Morning Wire XX
[0] A week after President Biden brought in a record haul in fundraising, former President Trump dwarfs the number at his own historic event.
[1] Prior to last night, the largest single event fundraiser in politics ever was the one that Joe Biden had, and he needed three presidents to haul in $26 million.
[2] Who's leading the fundraising race and what headwinds are each of the candidates facing?
[3] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howe.
[4] It's Monday, April 8th, and this is Morning Wire.
[5] Elon Musk calls out online censorship in Brazil, as political observers say the country is on the brink of dictatorship.
[6] At any moment, Brazil's Supreme Court could shut off all access to X Twitter for the people of Brazil.
[7] And the situation in the Middle East is rapidly changing.
[8] Israel withdraws from southern Gaza while Iran appears poised to strike.
[9] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[10] Stay tuned.
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[18] A week after President Biden's historic fundraising event in New York City, Donald Trump pulled off a record -breaking event of his own, significantly narrowing the fundraising advantage currently held by Democrats.
[19] The news comes as President Biden faces a growing number of challenges abroad and at home.
[20] Here with the latest is Daily Wire's senior editor Cabot Phillips.
[21] Hey, Cabot.
[22] So let's start with this enormous fundraiser for the Trump campaign.
[23] Yeah, so over the last few months, while President Biden has been dogged by negative press and continue to lag behind Donald Trump in the polls, there is one aspect where he has been firmly ahead of his opponent, fundraising.
[24] FEC reports released this week showed Biden with a $192 million campaign war chest.
[25] That is not only the largest amount for any Democrat in history at this point in a race, it's importantly more than double the cash that Trump has on hand.
[26] All told, Biden brought in $90 million last month, about a third of that coming from that highly publicized fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall.
[27] The Trump team vowed to respond with their own show of fundraising force and did so beyond anyone's expectations on Saturday.
[28] Yeah, apparently one -upping the Biden campaign.
[29] Yeah, that is for sure.
[30] If Biden did indeed have the largest fundraiser in history, that record only stood for a few dates because Trump's event in Palm Beach on Saturday reportedly brought in, get this, a staggering $50 million in one night.
[31] And one can't help but notice how different the two record -breaking fundraisers were.
[32] While President Biden's event was a who's who of Hollywood stars with celebrity musical performances and on -stage appearances from former president's Clinton and Obama, the Trump fundraiser focused almost entirely on one celebrity appearance.
[33] Now was Donald Trump himself.
[34] As a campaign spokesman, Danielle Alvarez, put it, quote, it took three Democrat presidents to raise $25 million and one president to raise over $50 million.
[35] Here's Trump speaking outside of the event.
[36] People are just wanting change.
[37] Rich people want it, poor people want it.
[38] Everybody wants change because people, they wanted to contribute to a cause of making America great again.
[39] And that's what's happened.
[40] Now, this event was hosted by billionaire investor John Paulson and attended by some of the country's most prominent business leaders, including oil and gas magnate, Harold Hamm, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, casino mogul Steve Wynn.
[41] The list goes on.
[42] For their part, a Biden campaign spokesman referred to those in attendance as, quote, a bunch of business.
[43] billionaire scammers, extremists, and racists.
[44] But beyond the importance of the money itself, Saturday's event was just further proof that Trump has once again locked up the support of big money GOP donors, many of whom had supported other candidates during the primary.
[45] Despite Trump's gains, the Biden team continues to project confidence, though, once again bragging over the weekend about the fact that their campaign funds won't have to go towards paying legal fees in court.
[46] But regardless, this narrowing of the fundraising gap comes at a time when Biden is facing a number of challenges on multiple fronts.
[47] Yeah, let's get into that.
[48] In particular, we saw that disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal brought back into the national conversation this month.
[49] What did we learn there in that new investigation?
[50] Right.
[51] This made headlines, even over at left -leaning CNN, which broke the story.
[52] An ongoing investigation by the House Foreign Affairs Committee is shining new light on the lack of preparation and foresight that led up to the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, which, as everyone remembers, left 13 American soldiers dead and saw the country fall back into the hands of the Taliban.
[53] The committee heard damning testimony from three separate State Department officials last week who say they were rushed into the country to oversee the final days of the withdrawal, but that when they arrived there, there were, quote, no plans in place for an evacuation.
[54] The men said the Biden administration was totally unprepared for the operation and left those on the ground to, quote, create from scratch tactical operations that would get our priority people into the airport.
[55] So as President Biden has his hands full with a number of escalating conflicts in the Middle East.
[56] You can certainly expect Republicans to continue reminding voters of his handling of Afghanistan as the election approaches.
[57] Yeah, no doubt.
[58] Cabot, thanks for reporting.
[59] Any time.
[60] Elon Musk says Brazil is illegally censoring its citizens and he's pledging to defy the government in order to keep speech free on its platform.
[61] Meanwhile, journalists warn the country is on the brink of totalitarianism.
[62] Here with the latest is Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.
[63] So, Megan, what led to the standoff between Musk, and this Brazilian court.
[64] So on Saturday, a Brazilian Supreme Court judge ordered X to block a number of pretty popular accounts.
[65] Almost immediately after, Elon Musk said that free speech principles matter more than profits.
[66] And he then announced plans to defy the court's order and lift all speech restrictions on his platform in the country.
[67] As a result of that, Musk says that he will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and that he's going to have to shut down X's offices there.
[68] That means the Brazilian Supreme Court could.
[69] shut off the Brazilian public's access to X at really any moment.
[70] Now, is X the only social media company that the Brazilian government is trying to censor, or is it going after all of them?
[71] Well, it appears the government is going after all of the big ones, at least.
[72] Facebook, Google, and some others have faced investigations for what the same court called, quote -unquote, abusive practices.
[73] Though it appears that most of the platforms have complied with speech restrictions to some degree.
[74] Musk, however, is the only big tech exec to have made this a very public fight.
[75] One way Brazil's government has attempted to squeeze these platforms into compliance is through lawfare.
[76] This same judge presiding over Musk's case also ordered investigations into big tech executives at other companies after they lobbied against a proposal to regulate Brazil's internet.
[77] They were lobbying against what's known as the fake news bill, and that would have levied large fines against the tech companies if they failed.
[78] to identify and report illegal content.
[79] But you need to keep in mind, the definition of illegal speech in Brazil has been pretty rapidly expanding to potentially include anything labeled misinformation by the government.
[80] Independent journalist Michael Schellenberger, who is in Brazil and broke parts of this story, said it's not an exaggeration to say that Brazil is, quote, on the brink of dictatorship.
[81] He then lambasted a number of big tech companies for giving in to the demands of the Brazilian authorities, I know censorship when I see it.
[82] The Twitter files revealed also that Google, Facebook, Uber, WhatsApp, and Instagram betrayed the people of Brazil.
[83] If this evidence is proven and admitted to, the executives of those companies behave like cowards.
[84] They provided the Brazilian government with personal registration data and telephone numbers without a court order.
[85] Therefore, they violated the Brazilian laws.
[86] Now, meanwhile, Musk said that X is set to publish, everything the Brazilian judge has ordered and that these posts will explain how the court's demands violate Brazilian law.
[87] He added, and I'm quoting, this judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the Constitution and people of Brazil.
[88] He should resign or be impeached.
[89] Now, has the White House and or U .S. officials spoken out about what Brazil is doing to its citizens?
[90] No, even though there have been some calls for them to do that, they haven't.
[91] In fact, some accusing the State Department of engineering this censorship.
[92] So former State Department official Michael Benz said the CIA and other U .S. foreign policy divisions fear rising populism in countries like Brazil.
[93] So according to him, they helped President Lula de Silva secure power over his populist rival, Jaire Bolsonaro, by funding censorship groups to suppress so -called election misinformation.
[94] Then said on X that the State Department doesn't want to see Brazilian citizens openly criticizing their country's government on social media any more than DeSilva does.
[95] When I was looking into what was behind censorship in Brazil, it turned out that what was driving it appeared to be a gaggle of U .S. State Department funded NGOs.
[96] And not just State Department funded NGOs, but they were actually National Endowment for Democracy funded as well.
[97] You had USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, funding a bunch of domestic censorship groups in Brazil.
[98] This actually goes right back to the beginning of both.
[99] Alessonaro's tenure in 2019.
[100] On Sunday afternoon, after Musk promised to publish everything, Brazil's Attorney General, Jorge Macias, called for urgent regulation of all social media networks saying, we cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks.
[101] Well, we will definitely report it when Musk puts that information out.
[102] Megan, thanks for reporting.
[103] Anytime.
[104] The United States and Israel are on high alert this week for an expected attack.
[105] from Iran.
[106] Tehran threatened retribution after an Israeli strike in Syria killed top officials from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
[107] Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce joins us now to talk about the escalation between Israel and Iran as well as the Democrats' wavering support for the Jewish state.
[108] Hey Tim.
[109] So first, Iran's threats, how much do we know about what Iran is planned?
[110] Not much, unfortunately.
[111] The expectation is that Iran will retaliate sometime within the next week, but we don't know what the target will be or if U .S. assets will be targeted as well.
[112] The top Iranian military advisor suggested over the weekend that the target could be an Israeli embassy, which would mirror the strike Israel carried out on Iran's embassy in Syria last week.
[113] That strike killed two senior members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and five other officers.
[114] It was the biggest blow to IRGC leadership since the U .S. assassinated General Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
[115] Right.
[116] Now, what are the chances this actually develops into open conflict?
[117] between Iran and Israel?
[118] That's certainly possible, but former defense secretary Mark Esper said that wouldn't be in Iran's interest.
[119] Here's Esper's prediction on CNN over the weekend.
[120] They're going to feel the need to uphold their dignity to maintain credibility with their proxies throughout the region.
[121] But on the other hand, they're not going to want to make this a wider war.
[122] They don't want to escalate.
[123] So I suspect that they will limit the attack to Israel.
[124] Now, over the weekend, the IDF pulled troops out of southern Gaza.
[125] what does this mean for the war against Hamas?
[126] Israeli officials announced an end to the active invasion stage of the war yesterday.
[127] That doesn't preclude Israel from opening up a new invasion later.
[128] There are still about four battalions of Hamas fighters in Rafa.
[129] They have to be dealt with eventually if Israel wants to complete its objective since October 7th.
[130] But Israel has for now pulled its military back into a defensive position and blockaded anyone in southern Gaza from traveling north.
[131] At the same time, there are no more active ground operations.
[132] in the South.
[133] This comes at a time when President Biden has signaled that he may pull back on his support for Israel.
[134] What happened between Israel and the White House?
[135] Right.
[136] The president has feuded with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for months, but this is the first time the White House has signaled that its policy toward Israel could change, and that's over the White House's perception that Israel has not done enough for Palestinians in Gaza.
[137] Here's Secretary of State Anthony Blinken outlining the White House's position last week.
[138] President Biden spoke a short while ago with Prime Minister in Netanyahu.
[139] He made clear the need for Israel to announce a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.
[140] He made clear that U .S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel's immediate action.
[141] It's worth noting that the White House has repeatedly said that no evidence exists of Israel violating international humanitarian laws.
[142] White House spokesman John Kirby also maintained last week that the U .S. has not wavered in its commitment to Israel.
[143] On October 7th, President Biden said, my administration's support for Israel security is rock solid and unwavering.
[144] That is not true anymore, correct?
[145] No, it is true.
[146] It's still true today.
[147] How is his support unwavering, but you're also reconsidering policy choices?
[148] Both can be true.
[149] They cannot be true.
[150] They're completely different.
[151] different things.
[152] No, no, no. I'm sorry.
[153] He is weight.
[154] Ah, no, no, come on.
[155] So an awkward answer from Kirby on that one.
[156] Yeah, some muddled messaging there.
[157] Tim, thanks for joining us.
[158] Thanks for having me. Thanks for waking up with us.
[159] We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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