Trump’s Budget Bill Stump & COVID Vax Lies | 5.21.25

Summary

Morning Wire Podcast Summary: Episode on Trump's Budget Bill, COVID Vaccine Controversies, and California's Deficit Released May 21, 2025

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1. President Trump's Bold Push for the "Big, Beautiful" Budget Bill

Timestamp: [00:04 - 05:38]

In this episode, John Bickley and co-host Georgia Howe delve into President Donald Trump's aggressive campaign to secure passage of his comprehensive budget bill on Capitol Hill. Cabot Phillips, Senior Editor at Daily Wire, provides an in-depth analysis of the bill's significance and its potential impact on American fiscal policy.

Key Highlights:

• Trump's Strategy: President Trump advocates for passing the entire budget bill in one swift motion, rather than dividing it into smaller segments. This approach underscores the administration's intent to implement what the White House labels "the largest tax cut in American history." Key components include eliminating taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security payouts, enhancing child tax credits, removing over a million illegal immigrants from Medicaid, funding border wall construction, and making the 2017 tax cuts permanent (02:41).

• Congressional Dynamics: With Republicans holding a narrow majority in both the House and Senate, unanimity is crucial for the bill's success. Congressman Blake Moore emphasizes the need for unity, stating, "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If we stall on getting this done, the outcomes that will come will be far worse" (03:14). This sentiment reflects Trump's pressure on GOP members to prioritize legislative progress over partisan perfectionism.

• Internal GOP Friction: The bill faces resistance from two main factions within the Republican Party:

  • Conservative Hardliners: Members of the House Freedom Caucus demand deeper cuts to federal spending, particularly targeting Medicaid, arguing that the bill's provisions could exacerbate the federal deficit and inflation (03:51).
  • Moderate Republicans: Northeastern members contend that the bill falls short in adequately funding Medicaid and seek higher caps on state and local tax deductions (04:33).

• Public Opinion and Fiscal Concerns: Despite internal disagreements, a Marquette poll indicates that 60% of Americans support lowering taxes even if it leads to a larger deficit (05:28). Congressman Moore counters deficit concerns by highlighting projected economic growth and significant spending cuts that aim to offset the tax reductions (05:04).

Notable Quotes:

• Georgia Howe: "I think anybody that didn't support it, as a Republican, I would consider to be a fool. It's a great bill." (04:45)
• Congressman Blake Moore: "I love a stand up double. I don't have to have a home run on every single at bat." (03:46)

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2. Senate Report Unveils Alleged COVID Vaccine Risks and Delayed Warnings

Timestamp: [06:21 - 10:26]

The podcast shifts focus to a controversial Senate report revealing that federal health agencies were allegedly aware of severe COVID-19 vaccine risks, specifically myocarditis, but withheld this information from the public.

Key Highlights:

• Senate Investigation: The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report claiming that during the Biden administration, federal health agencies recognized significant adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines. However, these concerns were downplayed, and public warnings were delayed for months (00:32).

• Senator Ron Johnson's Testimony: Senator Ron Johnson elaborates on the findings, noting that as early as February, the Israeli Ministry of Health alerted U.S. officials about myocarditis cases primarily affecting young men. Despite internal acknowledgment of the risks, the federal government refrained from issuing timely Health Alert Network warnings (07:09).

• FDA's Revised COVID Guidance: In response to ongoing concerns, the FDA has updated its COVID-19 vaccine policies. While continuing to approve vaccines for seniors and high-risk individuals, the agency now mandates that manufacturers conduct new randomized placebo-controlled trials for vaccines intended for healthy Americans aged 6 months to 64 years (07:53).

• Controversial Statements from NIH and WHO Leaders: Dr. J. Bhattacharya, NIH Director, stirred controversy by suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic was likely initiated by research funded by the NIH. His remarks led to visible dissent among NIH staff, highlighting internal divisions over the pandemic's origins (08:17). Additionally, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized the World Health Organization for alleged undue Chinese influence, asserting that WHO suppressed critical information and promoted narratives favorable to China’s interests during the pandemic (09:36).

Notable Quotes:

• Senator Ron Johnson: "The federal government was very well aware of the myocarditis signal... yet... they decided not to issue a warning on the Health Alert Network." (07:09)
• Dr. J. Bhattacharya: "If it's true that we sponsored research that caused a pandemic... what we have to do is make sure that we do not engage in research that's any risk of opposing any risk to human populations." (09:00)
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: "The WHO suppressed reports at critical junctures of human to human transmission... promoted the fiction that Covid originated from bats or pangolins rather than... a biolab in Wuhan." (09:36)

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3. California Faces a $12 Billion Budget Deficit Amid Medicaid Expansion

Timestamp: [10:26 - 14:10]

The episode concludes with an analysis of California Governor Gavin Newsom's announcement regarding the state's projected $12 billion budget deficit for the upcoming year.

Key Highlights:

• Governor Newsom's Blame Shift: Initially attributing the deficit to Trump's economic policies and broader national economic downturns, Newsom's primary focus centers on the state's expanding Medicaid program, specifically its coverage of illegal immigrants (10:42).

• Medicaid Expansion's Financial Strain: Georgia Howe explains that while tax revenue shortfalls contribute to the deficit, the substantial increase in Medicaid spending is the principal driver. California's Medicaid, or Medi-Cal, covers over a third of the state's population, significantly higher than the national average of 20%. The expansion to include illegal immigrants has led to unforeseen costs, with enrollment numbers surpassing initial projections (11:20).

• Proposed Budgetary Measures: In response to escalating costs, Newsom has proposed restricting new enrollments of illegal immigrants into Medi-Cal and introducing modest premiums. Howe critiques these measures, suggesting they merely address immediate budgetary pressures without tackling the underlying issue of population shifts due to immigration policies (12:53).

• Long-Term Fiscal Health: The episode highlights concerns that California's financial trajectory remains precarious. Governor Newsom's strategies may offer temporary relief, but experts like Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute, warn that without fundamental changes, the state may be heading towards severe fiscal instability (14:10).

Notable Quotes:

• Georgia Howe: "The Medicaid program... has been growing very rapidly... because they have more coverage for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers." (11:20)
• Georgia Howe on Deficit Solutions: "One could say this entire budget deficit could be solved just by stopping this one program for eliminated." (12:53)
• Georgia Howe: "The state is heading straight for the cliff financially." (14:10)

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Conclusion

This episode of Morning Wire offers a comprehensive examination of pivotal political and health issues facing the United States. From President Trump's ambitious budgetary initiatives and internal GOP challenges to the contentious revelations about COVID-19 vaccine safety and California's escalating budget deficit, the podcast delivers insightful analysis enriched with expert commentary and authoritative quotes. For listeners seeking a grounded perspective on current events, this episode provides essential information and nuanced discussions pertinent to understanding the nation's evolving landscape.

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Note: Advertisements and promotional segments have been omitted to focus solely on the episode's main content.

Transcript

[John Bickley]

President Trump shakes up Capitol Hill while pushing forward on his tax cuts and budget.

[Georgia Howe]

I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we're going to get everything we want, and I think we're going to have a great victory.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Did the president convince the GOP holdouts?

[John Bickley]

I'm Daily Wire Executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, May 21, and this is MORNING Wire.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

A new bombshell. Senate report claims federal health agencies were aware of COVID vaccine dangers, including myocarditis, but intentionally delayed alerting the public once.

[Senator Ron Johnson]

The COVID injections hit the market. The adverse event reporting just skyrocketed and it was summarily dismissed, just disregarded by federal health officials.

[John Bickley]

And Gavin Newsom is blaming Trump for California's $12 billion deficit. But are the governor's spinning decisions to blame?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

We were off.

[Cabot Phillips]

We were significantly off.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Thanks for waking up with MORNING Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news. You need to know.

[Cabot Phillips]

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[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

President Trump traveled to Capitol Hill Tuesday, where he pushed GOP Congress members to pass his big, beautiful budget bill.

[John Bickley]

Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips is here with the latest. A Cabot. We've been watching this big budget bill. I love saying it over and over again. Remind us first what's all at stake here?

[Judge Glock]

Well, at stake is President Trump's budget. Remember, rather than breaking up this bill into smaller pieces to be voted on piecemeal, the president has urged Congress to push all of it through at once. Thus, the big, beautiful language. This law would amount to what the White House calls the largest tax cut in American history. Among other things, it would codify his plan for no taxes on tips, overtime or Social Security payouts. It would also increase child tax credits, remove over a million illegal immigrants from Medicaid, increase funding for border wall construction, overhaul the faa. And perhaps most importantly for most folks, it would make Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent. Without this bill, they would expire later this year. At the Moment, the plan is for the House to vote on this thing by Thursday, but we're still not sure if it'll actually pass.

[John Bickley]

And that's where Trump comes in.

[Judge Glock]

Exactly. Remember, because Republicans hold such a slim majority in the House and Senate, they've got to have almost total unity to get anything passed. That's that slim margin is a big reason that Trump has only signed five new laws since taking office. That's the fewest for any president at this point in their term since 1953. So on Tuesday, Trump took a rare trip across town to the Capitol, where he delivered a blunt message to House Republicans. Get in line. I spoke with Congressman Blake Moore, who sits on the powerful Ways and Means and Budget committees. He was in the room with President Trump. Here's how he described his message.

[Congressman Blake Moore]

There was holdouts across the board, and his message to all of them was don't let the, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If we stall on getting this done, the outcomes that will come will be far worse. If you wanted some changes to Medicaid, if you force this perfect world that you have in your vision, you'll actually get nothing. Let's go out and move the ball forward. Get something. I love a stand up double. I don't have to have a home run on every single at bat.

[John Bickley]

All right, so Trump really leaning on Republicans pretty hard there. What are the holdups so far?

[Judge Glock]

So there are two main factions pushing back right now on the right. First, you've got a few hardline conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus. They want to see more cuts to federal spending, Medicaid in particular. Those holdouts say the bill will increase the federal deficit and ultimately make inflation worse. For his part, according to multiple sources, President Trump reportedly told those budget hawks, quote, don't f around with Medicaid. He also took aim Tuesday at some of the ringleaders on the right, including in particular, Kentucky's Thomas Massie.

[Georgia Howe]

Do you think that Thomas Massie is.

[John Bickley]

Correct in saying that this is.

[Georgia Howe]

No, I don't think Thomas Massey understands government. I think he's a grandstander, frankly. He'll probably vote. We don't even talk to him much. I think he should be voted out of office.

[Judge Glock]

And on the other side of the opposition are more moderate members from the Northeast who say the bill does not do enough to fund Medicaid. They also want to see higher caps on the amount of state and local taxes that Americans can write off.

[Georgia Howe]

I think anybody that didn't support it, as a Republican, I would consider to be a fool. It's a great bill.

[Judge Glock]

Now, it's worth noting, while the bill will offer tax cuts to millions of Americans, there are skeptics, some within the GOP who say that it'll increase the federal debt over the next decade. I asked Congressman Moore about that. Here's his take 1.

[Congressman Blake Moore]

When you, when you do tax policy, it gets scored as a deficit creator, but we're offsetting that with two factors. One, a conservative growth estimate within the economy. And we think that that growth estimate will cut half of that away. And then there's an, then there's an enormous amount of spending cuts that we're making, as well as what you would call revenue raisers.

[Judge Glock]

Now, regardless of who's right there, it's worth noting a recent poll from Marquette found that 60% of Americans support lowering taxes, even if the deficit increases. So something to keep in mind there.

[John Bickley]

Yeah. And lower taxes doesn't always mean lower revenues. Gavin, thanks so much for reporting.

[Judge Glock]

Absolutely.

[Cabot Phillips]

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[John Bickley]

A bombshell report released from the Senate says federal health agencies were aware of severe COVID vaccine risks for months prior to alerting the American people.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Here with more is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presto Giacomo. So, Amanda, a lot of COVID news this week. Let's start with this recent report on vaccines. What exactly did it say?

[Dr. J. Bhattacharya]

Yeah. Well, Morningwire was able to get an early look at this report. It was conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It claims that Biden era federal health agencies, they were aware of severe adverse health reactions associated with these Covid vaccines, but they downplayed health concerns and they delayed alerting the public about these risks for months. Republican Senator Ron Johnson, the chairman of the subcommittee, he'll hold a full hearing today at 2pm Morning Wire spoke exclusively with Senator Johnson about their findings.

[Senator Ron Johnson]

The federal government was very well aware of the myocarditis signal, particularly in young men as early as February, when they were warned by or asked, inquired by the Israeli Ministry of Health about the large number of cases of myocarditis, again primarily in young men in Israel. And for a number of months they were talking about these things. At some point in time, they actually internally said, is there a signal of myocarditis, a safety signal? And the answer was yes. And yet a couple days later, they decided not to issue a warning on the Health Alert Network.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Now, around the same time that this report is coming out, the FDA has just revised its COVID vaccine guidance. What are the changes?

[Dr. J. Bhattacharya]

Yeah, the FDA says that they'll continue to approve Covid vaccines for seniors and people who are at high risk. But the agency is now requiring vaccine makers to conduct new clinical trials before they approve this vaccine for the wider public. These companies are going to have to conduct randomized placebo controlled trials before the FDA will approve their shots for healthy Americans between the ages of 6 months and 64 years old.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Okay, now shifting gears a bit. NIH Director Dr. J. Bhattacharya made some news this week when he discussed the origins of the COVID pandemic. What happened there?

[Dr. J. Bhattacharya]

Yeah, Dr. Bhattacharya, who leads NIH, he upset a lot of bureaucrats at the agency when he said at a town hall event that he believes the COVID pandemic was likely started by research that was funded by nih.

[J]

It's possible that the pandemic was caused by research conducted by human beings. And it's also possible that the NIH partly sponsored that research.

[Dr. J. Bhattacharya]

At that point, dozens of employees can be seen walking out. Notably, some of them are wearing masks. Dr. Bhattacharya acknowledged them by making a comment about free speech.

[J]

And then he continued, it's nice to have free speech. Welcome, you guys. If it's true that we sponsored research that caused a pandemic, and if you look at polls of the American people, that's what most people believe. And I've looked at the scientific evidence. I believe it. What we have to do is make sure that we do not engage in research that's any risk of opposing any risk to human populations.

[Dr. J. Bhattacharya]

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He also made news this week when he was talking about the origins of COVID He scolded the World Health Organization at the group's annual meeting over their ties to China. Here's video of that message.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

The United States has provided the lion's share of the organization's funding. Historically, other countries such as China, have exerted undue influence over its operations in ways that serve their own interests and not particularly the interests of the global public. This all became obvious during the COVID pandemic when the who, under pressure from China, suppressed reports at critical junctures of human to human transmission and then worked with China to promote the fiction that Covid originated from bats or pangolins rather than from a Chinese government sponsored research at a biolab in Wuhan.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Well, amazing that it's taken five years for all of this to come out. Amanda, thanks for reporting.

[Dr. J. Bhattacharya]

You're welcome.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced his state will be facing an astounding budget deficit next year, $12 billion.

[John Bickley]

Here to talk about California's budget problems is Judge Glock, director of research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge, thanks for coming on.

[Georgia Howe]

Thanks so much for having me back.

[John Bickley]

So Newsom is blaming the budget hole on Trump slump as well as Washington's attack on on California's economy. That's what he's calling it. Is he right?

[Georgia Howe]

First Newsom is right that the outlook for the state has darkened a lot since back in January where the budget looked just about balanced. The tariffs, a more volatile stock market means California is going to be bringing in less funds than expected. But if you look at the actual budget document that Newsom released, it looks like half of this new deficit, less than half, is from reduced tax revenue coming in.

[John Bickley]

So what is actually driving this new deficit?

[Georgia Howe]

Well, the big difference now is that California is increasing their spending a lot faster than they expected. And a big driver of that is increased spending on Medicaid or Medi Cal as it's known in California. That's the health insurance program for the poor. In the rest of the country, Medicaid covers about 20% of people, but in California, it's more than a third. And it's been growing very rapidly. And one of the reasons Medical has been growing very rapidly is they have more coverage for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.

[John Bickley]

So the state of California provides health insurance for illegal immigrants as something we've covered in the past. Is that typical in the rest of the country?

[Georgia Howe]

The short answer is no. The Medicaid program is this joint federal state program. And the federal government has made it clear it doesn't want to pay for health insurance for illegal immigrants. But starting the 2010s, a handful of progressive states, including California, of course, began using their own money as a sort of top off to cover illegal immigrants. And these states kept expanding that coverage. And just last year, California became the first state to offer Medicaid coverage to all illegal immigrants of any age. Just a few months ago, Newsom announced the state needed to borrow an extra $2.7 billion because more immigrants were enrolling in the new program than he expected. The previous estimate was the program for illegal immigrants would cost about $10 billion a year. And now that estimate's gone up again. So one could say this entire budget deficit could be solved just by stopping this one program for eliminated.

[John Bickley]

Incredible. And Governor Newsom has signaled that it might be on the table to actually to eliminate this program, is that correct?

[Georgia Howe]

That's right. So a few months back when the state announced that extra borrowing for the Medicaid for immigrants program, Newsom said he wouldn't cut it back. He said no, no, no, medical insurance for the undocumented was a real duty of Californians and so forth. But this time when he made his announcement, he pointed the fingers at the Trump tariffs, talked a lot about the national economy going south. But then his big change, his announcement for what to how to solve the budget deficit, was restricting new illegal immigrant enrollment and starting to charge a modest premium. I think Newsom had to recognize the program had gotten out of control and this time he wanted to just blame the circumstances on the general economy. The state population shrank after Covid for the first time in history. And the only reason hasn't shrunk more is because of these migrants coming in from other countries. But California can't keep losing taxpayers to other states while they offer more rewards to illegal immigrants and others who consume a lot of taxpayer funds. So Newsom's proposed cuts, even if they pass, won't fix that long term problem caused by the shifts in the state's population.

[John Bickley]

It really sounds like the state's heading straight for the cliff financially. Judge, thanks so much for coming on.

[Georgia Howe]

Thanks again for having me.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with more news you need to know.

[Cabot Phillips]

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