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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
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Morning Wire Host
of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent
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Mary Kissel
to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com.
- [00:34]
John Bickley
President Trump convenes his cabinet today as peace talks with Iran reach a tipping point.
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Victoria Coates
It's either going to be a good
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Mary Kissel
deal or there isn't going to be one.
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John Bickley
I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howell. It's Wednesday, May 27th. This is Morning Wire.
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Morning Wire Host
Drone warfare in Russia and Ukraine leads to some of the most significant attacks to date. We have the latest on the four year war.
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Mary Kissel
The idea that, you know, we're talking about ends of wars after a couple weeks or months or years is really ridiculous when you look at the history of warfare.
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John Bickley
And influential left wing streamer and Democrat darling Hasan Piker confirms he's under investigation for aiding Cuba.
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Hasan Piker
They're after your boy. They're up my a.
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Morning Wire Host
Thanks for waking up with MORNING wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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Morning Wire Host
with the fragile ceasefire seeming to fray more every day, President Trump has convened a rare cabinet meeting today. The meeting was originally scheduled to Be at Camp David, which itself is rare, but was moved to the White House at the last minute due to weather.
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John Bickley
Joining us now to discuss is Victoria Coates, national security and foreign policy expert at Heritage. Victoria, great to see you again.
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Victoria Coates
Good to see you both.
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John Bickley
So let's start with this Cabinet meeting. How significant is it that the President called for it now and what do we know going into this?
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Victoria Coates
Yeah, it is unusual. The President is not a huge fan of Camp David. It is quite rustic for his tastes, but it is also extremely private and a quiet, secure place where if you need to make a very serious decision, that's an appropriate place to go. And historically, that's when he's made his big decisions. I think that shows you the urgency of it.
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John Bickley
He said this is very secretive. So we don't know many details going into this, Correct?
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Victoria Coates
No, I mean, we can read the tea leaves a little bit. You know, clearly there is a fissure emerging amongst the leadership of Iran. You have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. On the one hand, those are the folks who probably sent out the mine boats and prepared the missile launchers. Then you have President Pizzushkin and his administration. They're the ones who seem to be doing things like loosening up the Internet access. They might be more willing to deal on the nuclear program, but it's not clear there's a decision maker.
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Morning Wire Host
Right.
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John Bickley
You mentioned the mines. We've reported here on the recent strikes from the US in the southern part of Iran. CENTCOM made sure to stress that these were defensive and very limited. How fractured is this ceasefire at this point?
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Victoria Coates
Well, it does seem to be calming down. So if that was a rogue element of the IRGC and the Americans essentially put them back in their box, I can see the Iranians kind of taking that as, you know, as an okay. An okay signal to send. What I don't think they would tolerate right now is, you know, the resumption of actual hostilities. The Israelis have said they're not planning to do anything like that in Iran for the time being, and that that could be the kind of decision making the President's gonna take a look at if he thinks the deal is possible or if he thinks we need to start planning for more kinetic action.
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John Bickley
The political pressure on Trump has really mounted in this last week, especially after early reports on this deal, even from the right. Trump said this is largely negotiated. We got some early reports about what it might be. Do we have more details about the terms now of the deal and will the pressure end up forcing a less than optimal outcome for the US I don't think so.
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Victoria Coates
I think the deal looks pretty straightforward. The strait gets opened in fairly expeditious fashion. Iran doesn't get to play the troll under the bridge and collect tolls in perpetuity. There would be some sanctions relief on them if they relinquish this highly enriched uranium. That is going to also be though a significant process. It probably would take months under optimal circumstances. So that may be a sticking point. Just how much sanctions relief the president's willing to permit them. He said not much until they give up the so called nuclear dust. And if that takes months, what does that mean to the Iranians? So I think that's essentially the deal in a nutshell. It certainly seems like we can get there if there's somebody in Iraq on who's empowered to actually make a decision.
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John Bickley
Yeah, that's a big if. Victoria, thank you so much for coming on.
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Victoria Coates
Thank you.
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John Bickley
There have been a series of strikes and reprisals in recent days between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine hitting Moscow and oil refineries and then Russia hitting Kyiv with mid range missiles in one of the war's biggest attacks.
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Morning Wire Host
Now Putin is telling US Citizens to evacuate Kyiv as possible systematic strikes are imminent. Joining us now to discuss is Mary Kissel, foreign policy expert at the Hudson Institute. Mary thanks for coming on.
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Mary Kissel
It's great to be with you today.
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Morning Wire Host
So let's just start broadly. Where do things stand in the war between Ukraine and Russia?
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Mary Kissel
Well, first of all, I want to change your characterization just a little bit. We often talk about these wars as bilateral affairs, but they're not. These are actually proxy battles between China, Russia, Iran and the United States and our Western allies. And it's really important to say that because if you make it a bilateral conflict, you can simply talk about something which doesn't really reflect reality. So how is the war going? The war has changed. Ukraine has not just successfully stopped the Russian invasion, but is starting to make gains itself. And secondly, you've seen Ukraine's role as an arms exporter, as an arms innovator, change very significantly in the last couple of months with Zelensky going out to the Gulf, signing agreements with some of those nations, stopping in places like Syria, Saudi, uae. So this is an important shift in the war and in its dynamics.
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Morning Wire Host
Now, what about America's stance? It's not a topic we hear about all over the news anymore. Where does Trump and Rubio stand in all of this?
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Mary Kissel
In Trump 1, we shifted tremendously toward Ukraine because recall that under the prior administration, they just wouldn't give them any sort of real true weaponry, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance support. Now in Trump too, you've seen that support continue. It's continued quietly. You've seen different kinds of support come in. For instance, bringing the Treasury Secretary over to talk about economic assistance, urging our European allies to do more. You don't hear a lot about it, of course, because we have a lot of conflicts going on simultaneously right now. We've got Gaza, we have Ukraine, we have Iran, we have a situation developing in Cuba, we had the rendition of Maduro. And most importantly, we have continued outward pressure by the communist Chinese regime, not just at home, oppressing their own people and also expanding their influence near abroad, but also in the way that they interfere here in the United States.
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Morning Wire Host
Now you alluded to Ukraine developing weaponry. We've recently seen some reports that they've developed some unprecedented drone technology that they're now deploying against Russia. And, and also that Russia has been hacking those drones. Can you characterize what's going on with regards to their weaponry?
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Mary Kissel
Well, effectively every freedom loving nation needs to go over and study what Ukraine is doing. They've been incredibly effective with their drone warfare. And that hacking that you talk about, that's been going on the whole time. And recall too that it was Russia using Iranian supplied Shahid drones. Against Ukraine, that presented the initial threat. So what you're seeing here is Ukraine developing its own defenses and trying to punch back. It's important, too, to recognize that President Trump has allowed the Ukrainians to strike inside Russian territory. And especially so since the Ukrainians demonstrated that they could do so hundreds and hundreds thousands of miles away from Ukraine, hitting key production centers. So much so that in their recent military parade in Moscow, you didn't see Putin walking around very much because they don't know where Ukraine can hit, how, when, how hard. That's very, very important.
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Morning Wire Host
Now, a complicated question, and we don't really have a clear answer to this, perhaps, but who is winning this war? And is there actually an end in sight?
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Mary Kissel
I mean, given that Russia had an advantage, a vast advantage in terms of personnel, armaments, momentum, in the initial days of the war, it had an administration, certainly in the United States, that didn't even want to support Ukraine. It's incredible what the Ukrainians have done. Now, what is winning in a war? Winning in a war is establishing an advantage, a dominance that forces the other side to the table. We don't see that yet. Can we predict with a crystal ball when wars end? No. The Korean War is still ongoing, recall. We don't have an end to that conflict. That's simply an uneasy peace.
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Morning Wire Host
From your vantage point, what do you think are the next steps between Russia and Ukraine? What are you expecting to see?
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Mary Kissel
Well, that's hard to say. You have a US Administration that has a lot on its plate. And as we saw the national security strategy, the Trump 2 regime is much more focused on hemispheric security than anything else, and that is long overdue. But that suggests that you could see more of a focus on things like Cuba than you could the war in Ukraine, especially since you haven't seen the president focus on it so much as the Iran war has dragged out and as those negotiations perhaps hasn't gone as quickly and productively as the White House would have liked.
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Morning Wire Host
All right. Well, Mary, thank you so much for putting that in a broader context for us, and thank you for making time for us today.
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Mary Kissel
It's a delight to be with you. Thank you for inviting me.
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- [13:35]
Morning Wire Host
Wire Federal investigators have subpoenaed prominent left wing media personality Hassan Piker over a controversial trip he took to Cuba. Piker, a self identified Marxist and one of the biggest political streamers online, says the government is targeting him for his political views.
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John Bickley
Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with the details. Hey Megan. So first, for those who may not be familiar with him, can you walk us through who exactly Hassan Piker is?
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Megan Basham
Yeah, he's built one of the largest online political audiences, John, especially among younger progressive voters. He's got over 3 million followers on Twitch, another 2 million on YouTube, so a really sizable audience. And he's an open Marxist, he calls himself a socialist, and he's actually called for capitalist blood to run in the streets. He's also joked about assassinating Donald Trump, saying someone's gotta do it. He's overall very heavily critical of the United States and Israel. He has called the documented sexual violence that was a part of Hamas's attacks on October 7th a rape fantasy. So I would say that it's very fair to characterize him as a left wing extremist. And recently there's been a lot of controversy over legacy media like the New York Times trying to legitimize Hassan Piker by platforming him as a a normal political commentator without mentioning these extreme views.
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Ryan Reynolds
Right.
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John Bickley
And a lot of blowback against the Times for doing that. So why are federal officials investigating Piker?
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Megan Basham
Well, the focus of this federal probe is tied to a trip he took to Cuba in March Alongside activists affiliated with the so called Nuestra America convoy. Now that's a coalition that openly supports the communist Cuban regime. And on his program, Piker openly said that the Cuban government contacted him.
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Hasan Piker
The Cuban government actually hit my contact from the embassy and told him that if the only thing stopping Osama from coming to Cuba was the consistent Internet access, we can make it happen. Yeah, Cuba is sick. Wait, like the government reached out to you? So. Yeah, yeah, of course it's. Well, not reach out to me. There's like, there's a middleman there.
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Megan Basham
So the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued subpoenas, or what they called requests for information connected to whether U.S. sanction laws may have been violated on this trip. They also subpoenaed, you know, other well known left wing activists like Code Pink co founder Medea Benjamin over that same trip. And investigators are reportedly looking into finances, logistics, communications, really just any way they can try to figure out if American activists coordinated with sanctioned Cuban entities or officials. So this investigation is part of a broader effort by officials to try to control malign foreign influence that's operating in the US Particularly tied to support for political violence, extremist movements, and what the government would classify as terrorism.
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John Bickley
How has Piker responded to this? What does he say that he was doing in Cuba?
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Megan Basham
So he's insisting that all of this was just a humanitarian trip, and he says that he had cleared it with the treasury beforehand. He also said that he and his team stayed at an approved hotel and he's framing this as the government criminalizing aid to Cuba. So he addressed it on his live stream, calling it an intimidation campaign.
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Hasan Piker
And I'm not going to lie to you guys, it's. It's not great. I mean, it's bull. Still not great. We will free you, brother. Yeah, free me. Free me. I can't believe I'm saying that.
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Megan Basham
Now, to be clear though, John, at this stage we're just talking about subpoenas and information requests. There have been no criminal charges filed, but the broader investigation does appear to be significant. Federal agencies are reportedly examining a network of activist organizations and also individuals who are tied to pro Cuba and anti US Political movements.
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John Bickley
We'll of course, continue to cover this story with Piker as it develops. Megan, thank you so much for coming on.
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Megan Basham
Yep, thanks, John.
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Morning Wire Host
Another story we're tracking. President Trump's pick. Texas AG Ken Paxton ended up pulling off the win against incumbent John Cornyn in the hotly contested Republican Senate primary in Texas yesterday. Polling was tight going into the day, but Trump's 11th hour endorsement of Paxton appears to have been the deciding factor. Paxton will now face off against left wing Democrat James Tallarico in November.
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John Bickley
Thanks for waking up with us. The reporting that fuels this show is only possible because you tune in every day and because of all of our Daily Wire subscribers.
- [18:28]
Morning Wire Host
To enjoy the show ad free and join our mission become a member@dailywire.com we'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.
- [18:43]
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Victoria Coates
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