--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Host (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.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): President Trump is standing by his attorney general, even as MAGA loyalists call for Pam Bondi to be ousted over her handling of the Epstein files. Do you think she really gets MAGA? I don't think so. She wouldn't have behaved this way if she did. I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, July 14th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): The president gives ICE the go-ahead to use whatever means necessary to carry out its deportation efforts in the face of growing assaults on agents. Look, California and Los Angeles are waging insurrection against the federal government. They are protecting those who traffic in the suffering of children. And California escalates its battle with the Trump administration on several fronts. She's very clearly drawing a line and saying, these are not my people. My people are the folks who are here illegally.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Host (John Bickley): As the MAGA outrage mounts regarding the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein investigation, the president is standing by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips is here with the latest. So first, thanks for filling in. It was really tough to give you back your chair. Welcome back. You did all right. You did okay.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, ever since the White House declared the Epstein investigation closed, concluding the billionaire sex criminal died by suicide, did not blackmail powerful individuals, and had no client list, we have seen really just unprecedented backlash from President Trump's most diehard supporters.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They are confident that there's more to this story, and they want to know why there hasn't been more transparency. And more importantly right now, why people like Attorney General Pam Bondi went from saying that the Epstein client list was on their desk, awaiting release, to saying there was never a list to begin with.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And now we are possibly seeing the first legitimate signs of fracture within the administration over the story. On Friday, we learned that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino got into a shouting match with AG Bondi at the White House last week. Bongino reportedly accused the AG of misleading the public, while Bondi reportedly accused him of throwing her under the bus and planting negative stories about her in the press.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And now Bongino is reportedly laying out an ultimatum. Correct. Yes, it appears that way. A source close to Bongino told Daily Wire White House reporter Mary Margaret Olihan that he is so incensed by the Epstein debacle, he's threatening to resign if Bondi is allowed to remain attorney general.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That's a growing pressure within the White House for her to be out. How is President Trump responding? Well, remember, he drew outrage last week from supporters when he questioned why anyone still cared about Epstein. And on Saturday, he only added more fuel to that fire.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump defended Bondi, who he said is doing a, quote, fantastic job. We're on one team, he said, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening. He went on to say that the FBI would be better suited focusing on investigating voter fraud and political corruption instead of Epstein, before ending with a line that drew perhaps the most outrage from his base, quote, let's not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But clearly, a lot of people really do care about this and this investigation. Exactly. John, it's worth noting, plenty of Americans certainly agree with Trump that there are much bigger fish to fry. But among his most diehard supporters, the Epstein investigation is obviously a major issue.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And you can tell by how they're responding. This is one of the rare times where the president seems to have misread his base. As anecdotal evidence of that, Trump's post on Truth Social, a platform overwhelmingly dominated by MAGA faithful, was flooded with tens of thousands of negative comments.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: It appears to be the first post ever made by Trump there with more comments than likes. That is a bad sign. And it wasn't just average Republicans sounding off either. We also saw longtime Trump loyalist radio hosts and influencers taking shots at Trump over this saga, something we rarely, if ever, see from that wing of the party.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, for sure. So a lot of consternation, to say the least, among Republicans. What about the left? How are Democrats responding? So after largely keeping quiet on this investigation for the last few years, Democrats have now come out in droves to hit Trump's handling of the case.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The DNC, for example, launched a social media handle called the Trump-Epstein bot. It's got to counter-tracking how many days it's been since Trump has not released the full files. Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna went a step further, saying he will be introducing an amendment in the House this week to demand a vote on releasing all documents related to the Epstein case unredacted.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So he's saying he wants to put every Republican on the record to see whether they'll go against Trump. And here is Georgia Senator John Ossoff, who's up for re-election next year, speaking at a rally over the weekend.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Did anyone really think the sexual predator president who used to party with Jeffrey Epstein was going to release the Epstein files? So while we wait to see if there's a shakeup at the DOJ or FBI, Democrats seem to believe this issue could play into their hands come next November. They've been struggling to find an angle to attack Trump. Maybe this one sticks.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We'll see. Thanks for reporting. Absolutely.
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--:-- Host (John Bickley): More details are emerging about the ICE raid of a marijuana farm in California last week that resulted in the arrest of hundreds of illegal aliens. Officials say that on the farm were at least 14 children, most of them unaccompanied and potentially victims of forced labor.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Here to talk about the raid and the fallout is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So Tim, this was a legal marijuana growing operation but many of the workers there were not legal, and some of them were children. So what happened at this raid?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, first, it was quite a dangerous situation. This all went down at a pot farm outside of Camarillo, California. Anti-ICE riders attacked agents with rocks and bricks. Officers were shot at by one person. The government is now offering a $50,000 reward for that suspect.
--:-- Tim Pierce: One of the farm workers died in a hospital after he fell 30 feet from the roof of a greenhouse. Videos of the raid show protesters attacking federal vehicles as agents try to drive away. One protester appears to use his bike to try to block the road.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Authorities deployed tear gas and smoke bombs to try and disperse the estimated 500 people there to protest and block agents. At the end of the day, ICE arrested over 300 illegal aliens in that raid, as well as taking in those 14 children who were found.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, the chaos here caught special attention from President Trump, who on Friday authorized any ICE agent that is attacked to, quote, stop their car and arrest these slimeballs. Now, Democrats, though, have framed this quite differently. How have they responded?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, they put a lot of the blame on Trump and ICE. California Governor Gavin Newsom singled out Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff and an immigration hardliner. The governor called the raid inhumane and said Miller's tactics, quote, evoke chaos, fear and terror within our communities at every turn.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Miller responded to the attacks in an interview with Fox News. I don't know of anybody except the governor of California who would argue that a marijuana plantation is an essential component of America's food supply chain.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And if you everywhere you look in California, you see industrial child exploitation on a massive scale, an industrial scale. There are likely hundreds of thousands of children in California who are being exploited for their labor or sexually exploited as part of sex trafficking.
--:-- Tim Pierce: This administration is liberating these children and helping reunify them with their parents back in their home country. I should also note Los Angeles' Democratic mayor Karen Bass signed an executive order on Friday directing city resources to, quote, support immigrant communities.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That support includes cash cards given to illegal immigrants impacted by ICE raids. Here's Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley of California reacting on Fox News.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And now Bass is giving out these free cash cards. And apparently one of the ways you can get one is if you're too afraid to go into work. Now, in the middle of all this, it's worth remembering that last year, the Biden administration either lost or did not track hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children who crossed the border illegally.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Miller also commented on that. What the Biden administration did with respect to child trafficking is one of the great crimes in human history. Over 500,000 children were illegally trafficked into the country under the previous administration.
--:-- Tim Pierce: When we've gone and looked for these children, Martha, the addresses that the U.S. government provided, in other words, the records that the government kept under Joe Biden, are all fake. Nobody ever checked if the addresses were real. Nobody ever checked if the sponsors were real.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Nobody ever checked if they were really even relatives or parents or relations or safe. Right, and most of those children remain unaccounted for to this day.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, shifting gears a bit, there have also been protests in Mexico City towards American tourists. What's happening there? Yeah, not often we have a story about American immigrants traveling south.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Protesters and rioters in Mexico are angry that as remote work has grown more common, many Americans have chosen to work in Mexico City because of its low cost of living. That's brought on problems for residents who say that the influx of Americans are raising their rents and pushing out longtime residents.
--:-- Tim Pierce: As a result, we have been seeing protesters demanding that Americans assimilate and learn to speak Spanish. Well, some great irony there. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): California is digging in in its war with the Trump administration over everything from ICE to women's sports while several of its cities face growing crises. Joining us now to discuss is board-certified MD and California political commentator Human Hamadi.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Human, thanks so much for coming on. It's a pleasure. Look, your state has effectively declared war on the Trump administration on a number of issues, all while facing what I think it's fair to call crises in L.A. and other cities. What are the most pressing issues right now in California?
--:-- Human Hamadi: We have the public safety issues, and then we also have the affordability issues. And on the public safety front, we still have exceedingly high crime and homelessness.
--:-- Human Hamadi: I was a victim of crime just last night in my house. Part of the house was vandalized. We caught it on camera. This is how L.A. has become. And on top of that, on the affordability front, we have energy prices, electricity, gasoline that are sky high, highest in the nation, going through the roof and with no and in sight, water rates that are very high, insurance rates that are sky high, if you can even afford to get home insurance or car insurance.
--:-- Human Hamadi: It's getting really crazy at this point. People cannot survive in this state. And every one of these crises is something that's either preventable, predictable, or manufactured by the administration.
--:-- Human Hamadi: Now, we've seen most recently the battle with the Trump administration over ICE raids. How are city and state officials responding to this escalation of violence against ICE? You have city leaders like, you know, Mayor Karen Bass. You've even got Gavin Newsom. You've got vice mayor of a tiny town called Cudahy who are openly calling for people to resist ICE.
--:-- Human Hamadi: The vice mayor of Cudahy actually asked for gang members to come out and fight them in the streets in no uncertain terms. Now that your hood's being invaded by the biggest gang there is, there ain't no peep out of you.
--:-- Human Hamadi: So they've declared open war on federal officers who are really there enforcing federal law and doing their jobs. Is it aggressive? Absolutely. Is it in their face? Absolutely. Is that avoidable? Yeah, it would have been had the state and local officials simply cooperated with federal officials and done what they used to do.
--:-- Human Hamadi: Now, front and center in this conflict is L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. We've had new reports that she's maybe providing cash cards for illegal immigrants. And she says openly that she is directing government resources to illegal immigrant families in the face of the ICE raids.
--:-- Human Hamadi: What do we know for sure about her handling of the standoff with ICE? First, in terms of the cash cards, you know, she made it very clear in plain English that she is going to be distributing hundreds of dollars in cash to illegal aliens who are impacted by ICE.
--:-- Human Hamadi: And what she means by impacted are people who won't leave their homes, won't go to work because of fear of apprehension, arrest and deportation. And so that means basically everyone qualifies. I think she's partnering with that organization called Churla, which is an NGO, but it's government funded that happened to have actually helped organize the riots against the ICE officers.
--:-- Human Hamadi: It's keeping them from leaving their homes. It's providing aid and comfort to them while their own citizens who are legally here aren't able to afford food, rent, electricity, gasoline, insurance, etc. So it's really backwards and it shows you where her priorities are rather than focusing on the people who she has sworn to protect, the citizens, the people who voted her in.
--:-- Human Hamadi: And she had an opportunity here to say, you know what, we're going to do the uncomfortable thing of cooperating with federal officers, allowing them to do their job, but to do so in a peaceful, organized manner. And instead of that, she's basically said to her people, let's go after these guys and I'm going to protect you.
--:-- Human Hamadi: What appears your state's showdown with Trump is only ratcheting up at this point. We'll be watching with interest. Come on. Thank you so much for talking with us. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.
