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--:-- John Bickley: This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.
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--:-- John Bickley: Donald Trump answers reporters' questions for over an hour and announces that he's committed to three debates on Fox, ABC and NBC. We have spoken to the heads of the network and it's all been confirmed. I think it's very important to have debates. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's Friday, August 9th, and this is Morning Wire. Several states are changing voter laws as we enter the final months before the presidential election. Call me crazy, but I think American elections should be decided by American citizens. Which states are tightening and which are loosening voter rules. And a massively influential advertising group is shuttered after a congressional hearing exposed alleged collusion against conservatives. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: Cards issued by Sutton Bank and Celtic Bank, member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Former President Donald Trump held a highly publicized news conference Thursday, taking aim at Kamala Harris and confirming the two sides had agreed to a debate next month. Here with the highlights is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hey, Cabot. So it's been a fairly quiet week for the Trump campaign until yesterday's press conference. What did we see there.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, there's no doubt the Harris campaign has enjoyed the lion's share of the media coverage in recent weeks. But yesterday, all eyes were on Mar-a-Lago, as the former president called a surprise press conference where he spoke for around 15 minutes before taking questions from reporters for around an hour, discussing everything from crime and immigration to inflation and foreign policy. But the big news by far came when Trump confirmed that he had agreed to three debates, The first scheduled for September 4th on Fox News, the second on September 10th with ABC, and the third on September 25th with NBC. The other side has to agree to the terms. They may or may not agree. I don't know if they're going to agree. She hasn't done an interview. She can't do an interview. She's barely competent. But I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight. Remember, Kamala Harris has been taunting Trump for the last two weeks, saying, quote, if you got something to say, say it to my face. They accused him of backing out of the debates, and Trump essentially called her bluff, throwing the gauntlet down for not one, but now three debates. Shortly after that press conference, ABC confirmed the September 10th debate had been agreed on by both sides. We're still waiting to see if Harris will step up for the Fox and NBC events as well.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Right. Now, there have been a lot of people drawing a pretty stark contrast between the Trump event yesterday and what we've seen so far from Kamala Harris. Can you speak to that?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah it is quite the juxtaposition On one side you have Trump taking 20 plus questions from every reporter calling on and many of them combative And on the other is Kamala Harris who has not held a press conference or even sat down for an interview since becoming the Democratic nominee now more than two weeks ago. Typically, new candidates are happy to talk with any reporter who will give them airtime. But Harris has seemingly been content to sit back and ride this wave of overwhelmingly positive coverage the legacy media has offered her. And according to a political report this week, some in her inner circle say the VP could wait until after Labor Day to actually sit down for her first interview. That would mean zero interviews or press conferences for the first 40 plus days of her candidacy. We've never seen anything like that in modern political history.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here's what Trump had to say about her unwillingness to answer questions from the press. I'm speaking to you on phones. I'm speaking to radio. I'm speaking to television. Excuse me, what are we doing right now? She's not doing any news conference. You know why she's not doing it? Because she can't do a news conference. She doesn't know how to do a news conference. She's not smart enough to do a news conference.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: One more interesting development here. While Kamala Harris now holds a slim half point lead in national polls, this week, Donald Trump's average favorability rating climbed to 44.7 percent. That is his highest mark in nearly two years and higher also than Kamala Harris, who now sits at 43% favorability. On average, he also maintains a double-digit lead on the question of which candidate would better handle the economy, the far and away number one issue for voters. The Trump campaign says that rising favorability and continued popularity on the economy will eventually offset any momentum Harris has enjoyed this month. Less than 90 days to find out if that's true.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Kevin, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Kevin: Anytime. time. dot me slash wire for 15% off your purchase.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Many states have made changes to their voting laws ahead of the 2024 election from voter ID to felony voting. Daily Wire investigative reporter Maraid Alordi is here with the details.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Hi, John. Well, one state that's gotten a lot of attention since the 2020 election is Georgia. Just this week, Georgia approved a new rule requiring a reasonable inquiry before certifying election results. The new rule lets county election boards demand more information before certifying election results. The rule change was cheered by Republicans who say it's a safeguard against quickly rubber stamping election results without scrutinizing them. Republican state election board member Janice Johnston said they're not asking for a full audit of election results or anything intense, just a reasonable inquiry. Democrats and voting activists complained that what counts as a reasonable inquiry is unclear and could result in the election certification ending up in court for a lengthy dispute. Of course, Georgia was a pain point during the 2020 election when Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton. Donald Trump challenged the election results and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered a recount by hand, which found Biden was still the winner. The controversy led to Trump being criminally indicted for allegedly trying to interfere with Georgia's election results, a case that is still ongoing.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Here's Trump on Thursday discussing his 2020 election results in Georgia. I won Alabama by a record. I won South Carolina by a record. You don win Alabama and South Carolina by records and lose Georgia It doesn happen All we want is honest elections If we have honest elections in Georgia we have honest elections in Pennsylvania we going to win them by a lot So Georgia is really trying to get ahead of any issues this election cycle.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: What other states have made some significant changes? Well, another big one is Virginia. This week, Virginia removed more than 6,300 non-citizens and nearly 80,000 deceased voters from the state's voter rolls. Governor Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order on Wednesday directing the Department of Elections to clean up the voter rolls. It makes sure that votes are counted accurately, and it recognizes the fact that elections need to be trusted by voters. The move aims to protect election integrity, especially since Virginia does not require ID to vote, which potentially allows people to impersonate deceased voters or otherwise illegally vote.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Now, there are some Democrat-run states that have made some very different types of changes as well, correct?
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Yes, most of them are trying to remove restrictions and make it easier to vote, though Republicans say they're really trying to make it easier to commit voter fraud. In liberal Minnesota, under Governor Tim Walz, who was just tapped as Kamala Harris's running mate, the state enacted several changes to election law last year that loosened voting restrictions and expanded who can vote. Walz signed a law that gave more than 55,000 formerly incarcerated people the ability to vote again. Even felons who are out of prison may vote in Minnesota now. Another new law allows assisted living staff members to vouch for a resident on election day. Another change allows voters to sign up for a permanent absentee ballot list, meaning they will automatically be sent an absentee ballot every election. Minnesota voters do not need an excuse to vote absentee either. By the way, Minnesotans are also allowed to drop off ballots for three other voters.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Other Democrat-run states have made changes as well. Kentucky is now allowing absentee ballots to be sent to different addresses and made it easier for incarcerated people to vote by mail. Wisconsin, one of the major swing states, made small changes aimed at increasing transparency about polling places. The state faced a lot of scrutiny over its handling of the 2020 election as well, including allegations that polling workers kicked out Republican observers in the middle of the night, but ballot counting continued.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Right. Now, are there any other states that have made some recent changes? Yes, quite a few actually. Alabama banned ballot harvesting and several liberal groups have sued over that. Arizona now requires voters to prove citizenship in order to vote. Idaho now makes it a misdemeanor to collect another person's ballot and a felony to tamper with a voting machine. Mississippi requires a valid ID to vote, but not a current one. Nebraska is now allowing felons to vote as soon as they finish their sentence. Previously, they had to wait two years. West Virginia now requires the DMV to document a voter's citizenship. Florida now requires written consent from a voter for election supervisors to change their party affiliation, and they must get a printed receipt of that change.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So Republican states are trying to shore up election integrity, and Democrat states are trying to remove voting restrictions for the most part, although there is some overlap. Election integrity, a massive concern this go-around. Definitely.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: All right, thanks so much for reporting.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks, John.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: On Wednesday, we reported that social media platforms X and Rumble had sued the World Federation of Advertisers, alleging that the group's Global Alliance for Responsible Media violated antitrust laws to try to force platforms to censor more content. On Thursday, the alliance disbanded. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak is back to discuss.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Hi, Georgia. Yeah the Advertising Federation said it was discontinuing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media or GARM following the two lawsuits approved by the House Judiciary Committee and congressional testimony by Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro It said it will fight the lawsuits and believes it will win but the surrender highlights how companies bowing down to pressure from the left is no longer the easy path GARM members have been claiming that they were advising clients not to do business with sites like Rumble because they were, quote, divisive. But it's hard to claim the reason you're refusing to do business with conservatives is to avoid controversy when the path you're taking results in congressional hearings where you're trying to explain to members of Congress why, quote, we hated their ideology doesn't mean what it sounds like. That's how a brand safety executive from one of Garm's key members characterized Breitbart, correct?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yes, an ad firm called Group M. His email basically admitted that misinformation rules were just a pretext applied retroactively to censor conservative media. Another Group M brand safety executive wrote that, quote, we have Daily Wire on our global high risk exclusion lists categorized as conspiracy theories. The Rumble lawsuit also targets Group M. Of course, the World Federation of Advertisers isn't going away, only its main initiative on responsible media. It remains to be seen how this changes the culture of WFA and the big advertising firms that belong to it.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Ironically, even after shuttering GARM, WFA's homepage said, quote, scared to speak up about DEI or sustainability in the current environment? don't be. Fortune favors the bold. So it sounds like they're very open about this.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Now, what role did Congress play? Well, if the House Judiciary Committee hadn't used its oversight powers to obtain internal emails, X probably never would have known the extent of what was going on. Its lawsuit relies on emails that suggest that individual companies didn't particularly want to withdraw from X because it's a good way to reach customers and they didn't want competitors to get ahead. But competing companies allegedly used GARM to basically make a pact. They would withdraw if their competitors did. Congress also invited Ben Shapiro to testify about how this umbrella group basically amounts to big corporations colluding to threaten to withhold money from news outlets unless they tow the liberal line. Democrats and company reps had a hard time rebutting him.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: One of the big problems here is vague, unspecified subjective standards that are posing as pseudo-objective standards. And under that guise, all bias falls in one direction. When all the bias keeps falling in one direction, you start to suspect that actually the standard is not objective. I mean, the use, again, of advertising dollars as a cudgel in order to shut down one political side of the aisle, the effects of that are quite clear, certainly on a wide variety of businesses on the right.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The emails obtained by Congress also highlighted how big international companies that seemingly have no business dictating U.S. political discourse like Unilever were doing just that. After Musk purchased Twitter, Unilever was furious about how he didn't think the story about Hunter Biden's laptop should have been censored. So the group supposedly designed to protect against, quote, misinformation, wanted to suppress a story that's been proven very much true.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yes. And that's the big picture here. All these nonprofits and fact checkers and advertising companies, they can't realistically be arbiters of the truth about every subject in real time. It typically just amounts to policing whether people depart from whatever the government's official position is at the moment. Well, we all remember how that went with the lab leak theory.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Exactly.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Luke, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Sure thing.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with us we'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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