--:-- [Upbeat music fades out]
--:-- Host: Well, I was down on my last dollar, then I started saving, cause the bank said fiscal restraint is what you're craving. So I put my earnings in a high yield account, let the savings compound and the interest mount. I'm optimizing cash flow, putting debt in check, now time is my friend and not a pain in the neck. And we've got a little cash to rebuild the old deck. Boring money moves make kind of lame songs, but they sound pretty sweet to your wallet. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865.
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--:-- Host: President Trump travels to Israel to meet with leaders and the hostage families as his historic but precarious peace deal takes another key step. The war is over, okay? Do you understand that? Are you confident that the ceasefire is going to hold? I think so. I think it's going to hold. I think people are tired of it. It's been centuries.
--:-- Host: I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. Georgia's off today. It's Monday, October 13th. This is Morning Wire. The shutdown fallout ramps up with mass layoffs at the IRS. But Trump vows to get our troops paid as payday fast approaches.
--:-- Host: Well, the Democrats have given us a choice between giving low-income women their food benefits and paying our troops on the one hand, and on the other hand, paying federal bureaucrats. Well, given that choice, we're going to choose low-income women. We're going to choose our troops.
--:-- Host: and have violent texts in a viral debate shaken up the Virginia governor and AG race. We talked to a pollster who's taken the pulse of voters in the state. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Host: President Trump is in Israel this morning meeting with hostage families as the historic peace agreement takes a key step. He's also there to deliver a speech to the Israeli Knesset. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to tell us about this pretty momentous trip to the Middle East.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So a lot happening right now in Israel, in fact, as this episode is being released. Break it down for us. What is happening right now?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, it's really a whirlwind visit to Israel by President Trump. It was scheduled to begin at 2.30 a.m. Eastern Time this morning. And a note for listeners, I apologize for the lag between the information we have here and what's happening right now in the Middle East because of the reality of the format and the fast pace of this trip. I can't give up-to-the-minute details, but we will have more on this later on in the afternoon and evening wire. And, of course, we'll be covering this throughout the day on dailywire.com.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That said, on to the news. Yesterday, Israeli journalist Amit Segal predicted this would be one of the most hectic days in Israel's history. We talked to Daily Wire White House reporter Mary Margaret Olihan as the president was heading out yesterday.
--:-- Mary Margaret Olihan: The president will be meeting with the hostage families. This is part of the president's promises to the Israeli people and to the American people over the last several years that he will reunite the hostages with their families and also that he will reunite families with the bodies of their deceased family members who were either killed by Hamas or died in captivity.
--:-- Mary Margaret Olihan: So he'll meet with them at the Knesset, which is Israel's parliament. And then shortly afterwards, he'll deliver remarks. And then he will depart Israel en route for Egypt, where he'll participate in a Middle East peace ceremony.
--:-- Mary Margaret Olihan: And that will obviously deal with Gaza the future of the people there how the president and these Middle Eastern leaders plan to make sure that there is peace in the region
--:-- Mary Margaret Olihan: And I add this about Trump trip The people of Israel really love President Trump. There was a rally yesterday in Tel Aviv with U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. And every time Trump's name was mentioned, the crowd exploded. He maybe got the loudest applause from everyone except for the IDF. Members of the crowd were even wearing Make America Great Again MAGA hats in tribute to President Trump.
--:-- Mary Margaret Olihan: So a lot of love for the president on this trip. And back to Mary Margaret, she also pointed out the reason that the president is heading back to the U.S. so quickly is to honor Charlie Kirk. He plans to award Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday. So that ceremony will take place at the White House. This will be an emotional ceremony, but a very, very important one. Certainly going to be a powerful moment, no doubt.
--:-- Mary Margaret Olihan: Now, as Mary Margaret highlighted there, the meeting with the hostage families is a key part of this trip. There's a lot of concern that Hamas will not follow through. What do we know right now about that situation?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, this is really what the first part of the ceasefire hinges on, the release of 48 hostages from Gaza. 20 of them are still alive and should be released early this morning. The other 28, there are a lot of concerns over whether the bodies will be returned. In return for the hostages, Israel is expected to release 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and another 1,700 Gazans detained after October 7th.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, obviously, this is a really lopsided deal in favor of Gaza, the Palestinians, Hamas, and against the Israelis, but it gets even more lopsided when you consider who Israel has agreed to release. In many cases, these prisoners are known terrorists. Many of them have been rearrested after being released in similar swamps.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So the major concern is that Israel will have to deal with the fallout from this later, maybe in more terror attacks in the future. But Israel is willing to pay this price right now because they really want those hostages back. It shows you how much they're desperate to get those people back.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, before you go, there's been some reports about 200 troops being there on the ground in Israel. There's a lot of controversy about that. What do we know about that situation?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Right. Vice President J.D. Vance was making the rounds on the networks on Sunday, and he offered some clarification to that report about 200 soldiers. We're not planning to put boots on the ground. What we already have is a U.S. central command. We already have people in that region of the world. They're going to monitor the terms of the ceasefire. They're going to monitor, ensure that the humanitarian aid is flowing.
--:-- Tim Pierce: They actually confirmed yesterday that Israel pulled back to the agreed-upon lines, which, of course, is the first condition. The second condition or the second term is for the hostages to be released. So we have people in that region of the world who are going to monitor parts of this peace proposal. But the president is not planning to put boots on the ground in Israel.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All right, so American troops already in the region to monitor rather than new boots on the ground. An important distinction there.
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--:-- Host: Shut down for going on two weeks now and employees are about to start missing paychecks. Some employees, though, might never come back at all. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak is with us to discuss the Trump administration's response to this funding impasse in the Senate.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Hey, John. So week two, where do things stand now?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Well, I'll tell you, traffic here in D.C. has definitely been light for the last couple of weeks since Congress hasn't reached a budget deal. Republicans have, of course, offered a clean continuing resolution, meaning simply continuing to fund the government at current levels until a new budget is finalized. But Democrats want more. They're using the only leverage they really have, which is to block funding entirely unless Republicans agree to put in more money.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: There's definitely some irony in that logic. Yeah. So, you know, the Trump administration essentially seems to be saying now, you know what, if we've been running the government on a skeleton crew of just essential employees for a couple of weeks and nothing catastrophic has happened. Maybe some of these employees aren't so essential to have back even after the shutdown. And so maybe some of these employees should remain home permanently.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Right. Meaning layoffs, permanent layoffs. Yeah. And Trump has indicated that those would especially be targeted to agencies that are historically the darlings of Democrats. Right. That threat has generated a lot of attention.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: So what about the real-life impact so far? Are we seeing the mass firings as the White House has threatened?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah, you got to go through the whole process of what the government calls reduction in force, but the notices have gone out. They have 60 days of warning. And, you know, more than 4,000 employees receive these notices. An official with the Office of Management and Budget told me that 1,400 employees will be laid off at the IRS alone.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: More than 20% of the Department of Education's employees got these notices. And that's even after the really steep cuts that that agency took already in the Trump presidency. And the figure at the Health and Human Service Agency is more than 1,000. And then you have more than 400 at HUD, the Housing and Urban Development Department.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Now, I spoke with a HUD official who said the cuts were primarily in the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Office there, which is an agency or an office that the Biden administration had increased by 20 percent and really expanded its mission to be focusing on things like environmental justice.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: And their view is they're still going to get done all the things they need to be doing enforcing civil rights laws. But it's just kind of getting rid of some extraneous things that had caused the whole department to lose focus.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: We've seen federal employee unions already filing lawsuits about some of this. But it sounds like in some of these cases, it's actually more returning to historical baseline levels. after this growth under the Biden administration, as you discussed. Is that fair to say?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah, I think that's right. As I mentioned, employees have been given these notices, 60-day layoff notices. So we'll see what happens, whether they wind up coming back until that time if a deal is reached to end the shutdown, or whether it turns out that their last day in the office was September 30th.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: As for the employees who aren't actually laid off, how are they affected by a shutdown? So the big thing with any government shutdown is government contractors, they don't work, and they actually never get paid. So it can be hard on them. Federal employees themselves, they traditionally have gotten back pay. So it winds up, frankly, being like a paid vacation for them.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The Trump administration, though, has actually flirted with the idea that maybe this time there won't be back pay. So again, some unforeseen fallout from Democrats that should put more pressure on them.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Now, Trump has also given a directive related to the military. What action is he taking there?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah, so I should have mentioned that there are, of course, some employees working. Those are the so-called essential employees that theoretically are working on things like life and death issues. And of course, the biggest one there is the military. I mean, there's a million troops. The Department of War is going to move money around inside the department and use some other accounts to cut those paychecks and make sure that at least the troops don't miss a paycheck even temporarily.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Well, the last shutdown, which actually happened in Trump first term lasted about a month We about halfway there so far We see if there any movement from either side of the aisle this week with this paycheck deadline hitting Luke thanks so much for reporting
--:-- Host: Thank you, Luke. Two massive races in Virginia have gained national attention due to a series of controversies and a debate last week that went viral. The race for governor pits Democrat Abigail Spanberger against Republican Winsome Earl Sears. She's the current lieutenant governor. The two went toe-to-toe last week in a debate in which Spanberger attempted to sidestep questions about her past endorsement of Democrat candidate for Attorney General Jay Jones.
--:-- Host: Jones has come under massive pressure amid newly released text of him wishing violent and atrocious acts against specific Republicans. Joining us now to discuss the current state of play in the state of Virginia is Brent Buchanan, founder and president of the Signal Polling Group.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: Hey, great to be back. So your team has done some extensive polling in Virginia and just released a new one that looks at both of these races. What did you find?
--:-- Brent Buchanan: Well, normally governor's races drive down ballot races. And because of the scandal with Democrat Jay Jones and his text messages and the fact that no Democrats are coming out and saying that he should resign, drop out of the race, it's really flipped the race on its head.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: We polled right after Labor Day, both the governor's and attorney general race. The Democrats were leading. And that attorney general's race has flipped totally upside down now. And the Republican leads by two, which is within the margin of error.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: But one of the things we found is that there's a huge swath of voters in Virginia who still have not heard about these text messages. And we went in the field right as the advertising started, making sure that voters were aware of this and not just by watching the news. because even though it's not been on national news, it had been all over Virginia news.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: And it really has damaged the Democrats' image. And then, as you mentioned in your intro on the debate, it's really starting to drag down the Democrat in the governor's race also. In September, we had Winsome Earl Sears down by seven and now have her only down by four and a half.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: And I know that doesn't sound huge, but when you consider how much money has been spent by the Democrats and little in comparison by Sears, it's essentially proof that the AG's race is driving the governor's race now.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: Yeah, I don't know if we've seen something this direct where this one race that's a lower level race is really impacting the higher level gubernatorial race. Obviously, the Jones texting scandal is looming large here.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: There's also the transgender issue that is really starting to hurt the Democrats, Spanberger. What are we seeing with her in terms of the polling at this point?
--:-- Brent Buchanan: Well, that was really interesting to see in the debate where she just refused to answer a question. She's had multiple media interviews since then where she refused to answer the question if she would be okay if men changed in a locker room with her own daughters.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: You know, if Northern Virginia is doing anything right now, it's embarrassing this country with saying that that is an okay behavior. It is not just the texting piece, but you're exactly right. The transgender issue is popping its head back up.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: Obviously, projecting forward is risky, but if you would risk it for us, what do you think is going to happen with both Spanberger and Jones in the coming weeks?
--:-- Brent Buchanan: Well, the Republicans are firing on all cylinders right now, making sure that this is the one issue being spoken about in paid advertising. The challenge is the Democrats still have a very large spending advantage, and there are some key fundamentals to any political campaign, and that is money, message, and messenger.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: and the message and messenger is on the Republican side, but the money is on the Democratic side right now. So I really, I would not be shocked if at some point they got enough bad polling data back, they being the Democrats, that they forced Jay Jones to drop out in order to protect the governor and lieutenant governor's race.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: And there's also legislative races going on right now all across the Commonwealth, too, that if they start seeing bad numbers across the board, they might make him the sacrificial lamb.
--:-- Host: Well, just fascinating to see this kind of movement this late in our race. We'll see what happens in three weeks when voters take to the polls. Brent, thanks so much for coming on.
--:-- Brent Buchanan: Thanks, John. Thanks for waking up with us.
