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--:-- 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: In a historic moment over the weekend, former President Trump appeared at the Libertarian Party convention, asking them to unite behind him. Because we have to get rid of the worst president in history, and together we will. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley, joined this week by our guest host, Michelle Tafoya, host of the Michelle Tafoya podcast.
--:-- Michelle Tafoya: Michelle, welcome. Glad to have you on. Great to be here.
--:-- Host John Bickley: It is Tuesday, May 28th, and this is Morning Wire. Donald Trump's New York City hush money trial could reach a verdict this week with closing arguments set to begin this morning. This judge is the judge that determines the jury instructions, the roadmap for non-attorneys and jurors to follow the law. And Hollywood suffers box office bombs as the summer blockbuster season kicks off. What do the flops mean for the already struggling film industry?
--:-- Michelle Tafoya: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Are you having trouble falling or staying asleep? Well, then you got to try Beam's Dream Powder. Beam Dream has been an absolute game changer for the whole team at Daily Wire. Other sleep aids can cause next day grogginess, but Dream contains a powerful all-natural blend of reishi, magnesium, L-theanine, apigenin, and melatonin to help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed. If you want to try Beam's best-selling Dream Powder, then go to shopbeam.com slash wire and use code wire at checkout for up to 40% off. That's shopbeam.com slash wire and use code wire for up to 40% off.
--:-- Host John Bickley: As President Biden continues to face mounting electoral headwinds, his opponent, Donald Trump, appeared at a major third-party convention this weekend, looking to expand his base of support. Here to discuss that and more is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hey, Cabot, so what took place over this holiday weekend on that front?
--:-- Host John Bickley: Yeah, this was the first time in modern history that a major party nominee has addressed the nominating convention of another party. For context, the Libertarian Party, which skews fiscally conservative and socially liberal, is among the most widely recognized third parties. They'll appear on the ballot in at least 37 states this year, likely 48 or 50 when all is said and done. Now, historically, they only pull in around 1 to 3 percent of the vote, but that can still have an outsized impact on the race. And explains why Trump made this appearance in the first place, which, as you mentioned, is a first.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Exactly. Now, as a Republican nominee, Trump is technically barred from winning their nomination, but he appeared anyway. Focusing on shared interests like government deregulation, defending capitalism, and protecting cryptocurrency. He even promised at one point to appoint a libertarian to his cabinet. But despite his call to, quote, unite and become unstoppable, a number of attendees loudly booed and heckled him throughout. And that drew out a more combative Trump who went on to mock their electoral track record.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now I think you should nominate me or at least vote for me and we should win together. Or you can keep going the way you have for the last long decades and get you 3% and meet again and get another 3%. Now you want to make yourself winners It time to be winners You have a lot of common sense Pretty raucous event there
--:-- Host John Bickley: Now Trump wasn't the only non-candidate at the convention. Robert F Kennedy Jr also made an appearance albeit one with fewer fireworks. Kennedy is still averaging double-digit support in national polls and is clearly looking to coalesce that third-party vote, essentially arguing, if you want to cast a protest vote, give it to the guy who will make the biggest splash.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, ultimately, libertarian delegates picked little-known activist Chase Oliver as their nominee. Oliver, an openly gay former Democrat, has drawn criticism from right-leaning libertarians over his past support of open borders and abolishing ICE, as well as his defense of sex change or so-called gender transition surgery for minors. But it's worth noting, he's already played spoiler before. In the 2020 Georgia Senate race that ultimately decided the Senate majority, Republican Herschel Walker lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock by less than 1%. Oliver pulled in 2% of the vote.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So now the question becomes, how many ballots he'll appear on this November, and whether he'll pull in more Republican or Democrat support. Speaking of Democrats, we saw some more concerning data for President Biden over the weekend. Tell us about that.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Yeah, every week now there's a new poll or survey coming out that seems to spell bad news for Democrats. So just ahead of the 2020 election, Gallup asked voters which candidate they felt would govern more effectively. At the time, Biden came out on top 52 to 48, which was, it's worth noting, almost identical to the final popular vote margin. Well, this weekend, they asked the same question, and it was Trump on top, this time by a margin of 49 to 39. So a 14-point swing. And one more sign of Trump momentum.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Last month, political betting markets had Joe Biden with a two-point advantage to win re-election. Today, the markets have Trump as the favorite by a 19-point margin. So a 21-point swing in Vegas in just a month. Still a long way to go until November, but a lot of Republicans right now are hoping the election were tomorrow.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Yeah, I bet they are.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Kevin, thanks for reporting.
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--:-- Host John Bickley: Closing arguments will take place this morning in Donald Trump's New York City hush money trial, and it is possible the jury could reach a verdict this week. Here to discuss what we should expect as the spectacle winds down is Daily Wire contributor David Marcus.
--:-- David Marcus: Hey, Dave. So before the jury gets the case, they'll hear closing arguments and also Judge Juan Mershon's instructions. Now, first, there's been a bit of controversy there as Mershon has ruled that the jury does not have to agree on what the underlying crime is. Can you explain that?
--:-- Host John Bickley: Morning, John. And let me see if I can simplify this a bit. The bookkeeping crime charged by prosecutors, which is to say labeling the hush money payment as legal fees instead of payoff reimbursement or something, that's only a misdemeanor and the statute of limitations had run out on it. So it wasn't a crime that was chargeable at this point. The DA argued that the bookkeeping mistake or crime was in furtherance of a felony, which would erase the statute of limitations. The question, though, for the whole trial has been, what exactly is the felony Trump is guilty of?
--:-- David Marcus: On that, prosecutors have been intentionally unclear. Trump isn't charged with any actual specific election crime, like interference or fraud. But Judge Marchand sided with former Biden DOJ prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, ruling that the jury does not even have to agree on what exactly the election crime was to convict Trump on the bookkeeping This helps prosecutors because it provides a lot more paths to potential guilty verdicts on any of the more than 30 charges This is also an issue that both sides can bring up in their summations, and maybe we will get a clearer description of the underlying crime from the prosecution.
--:-- David Marcus: Speaking of summations, it seems like an awful lot is riding on them since there's no real smoking gun here. What should we be looking for from each set of attorneys? The prosecution knows its star witness Michael Cohen did not exactly come across like George Washington unable to tell a lie. The jury was treated to his long litany of lies, some of which he's been convicted for, as well as a lie of omission in this very trial about a phone call in which he claimed he told Trump Stormy Daniels had been paid. So they will use the documentary testimony from earlier in the trial to try to buttress Cohen's cracked credibility, backing up at least in part some of his assertions about Trump wanting to pay off because of the election.
--:-- David Marcus: Could be a big lift. Yeah. And the defense, what do we expect there? And the defense has a few options. It'll be interesting to see what they do. They could really just say, look, there's no crime here. Cohen was Trump's lawyer, so this was part of his legal fee as listed. They'll also say it has not been proven that Trump's sole intent in paying Daniels was the election and not, say, to protect his family. They may not go all in on all of the nitty gritty of the prosecution case, in part so as not to give it credence, but expect big things like Cohen lying on the stand to be featured.
--:-- David Marcus: Yeah. Now, finally, to the jury, how soon could they have the case? And do we have any idea how long deliberations in a case like this might go? They could be deliberating as early as this afternoon. The more likely would be tomorrow.
--:-- Host John Bickley: I once knew a very well-respected trial lawyer and sports gambler in Philadelphia, John. And he told me once, David, two things you never bet on hockey and juries. So I won't try to do that here. But by all accounts, they've been very attentive and they have to understand the profound gravity of this case. Well, the whole country watching how this unfolds with rapt attention. Dave, thanks for reporting.
--:-- David Marcus: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Host John Bickley: Furiosa and Garfield, two movies expected to launch the summer blockbuster season tanked at the box office. The long weekend's combined earnings marked the worst Memorial Day showing in 30 years. Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is here with more on Hollywood's Memorial Day meltdown.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Megan, studios really look to this weekend to set the tone for their most profitable quarter of the year. But audiences just weren't that interested in seeing the two new big releases, Furiosa, a Mad Max saga, and the Garfield movie. How badly did they perform?
--:-- Host John Bickley: You know, Michelle, I have to say, I think it's hard to overstate flops of this magnitude. So Furiosa was very well reviewed. Its predecessor, Mad Max, Fury Road, was a big hit in 2015. And I think expectations were really high, but it didn't just disappoint, it positively bombed. So it earned only around $31 million over the four-day holiday weekend. And just to give you a little contrast. In 2022, Top Gun Maverick took in $160 million in that same time frame. And then you've got Garfield. So, you know, it was never likely to set the world on fire, but it did look like a reliable family offering and it had little competition this weekend for that demographic. Also, its budget was much lower, a modest $60 million, yet it still underperformed those modest expectations, also coming in around 31 million. Ouch.
--:-- Megan Basham: So what is the reasoning? Why do people think that these two movies bombed so incredibly hard? Well I think we have to first look at them in terms of the movie business overall struggles So the past few weeks have seen a number of big budget disappointments There Ryan Gosling Fall Guy and If which was a new animated family movie starring Ryan Reynolds. And both of those movies had positive reviews, likable casts, but they also failed to score with audiences. And I've mentioned this before, but I do think we may also need to look at franchise fatigue. Now, Maverick may have been an outlier there because it was a unique case of a very beloved character coming back after a nearly 40-year hiatus with an equally beloved actor. Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Taylor-Joy, they're popular actors, but you could argue that they aren't old-school stars on that same level of magnitude as a Tom Cruise. Their names alone aren't going to put rears in the seats. So, you know, the streaming schedule studios creating could also be contributing to this problem. The Fall Guy, for instance, hit theaters on May 3rd, but it started streaming on May 21st. So really just a couple of weeks later, Furiosa is expected to hit video on demand only a few weeks after its theatrical release early July. So a lot of former moviegoers may just decide, hey, I'll wait and I'll watch it at home. And I do think that is related to what is, my guess, the biggest cause, the economy. So inflation means movie tickets are up right along with the cost of everything else. Right now, the average ticket price is between $13 and $14. You compare that to 2019, it was only around $9. So add in the higher prices on snacks, drinks, a lot of people figure, unless you're showing me something really groundbreaking and new, like say Barbie or Oppenheimer, I'm just going to save my money.
--:-- Megan Basham: So what does this awful, awful weekend mean for Hollywood overall? What's the outlook? You know, I think traditional studios do have to be pretty worried right now. Ticket sales are lagging 22% behind where they were at this point last year. Much more concerning, they are 41% behind 2019, the pre-pandemic era. So this is a huge problem because summer, as you said, is when studios make most of their money. 40% of their annual domestic revenue comes from just that three-month period. So if summer bombs, almost no chance for them to recover for the entire rest of the year.
--:-- Megan Basham: Wow, that is depressing for Hollywood. So are there any hopeful signs on the summer movie calendar as we look ahead? Well, there is one major wrinkle. So due to delays and schedule shifts coming out of those big writers and director strikes, Hollywood's biggest studio, Disney, has not had a single wide release yet this year. They'll have two major movies, though, in June and July. So first Inside Out 2 and then Deadpool and Wolverine. So I'm going to be watching to see how those two films do in particular. They really look like the only hope for getting this summer back on track. If they underperform, it's really going to be code red. Certainly not a reassuring start to this make or break season for the industry.
--:-- Host John Bickley: You've said it well, Megan. Thank you so much for the reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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