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--:-- Georgia Howe: Why shop at Burlington? Maybe it's the deals that are new each time you drop by. Maybe it's the brand names you'll be shocked Burlington has in store. Or maybe it's the quality of the items, the amazing selection, and the newest trends. If you like to save, but also like to stay in style, Burlington is your answer. And the question you'll be asking yourself is, why go anywhere else? Burlington. Deals. Brands. Wow.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Trump and Putin are set today to discuss peace and dividing up assets with Ukraine. As both President Putin and Zelensky said on our first call just a few weeks ago, only President Trump could drive this to an end. What can we expect from the high-stakes call between the two leaders?
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, March 18th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Trump pushes ahead with deporting violent gang members, despite legal efforts to bring them back to the U.S. These are heinous monsters, rapists, murderers, kidnappers, sexual assaulters, predators, who have no right to be in this country and they must be held accountable. And new reports show both the UK and Germany had intel that the COVID virus was created in a lab, but chose to suppress it. This is one of the most significant cover-ups. I mean, it's hard to find a bigger one.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: President Trump will hold what could be a pivotal phone call with Russia's Vladimir Putin today as the two sides move closer to a ceasefire in Ukraine. Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips is here with the latest on what to expect.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So Cabot, this really could be the end of the war. What are we expecting them to talk about?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So today's conversation will likely center on a potential ceasefire. At the moment, it seems that Putin will only agree to a ceasefire if he has assurances that the U.S. would pause new weapons shipments to Ukraine in the meantime, and that Ukraine would not be allowed to mobilize new forces during that 30-day period.
--:-- John Bickley: But there are plenty of folks, including Vladimir Zelensky, who say Putin is exaggerating his openness to a ceasefire.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, where does Zelensky stand? So over the weekend, he told reporters that, quote, the Russians say we support a ceasefire, but and then after the but they start coming with various details to delay the process.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: He says Putin is well aware that Western support for Ukraine is starting to dwindle and he wants to drag out the ceasefire process to allow his side to gain as much territory as possible ahead of negotiations so that, you know, he'll have more leverage.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And to that point, Moscow has recently launched a counteroffensive in the Kursk region, a territory in Russia that had fallen into Ukrainian hands last summer after a surprise incursion.
--:-- John Bickley: Putin says thousands of Ukrainian troops there are currently surrounded. He called on them to, quote, lay down their arms and surrender in exchange for their lives.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the longer a ceasefire is delayed, the more time Putin will have to close in on those troops and the more leverage that he would likely have once talks begin.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: A showdown over a plane load of suspected Trin de Aragua gang members has pitted immigrant activists against Trump. The administration is moving forward with deportation of over 250 individuals despite legal moves from the ACLU. Here to discuss the situation is Daily Wire senior editor Ash Short.
--:-- Ash Short: So Ash, can you first clarify the timeline and why these deportations became so controversial?
--:-- Ash Short: Sure. On Friday night, President Trump signed an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allowed suspected gang members in the country illegally to be deported without a judicial hearing.
--:-- Ash Short: The signing wasn't promoted, but the media caught wind of it on Saturday morning. The left-wing ACLU then jumped in and filed a court order trying to stop the deportations.
--:-- Ash Short: By Saturday afternoon, however, the planes were already in the air. By the time When Judge James Bosberg order was issued the flight was already outside US airspace That according to a senior administration official speaking to Axios Trump border czar Tom Homan dismissed the ruling saying he and Trump will not stop until America is safe We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming.
--:-- Ash Short: OK, so these individuals believed to be a part of Trenda Aragua are now in El Salvador. Does this order mean that they now have to be brought back to the U.S.? That's the legal battle that's now taking shape.
--:-- Ash Short: The Trump DOJ filed a response in court saying, quote, plaintiffs cannot use these proceedings to interfere with the president's national security and foreign affairs authority.
--:-- Ash Short: They also asked to vacate the hearing and stop interfering with the executive branch. The other legal issue here is the use of the Alien Enemies Act and whether it gives the president the authority to deport illegal immigrants without a judicial hearing.
--:-- Ash Short: But the White House welcomes the fight. In fact, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt addressed the topic in her press briefing on Monday.
--:-- Ash Short: This administration acted within the confines of the law, again, within the president's constitutional authority and under the authority granted to him under the Alien Enemies Act.
--:-- Ash Short: We are quite confident in that, and we are wholly confident that we are going to win this case in court.
--:-- Ash Short: Now, this is just one battle in a much larger war over what to do with the illegal immigrants that are currently in the U.S. Where else is this playing out?
--:-- Ash Short: Well, ever since Trump was inaugurated, Democrats have fought tooth and nail to keep illegal immigrants, even those convicted of violent crimes, from being deported.
--:-- Ash Short: California set up a legal slush fund to fight deportations, and other sanctuary cities have said they would openly defy administration orders.
--:-- Ash Short: And just recently, emails were leaked showing Minneapolis-area lawyers actively working to keep ICE from apprehending illegal immigrants.
--:-- Ash Short: Minneapolis is one of many sanctuary cities that said it wouldn't comply with ICE.
--:-- Ash Short: Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, issued a formal legal opinion after emails were sent from a leftist legal organization saying that state law, quote, prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from holding someone based on an immigration detainer if the person would otherwise be released from custody.
--:-- Ash Short: But in general, the Trump administration has made some significant headway on immigration.
--:-- Ash Short: What do the recent numbers show?
--:-- Ash Short: Absolutely. In the first 50 days of the Trump administration, ICE made more than 32,000 enforcement arrests, just a hair shy of the total number of arrests made in all of fiscal year 2024.
--:-- Ash Short: Nearly half of those arrested were convicted criminals and about a third had pending criminal charges, meaning 75% of those arrested were accused or convicted criminals.
--:-- Ash Short: Illegal border crossings also fell by 94% in February compared to the previous year, and illegal encounters at the Del Rio sector declined by 99% since 2023.
--:-- Ash Short: In fact, Trump has been so successful with illegal immigration in his first two months of office that concerns about the issue have dropped from a top priority to a fourth priority for a majority of voters.
--:-- Ash Short: Well, it was a major campaign promise.
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--:-- Announcer: We learned this week that the former head of the UK's Foreign Intelligence Agency told the British Prime Minister in early 2020 that the COVID virus escaped from the infamous Wuhan lab. Joining us now to discuss is independent journalist and author Michael Schellenberger.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: Hey, Michael, thank you so much for joining us.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So let's start with what we found out from the UK related to the origins of the coronavirus. What did we just learn and how does this change the way we think about how the UK in particular handled this situation?
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: Sure I mean what just got released was a memo sent from the former head of MI6 which is the UK version of the CIA And it was sent with a very well and respected professor from London School of Economics in early 2020 that essentially debunked this Nature article called Proximal Origin, which claimed to have debunked that the virus came from a lab.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: We had done earlier reporting on this way back in 2023, showing that there was higher ups, to use the language, of the key authors, Christian Anderson, who had basically changed the direction that they were going in their research.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: And so we already knew that this proximal origin paper was manipulated. Well, now we have this British memo, again, from the former head of MI6, saying that the Chinese government is engaged in an information and influence operation to deflect responsibility.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: The memo says, beyond a reasonable doubt, the Wuhan Institute of Virology retroengineered a bat virus in January 2020.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: We surmise that this was done to align with COVID-19 to sustain the natural causation narrative. So, you know, the implications of this conspiracy, I think it's the correct word in this case, are pretty significant because it would suggest that you now have the U.S., U.K., Chinese and German governments who all knew that the virus escaped from the lab, arguably as early as January.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: And we had reported that the U.S. intelligence community had known, in fact, the names of the first three people to be infected by the COVID virus. And that didn't come out.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: So, I mean, this is significant both because it obviously implicates a number of senior American officials, including Anthony Fauci. But it may have meant that our response to the virus may have been different had we known that it come from a lab.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: And it's worth noting that just a few days before the British announcement, two major newspapers in Germany revealed that the German Foreign Intelligence Service, their version of the CIA, had also believed that there was a 80 to 90 percent chance that the coronavirus had leaked from a Chinese lab.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: Now, you mentioned Fauci. Trump has just made the statements declaring that Biden's preemptive pardons for Anthony Fauci and others are invalid.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: His argument is that all of these pardons were signed by an auto pen, and thus Biden did not actively sign them and allegedly was not even fully aware what was being enacted in his name.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: Trump's going to try to make that case. We'll see if that holds up. But related to this topic, a lot of people are looking for some sort of accountability, particularly from Fauci.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: What do you see coming on that front? What investigations are ongoing with congressional members? Where can we look for potential accountability?
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: Yeah, I mean, first, I should say, I don't know that I'm comfortable with this idea that you would revoke pardons. I just think that that opens up a whole Pandora's box that I don't think we want to do.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: And I appreciate the desire people have to get some revenge on Fauci. He certainly appears to have done wrong in many ways.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: But the most important thing is just to get the truth out and whatever it takes to do that, I think is important.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: And so I don't know what's possible legally, but I mean, we still don't have all the documents. I mean, we reported on a bunch of the documents. But there's just got to be a lot more there.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: There's probably more from various agencies, including the intelligence community. But I think the priority should be on getting the truth out, not on prosecuting or incarcerating people that lied.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: Well, we've seen so far this administration seems like it's pretty committed to transparency. Let's hope that holds up and we get some more transparency on this issue.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: Thanks for talking with us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Michael Schellenberger: Thanks for waking up with us.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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