Morning Wire XX
[0] Congressman Jim Jordan released a cache of documents that confirms the White House pressured Facebook to censor speech.
[1] One of the executives at Facebook said this is a significant incursion into free expression.
[2] They knew it was wrong.
[3] What evidence does the congressman have?
[4] And how is the White House responded?
[5] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howe.
[6] It's Friday, July 28th, and this is Morning Wire.
[7] New economic data shows the U .S. economy grew more than expected last quarter.
[8] prompting optimism on Wall Street and Main Street.
[9] Given the resilience of the economy recently, they are no longer forecasting a recession.
[10] And there is less than a month until the GOP presidential debate.
[11] Whose rhetoric is inspiring voters and whose message is falling flat?
[12] Plus, special counsel Jack Smith expands the indictment against former President Trump.
[13] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[14] Stay tuned.
[15] We have the news you need to know.
[16] The House Judiciary Committee released messages on Thursday.
[17] day that reveal more about the Biden administration's efforts to censor so -called misinformation.
[18] The committee obtained internal communications from META that show how pressure from White House officials affected mis and disinformation policies at Facebook and Instagram.
[19] Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to go through the released documents and what they show.
[20] Hi, Tim.
[21] So what's going on with this new evidence from the committee?
[22] This could turn out to be quite significant.
[23] Some politicos are saying that this is even more damning than the Twitter files.
[24] Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, released what he called smoking gun documents on Thursday.
[25] Jordan made public a handful of internal emails from META that suggests the company shifted and bent its moderation policies to fulfill White House requests.
[26] In one instance from July 2021, executives at META were pretty concerned over the White House's reaction to a popular meme.
[27] Biden's senior advisor Andy Slavitt was, quote, outraged that a meme that discouraged getting COVID vaccinated wasn't banned from the platform.
[28] 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.
[29] The video had been placed in a fact check queue and suppressed by 50%, even though, according to the email, the video did not violate Facebook's policies.
[30] So what appears to be action taken by Facebook in direct response to the White House?
[31] What was the Biden administration saying publicly on this issue at the time?
[32] Around the same time Meadow was having these internal conversations, President Biden was blaming Facebook in the media for, quote, killing people with disinformation.
[33] Here's Biden on July 16th, 2021.
[34] What's your message to platforms like Facebook?
[35] They're killing people.
[36] I mean, they're really, look, the only pandemics we have is among unvaccinated.
[37] And they're killing people.
[38] An August 2021 memo showed that Facebook was reviewing a. its policies to come up with new levers to pull against misinformation.
[39] 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.
[40] Other messages suggest that the Surgeon General was involved in the administration's pressure campaign as well.
[41] Now, this is the first batch of documents released by the Judiciary Committee.
[42] What else can we expect from them?
[43] Well, Jordan said there will be more to come because meta has finally started producing meaningful documents.
[44] 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.
[45] Morningwire spoke to Congressman Jordan about the evidence.
[46] We want the same information we got from Twitter in the Twitter files.
[47] Tell us exactly what was going on here.
[48] 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.
[49] speech rights.
[50] We finally got these kind of communication, this kind of information, and it shows exactly what we thought was going to happen.
[51] 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.
[52] 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.
[53] Has the White House responded to Jordan's release.
[54] White House press secretary, Corrine Jean -Pierre, talked a bit about it on Thursday.
[55] She directed questions about that court order to the Justice Department, but on the White House's past communications with social media platforms, she had this to say.
[56] 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.
[57] Well, some pretty troubling disclosures here, and it sounds like there's more to come.
[58] Tim, thanks for joining us.
[59] Thanks for having me. Coming up, the U .S. economy grew more than expected.
[60] New data from the Commerce Department shows that the U .S. economy grew by 2 .4 % last quarter, exceeding projections, and temporarily staving off fears of a recession.
[61] Here with more on what those numbers mean and how it could impact interest rates is Daily Wire Senior Editor, Cabot Phillips.
[62] So, Cabot, we've been waiting to see these numbers, and they're a bit better than we were expecting.
[63] What can you tell us?
[64] Yeah, so every three months, the Commerce Department releases figures tracking the nation's GDP growth.
[65] 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.
[66] That's a slight uptick from the first quarter which saw 2 % increase.
[67] 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.
[68] 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 But since then, we've seen four straight quarters of growth.
[69] So some rare good news on the economic front.
[70] Now, what's behind the growth?
[71] It's tough to pick just one or two factors.
[72] But economists say consumer spending habits are really contributing.
[73] Despite those high inflation rates, Americans are still spending a lot of money on travel and big ticket items like cars and household appliances.
[74] There was also a huge uptake last quarter in business investing.
[75] Now, while high interest rates are keeping smaller and mid -sized businesses from borrowing as much, large corporations invested billions of chip manufacturing.
[76] manufacturing plants and electric vehicle factories last quarter do in large part to huge federal subsidies in those sectors.
[77] And the tight labor market is also playing a role.
[78] 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.
[79] So the fact that so few Americans are out of work is helping bolster those GDP figures.
[80] Now, what does all of this mean for the interest rates?
[81] Yeah, it's interesting.
[82] Those strong jobs figures actually make it more likely that rates will continue to rise or at best hold steady for the near future.
[83] 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.
[84] 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.
[85] And importantly, they signaled that they're not yet done and will likely raise rates further in the coming months.
[86] So bad news on that front for those in the market for a new house or car.
[87] Now, what have we heard from the White House on this?
[88] Well, President Biden says that it's proof that what he calls Bidenomics are working.
[89] On Thursday, we heard from White House Press Secretary Corrine Jim Pierre on that front.
[90] There was a conversation for almost two years about a recession.
[91] 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.
[92] But the reality is that while the overall economy might be showing some growth, millions of Americans simply are not feeling.
[93] feeling much relief.
[94] That tough reality is one reason that so many Americans still have a more dour outlook on the economy despite positive GDP growth.
[95] 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.
[96] Yeah.
[97] All right.
[98] Well, Cabot, thanks so much for reporting.
[99] Anytime.
[100] With less than a month before the first GOP presidential debate, the campaign season is in full swing.
[101] Here to talk about it is Daily Wire contributor, David Marcus.
[102] Hey, Dave.
[103] So here we are rapidly approaching the first big showdown.
[104] What are we seeing in the polls and on the trail?
[105] Morning.
[106] 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.
[107] Perhaps most striking is that Vivek Rameswamy 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.
[108] We've also seen polling from Iowa and South Carolina that have strong showings for Tim Scott and Nikki Haley.
[109] 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.
[110] Right.
[111] Speaking of the DeSantis campaign, we saw some major shakeups in the past week or so, what they're calling a reset.
[112] Is there a pivot happening here?
[113] There is, and there has been for a few weeks now.
[114] Another third of his campaign staff was let go this week, including the firing of a speechwriter.
[115] 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.
[116] But critics still look at this campaign as somewhat faltering thus far.
[117] The debate in about three weeks is really keyed in on.
[118] And 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.
[119] And as DeSantis supporter Hal Lamberg told Morning Wire, getting media attention away from Trump, it isn't easy.
[120] If you look at the earned media, I think he's 10x what Governor DeSantis is.
[121] And then if you look at that compared to any other candidates, they're not even close.
[122] So it's kind of 2016 replay where it's just Trump, Trump, Trump.
[123] 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?
[124] 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.
[125] And mathematically, that makes a lot of sense.
[126] He has the support he needs to win already, according to the polls.
[127] So why risk a gaffe or a stumble that could eat away at that?
[128] But on the other hand, by abandoning the field of play, he could give a Ron DeSantis or a Ramoswamy exactly the star turn that they need.
[129] Yeah.
[130] 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.
[131] It's not clear if anyone else on that stage will do it either.
[132] Right.
[133] What are the issues right now that are motivating GOP voters and how are these candidates positioning themselves to address those concerns?
[134] 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.
[135] That is, of course, very much Ron DeSanches' wheelhouse.
[136] 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.
[137] The judge tossed it, and the endless indictments of Donald Trump, which, as you reported here, heated up even more this week.
[138] Both Ramoswamy and DeSantis have indicated that they would take much stronger control over the Department of Justice of Elected.
[139] 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.
[140] Yeah.
[141] Now, finally, are we going to see some of the minor candidates drop out sooner rather than, than later are most likely to roll the dice in the first few primaries before throwing in the towel.
[142] It seems like anyone who makes the debate stage, which now includes Governor Doug Bergham and Chris Christie, are likely in it until at least the first contest.
[143] One wildcard is Mike Pence.
[144] He has yet to qualify for the debate.
[145] He still needs more individual donors.
[146] But the assumption of most politicos is that he'll squeak by and he'll be on that stage.
[147] Right.
[148] Things have already been intriguing to this point, but the drama's about to really turn up.
[149] Dave, thanks for joining us.
[150] Another story we're tracking this week.
[151] Special counsel, Jack Smith, has added another defendant and three more charges against former President Trump related to the classified documents case.
[152] Carlos Di Olivera, the head of maintenance at Mara Lago, has been added as a defendant along with Trump's valet, Walt Nata.
[153] 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 Mara Lago after investigators had delivered a subpoena to Trump for the materials in his possession.
[154] That's all the time we've got this morning.
[155] Thanks for waking up with us.
[156] We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.