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--:-- Host John Bickley: The NFL is back, and FanDuel's got everything you need to play your game. From same-game parlays to live betting. Right now, new customers bet $5 and get $300 in bonus bets if you win. 21-plus in president select states. 18-plus in Kentucky and Wyoming. Must be first online real money waging. $5 deposit required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at FanDuel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
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--:-- Host John Bickley: The defense rests in Donald Trump's hush money trial, which will soon be in the hands of the jury. It's only in closing arguments that we expect the jury to actually hear what the theory is as to this second crime. Did the prosecution prove their case and how will the verdict play in the court of public opinion?
--:-- Host John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Wednesday, May 22nd, and this is Morning Wire. The Biden administration is withholding information about illegal immigrants on the terror watch list, including an alleged attempt to infiltrate a military base. Some reporting was that one of them had hit the TSDS, the terror screening database. Can you shed any light on that?
--:-- Guest David Marcus: Yeah, I can't confirm anything like that right now.
--:-- Host John Bickley: And a controversial new film about Trump is met with high praise at the Cannes Film Festival and legal threats from an investor and the Trump campaign.
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--:-- Host John Bickley: The evidence phase of the hush money trial of former President Donald Trump is over, with closing arguments scheduled to commence next week. The prosecution brought 20 witnesses, the defense only two, and soon it will be in the hands of the jury. Here to discuss this week's final day of court is Daily Wire contributor David Marcus.
--:-- Guest David Marcus: Hey, Dave. So a fast wrap on witnesses for the defense. What did we see yesterday?
--:-- Guest David Marcus: Morning, John. It was a quick day in court. The only testimony came from former Michael Cohen associate Robert Costello, whose testimony began late Monday. He says that Cohen was suicidal after being arrested and has said in the past that Cohen told him he had nothing on Trump. The Trump team had wanted to bring one last witness, election law expert Brad Smith, basically to argue that no election law was broken here. But Judge Marchand did not allow it, saying that competing legal experts would just confuse the jury.
--:-- Guest David Marcus: Smith took to social media, posting on X that he should have been allowed to testify because, as he put it, even Antonin Scalia famously called election law confusing and arguing that Marchand had given greater latitude to the prosecution. He did not mince his words, saying he was not optimistic about jury instruction and ending his thread with, quote, why do pluralities of Americans see Biden as a greater threat to democracy than Trump, in part because of farces like this trial, end quote.
--:-- Host John Bickley: About those instructions this is what the judge will tell the jurors after the closing arguments are made by both sides next week. How important could those instructions be?
--:-- Guest David Marcus: In a case like this it is absolutely vital because it's not like there's a dead body here. The question isn't so much whether Trump committed a crime, but whether Trump's actions even constitute a crime. In some areas, Marshawn could essentially say to jurors, if you believe evidence X, then your decision should be Y, almost an equation.
--:-- Host John Bickley: As far as the media coverage goes, where did the top networks or outlets land at the end of all this evidence given by over 20 witnesses? Was there, if not a consensus, maybe a few points of agreement?
--:-- Guest David Marcus: There were. The experts who have been criticizing this case for some time, such as Andrew McCarthy, thought the prosecution's case just got worse and worse. Jonathan Turley went so far as to say there could be reversible error here if Trump is convicted, which is to say grounds for an appeal. But even on CNN, which is not friendly to the former president, there was legitimate shock at Monday's bombshell that Cohen had stolen $60,000 from Trump.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Here's their legal analyst, Ellie Honig, basically saying that the prosecution finally found a crime, but one committed by Michael Cohen. It's a very fair question to ask, gee, folks, of the jury. They gave him a free pass. He committed larceny. It's a higher degree of a felony than what Donald Trump is charged with. Yet they gave Michael Cohen a free pass, even though he's now admitted that he stole what amounts to $60,000. It goes to his credibility. It goes to his relationship with the DA.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Could the media reaction actually end up influencing the outcome of this case? So there's really two ways that the coverage could impact the ultimate outcomes of this case. One is potentially influencing the jury, and the other is what the American voters take away from the case.
--:-- Guest David Marcus: As to the first, yes, they are instructed not to read about the case, but they aren't sequestered. They have phones and televisions and spouses. They might even listen to 15-minute morning news programs. So some of this coverage could certainly seep through, and most of it has been pretty bad for the prosecution. Then there's the voters. A big question going into this was whether Trump would lose support should he suffer a conviction, as some polls had suggested. And look, I think it's just kind of obvious that the weaker the case looks, conviction or no, the stronger a position Trump will be in heading into the election.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Yeah, it certainly seems true. Dave, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Guest David Marcus: Thanks for having me.
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--:-- Host John Bickley: A man on the U.S. terrorist watch list traveled from the Middle Eastern country of Jordan to Mexico and then illegally crossed into the U.S. He then allegedly tried to break into the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak found that this and the secrecy around it is becoming a bit of a pattern. He joins us now.
--:-- Guest Luke Rosiak: Hey John, so when did this occur and how did we find out about it?
--:-- Guest Luke Rosiak: Well, the remarkable thing is that the Quantico incident occurred way back on May 3rd, but authorities hid it from the public. They acknowledged it last week only when a freelance reporter for a local news outlet, Potomac Local, forced their hand.
--:-- Host John Bickley: A Marine Corps spokesman then said that two men claimed to be delivery drivers and when guards got suspicious and told them not to proceed onto the base, they drove onto the base anyway before being apprehended and turned over to ICE. That implies that both were illegal immigrants, but the Marine Corps and ICE each refused to confirm whether the man from Jordan was on the terror watch list. Potomac locals said the man had just crossed the southern border recently.
--:-- Guest Luke Rosiak: All right, so we have known bad actors flying to Mexico in order to come across the border, then potentially attempting espionage or an attack on a military base. This sounds like something that would be big news.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Yeah, absolutely, but the Biden administration and the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of both securing the border and preventing terrorism, have instead gone to great lengths to prevent Americans from learning about the security repercussions of what's become the most open border in history.
--:-- Guest Luke Rosiak: On Wednesday, the same day we found out about Quantico, DHS refused to fulfill a public records request listing how many suspected terrorists from each foreign country were known to have crossed the border. It acknowledged that it had those records, but it refused to release them, citing the, quote, privacy interests of the foreign suspected terrorists.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Fox News reporter Bill Malugian, who filed the request, said that likely amounted to violating the Freedom of Information Act, as he didn't even want the names of the terrorists, just the number and the home countries.
--:-- Guest Luke Rosiak: We know the man from Jordan who allegedly tried to infiltrate Quantico is not the only one on the terror watch list to make it in. The House Committee on Homeland Security said in December that about 300 illegals on that watch list were apprehended at the southern border since 2021, not to mention the ones who weren't caught.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Luke, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Guest Luke Rosiak: Sure thing.
--:-- Host John Bickley: That was Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak.
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--:-- Host John Bickley: A new movie about the early days of Donald Trump's career is making waves at the Cannes Film Festival this week, but not all of the film's investors are happy with how the former president is being depicted and the Trump campaign is now threatening to sue. Here with more is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: Hey, Megan. So this film appears to have come out of sort of nowhere. Why are we just now hearing about this movie and what do we know about it?
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: Yeah, you know, I'd say the producers did a pretty good job keeping it under wraps until now. It's a biopic titled The Apprentice and it stars Sebastian Stan, who everyone probably knows, as Bucky Barnes slash the Winter Soldier in the Marvel movies. And it follows Donald Trump's life when he was an up-and-coming real estate mogul in the 70s and 80s. In particular, it explores his relationship with his attorney and mentor, Roy Cohn, who was a well-known Democratic operative and chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s. And then it also covers Trump's relationship with his first wife, Ivana.
--:-- Host John Bickley: But the word is the filmmakers took special care to keep this movie and I quoting shrouded in mystery Ahead of its world premiere at Cannes on Monday night none of the cast did any press on the ground That's pretty unusual. And they seem to have worked hard to keep any details about the plot from leaking until just now.
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: Well, apparently that work paid off. So how is Trump portrayed in the film? It's hard to imagine, given the mainstream stars in it, that it would be especially positive.
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: Well, of course, I haven't seen it yet, but the early reviews suggest that it is not positive. No, in fact, pretty far from it. Both ABC and Variety used the word scathing to describe it. Other outlets have used terms like blistering and brutal. And there are scenes that show Trump using amphetamines to lose weight and one that depicts him raping Ivana. Now, she passed away in 2022, but though she used the word rape during their divorce proceedings, she later said that she was misunderstood and that she did not mean that literally.
--:-- Host John Bickley: So at the very least, I think we can say that this does not sound like a flattering film.
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: Yeah, not at all. And one of the film's investors is not happy about this, correct?
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: Yeah. According to an exclusive new report from Variety, no. So Dan Snyder is the billionaire former owner of the Washington Commanders. commanders. He's also been a Trump donor. He gave over a million dollars to Trump's inaugural committee and also contributed to his 2016-2020 presidential campaigns. Well, Snyder is reportedly very unhappy with how the film presents Trump, and he has demanded edits.
--:-- Host John Bickley: So according to Variety, Snyder only agreed to back the film because he thought it was going to be more even-handed, and when he saw a rough cut back in February, Variety sources say that he was furious and his lawyers have actually been fighting the release of this film. Also, as you said, complicating this, Snyder is not the only one making legal threats. On Tuesday, the Trump campaign announced that they'll be filing a lawsuit to, quote, address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: Director Ali Abassi said he's not worried about that, though.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Do we know when this film will be released? Is there a sense that the filmmakers are hoping it could have an impact on this election?
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: It doesn't have a release date yet. That's the purpose of these film festivals, to screen the film so that they find distributors. But it did make a major splash at Cannes. So the audience gave the film an eight-minute standing ovation. So with that and a well-known cast, I don't think it's going to have any trouble getting picked up. And for financial reasons alone, any distributor is going to want to release it before the election when interest is going to be at a peak. And obviously, Hollywood isn't exactly full of Trump fans. So, yes, I'm guessing there will probably be some political motivation to see it released in the fall.
--:-- Host John Bickley: In fact, after the screening in Cannes, Abbasi said it's time to make movies political again. And he suggested that this film is a warning against fascism. So statements like that, if no other, certainly indicate that, yes, they are planning for this film to have some political impact.
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: Yeah, that seems very clear.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Guest Megan Basham: Anytime. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- Host John Bickley: We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know. If you're looking around at your business and seeing inefficiency, you should know these numbers. 37,000, the number of businesses that have upgraded to the number one cloud financial system, NetSuite by Oracle. 25. NetSuite just turned 25. That's 25 years of helping businesses streamline their finances and reduce costs. One. Because your unique business deserves a custom solution, and that's NetSuite. Learn more when you download NetSuite's popular KPI checklist absolutely free at netsuite.com slash morningwire. That's netsuite.com slash morningwire.
