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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm your host, John Bickley.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I'm Georgia Howe.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Congressman Jim Jordan released a cache of documents that confirms the White House pressured Facebook to censor speech. One of the executives at Facebook said this is a significant incursion into free expression. They knew it was wrong.
--:-- John Bickley: What evidence does the congressman have and how has the White House responded?
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--:-- John Bickley: New economic data shows the U.S. economy grew more than expected last quarter, prompting optimism on Wall Street and Main Street. Given the resilience of the economy recently, they are no longer forecasting a recession. And there is less than a month until the GOP presidential debate. Whose rhetoric is inspiring voters and whose message is falling flat?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Plus, special counsel Jack Smith expands the indictment against former President Trump. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned.
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--:-- John Bickley: The House Judiciary Committee released messages on Thursday that reveal more about the Biden administration's efforts to censor so-called misinformation. The committee obtained internal communications from Meta that show how pressure from White House officials affected mis- and disinformation policies at Facebook and Instagram.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hi, I'm Tim Pierce, Daily Wire reporter. So what's going on with this new evidence from the committee? This could turn out to be quite significant.
--:-- John Bickley: Some politicos are saying that this is even more damning than the Twitter files.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, released what he called smoking gun documents on Thursday. Jordan made public a handful of internal emails from Meta that suggest the company shifted and bent its moderation policies to fulfill White House requests.
--:-- Tim Pierce: In one instance from July 2021, executives at Meta were pretty concerned over the White House's reaction to a popular meme. Biden senior advisor Andy Slavitt was, quote, outraged that a meme that discouraged getting COVID vaccinated wasn't banned from the platform.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Another Meta email contained talking points for the White House that emphasized action Facebook had taken to reduce the reach of a Tucker Carlson video. The video had been placed in a fact check queue and suppressed by 50 percent, even though, according to the email, the video did not violate Facebook's policies.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All right, so what appears to be action taken by Facebook in direct response to the White House? What was the Biden administration saying publicly on this issue at the time?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Around the same time Meta was having these internal conversations, President Biden was blaming Facebook and the media for, quote, killing people with disinformation.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's Biden on July 16th, 2021. What's your message to platforms like Facebook? They're killing people. I mean they really look the only pandemics we have is among unvaccinated And they killing people
--:-- Tim Pierce: An August 2021 memo showed that Facebook was reviewing its policies to come up with new levers to pull against misinformation And the memo said quote this is stemming from the continued criticism of our approach from the administration, meaning the Biden administration, which included pressure from outside the White House.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Other messages suggest that the Surgeon General was involved in the administration's pressure campaign as well.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, this is the first batch of documents released by the Judiciary Committee, what else can we expect from them?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, Jordan said there will be more to come because Meta has finally started producing meaningful documents. Meta estimates it's turned over roughly 50,000 documents to the committee since February, but Jordan said it was holding back important records until he threatened to hold CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt.
--:-- John Bickley: Morning Wire spoke to Congressman Jordan about the evidence.
--:-- John Bickley: We want the same information we got from Twitter in the Twitter files. Tell us exactly what was going on here, show us the communications internally that demonstrate the pressure that we know was applied by the White House to censor Americans' First Amendment free speech rights.
--:-- John Bickley: We finally got these kind of communications, this kind of information, and it shows exactly what we thought was going to happen. The only thing we had wrong is it's worse than we thought because they knew it was an attack on the First Amendment and they did it anyway because of the pressure and the relationship they wanted to keep with the Biden White House.
--:-- Georgia Howe: As we've reported, the White House was blocked by a court order from communicating with social media companies a few weeks ago over First Amendment concerns, has the White House responded to Jordan's release?
--:-- Corrine Jean-Pierre: We have consistently made clear that we believe social media companies have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects of their platforms that they have on the American people.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, some pretty troubling disclosures here, and it sounds like there's more to come. Tim, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: Coming up, the U.S. economy grew more than expected. New data from the Commerce Department shows that the U.S. economy grew by 2.4 percent last quarter, exceeding projections and temporarily staving off fears of a recession.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So every three months, the Commerce Department releases figures tracking the nation's GDP growth. On Thursday, we learned that America's GDP, that's the total value of all goods and services in the country, grew by 2.4% between April and June.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That's a slight uptick from the first quarter, which saw a 2% increase. Now, while a recession within the next year or two is still a very real possibility, especially with inflation remaining stubbornly high, the news does alleviate some of those concerns.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Remember last year, our overall GDP growth was negative for two straight quarters, leading many economists to predict that we were on the precipice of recession. But since then, we've seen four straight quarters of growth.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So some rare good news on the economic front. Now, what's behind the growth? It's tough to pick just one or two factors, but economists say consumer spending habits are really contributing.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Despite those high inflation rates, Americans are still spending a lot of money on travel and big ticket items like cars and household appliances.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: There was also a huge uptick last quarter in business investing. Now, while high interest rates are keeping smaller and mid-sized businesses from borrowing as much, large corporations invested billions in chip manufacturing plants and electric vehicle factories last quarter due in large part to huge federal subsidies in those sectors
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And the tight labor market is also playing a role While it has cooled a bit in recent months unemployment is still surprisingly resilient sitting at 3.6% right now, which historically is very strong.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the fact that so few Americans are out of work is helping bolster those GDP figures.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, what does all of this mean for the interest rates? Yeah, it's interesting. Those strong jobs figures actually make it more likely that rates will continue to rise or at best hold steady for the near future.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: It might sound counterintuitive, but remember, as we talked about on the show, the Fed wants to see the unemployment rate go up as part of their broader effort to cool the economy and bring inflation down.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: To that point this week, the Fed raised their key interest rate by 0.25 points, bringing overall interest rates to their highest levels in 22 years.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And importantly, they signaled that they're not yet done and will likely raise rates further in the coming months.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So bad news on that front for those in the market for a new house or car.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, what have we heard from the White House on this?
--:-- Karine Jean-Pierre: There was a conversation for almost two years about a recession. And now you have economists saying that because of the work that this president has done these past two years, we're not headed in that way.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But the reality is that while the overall economy might be showing some growth, millions of Americans simply are not feeling much relief.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That tough reality is one reason that so many Americans still have a more dour outlook on the economy despite positive GDP growth.
--:-- Georgia Howe: For example, President Biden might be celebrating the news this week, but a CNBC poll last week showed that just one in three Americans approve of his handling of the economy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, Cabot, thanks so much for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- John Bickley: With less than a month before the first GOP presidential debate, the campaign season is in full swing.
--:-- David Marcus: Hi, I'm David Marcus, Daily Wire contributor. So here we are rapidly approaching the first big showdown. What are we seeing in the polls and on the trail?
--:-- John Bickley: Morning. As we get closer to the first debate, now less than a month away, we're starting to see some new things happening in the polling.
--:-- David Marcus: Perhaps most striking is that Vivek Ramaswamy has passed Mike Pence and moved into third place, albeit in single digits behind Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis in the real clear average of polls.
--:-- David Marcus: We've also seen polling from Iowa and South Carolina that have strong showings for Tim Scott and Nikki Haley.
--:-- David Marcus: All of this somewhat complicates the basic narrative of the DeSantis campaign, which has been, this is a two-man race between the Florida governor and Trump, and that the sooner the others drop out, the better the chance of beating the former president.
--:-- David Marcus: Right. Speaking of the DeSantis campaign, we saw some major shakeups in the past week or so, what they're calling a reset. Is there a pivot happening here?
--:-- David Marcus: There is, and there has been for a few weeks now. Another third of his campaign staff was let go this week, including the firing of a speechwriter.
--:-- David Marcus: And meanwhile, DeSantis himself has been doing more TV interviews. And it seems trying to instill some message discipline by modeling that message himself in his appearances.
--:-- David Marcus: But critics still look at this campaign as somewhat faltering thus far.
--:-- David Marcus: The debate in about three weeks is really keyed in on. If Trump doesn't show up, then DeSantis will be at the center of the stage with a real opportunity to set a new tone for his run
--:-- David Marcus: As DeSantis supporter Hal Lambert told Morning Wire getting media attention away from Trump it's easy If you look at the earned media I think he 10x what Governor DeSantis is And then if you look at that compared to any other candidates, they're not even close.
--:-- David Marcus: So it's kind of 2016 replay where it's just Trump, Trump, Trump.
--:-- David Marcus: As far as Trump goes, do we have any better indication as to whether he's actually planning to show up for the debate or is he likely just to skip it?
--:-- David Marcus: People I've spoken to in Trump's orbit indicate that as it stands right now, with Trump up by around 30 points, there's no upside to his participation.
--:-- David Marcus: And mathematically, that makes a lot of sense. He has the support he needs to win already, according to the polls.
--:-- David Marcus: So why risk a gaffe or a stumble that could eat away at that? But on the other hand, by abandoning the field of play, he could give a Ron DeSantis or a Ramaswamy exactly the star turn that they need.
--:-- David Marcus: And another potential worry for Trump is that Chris Christie is obviously going to focus a lot of fire at the 45th president, and he won't be there to defend himself.
--:-- David Marcus: It's not clear if anyone else on that stage will do it either.
--:-- John Bickley: What are the issues right now that are motivating GOP voters, and how are these candidates positioning themselves to address those concerns?
--:-- David Marcus: The economy, of course, notwithstanding some good news of late regarding inflation and growth, the culture issues, especially surrounding parents' rights, are also animating many conservative voters.
--:-- David Marcus: That is, of course, very much Ron DeSantis' wheelhouse.
--:-- David Marcus: But another big issue right now, and a tricky one for Trump's opponents, is this question of a two-tiered system of justice, bookended by the plea deal for Hunter Biden that was such a sweetheart deal, the judge tossed it, and the endless indictments of Donald Trump, which, as you reported here, heated up even more this week.
--:-- David Marcus: Both Ramaswamy and DeSantis have indicated that they would take much stronger control over the Department of Justice elected.
--:-- David Marcus: But on the whole, it's hard to see how this issue does anything but help Trump, since he is, after all, the interested, and in the eyes of many Republicans, the rightfully aggrieved party.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, finally, are we going to see some of the minor candidates drop out sooner rather than later or are most likely to roll the dice in the first few primaries before throwing in the towel?
--:-- David Marcus: It seems like anyone who makes the debate stage, which now includes Governor Doug Burgum and Chris Christie, are likely in it until at least the first contest.
--:-- David Marcus: One wild card is Mike Pence. He has yet to qualify for the debate. He still needs more individual donors.
--:-- David Marcus: But the assumption of most politicos is that he'll squeak by and he'll be on that stage.
--:-- John Bickley: Things have already been intriguing to this point, but the drama is about to really turn up.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Another story we're tracking this week. Special Counsel Jack Smith has added another defendant and three more charges against former President Trump related to the classified documents case.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Carlos de Oliveira, the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago, has been added as a defendant along with Trump's valet, Walt Nada.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The additional charges include another count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts stemming from alleged attempts to delete surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago after investigators had delivered a subpoena to Trump for the materials in his possession.
--:-- John Bickley: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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