Daily Wire app and keep up with the facts, no matter where your day takes you.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Drug cartels have found a new way to smuggle lethal doses of the drug fentanyl into the U.S. Federal officials warn they're seeing a spike in overdose deaths from fentanyl that comes disguised as prescription drugs.
--:-- Ben Johnson: Thanks for joining us, John. Good morning, John.
--:-- John Bickley: The DEA recently issued a public warning about the threat posed by these counterfeit pills. First of all, which prescription drugs are affected? We should say up front, the DEA has specified that this warning is only about counterfeit pills sold on the black market or on social media sites.
--:-- Ben Johnson: It doesn't affect prescriptions filled by your local pharmacist. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it's not a widespread problem. Federal officials have said they've seized more than 9.5 million fentanyl-laced pills that look like drugs like OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin, Adderall, and Xanax.
--:-- John Bickley: That would make these drugs even more addictive, but about four out of every 10 pills they've seized contains enough fentanyl to cause an overdose.
--:-- Ben Johnson: So 40 are potentially causing overdoses and you saying 9 million pills half million 40 potentially deadly.
--:-- John Bickley: One of the victims was a 22 Texas woman named Cassandra Saldivar who died in June from taking what she thought was a Percocet.
--:-- Ben Johnson: She left a two-year-old son behind. Her mother, Patricia, has rented a billboard across from AT&T Stadium in Arlington with a picture of her daughter and the message, One pill, that's all it took.
--:-- John Bickley: Last week, 11 governors, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott, held a press conference warning that America's southern border has become the epicenter of this new outbreak.
--:-- Ben Johnson: This is one of, if not the most urgent matter that we're facing in the United States at this time. Opioids caused about three-quarters of the 93,000 overdose deaths last year.
--:-- John Bickley: To give you an idea of how new this problem is, Penal County, Arizona, reported zero counterfeit pills in 2018. So far this year, they've seized more than a million, and that's only a fraction of the total amount of fentanyl that comes across the border.
--:-- Ben Johnson: To put it in perspective, it takes two milligrams of fentanyl to kill someone. That's about the size of the point of a pencil.
--:-- John Bickley: Every single pound of fentanyl could kill almost 227,000 people, a city the size of Baton Rouge or Des Moines.
--:-- Ben Johnson: So far this year, Border Patrol agents have seized more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl.
--:-- John Bickley: Oh my gosh.
--:-- Ben Johnson: Arizona Governor Doug Ducey highlighted the enormity of the problem last week. Just think about how many drugs are slipping through the cracks and slipping into the bloodstreams in our communities.
--:-- John Bickley: Fentanyl overdoses have replaced car accidents as the leading cause of death for people 19 and younger in Pima County.
--:-- Ben Johnson: So fentanyl overdoses are now the leading cause of death in some border cities. That's right. That's amazing.
--:-- John Bickley: What I don't understand is why the cartels are putting extra opioid into the pills. Why are they making these counterfeit pills so strong?
--:-- Ben Johnson: The DEA says they're doing this to get their customers even more addicted than they would be to other opioids.
--:-- John Bickley: Fentanyl is the most addictive substance on the streets today. It's pretty cynical. Cynical and deadly.
--:-- Ben Johnson: So the government also says there's an international criminal element to this as well.
--:-- John Bickley: Can you tell us about that?
--:-- Ben Johnson: Yeah, the DEA released a report last January tracking the origins of these fentanyl-laced prescription pills. It's said that the Mexican pill factories were operated by or with the consent of two transnational criminal organizations, the Sinaloa Drug Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
--:-- John Bickley: Part of the reason this is so deadly is that the fentanyl looks like a normal prescription. How do the drug cartels take street drugs and pass them off as regular pills?
--:-- Ben Johnson: Well, first, the cartels import fentanyl or its components, usually from China or India. Factories in Mexico then assemble these pills and sell them online or carry them across the border.
--:-- John Bickley: Ben, thanks for the reporting on this important story.
--:-- Ben Johnson: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Comedian Dave Chappelle is no stranger to controversy, but none of his previous stand-up specials created quite the firestorm his latest Netflix release, The Closer, has.
--:-- Megan Basham: Jokes that poked fun at the transgender movement have particularly drawn the ire of LGBT groups, and some activists are demanding that Netflix remove the special from its platform.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here to give the latest details is Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, Megan, what did Chappelle say that the LGBT activists are so upset about?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, so essentially when you strip away some language that I'm obviously not going to repeat here, Chappelle simply said that gender is real Male and female are biological facts
--:-- Megan Basham: Now here one example from the show where he talking about how the trans community attacked Harry Potter author J Rowling And it canceled because she said in an interview, and this is not exactly what she said, but effectually she said, gender was a fact. I agree. I agree, man. Gender is a fact.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay, and what has the fallout from this been?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, I mean, it depends on who you're talking about, Netflix or Chappelle. If you're talking about Chappelle, he knows he is way too big to be canceled.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. So in the middle of all this negative media attention, he performed a sold-out show at the Hollywood Bowl that had A-listers like Brad Pitt, Tiffany Haddish, Jon Hamm, Stevie Wonder, all these very big names in the audience.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, clearly, they aren't afraid of being associated with him, which you might think they would be. And we're talking about very liberal L.A. here. Even there, he got a standing ovation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And he finished that show by saying, if this is what being canceled is like, I love it.
--:-- Megan Basham: So none of this is hurting him. But you mentioned Netflix. How does that affect Netflix?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. Okay. So that's a different story. So from an investment standpoint, of course, the special is drawing huge audiences. So that's a win.
--:-- Megan Basham: But it's also been kind of a rolling PR nightmare for them. So first, a trans showrunner for the show, Dear White People, announced they were boycotting the platform going forward.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Sorry, Megan, a trans showrunner, that's an exec who just is a trans individual.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right. This is a person who works on the show who happens to be transgender. Now, that caused some bad press, but it really wasn't that big of a deal because a show like that is only going to draw like a fraction of the audience of something like The Closer.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So for Netflix, if it comes down to a niche diversity and inclusion series or Dave Chappelle, well, that's an easy call. Right.
--:-- Megan Basham: But then one of its own employees started sounding off in some viral tweets condemning the company for allowing Chappelle to, and I'm quoting here, attack the trans community.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That employee was then suspended. At that point, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos issued a memo saying that the company would not bow to calls to remove Chappelle's special, even if high-level talent joins the outcry.
--:-- Megan Basham: He said that while Netflix has a policy against content that incites hate or violence, he doesn't believe Chappelle's show crossed that line and stand-up comedy, quote, exists to push boundaries.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, that statement, too, drew some negative news stories. Right.
--:-- Megan Basham: On Monday, glad that is the gay and lesbian rights group. Well, they issued a statement saying Netflix needs to live up to its publicized standards against inciting hate and violence, which presumably means they want the company to pull the show.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And any chance that Netflix is going to do that?
--:-- Megan Basham: No, absolutely not. Their relationship with Chappelle is way too valuable.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But, you know, what it might do is make them hesitate to take a chance on that next Chappelle who hasn't built such a big name yet. Right.
--:-- Megan Basham: And that kind of illustrates how hard it is to break into comedy these days. You can't say much unless you're already a star.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Exactly.
--:-- Megan Basham: Megan, thanks for coming on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, absolutely. That's Daily Wire entertainment reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Those are our big stories for the day. If you like this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review.
--:-- John Bickley: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
