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--:-- Host: 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.
--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: Trump hammers out a deal with Zelensky designed to pay back Americans for years of financial and military support. The American taxpayer now is going to get their money back plus. We break down the latest on the negotiations.
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--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, February 27th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Host: John Bickley: President Trump announces a new fast-track immigration program at his first cabinet meeting.
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--:-- Host: John Bickley: You have a green card. This is a gold card. We're going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million. Will this help pay down our national debt?
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--:-- Host: John Bickley: And several legacy media outlets are caught misleading their audience on viral anti-Doge protests. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: Your personal data from contact details to family information is constantly collected and sold online by data brokers. There's more out there than you'd expect. That's why I personally recommend Delete Me. Delete Me is a subscription service that removes your personal info from hundreds of data brokers. Delete Me sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where they found it and what they removed. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Today, get 20% off your DeleteMe plan by texting WIRE to 64000. Text WIRE to 64000. That's WIRE to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details.
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--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: The U.S. and Ukraine have reached a potentially game-changing agreement, coming to terms on a long-awaited mineral deal. Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips has been tracking this story and joins us now.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hey, Cabot. So Trump and Zelensky are finally ironing things out here. We'll get to the specifics of what's included. But first, how did we get to this point?
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, it's been a turbulent three years, John. So last year, as Trump campaigned on a promise to cut back funding for Ukraine and end the war quickly, Vladimir Zelensky threw out the idea of a minerals deal where the U.S. would get a piece of Ukraine's natural resources in exchange for continued military support and security guarantees after the war ended.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, once Trump won, he took him up on the idea, saying America deserved to be paid back to the tune of $500 billion in the form of oil, gas, and rare earth mineral contracts. Zelensky initially balked at those figures, saying he would not, quote, sell his country, but the two kept negotiating, as Trump loves to do, and ultimately reached a deal.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Trump says that he will meet with Zelensky on Friday to sign the final terms. It could be a trillion-dollar deal, it could be whatever, but it's rare earths and other things. We want to get that money back. We're helping the country through a very, very big problem.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the big question, what exactly is in this deal? Well, both sides have been tight-lipped on the specific numbers, but according to Ukraine's prime minister, it would establish a, quote, reconstruction investment fund that would be jointly managed by the two countries. Moving forward, 50 percent of revenues from new oil, gas, and mineral projects would go into that fund.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: The deal is also expected to grant American companies more direct access to the country's mineral reserves, which is crucial. Remember Ukraine has some of the world's largest deposits of graphite, lithium, uranium, and titanium, all of which are critical for producing high-tech batteries, electronics, and weapons.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, at the moment, China is responsible for around 90% of rare earth mineral production. So this deal could make the U.S. far less reliant on Beijing. Yeah, another key priority of the Trump administration.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: And what did the Ukrainians get from this? Trump says they've already gotten their part of the deal in the form of $100 billion-plus in military and financial aid. But it does appear the U.S. will also agree to some form of security guarantee.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to The New York Times, the agreement says that in exchange for minimal rights, the U.S. would, quote, support Ukraine's effort to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace. That could mean Trump working out an agreement with European allies where they would supply boots on the ground after the war to prevent Russia from invading again.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: But it's worth noting Trump has been hesitant to offer too much in the way of a security guarantee. He's argued that the economic deal is all the assurance that Zelensky should need, that the U.S. is incentivized to keep Ukraine secure from Russia.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here's National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to that point on Fox. We presented the Ukrainians really an incredible and historic opportunity to have the United States of America co-invest with Ukraine, invest in its economy, invest in its natural resources, and really become a partner in Ukraine's future in a way that's sustainable, but also would be, I think, the best security guarantee they could ever hope for, much more than another pallet of ammunition.
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--:-- Host: John Bickley: Now this all comes as Trump is working on separate negotiations with Moscow to end the war there. What's the latest on that front?
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the White House says they're still hammering out the details for a sit-down with Trump and Putin. President says he's confident they'll finalize a deal that will be favorable for all parties. And that deal could also include some economic partnerships regarding oil and rare earth minerals.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Trump said they've been, quote, trying to do some economic development deals with Moscow. Russia has been largely shut out from the global economy since their invasion of Ukraine. And it's clear Trump wants to use that economic leverage to bring Putin to the table.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: That negotiating, though, has drawn criticism from many on the left who say Trump is playing into Russia's hand. Trump's cabinet convened for the first time yesterday. We'll hear more on that later. And VP Vance had some strong words in response.
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--:-- VP Vance: We're not going to do the negotiation in public with the American media. He's going to do it in private with the president of Russia, with the president of Ukraine, and with other leaders. Every single time the president engages in diplomacy, you guys preemptively accuse him of conceding to Russia. He hasn't conceded anything to anyone. He's doing the job of a diplomat.
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--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: We're not going to do the negotiation in public with the American media. He's going to do it in private with the president of Russia, with the president of Ukraine, and with other leaders. Every single time the president engages in diplomacy, you guys preemptively accuse him of conceding to Russia. He hasn't conceded anything to anyone. He's doing the job of a diplomat.
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--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: So the big question is, what exactly is in this deal? Well, both sides have been tight-lipped on the specific numbers, but according to Ukraine's prime minister, it would establish a, quote, reconstruction investment fund that would be jointly managed by the two countries. Moving forward, 50 percent of revenues from new oil, gas, and mineral projects would go into that fund.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, the aim is to use it to replace the EB-5 program. That's a program that was launched in the 90s to spur job creation and investment from foreigners in exchange for a green card.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explaining it during Wednesday's cabinet meeting. So the EB-5 program, which has been around for many years, had investment of a million dollars into projects in America. And those projects were often suspect. They really didn't work out. There wasn't any oversight of it. And so for a million-dollar investment, you got a visa, and then you came into the country and ended up with a green card.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: So the idea is we will have a proper business. We will modify the EB-5 agreement. Christy and I are working on it together. So the idea is this would give better oversight than the current EB-5 program.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, there's also a pro-business angle, though. What's in it for businesses? Right. The program can be used by companies to recruit top-tier talent internationally. Here's President Trump talking about that.
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--:-- Host: John Bickley: I get calls from, as an example, companies where they want to hire the number one student at a school. A person comes from India, China, Japan, and lots of different places. And they go to Harvard, to Wharton School of Finance. They go to Yale. They go to all great schools. And they graduate number one on their class. And they made job offers, but the offer is immediately rescinded because you have no idea whether or not that person can stay in the country. I want to be able to have that person stay in the country.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: These companies can go and buy a gold card, and they can use it as a matter of recruitment. The president said the money made from this program will be used to pay down some of the United States' nearly $37 trillion debt.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, another immigration initiative is the illegal alien registry. What would that look like? Sure. So the Trump administration wants to create a criminal penalty for those illegal aliens who are in the country and have never interacted with the government.
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--:-- Kristi Noem: The Alien Registration Act says that within 30 days of being in this country illegally, someone must register with the federal government. They will be fingerprinted. They must announce that they are here. And if they do so, they can avoid criminal charges and fines, and we will help them relocate right back to their home country.
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--:-- Kristi Noem: And what this does is provide them an opportunity to come back someday and to be a part of the American dream.
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--:-- Kristi Noem: Now, is it actually legal to create a registry like that? The Trump administration would go to a law passed in 1940. That law created an immigration registry to help catch suspected communists. The authority fell out of use in the 60s, though, after lawmakers found the program to be too costly and not of much benefit.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: So there were two groups primarily behind these protests, first being Indivisible, the second being Move On. They are very well-funded liberal organizations who have been organizing protests like this for some time.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: And what was interesting in this case is these protests occurred during the congressional recess, the House recess. They just came back in session. And Move On and Indivisible were very public and very forthcoming in the fact that they were planning these protests.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: They had their own statements released. They had toolkits that they put out for their members on how to find these town halls what to say when they got to them The whole works They also planted a story with the Associated Press in which their leaders said very explicitly that we are ramping up these protests during the House recess and here's what we're going to be doing and you should watch for this.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: And so it was very telling then when we saw this wave of mainstream media coverage come out on these protests that portrayed them in a very different light and alluded to sort of the broad and bipartisan backlash that Doge and Elon Musk were generating through their efforts to slash government spending.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: And you did not see mention of these groups and organizations driving them. What was so interesting about it to me is how public these groups were in touting their role in these protests even before they happened. And yet you don't see mention of these things in these stories.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: Now, you name three different outlets, The New York Times, Washington Post, and CBS News. So really the tip top of the legacy media in terms of influence. They specifically omitted this very clear, easy to discover detail in terms of the funding and promotion of these protests, correct?
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--:-- Colin Anderson: That's right. Yeah. And there were some really interesting examples, particularly in CBS News. The protest in the town hall that went particularly viral was a Rich McCormick town hall in Georgia, particularly in suburban Atlanta. He's in a deep red district. And there were some very sort of chaotic videos that came from it of folks shouting him down.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: And CBS quoted one of the organizers. Her name is Maggie Goldman. And they quote her essentially just as a McCormick constituent. She says that she brought lots of folks to the town hall. CBS doesn't explicitly say that these folks are Democrats or liberals or liberal activists.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: And yet, if you just sort of Google around, it's very obvious. You know, Maggie Goldman was a volunteer coordinator for Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign. She contributes routinely to Democrats. She ran for her county commission in this area as a Democrat on an agenda of inclusivity.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: And so that's what was so stunning to me going through this coverage is this was really low-hanging fruit in terms of the allegiances and the affiliations of these people. And it was either ignored or deliberately omitted.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: Right. And look, the larger context here is that the polling pretty consistently shows a lot of support right now for not just Trump, but also Musk's efforts. What have you seen in terms of the polling data, the focus groups? How are people responding so far to Doge's actions?
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--:-- Colin Anderson: Sure. On the polling side, it seems like as of now, the efforts are generally supported, particularly when they're worded as targeting waste and fraud. We've seen a little bit of a mixed bag in the focus groups.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: There was an Axios focus group, for example, that featured swing voters in Arizona. And of these swing voters, there were 11 in total. Eight of them proved of Musk's efforts in the administration, and several of them particularly expressed the view that waste, fraud, and abuse are so prevalent in the federal government that those could go about slashing spending without really hurting core services.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: The left seems to feel very confident in this case that regardless of whether these protests are grassroots or astroturfed, that Elon and Doge is sort of this rallying figure that is uniting and exciting their members in a way that perhaps they weren't fired up before.
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--:-- Colin Anderson: I'm not so sure that that's the case yet. It does appear that Musk has become the new strategic target of the left after the repeated failures to bring Trump down.
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--:-- Host: Georgia Howe: Colin, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, really appreciate it. Always happy to. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you enjoyed what you heard this morning, please consider sharing this episode with a friend.
