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--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: Several thousand people are dead and cities reduced to rubble after parts of Turkey and Syria were rocked by two massive earthquakes. We break down the devastating damage report and look at the international response. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, February 7th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: President Biden will give his State of the Union speech tonight, but it comes amid signs he's losing support within his own party. Will waning approval affect his messaging and his approach to 2024? And more revelations have come to light regarding the downed Chinese spy balloon, while claims of other balloon occurrences have surfaced. How much were the Chinese able to transmit out? Were we able to jam it? And it did fly over our most sensitive ICBM missile sites.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: One of our precious metal experts. Text WIRE to 989898 today.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: A 7.8 magnitude earthquake shook portions of Syria and Turkey on Monday morning. The quake leveled buildings and killed thousands of people, with many more missing. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to tell us about the disaster.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So, a massive tragedy unfolding in the Middle East. What can you tell us?
--:-- Tim Pierce: The earthquake's epicenter hits southern Turkey near the city of Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border. It was one of the most powerful earthquakes ever to hit Turkey, and maybe the most powerful ever recorded in the region. And the aftershocks were themselves major earthquakes. One measured just slightly less powerful at a 7.5 magnitude, and a couple others were recorded at over a 6.0 magnitude.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Most of the damage took place across southern Turkey and northern Syria, though some reports say tremors were felt about 400 miles away from the epicenter. As of Monday, several thousand people have been declared dead, and thousands more are missing or wounded. And since the earthquake, videos have surfaced online showing some of what happened, and the footage is frankly horrifying.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Numerous high-rises and apartment buildings were completely leveled. Emergency crews and bystanders can be seen digging through rubble to find people, and there are rows of body bags. There are fears that crews won't be able to reach some of the more rural parts of Turkey to help the trapped and wounded before it's too late.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Just to give listeners an idea of how powerful this earthquake was, one of the buildings destroyed was the Ghaziantep Castle. That castle was finished under Byzantine Emperor Justinian around the middle of the 6th century. Now it had undergone renovations between now and then, but it had remained essentially unchanged for more than a thousand years until Monday's earthquake.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now most of it is either badly damaged or just rubble. Now there's been a pretty big international response to this quake. What are we hearing from the White House?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, the Biden administration is working on a disaster response. The United States quickly deployed two 79 search and rescue teams and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Monday that USAID and other federal agencies were working to assess how the U.S. could best help the recovery effort.
--:-- Tim Pierce: White House Press Secretary Corrine Jean-Pierre gave an update on the U.S. response at the top of her press briefing on Monday. Today, our deepest condolences are with those who have lost loved ones in the devastating earthquakes that have thus far claimed thousands of lives and caused massive destruction in Turkey and Syria.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The president authorized an immediate U.S. response in addition to the U.S. personnel currently on the ground. Now, what's the international response been like? Over a dozen other countries have either made promises of aid or have already sent it. The European Union has dispatched search and rescue teams from over half a dozen countries.
--:-- Tim Pierce: India and Britain are preparing something similar. Israel has promised aid to Turkey and said it would be willing to send aid to Syria as well, even though they're enemy states. Even Ukraine and Russia have volunteered aid.
--:-- Tim Pierce: As of now, the recovery effort is pretty chaotic. Emergency crews have been working around the clock, and then there are the tens of thousands of people that are now homeless to think about. The earthquake hit Turkey in the middle of a winter storm, so shelter and warmth is a major concern for those people who are now effectively refugees in their own country.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It's also important to note that Turkey is in economic crisis, and Syria has been torn apart by civil war. So neither one of these countries actually has much of a safety net to care for the earthquake victims. The United States Geological Survey estimated that the damage from the earthquake could top $1 billion.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, hopefully the worst is over.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire's Tim Pierce.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: Coming up, President Biden faces headwinds ahead of his State of the Union address. This Valentine's Day, give her the gift of silky, naturally nude pajamas available exclusively at Pajamagram. Even more alluring than lingerie, the texture and touch of these pajamas are so soft that you'll both love the way they feel. Go to pajamagram.com right now and use code NUDE to save 25% off your order of naturally nude pajamas. That's pajamagram.com, use code NUDE, N-U-D-E, for 25% off. Don't forget to tell them we sent you.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: As President Biden prepares to give his State of the Union address this evening, a growing number of voters within his own party say they'd like to see another Democrat atop the ticket in 2024. Here are the latest data on where the president stands with voters and how the White House is responding to the mounting pressure against him is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cabot, we'll be back here this evening to break down Biden's State of the Union, and it comes at a politically fraught time for the president. Set the stage here for us.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: It really does. So we've talked plenty on the show about the president's poor approval ratings across the majority of his first term, but it's his performance among his own party base that's turning heads this week. According to two new polls, the majority of Democrat voters now say they want him off the ticket in 2024.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The first from the Associated Press and Nork shows just 37% of Democrats want him to seek a second term, while the second from ABC and The Washington Post shows just 31% of Democrats want him to run again. And among independent voters, 72% say they don't want him running again.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And when you zoom out, look at all voters, 62% say they would be disappointed or angry if he were to win re-election, which is not all that surprising given the fact that approval ratings have hovered in the high 30s and low 40s for the past 18 months.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: What's causing that quick drop off among voters? Yeah, the number one reason appears to be the economy. We've seen the president try to say the economy is actually doing very well and that inflation is better now than it was when he took office, which is just objectively false.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We'll probably hear more claims like that this evening at the speech. But voters have just not responded to that message. According to the ABC poll, 41 of Americans say that they are worse off now than when Biden took office.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The same poll has been asking voters that question since 1986. Get this, no president has ever had a score that bad. For context, at this point in Trump presidency, just 13 of voters said they were worse off than when he took over. So more than three times as many people under Biden saying they're worse off than when he got into office.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So watch tonight to see how the president discusses the economy, whether he tries to empathize with Americans and say that he's aware of how tough things are, or whether he continues that message of, you know, things are better than they seem economically.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: How much of an impact has the classified document scandal had on his support among Democrats? Do we have any clear data on that? So neither poll asks if that's why Democrats want someone else.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But look, the timing is interesting. Biden's support within the party was holding relatively steady as recently as November. For example, in the weeks ahead of the midterms, that same AP poll had 52% of Democrats saying that they did want him to run again.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And given the fact that Democrats fared surprisingly well during midterms, you'd expect his numbers to be higher, not 15 points lower since November. So that classified document scandal very well could be playing into this as voters weigh his electability.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: On that front, the AP poll found that just 16 percent of voters think Biden did nothing wrong when it comes to his handling of classified material. So it is clearly having at least some effect. And there's also the elephant in the room, his age.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: At 80 years old, Biden is already the oldest president in history. And if he were to win a second term, he'd be 86 by the time he left office. We don't have recent polling on that angle, but a number of polls at the end of last year showed a majority of Americans saying that Biden's age concerned them or made it harder for him to do his job effectively.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We've all seen videos of the president appearing to lose his train of thought or looking lost on stage. And as 2024 approaches, don't be surprised if his age becomes even more of a discussion, especially among Democrats hoping to get someone younger on the ticket.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So what are the chances that the nominee for Democrats is not Biden? in 2024? Well, the odds of him being removed from the ticket through the primary process are next to zero.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Many view the Democratic Party making South Carolina the first state to vote in the primary as a sign that they're fully behind Biden. If there was going to be a new candidate, Biden himself would have to make the call to step down. And from what we're being told right now, he's still intent on running, saying it was, quote, his intention to announce in the coming months.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But even members of his own cabinet have been hesitant to voice their support for another run. For example, listen to House Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg responded on Sunday when asked about re-election.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Do you want him to run again? I mean, you saw our poll. A large number of Democrats say they don't want him to run again. He is an absolutely historically successful president, and I want to see that continue.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: It'll be interesting to see if he makes any strategic messaging shifts this evening.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: More details about surveillance operations by China are coming to light, with claims of a handful of other instances of surveillance balloons getting near U.S. territory in recent years, and another balloon crossing over Latin America on Monday.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: The developments have lawmakers on both sides of the aisle demanding answers about how the administration is handling the threat. Joining us to discuss is Stephen Bryan, a former senior Pentagon official and expert in weapons technology, now with the Yorktown Institute.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: So, Stephen, why was this balloon from last week such cause for concern?
--:-- Stephen Bryan: Well, it's certainly a surveillance balloon, but it's probably equipped with much more sensitive equipment than you can put into a satellite. For example, it probably has synthetic aperture radar. It probably has multispectral imaging.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: So it's certainly in that category. Plus, it also gives them the opportunity to see our response time to any incursion. So they able to measure just how quickly we respond or in this particular case as you well know didn't respond.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: This is very aggressive by the Chinese. It's not the only evidence of this aggressiveness by any means but it's very aggressive to send an instrument, a balloon loaded with high-tech equipment, over U.S. airspace and to do so with complete impunity, not expecting the U.S. to respond in any way, shape, or form.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: That doesn't say good things about the United States. It's not the first time there have been other occasions of these balloons going across the U.S. and other countries. Yeah, there's been some controversy over that.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: Some reports say that there have been at least three surveillance balloons over or near U.S. territory in recent years. The New York Times reports that a, quote, handful of balloons have been spotted that had advanced spy capabilities.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: What do we know for sure about past instances of surveillance? Well, the administration says three. I don't know whether to accept or not accept that statement, but let's say we accept it. So three across the continental U.S. and then one over Hawaii in 2022.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: Now, as part of the rationale for allowing the balloon to cross the U.S., the Pentagon assured the public that they felt confident they were protecting any important intel. How could they be confident of that? That's a great story. How can you protect against a synthetic aperture radar, for example? You can't. How do you protect against multispectral imaging? You can't.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: I don't know why they said it, but they've said a lot of things which are dubious. We were also assured that the balloon did not contain anything that could be a threat to the U.S. population. How could we be sure of that? Are there ways to know that with complete certainty? No.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: I mean, the short answer is no, because we don't know what's in it, so how do we know? Now, there have been accusations, including by some political figures, that we're witnessing a concerted effort by officials to downplay the extent of these incursions into our territory.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: What would be the motivation there? Well, I think it's political. I think that the powers that be in DOD, the Pentagon, did not want to get into a cartuffle with the Chinese. So they simply said, well, this is nothing. They have satellites, so they have this, so what? But we're talking about air defenses being surveyed by this balloon, very sophisticated balloon, and the Pentagon did nothing.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: Final question. Do we need congressional follow through here? Should there be hearings on this? There should be hearings because I think the American people ought to know what's going on.
--:-- Stephen Bryan: And the fact that, you know, our nuclear defenses are threatened. I think that's a big deal. And also, I think the American people need to understand that our nuclear defenses are weak. So both those things need to be exposed.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: That was Yorktown Institute's Stephen Bryan.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: Well, that's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
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