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--:-- John Bickley: 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.
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--:-- John Bickley: The world has a new pope, the first American in history, Pope Leo XIV, who blessed elated worshipers celebrating in St. Peter's Square. La pace sea con tutti voi. Peace be with you all. What do we know about the Chicago-born pontiff?
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, May 9th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: Trump announces a massive trade deal with the UK, sending markets soaring. There won't be any red tape. Things are going to move very quickly both ways. And a Daily Wire investigation finds that an African aid group funneled taxpayer dollars to friends, co-workers and even themselves. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: A new pope was named on Thursday. Cardinal Robert Provost, the Catholic Church's first American-born pope. Provost was elected by over 100 cardinals at the Vatican and addressed the world's Catholics afterwards. Daily Wire investigative reporter Maureen Delordi is here to tell us more.
--:-- Maureen Delordi: Hi, John. Yes, so Cardinal Robert Provost, who's from Chicago, was elected pope on the second day of the conclave. This was signaled by white smoke billowing out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel as the cardinals burned their ballots. The crowd in St. Peter's Square erupted at that moment.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, as you know, the pope adopts a new name and Provost has chosen Pope Leo XIV. He's the church's 267th pope, and he will lead 1.4 billion Catholics around the world.
--:-- Maureen Delordi: Pope Leo appeared visibly emotional as he appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica and addressed the massive crowd in the square. La pace sia con tutti voi. Peace be with you all. Fratelli, sorelle carissimi. Dearest brothers and sisters. This is the first greetings of the resurrected Christ, the good shepherd who has given up his life for God. And I should also like this greeting of peace to enter our hearts. Peace be with you.
--:-- John Bickley: So tell us a bit more about him. You mentioned that he's from Chicago. He also pretty young correct?
--:-- Maureen Delordi: Yes, so Provost is only 69. He was born in Chicago but he spent much of his priesthood in Peru. He became Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru for eight years until 2023 when he was made a cardinal by Pope Francis. He also led the religious order started by San Augustine. Francis then made Provost the prefect of the dicastry for bishops. This means he was a Vatican official responsible for recommending priests to be made bishops around the world.
--:-- John Bickley: Provost was not considered the most likely cardinal to become Pope, but Vatican officials are often considered for Pope. Now, we know Catholics and conservatives were very interested in seeing if there is a political leaning to the new Pope. Where does Pope Leo stand?
--:-- Maureen Delordi: So Pope Leo has been strong on church doctrine, but he's overall seen as a centrist on political issues. We spoke to Sean Carney. He's CEO of the pro-life organization 40 Days for Life, and he had some insight on what Pope Leo could mean for the church.
--:-- Sean Carney: The Catholic Church has just been drug into so much stuff, whether it be telling the UN what to do, telling countries whether they need an open border or closed border. Certainly that's an issue here in America. And just so many issues and just seem to get away from the message of salvation and what the church teaches. And so I hope it's not, I hope he's not as political as Francis, I guess.
--:-- John Bickley: I think that's probably what a lot of people in their living rooms are saying, because we've just had so much of that. And I think we need to give him a chance. I think he can read the room. He came out in the traditional garb. He didn't make a swipe at that. So I'm optimistic, but I think for most Catholics, honestly, they're just worried.
--:-- Sean Carney: Basically, it's not Leo XIV's fault. It's just the last 12 years have been chaos after John Paul and Benedict. He is not rash. This isn't an emotional guy. He's very stable. He does listen. He's a clear thinker. I think one of the things that's cool aside for I can see other countries just going nuts right now because there's an American pope. So that part's kind of cool.
--:-- John Bickley: Speaking plainly, I think that this was probably like for the liberal side, a compromise guy of like, look, we can't do Francis all over again.
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--:-- John Bickley: President Trump weighed in on the election of the new pope yesterday. To have the pope from the United States of America, that's a great honor. That's a great honor. watching and they said he's from America. He said, that's great. Catholics are certainly rejoicing this week and there's a sense of optimism around Pope Leo.
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--:-- John Bickley: Brad, thanks so much for reporting.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, ever since President Trump announced the sweeping tariffs at Liberation Day, he said other countries would come to the negotiating table to work out a trade deal. And on Thursday, we saw just that. Now, yesterday marked the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. President Trump leaned into that shared history and special relationship during his announcement yesterday at the White House.
--:-- John Bickley: This morning, I'm thrilled to announce that we have reached a breakthrough trade deal with the United Kingdom. credible country. Today is a victory day for World War II. We won the war together exactly 80 years ago, so there could be no more perfect morning to reach this historic agreement.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Clearly, the president is very enthused about this. Now, the big question is, what's in the deal? Well, on our side, the president did hold firm on that universal 10% tariff he put in place last month but he did offer concessions elsewhere. For example, he cut the British auto tariff from 27 to 10. He also completely eliminated the tariff on British steel and aluminum. That go down to zero.
--:-- John Bickley: For their part, the British did open up their markets to American ethanol, beef, and poultry. The White House says that will result in billions of dollars in the pockets of American farmers and ranchers. The Brits also agreed to purchase $10 billion of American Boeing planes in exchange for the US eliminating all tariffs on Rolls Royce engines and other parts.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And of course, tech stocks skyrocketed Thursday on the news that the British had agreed to eliminate a digital tax that had been impacting American tech companies operating in the country.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, bigger picture, what does this mean for other future deals? Well, the president did hint that he was, quote, very close on numerous deals with other countries. At that point, he said Treasury Secretary Scott Besant would soon travel to Switzerland for formal trade negotiations with China.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: He also said that he would not be taking a piecemeal approach with the rest of the countries in Europe, and instead would look to negotiate a broader deal with the European Union as a whole.
--:-- John Bickley: And it's worth noting, in a clear attempt to maintain leverage for future negotiations, President Trump said that not every country can expect to get tariffs as low as the ones that Britain just secured.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That's a low number. They made a good deal. Many, some will be much higher because they have massive trade surpluses. And in many cases, they didn't treat us right. One thing with UK, they always treated us with great respect. They treated us with great respect.
--:-- John Bickley: The template of 10 is probably the lowest.
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--:-- Announcer (Vanta): Trust isn't just earned, it's demanded. Whether you're a startup founder navigating your first audit or a seasoned security professional scaling your GRC program, proving your commitment to security has never been more critical or more complex. That's where Vonta comes in. Businesses use Vonta to establish trust by automating compliance for in-demand frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more. For a limited time, our listeners get $1,000 off Vonta at Vonta.com slash MorningWire. Again, that's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash MorningWire for $1,000 off.
--:-- [Music transitions back to the news theme]
--:-- John Bickley: President Trump sort of phoned a friend, calling in British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to offer his take on the groundbreaking deal.
--:-- Keir Starmer: This is going to boost trade between and across our countries. It's going to not only protect jobs, but create jobs. And I want to thank you for your leadership on that, Donald, and for the way in which your team have negotiated this.
--:-- John Bickley: So big day here at the White House. one trade deal down. The president hopes many more to come in the future. Well, definitely a growing sense of optimism. Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Absolutely.
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--:-- John Bickley: A new Daily Wire investigation uncovers how one government agency went to great lengths to block a Doge audit. The African Development Foundation was deemed a resistance hero to the media for stonewalling auditors, including literally locking their doors. Daily Wire's government efficiency reporter Luke Rosiak found that this foreign aid group had a lot of reasons to keep its books private. He joins us now.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: So this is a small federal agency, kind of like USAID. It's got 30 employees and a $45 million budget. And by law, it's only allowed to give grants to Africa up to a quarter million dollars each.
--:-- John Bickley: The agency locked the doors and refused to let Doge in and said it wouldn't recognized Trump appointee deleted Peter Morocco who was also dismantling USAID.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The group board also filed a lawsuit claiming Doge was intruding on the privacy of its financial records personnel documents and so on. Ultimately the Trump administration seized the building with the assistance of U Marshals.
--:-- John Bickley: So Elon Musk has said when people get really angry about being audited by Doge, it's usually because they have something to hide. And that definitely applied here.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: What I found is that this group would give money to African organizations like it was required to by law, But then it would require them to redirect that money back to the United States to pay officials at their headquarters or their friends or former employers, almost like laundering it.
--:-- John Bickley: Americans who worked at the headquarters of this agency in D.C. were literally getting wire transfers from African entities into their personal bank accounts.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: I literally have a receipt for $17,000 from Kenya to a woman who was working as the assistant to the African Development Foundation's CEO. The CEO, a guy named C.D. Glynn, would push unwanted projects on Africans as a way of steering money to his friends.
--:-- John Bickley: So in one case, they told African groups they'd give a grant to manufacture COVID masks, but they had to subcontract it to Glynn's friend in Colorado. The African group said, we don't want that. We don't need any COVID masks. We've already got as many as we need. But Glynn didn't care.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: In another case, they gave a grant to a Ghana group that had to use it to hire Glynn's former employer in D.C.
--:-- John Bickley: So this sounds like exactly what people were speculating about with foreign money for USAID actually getting redirected back to Beltway types, correct?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there were so many conflicts of interest going on here. At one point, the African Development Foundation pushed its board members' pyramid scheme on poor Africans. The CEO of Herbalife, which was, remember, that basically pyramid scheme that was charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and accused by the DOJ of tricking people into opening these money-losing businesses. he was on the board of this government agency. And the agency entered into a partnership with Herbalife, where they were giving Africans some money and product and having Herbalife employees be their mentors.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, refusing to let the Trump administration into an agency is a pretty drastic move. Do you think this foundation was indeed hiding criminal conduct?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The USAID inspector general suspected at least some of it was outright criminal for sure. The African Development Foundation's chief financial officer, Matthew Zahew, repeatedly steered about a million dollars in grants and contracts to an African company called Ganyam Limited with no competition. One of them was for travel during COVID when there was no travel going on. A USAID inspector general seized Zaheus' phone and found that Ghanium was owned by his friend. And every time he gave it a contract, the friend sent money to Zaheus' personal bank account.
--:-- John Bickley: Zaheus, though, was never arrested. Now, Zaheus told me he's been back to the office since Doge locked staff out. I don't know if they did any purpose or they forgot or they didn't know there was a backdoor that they didn't lock. So we're able to get access to the office through the backdoor.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Sounds like lots of red flags over the years, but no reform at all. Now Doge has finally shuttered this agency.
--:-- John Bickley: Luke, thanks so much for reporting.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Thank you.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with more news you need to know.
