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--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, October 28th, and this is Morning Wire. Kamala Harris faces some surprise headwinds from legacy media outlets and high-profile Democrats, undermining her claims about Trump. I don't think it's fitting to anyone to state that the former president is equal to being Hitler. And Israel unleashes its most destructive strike ever against Iran. How will the U.S. election impact Iran's response? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We have the news you need to know. With everything going on in America these days, turning off your mind at night can feel impossible. That's why I'm excited about Dream Powder from Beam. It's a delicious science-backed hot cocoa that's completely transformed my sleep. Just mix it with hot milk or water before bed, in this natural blend of reishi, magnesium, and other sleep-supporting ingredients, it'll knock you right out. And without that groggy feeling in the morning, too. Right now, Beam is offering our listeners exclusive early access to their Cyber Monday sale. Get up to 50% off when you visit shop at beam.com slash wire and use code wire for up to 50% off.
--:-- John Bickley: With eight days remaining until election day, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump make a series of high-profile campaign stops as they race to the finish line. But none so massive as Trump's Madison Square Garden event. Here with the latest from the trail is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hey, Cabot, so barely one week to go. Some major events over the weekend set the scene for us. Yeah, eight days out, and based on polling, this continues to be the tightest presidential race of the century. On Saturday, for the first time since August, Donald Trump briefly overtook Kamala Harris in the real clear average of national polls. With the race a dead heat, both candidates are doing all they can to grab the headlines. And that resulted in some of the biggest events of the entire campaign this weekend.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So let's start with Trump and that enormous rally in New York City. What did we see there? Yeah, Trump said he wanted to wrap up campaign season with a bang. And he did just that, selling out the iconic Madison Square Garden last night. There were thousands more supporters who flooded bars and restaurants in the area to watch on TV. Now, while the odds of Trump winning New York are quite slim, this event was a lot more about grabbing the headlines and showing that he can still draw a massive crowd in the bluest of cities.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The event featured Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, UFC boss Dana White, Dr. Phil, Hulk Hogan. The list goes on. It was a raucous night. Have a listen. He's tough as an old army boot. They have impeached him, indicted him, shot him, and sued him. He is still standing. America is going to reach heights that it has never seen before. The future is going to be amazing This is the city where I was born and raised and this is the town that taught me that Americans can do anything when they want to So no matter our differences, when we work together, there is nothing that we cannot achieve.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, the New York event wasn't the only high-profile appearance from the former president this weekend, correct? Right. On Friday, Trump appeared on Joe Rogan's massively influential podcast for a three-hour unedited conversation. Within 24 hours, that interview had been viewed 26 million times on YouTube alone. It hit about 30 million by yesterday. That makes it the fourth most viewed podcast in the show's history, again, in just 24 hours.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And it's worth noting, there were numerous reports that Harris had been in negotiations for an appearance of her own, but actually backed out when Rogan's team informed her that no topic would be off limits. All right, so she's potentially missed a chance for massive exposure there. Now, Harris held a big event of her own this weekend. Tell us about that. Yeah, Harris has increasingly relied on big-name celebrities to draw supporters in battlegrounds. And on Friday, Beyonce turned out for an event in Houston. Initial reports had indicated she would be giving a performance, but Beyonce fans were left disappointed when she only spoke for around three minutes before Harris came on stage. In fact, many supporters apparently left when it was clear that she was not going to perform.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We've seen a noticeable shift in messaging from the Harris campaign in this last week. What are we hearing from her? Right. So Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Tim Walz, tried to compare the Madison Square Garden rally to the infamous pro-Nazi demonstration held there back in 1939, claiming the similarities supposedly were not a coincidence. As Trump has continued to gain ground in the polls, we've seen Harris fully lean into that Trump is a fascist line of attack, outright comparing him to Hitler, saying he will embrace a Nazi-style regime if elected. The DNC went as far as projecting the words Trump praised Hitler onto the outside of Madison Square Garden as he spoke.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: In response, the Trump campaign released this video featuring a 94-year-old survivor of Auschwitz. Wortski attended the rally at the Garden. For her to accuse President Trump of being like Hitler is the worst thing I've ever heard in my 75 years living in the United States. She owns my parents and everybody else who was murdered by Hitler in apology for repeating this lie. So Democrats returning to the heightened attacks we saw before the first assassination attempt against Trump. See if that helps or hurts Harris in these crucial final days. Some desperate campaigning going on in these final days.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Kappa, thanks for reporting. Anytime. What's the secret sauce behind wildly successful businesses? It's not great products or brilliant marketing. It's the unsung hero, the business behind the business. For millions of entrepreneurs, that hero is Shopify. Shopify boasts the number one checkout on the planet. With ShopPay, they boost conversions up to 50%. That means more sales and fewer abandoned carts. Get a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash morningwire. That's shopify.com slash morningwire.
--:-- John Bickley: After 47 years, the Washington Post announced that it's ending its policy of endorsing presidential candidates. The Los Angeles Times also says it won't endorse a candidate this go-round. This comes after the Teamsters and the International Association of Firefighters chose not to endorse Harris. And as some Democrats are starting to admit that Trump's popularity has never been higher. Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with more.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Megan for The Washington Post and The L Times to both announce that for the first time in decades they not going to make a presidential endorsement seems pretty seismic What going on here Well of course there the official PR reason both papers are offering They're saying that this is simply an effort to maintain political neutrality and independence. But I don't think anybody really believes that that's all that's happening here.
--:-- Megan Basham: Because for one thing, it's not like Jeff Bezos or Patrick Soon-Chiang, who is the biotech billionaire who owns the LA Times. It's not like they made these decisions early in the election cycle. They both waited until less than two weeks before election day when it was sure to create some pretty heated reaction. And it definitely did. Both papers are seeing resignations and mass outcry from their editorial staff right now. In fact, Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan, just to give you one example, publicly resigned hours after the announcement.
--:-- Megan Basham: And so there's been a lot of speculation that Bezos and Sun Xiong think there's a good chance that come 2025, Donald Trump will be in the Oval Office again. And they don't want to have an antagonistic relationship with the new administration when it does come time to seek those federal contracts or approvals for their other businesses. Well, and technically the polls and most of the media are calling this an extremely tight race. But you think it sounds like the billionaire class at least is privately hedging that it's going to be a Trump victory.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, I think there's no denying that there's an energy around the Trump campaign right now, a certain optimism that we're just not seeing with Harris. And you're starting to hear even Democrats talking about Trump in a way that suggests even they feel this vibe shift, as the kids say. So in Pennsylvania, which of course is the state that everyone expects to decide this election, its Democratic senator, John Fetterman, just told The New York Times that he's witnessing incredible enthusiasm on the ground for Trump.
--:-- Megan Basham: I was doing an event in Indiana County, very, very red. And there was a superstore of Trump stuff. And it was dozens of T-shirts and hats and bumper stickers and all kinds. I mean, it's like, where does this all come from? I mean, it was almost like Taylor Swift kind of swag. It's like of everything. It wasn't just a sign. It's the kinds of thing that has taken on its own life on that. And it's like something very special exists there. And that doesn't mean that I admire it. It's just like it's real.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, this comes after Democrats running for reelection in some vulnerable states have been out touting their ability to work with Trump. Senators Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania are really only a couple of the examples. And there's also plenty of other anecdotal evidence that big business does think they're going to have to work with the Trump administration. So sources told CNN that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called Trump for what they described as a general hello type of thing. And then Mark Zuckerberg, we've seen him out praising Trump for showing immediate composure and determination after getting shot in Butler, Pennsylvania.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, you know, I don't want to be in the business of prediction, but certainly we seem to be seeing big business moving to ensure that it's going to have a good relationship with another potential Trump administration. Well, at the end of the day, these people do care about their business interests before their politics. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime.
--:-- John Bickley: Israel's military capability was on full display on Saturday when it launched precision strikes against military targets inside Iran. The attack is Israel's first attack inside Iran to be publicly acknowledged by the Jewish state. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about Israel long counter against Iran.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey Tim So reports say this was a calibrated and precise strike What exactly did Israel hit Yeah according to reports Israel used its air force to strike about 20 targets inside Iran. Those targets included radar stations, air defenses, and missile production facilities. Reports suggest that it could take Iran years to repair that damage.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari confirming the attack in a statement. We demonstrated today that we have both the capability and the resolve to act decisively. And we are prepared on offense and defense to defend the state of Israel and the people of Israel. Iran downplayed the attack and said that four Iranian soldiers had died and that the strikes had targeted three military installations.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The regime claims Iran's air defense has limited that damage. Here's how Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei responded. The Zionist regime's calculations must be stopped. They are making serious mistakes in judgment. It's up to the country's authorities to determine the appropriate response that best serves the interests of the nation and the country.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It's not clear how Iran will choose to respond to this attack. But what is clear, according to analysts, is that Israel has shown it can deliver significant strikes inside Iran on Iranian soil. On the other hand, Iran hasn't caused more than superficial damage in two major missile attacks now on Israel on April 13th and October 1st. Right. Now, what's the likely fallout now? What are the chances that Iran responds or is actually deterred by this latest attack?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, a few factors play into that. Mark Dubowitz at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy says an immediate Iranian response seems unlikely given Israel's military superiority. But the major concern now is Iran's work towards a nuclear weapon and how much time that would take to finish. As Israeli officials have said over and over again, that would be an existential threat to Israel.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Some projections suggest that Iran could build a crude warhead within several months. According to Dubowitz, the outcome of the U.S. presidential election could impact that timeline as well. If Trump wins, the Iranian regime may feel pressure to escalate as much as possible before Trump restores a maximum pressure policy and undercuts Iran economically. There's also another factor here, reports of Iran's supreme leader being seriously ill. If that's true, that could put more pressure on the regime to strike sooner rather than later.
--:-- Tim Pierce: On the other hand, if Harris wins the election, Iran may be more content to see where U.S. policy heads. Now, as we've noted prior to the attack, the Biden administration had advised Israel on what targets to hit. How has the White House responded to these strikes? Right. President Biden pushed Israel to avoid hitting Iran's nuclear program, since U.S. officials believed that would be too escalatory.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That followed the U.S. pressuring Israel to restrain itself after Iran's April 13th attack, which obviously did not prevent another attack earlier this month. But Biden appears to be content with how Israel chose to respond and told reporters that he hopes that this is the end of escalation between Israel and Iran. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that Israel did warn him ahead of the strike, That's somewhat surprising because that followed a leak of confidential information from the U.S. to Iran on Israel's response.
--:-- Tim Pierce: On the other hand, some of Israel's most influential officials say the attack didn't go far enough. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said Prime Minister Netanyahu bowed to pressure from the U.S. and, quote, should have made Iran pay a much higher price. Netanyahu, for his part, said U.S. pressure did not factor into the Israeli response. Still a very tenuous situation in the Middle East. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
