Morning Wire - Cloakroom Cocaine Investigation & Meta’s ‘Twitter Killer’ | 7.6.23

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

The Secret Service confirmed that the suspicious white powder found at The White House was in fact cocaine, Meta debuts a new conversation app named “Threads,” and a judge bars the Biden administration from pressuring social media companies to censor free speech. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.  Balance of Nature: Get a FREE Fruit & Veggies Travel Set plus $25 off your first order as a preferred customer. Use promo code WIRE at checkout: https://www.balanceofnature.com/ Birch Gold: Text "WIRE" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation information kit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The suspicious bag of white powder that prompted an evacuation of the White House on Sunday has been confirmed by the Secret Service to be cocaine. Where this was discovered is a heavily traveled area where many White House West Wing visitors come through. What's being done to identify the culprit and how could the incident further test the transparency of the Biden administration? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, July 6th. And this is Morning Wire. Meta debuts a new conversation app named Threads.

Why are some calling it the Twitter killer? A lot of people see this as the first real competitor that could draw people away because it's the right time because Twitter is really floundering right now. And in what's being celebrated as a big win for the First Amendment, a judge borrows the Biden administration from pressuring social media companies to censor free speech. It's a great president on an Independence Day to defend the liberty of the American people from a government that's been spying and censoring them. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.

Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. On Sunday, a suspicious white powder was found in the White House, causing an evacuation of the building. It was later determined that the substance was cocaine. Reports indicate that a baggie with cocaine in it was found in the West Wing, and though the details are still murky, the Secret Service is investigating the incident.

Here to talk about it is Daily Wire contributor, David Marcus. So, Dave, how much do we know about these misplaced drugs and, most importantly, who might have misplaced them? Good morning. We don't know too much. We do know it was found in the cloak room of the West Wing, leaving almost a game of clue with cocaine in the cloak room. But as to who put it there, nobody knows. I think anyone playing word association with Biden and cocaine is going to come up with the word hunter, the president's son who has been known to use it. But though he has recently been to the West Wing, there's nothing tying him to this particular Bolivian marching powder.

So the search we assume is ongoing. Yeah, it's impossible not to bring up Hunter's name in this, though, as you mentioned, no direct evidence at this point. If we assume it's not actually the president's son, who are some of the other suspects that investigators could pursue in order to find the culprit? The potential suspect list is long, but not infinite. Obviously, there's a record of anyone who enters 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. So there's speculation it could have been a guy.

perhaps a member of the staff. So the pool of people with access is limited, and the possibility exists that fingerprints could be found on the baggy. I mean, it's almost amusing to imagine whoever it was realizing, like, where's that bag of blow go? I know I had it. Let me retrace my steps. Where was I?

Oh, right, the White House. I think you've probably just taken a loss on that one. How important is it that this investigation be taken seriously and that the American people get some answers about how this happened? A bag of cocaine isn't exactly. the case of the century. But I do think it matters, especially at a time when Americans have real and reasonable concerns about a two-tiered system of justice, comparing, for example, how the Department of Justice handled Donald Trump versus Hunter Biden. Look, if you or I are caught

with a stash of nose candy in a government building, let alone the White House, we'd face consequences. And so if this was someone who works there, Americans are going to want to see those consequences meet it out. Yeah, indeed. Could this be a test of the transparency of the Biden administration, which has been criticized in the past for not being forthcoming with the press on these kinds of internal matters? Yeah, I think so. We have a press secretary in Corrine, John Pierre, who every other day says from the podium that she won't discuss Biden's classified document scandal or his dealings with Hunter. You can go back to the summer of 2021 when then press secretary, Jen Saki, refused to answer how many breakthrough COVID cases had been discovered

at the White House. So there is a sense that this administration feels it's somehow above answering many questions about topics to put it in a bad light. Am I going to be shocked if in two weeks we still have no answer and this story just fades away? No, I won't be, but there's a cumulative effect here. And this is just another example. Yeah. Now, I'm sure officials were relieved that the powder was not a poisonous substance like anthrax, but these days with so many drugs cut with fentanyl, could cocaine in the White House actually be a real tragedy waiting to happen? Yes, 100%. I mean, Today, it's impossible to know whether any drug is cut with fentanyl. So absolutely an overdose or even death is possible, even just from one use of a drug.

Obviously, the White House should be working very hard, not just to find out how it got there, but really to make sure it doesn't happen again. Yeah, let's certainly hope that's the response. Dave, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. The battle for social media dominance enters a new stage as the world's largest social media company launches its so-called Twitter killer. Facebook's parent company, Meta, released a new micro-blogging app called Threads today as a direct competitor to Twitter. Joining us with the details is Daily Wire researcher Michael Whitaker. So, Michael, what can you tell us about threads?

Well, it certainly seems to be the most formidable competitor Twitter has ever had, and the company is in a time of turmoil as we speak. Twitter has been at the center of numerous controversies since Elon Musk purchased it last October. Twitter greatly expanded the kinds of political speech aloud on the platform and publicized previous collusion between it and the government to censor certain viewpoints. It opened up verified status to the Hoyt-Polloy so that now anyone can get a blue check mark for $8, and since Musk took over, he's fired more than 80% of the company's employees. Some users love the new changes. Full disclosure, the Daily Wire has been a major supporter of Twitter's new free speech policies, but other users have been quite vocally opposed. Advertisers have also pulled back from Twitter, setting concerns about the kinds of content

their ads might appear next to. Disatisfaction of Twitter is far from new. In the pre-Musk era, many right-wing alternatives were created in response to censorship or outright banning of conservative users. But none of the other rivals to the bird, old or new, left, right, or center, have achieved liftoff. But people are saying threads could. Potentially, to put things in perspective, Gab, Macedon, Blue Sky, half a dozen other websites that most of our audience has probably never heard of, all have less than 1% of Twitter's user base. Truth Social, former President Trump's favorite domain, has about 2 million monthly users. Twitter has more than 300 million.

meta, on the other hand, dwarfs Twitter by an order of magnitude. Instagram, which will be closely connected with Fred's, has over 2 billion monthly users. While the company's flagship application, Facebook, has nearly 3 billion users. And meta's accounts are very easily linked. You can log into Instagram using Facebook and vice versa, and Freds will be connected the same way. The competitors have a massive shared user base. According to data.aI, more than 50 million Americans have Twitter and Instagram downloaded onto their phones. If meta can convert even a fraction of those users to threads, it would be the largest rival to Twitter by far.

Instagram has successfully imitated stories from Snapchat and reels from TikTok, so they've already proven that they are more than capable of copying their competitors. So it sounds like threads has a lot of things going forward already, more so than some of those other alternatives. How is Twitter responding? You mean, aside from the chief tweet challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match? Well, despite all of Met his advantages, building a new social media platform isn't easy. Remember, most of the value is in the news. network. People use these sites because other people they're interested in use them, meaning the best

way to attract new users is to have a lot of users already. Reaching that critical mass can require a Herculane effort. For Twitter specifically, making a profitable alternative is more complicated by the fact that Twitter itself has not been profitable for most of its history. It reported net losses for most of the years that was publicly traded and lost $220 million in 2021 before Musk bought it. For context, Facebook made more than $39 billion that year. The model could be inherently difficult to monetize, and meta has financial issues of its own. The entire tech sector has seen massive layoffs and setbacks over the last year or so.

Facebook saw profits dip by more than 40% from 2021 to 2022, and it's reduced its headcount by almost a quarter since the end of last year, so taking on new projects could be difficult. On the other hand, Twitter dropped more than three quarters of its staff over the same time frame, and it's been chugging along just fine, barring a few hiccups, so anything's possible. While information is harder to come by since Musk took the company private, it seems like some of his initiatives are starting to pay off.

Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yakarino, is a veteran advertising executive who could bring antsy customers back to the site. Twitter Blue has also attracted roughly 850,000 subscribers and counting, so that $8 a month fee could start adding up fast. Well, just the fact that users can convert directly from Facebook does seem like a huge advantage to me. Michael, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me.

A meeting between the State Department and Facebook parent company Meadow was canceled yesterday. The move comes after a federal judge blocked the administration from working with big tech to censor speech. The Biden administration has been accused for years of pressuring social media platforms to silence conservatives. Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marade, Alorty, is here with the details. So, Marade, tell us about this judge's order.

Hi, Georgia. Yes, so this is an important ruling in a case that could have huge consequences for First Amendment rights. This preliminary injunction comes down from federal judge. Terry Dowdy in Louisiana, a Trump nominee. Dowdy ordered certain Biden federal agencies and more than a dozen top Biden officials not to communicate with social media companies about taking down, quote, content containing protected free speech.

The ruling is a win for red states, Missouri and Louisiana. Their attorneys general sued the government in 2022 for censoring content it considered to be COVID misinformation. The judge said the two GOP attorneys general produced evidence of a massive effort by the White House and federal agencies to suppress speech based on its content. The judge will still have to issue a final ruling on the case, but this preliminary injunction signals he may rule that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment. So this is a win for Missouri and Louisiana, at least for now. So which Biden agencies and or officials does this apply to? The agencies mentioned in the ruling are the

HHS, the CDC, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was run by Anthony Fauci until recently, the Justice Department, and the FBI. The ruling also targets Biden's Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House Press Secretary Karin Jean-Pierre. So specifically, what this ruling says is that these agencies and officials can't flag content or posts on social media platforms and forward content to social media companies, quote, urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech. The judge went on to say, if proven true, the allegations are the most massive attack against free speech in the United States history. The judge did allow for some exceptions, including posts about criminal activity or criminal conspiracies, national security threats and threats to election security, but they can't ask the platforms to take down content they don't like.

Now, conservatives have been saying for years that the Biden administration pressured social media companies to suppress them, and there's evidence to suggest that that was happening, correct? That's right. According to the Twitter files and at least one congressional report, there is some evidence to suggest the Biden administration did in fact pressure major social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to suppress content, especially content about COVID or the 2020 election. The Twitter files, which are internal Twitter documents that were released last year, showed that, for example, Twitter censored the Hunter Biden laptop story after the FBI pressured Twitter to do so. Also just last month, GOP House lawmakers accused the Biden administration. in a new report of colluding with big tech to surveil and censor Americans leading up to the 2020 and 2020 elections. So there's definitely a case to be made that the Biden administration has consistently pressured big tech to censor Americans with opinions or information it doesn't like. Now, speaking of the Biden administration, how have they responded to this ruling? A White House official said it is reviewing the course injunction and will evaluate its options in this case.

The White House official defended the Biden administration and said they have promoted responsible, actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections. The official also said that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people. So the White House is calling out the social media companies, but it'll be interesting to see how the judge in this case rules and whether he decides the Biden administration really did pressure social media platforms to stifle content about COVID. Well, we're certainly going to be to see how this case unfolds.

Marade, thanks for reporting. Thanks, Georgia. Another story we're tracking this week. Earth's temperature spiked on Independence data, what officials say is the hottest day in at least 44 years. According to a University of Maine Climate Re-analyzer tool,

the globe's average temperature reached 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday. In the U.S., 57 million people were exposed to dangerous heat that day, according to the Washington Post's extreme heat tracker. And on Wednesday, Beijing experienced 104 degree temperatures. National Oceanic and atmospheric administration officials say it's likely the hottest day in several hundred years that we've experienced. All right, well, stay cool, everyone, and thanks for waking up with us.

We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.