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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire. I'm John Bickley, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, and co-host Georgia Howe is here with me today.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks, John. It's Monday, August 12th, and we're here to bring you the latest news and updates from the campaign trail.
--:-- John Bickley: We know our immigration system is broken, and we know what it takes to fix it. Comprehensive reform.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's right, John. And we have the latest from the campaign trail. After Trump famously promised no tax on tips, Harris is now co-opting the pledge.
--:-- John Bickley: We look at the Biden-Harris record on taxation. And the Olympics wraps up with the U.S. racking up medals while the IOC finds itself mired in controversy.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Brandon: Hey guys, producer Brandon here. It's been an awesome Olympics. And even as they end, Good Ranchers is getting in on the festivities by offering new subscribers a free gold medal add-on for the next four years.
--:-- John Bickley: You can enjoy free playing chicken breasts, Angus ground beef, applewood bacon, or wild-caught salmon in every order for the next four years or until the next summer games.
--:-- Brandon: Plus with Code Wire, you'll get an additional $25 off your first box. That's up to $1,200 in savings when you subscribe. Go to GoodRanchers.com and use promo code WIRE to claim this exclusive offer. Good Ranchers, American meat delivered.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: With Election Day fast approaching, the stolen valor accusations against Harris's running mate, Tim Walls, continue to grow.
--:-- John Bickley: Meanwhile, the Trump campaign says it was the victim of a foreign hacking operation.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, a wild story here. So on Saturday, Politico published a report saying that they had been receiving emails from an anonymous account containing private documents from within the Trump campaign.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That included research dossiers on potential VP picks, including J.D. Vance, as well as sensitive internal communications between campaign officials.
--:-- John Bickley: Hours after that report was published, the Trump campaign confirmed they had been hacked, blaming Iran, saying, quote, the Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America's enemies and doing exactly what they want.
--:-- John Bickley: For their part, Microsoft did confirm the story, saying Iranian hackers had broken into the account of a high-ranking campaign official back in June.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, Politico and other outlets who also received the hacked materials have yet to publish most of the contents, but there is a good chance they do eventually make their way online. So something to keep an eye on.
--:-- John Bickley: Indeed. Now, before we go, President Biden was also in the news this weekend and made a head-turning admission.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, on Sunday, the president's first interview since dropping out of the race aired on CBS.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to Biden, he believed he could have beaten Donald Trump, but stepped aside after mounting pressure from within his own party.
--:-- John Bickley: A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them and the races.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic you'd be interviewing about. Why did Nancy Pelosi say? Why did so? And I thought it'd be a real distraction.
--:-- John Bickley: So again, a fairly stunning admission there. The president of the United States essentially admitting that he was forced out by leaders in his own party.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: A remarkable sequence of events, to say the least.
--:-- John Bickley: Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- John Bickley: Welcome back to Morning Wire. Vice President Kamala Harris copied the Trump campaign over the weekend with a pledge to eliminate taxes on tips.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Harris announced the proposal at a rally in Las Vegas two months after former President Trump promised the same reform at a rally in the same city.
--:-- John Bickley: Here to discuss the dueling proposals is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So, Tim, what can you tell us about Harris's announcement?
--:-- Tim Pierce: She announced the pledge on Saturday during a rally at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And it is my promise to everyone here when I am president we will continue our fight for working families of America including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers
--:-- Tim Pierce: And here's Donald Trump making the same promise at a rally in Las Vegas back on June 9th.
--:-- Tim Pierce: When I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips, people making tips.
--:-- John Bickley: The Las Vegas setting is important because Las Vegas has massive service and hospitality industries, and Nevada is a battleground state.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, polls right now show that Trump has the edge. Real clear politics polling average for the state has Trump up over Harris by nearly four points.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That's a decent lead, but Harris's move here to adopt Trump's anti-tip tax stance is clearly designed to try to cut into that advantage.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, has Team Trump responded?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah. Shortly after Harris made the pledge public, Trump responded in a post on Truth Social.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The former president said Harris stole the idea from him.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But according to Trump, Harris, quote, won't do it. She just wants it for political purposes.
--:-- Tim Pierce: He then said Harris has, quote, proposed the largest tax increase in history, a reference to the Biden-Harris administration's 2025 budget proposal.
--:-- John Bickley: A note on that, Trump may have overstated his case.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, Trump has previously cited figures from the Heritage Foundation to make that claim.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But according to the Tax Foundation, the administration's proposed tax increase is big, but not the largest in U.S. history.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It would rank as the ninth largest tax increase since 1940, although all but one of the tax increases ahead of the Biden-Harris proposal were enacted to fund war efforts in World War II, the Korean War, or the Vietnam War.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, why is Trump claiming that Harris won't follow through?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Does he have any evidence for that?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, it would be a reversal of the Biden-Harris administration policy.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The IRS and Treasury departments actually introduced a new tip reporting program last year called the Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement Program.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The stated goal of the program is to improve tip reporting compliance.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It's currently just a voluntary program.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But again, according to the IRS, the government would like to make it the, sole tip reporting compliance program for employers in various service industries.
--:-- John Bickley: So at the same time that Harris has promised to eliminate taxes on tips, the Biden-Harris administration is testing out a program designed to more strictly enforce those taxes.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So some basis for that claim there.
--:-- John Bickley: Tim, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Good to be on.
--:-- John Bickley: Welcome back to Morning Wire. The 2024 Paris Olympics came to a close on Sunday, ending with some high points for the USA and some lingering controversies.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Hey, Amanda. So as usual, the United States performed quite well at the Olympics.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: First, how did we fare with the overall medal count?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, overall, the United States was the medal leader with a total of 126 medals.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: The USA has taken home the most medals since the 1996 Games, but we did not win the most golds.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: USA tied with China at 40 medals, And China actually had the second most medals, taking home 90 total.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: And Great Britain rounded out the top three with 65 medals.
--:-- John Bickley: So a tie at the top with China for gold.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: What about some of the highlights for the U.S.?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Yeah, there were a lot. USA won gold in men's and women's basketball.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: This was Steph Curry's first ever gold medal, and he really dominated.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: In the final game against France, he had 24 points.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: And this was the men's fifth straight Olympic gold.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: And actually they still bested by the women who won their eighth straight Olympic gold on Sunday They won by a single point
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: And that close loss by the way that actually sparked a lot of debate because standout Kaitlyn Clark was controversially omitted from the team roster
--:-- John Bickley: Now, more with the female athletes. USA Soccer also took home the gold.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: That really wasn't expected.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: The women's team has recently slipped to number five in FIFA World Rankings, and they were ousted from the World Cup in the round of 16 with its worst finish ever.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: The team was also marred by its hyper focus on political activism, which earned much domestic criticism.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, there were also big wins for women's swimming and gymnastics.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Swimmer Katie Ledecky took home four medals and she became the most decorated female Olympian of all time.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: In gymnastics, USA women took home the gold in the team competition and Simone Biles with a total of 11 Olympic medals.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: She became the most decorated female Olympic gymnast.
--:-- John Bickley: This was a big comeback for Biles and her team, since famously she dropped out of the team competition during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and the girls missed out on gold there.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Right. Now, there was also some controversy with women's gymnastics.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Tell us about that.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Right. Jordan Childs was told she won the bronze medal for her floor exercise last week.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: That happened in dramatic fashion.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: She finished fifth initially, but then won a challenge to her difficulty score, and she ended up taking third place.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: But yesterday, the International Olympic Committee said an arbitration court found that the USA Challenge happened four seconds outside of the one-minute window permitted for a challenge.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: So without that scoring bump, she drops back down and she has to return her bronze medal.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Now we've also been following this gender story out of women's boxing.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: What happened with the two boxers who were at the center of that controversy?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, Amane Khalif of Algeria and Lin Yuting of Taiwan, they both won gold in their respective weight classes.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: and they won every single round at the Olympics.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Their final matches were very dominant, as they've been from the start.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: In Lynn's final match, Lynn is 28, the opponent was a 20-year-old female from Poland.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: She was far shorter than Lynn, and she left the bout pretty bloodied.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: As you alluded to, John, they both failed gender tests by the International Boxing Association in 2019 and 2023.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: The president of the IBA has said that the tests revealed that they have XY chromosomes, and both Lin and Khalif never followed through with an appeal to those findings.
--:-- John Bickley: So their gold medal finishes sparked a lot of outrage.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Right, we've tracked a lot of that.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Now we've learned that Khalif is now filing a legal complaint.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: What's that about?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Right, the fighter filed a complaint in France for online harassment and so-called hate speech related to this gender issue.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: France is, you know, not the U.S. and under French law, the supposed crimes could carry prison sentences that range from two to five years with fines up to $50,000.
--:-- John Bickley: So potentially severe penalties there.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, another successful Olympic showing for the U.S., but certainly a lot to debate over the last two weeks.
--:-- John Bickley: Definitely.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Amanda, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: You're welcome.
--:-- 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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--:-- John Bickley: During this polarizing political season, security is top of mind for many Americans. Security for our country, security for our leaders, and security for our families.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But what about your financial security?
--:-- John Bickley: Gold and silver are an excellent way to diversify your savings.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Through my friends at Birch Gold Group, you can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account.
--:-- John Bickley: Text WIRE to 989898 and receive a free, no-obligation info kit to learn the role that precious metals play in your overall saving strategy.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Again, text WIRE to 989898.
