Morning Wire - Confirmation Hearings Continue & Israel-Hamas Deal Reached | 1.16.25

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Pam Bondi and Marco Rubio kick off second day of confirmation hearings, Israel and Hamas come to a ceasefire agreement, and both Florida and Tennessee prepare to help with Trump’s immigration agenda. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Babbel: Start learning a language today! Get up to 60% off subscriptions at https://Babbel.com/WIRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Day two of confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's nominees sees Pam Bondi and Marco Rubio under the spotlight. Can you tell me in this committee what the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment says? Senator, I'm here to answer your questions. I'm not here to do your homework and study for you. How can any nation state on the planet coexist side by side with a group of savages like Hamas? How did Trump's picks handle the congressional grilling? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, January 16th, and this is Morning Wire. A deal has been reached to get hostages back from Hamas,

with Trump's return to the White House just days away. They don't want to deal with Trump. He's been perfectly clear. He is not vacillated about his message that if they don't send our people back, there's going to be hell to pay. And Florida and Tennessee convenes special sessions to help carry out Trump's immigration agenda on days. We need to enact strong policies that are going to help this administration accomplish the mission that the American people spoke loudly and clearly about in November.

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Rules and restrictions may apply. Yesterday was another marathon day of confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill. as senators grilled some of Donald Trump's highest profile nominees. Here with the key takeaways from the day's events is Daily Wire Deputy Managing editor Tim Rice. So Tim, we had six hearings yesterday. Give us the highlights. Yeah, good morning, Georgia. You know, most of the hearings went on without incident.

Trump's nominee for Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, spoke mostly about policy, promising to cut red tape and oppose a gas tax. John Radcliffe, Trump's pick to lead to the CIA, talked about how he would ensure the agency is focused on its, core mission. And Energy Secretary nominee Chris Wright, who spoke about the importance of fossil fuels, even seemed to get support from Democrats John Hickenlooper and Ruben Gallego. So it seems like all three of those nominees will sail to confirmation relatively easily. So certainly pretty different from Monday's fiery hearings with Pete Hegeseth. And what about the more contentious hearings?

Yeah, that would be the hearings for Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi and Marco Rubio, Trump's pick to lead the State Department. Bondi's hearing was dead. definitely the most lively of the day. Democrats grilled her on a number of political topics, pressing her about the 2020 election and her relationship with Trump. But Bondi was ready to answer. Like in this moment when Senator Richard Blumenthal accused Bondi of simply saying the right things to get senators to vote yes on her confirmation. Senator, first, I need to clarify something that you said that I have to sit up here and say these things. No, I don't. I sit up here and speak the truth. I'm not going to sit up here

and say anything that I need to say to get confirmed by this body. I don't have to say anything. Here's Bondi squaring off against Adam Schiff when he claimed Trump would prosecute Liz Cheney. We're also worried about Liz Cheney, Senator. You know what we should be worried about? Ms. Bondi, please answer my questions. You are aware of the roof. Your robberies are 87% higher than the national average.

My question is this. That's what I want to be focused on, Senator. Do you have the power to say no to the president? Now, Rubio's hearing took pretty much the whole day, but it was way less eventful than Bondi's. He had friendly banter with Democrats on the committee, which he served on for years. He said that he would focus on helping Israel defeat Hamas and work to fight global anti-Semitism,

and he offered a frank assessment of the war in Ukraine, urging lawmakers to realize that the conflict would likely have to end in some kind of compromise, not total victory for either side. Throughout the hearing, Rubio stressed that, as secretary, he would work to put America first. Under President Trump, the top priority of the United States Department of State will be the United States. The direction he has given for the conduct of our foreign policy is clear. Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, every policy we pursue must be justified

by the answer to one of three questions. Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Or does it make America more prosperous? Now, before you go, President Biden delivered his farewell address last night. What did we hear? Well, it was partially what we expected to hear. Biden insists that he created the strongest economy in the world and tried to frame his administration as a comeback from the coronavirus pandemic. But then he veered into a more pessimistic tone, warning Americans about a number of threats,

including climate change and the rise of AI. He also warned that the United States was at risk of being taken over by a tech industrial complex and turning into an oligarchy. This is a dangerous concern, and that's the dangerous conversation of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people. The dangerous consequences, if their abuse of power is left unchecked.

Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. Needless to say, a majority of Americans disagreed with his assessment of his legacy, which is why he found himself delivering a farewell address last night, rather than prepping for his second inaugural address, like President-elect Trump.

Right. Well, and to that point, I want to remind listeners that Daily Wire is going to be in D.C. Live for coverage of the inauguration on Monday. That's right. Tim, thanks for reporting. Anytime. Nearly a year and a half after Hamas launched its October 7th terror attack on Israel, killing 1,200 and seizing over 200 hostages, a tentative hostage and ceasefire agreement has been reached. The potentially momentous agreement comes just days before Trump takes office.

Joining us to discuss is Victoria Coates, Vice President of Heritage's National Security and Foreign Policy Institute, and author of the Battle for the Jewish State, how Israel and America can win. Hey, Victoria, so significant developments in Israel, to say the least, what do we know so far about this hostage arrangement? Well, we know so far that this is going to be a phased arrangement that Hamas finally supplied a list of, we hear, 98 hostages both dead and alive, that are still in Gaza under their control. So we'll set aside the possibility that there are additional people that Hamas no longer has control over. So this is what they have, that there will be some number of them, close to 35, who will be released in coming days. and ceasefire will go into effect for about six weeks if that does indeed happen,

and during which time Israel reserves the right to go back into Gaza and resume fighting if there are any infractions on the ceasefire. And I think that's very important that the only thing we really know right now is that we're likely to see about 35 hostages come out on Sunday the day before the inauguration, and at that point, burden is on Hamas to see. if we go any further with this deal. Does this require a complete withdrawal from Gaza by Israel, or is this a drawdown, a reduction in forces?

I think it's more of a drawdown in these early phases. And also important that Israel is being asked to release some number of Palestinian prisoners. This is standard. It happened in the last deal for hostages, which was in November of 2023. So that is going to happen as well. but important that Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that they are not going to relinquish control of the periphery of the Gaza Strip. They are going to retain the right to go back in if Hamas violates this.

And so it's a very big if that Hamas is actually going to behave itself and not do something that would bring the Israelis back in. Right. Now you mentioned the inauguration, this deal, the hope is for it to be finalized and go into effect the day before Trump comes into office. There's been a lot of comparisons made between this situation and the hostage situation with Reagan coming into office. Do you think it's a fair comparison? I do think it's fair. I mean, they're obviously not identical by any stretch of the imagination. But in this case, what you've had is, as I said, since November of 2023, no movement on the hostages whatsoever.

And a number of hostages killed in that intervening 14 months. And what has changed is in early December. of last year, you know, six weeks ago, you had President Trump make a very strong statement that the hostages needed to be let go now, or there would be hell to pay. And he has repeated that strong statement. He has empowered his good friend Steve Whitkoff to be Middle East envoy to carry out these negotiations, somebody that, you know, our interlocutors in the Middle East knows speaks for the president-elect. And that has created motion. So I think you're going to see the Biden administration try to take all sorts of credit for this.

But the fact of the matter is it was the change in tone out of President Trump that brought this into being. And the other kind of cruel reality here is that the window to get the hostages out has been closing. We know that more and more of them are dying. The conditions they're under are dire. So if not now, if it was becoming a real possibility, it would be never. So I think that's why President Trump took the actions he did. And remind us again, how many Americans are amongst these remaining hostages? We think they're four alive. And so the question is whether they would be part of this original trosh. We don't have those names yet or whether they would come out in phases as well.

A lot of grieving families hoping to see their loved ones again. Now there's some real hope here. Victoria, thank you so much for joining us. States are consolidating behind Trump's mass deportation agenda. Tennessee and Florida are the latest to have sworn to help federal authorities deport aliens from the U.S. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about the growing support for Trump's immigration agenda. So Tim, Trump seems to be getting some help from red states, at least, with his immigration agenda. What's the latest? That's right. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee was the latest to take action. On Wednesday, he announced a special session of the state legislature.

Lee has a few priorities for the session, but one of those is to lay the groundwork for Trump's immigration agenda. The governor's office said in a statement, he wants Tennessee ready to assist Trump on day one to support. effort efforts to secure our nation's borders and keep communities safe. The governor's announcement follows a similar one from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this week. Here's what DeSantis said. We have a responsibility to be in this fight. State and local officials in Florida must help the Trump administration enforce our nation's immigration laws.

And we are going to need, in order to do that effectively, we are going to need legislation to impose additional. duties on local officials and provide funding for those local officials. There also needs to be measures to hold people accountable who are violating our anti-sanctuary policies, and then Florida needs to make sure that we don't have any lingering incentives for people to come into our state illegally. Now, Trump promised mass deportations and Republican states seem to want to facilitate that program as much as possible. I should also note that the president has already received

widespread support on immigration. You might recall a letter co-signed by all 26 Republican governors in December backing Trump specifically on this issue. Now all of this comes as we see some alarming reports regarding immigration and terrorism. What's going on there? According to Fox News, the Biden administration in fiscal year 2024 exempted nearly 7,000 foreign nationals from terrorism-related restrictions on immigration. That's a huge jump over 2023 when the administration exempted about 2,000. thousand people. And 2023 was a large jump, too. Just a few years ago under Trump, the number of these exemptions given out in 2020 was just 361. And who received those waivers? We don't have a lot of information on that. We know that the vast majority of those that received them claimed to be refugees,

and most of those appear to be from Afghanistan. Fox News reports that 29 received exemptions as Afghan allies to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. 374 were given exemptions as civil servants. where 3,000 received a waiver related to insignificant support given to Tier 1 or Tier 2 terror organizations. Of those who don't appear to be from Afghanistan, we don't know their nationality. We do know that 155 of them were seeking asylum. 22 were green cardholders and four more applied for temporary protected status in the U.S. Well, and all of this comes amid some heightened terrorism concerns. For good reason.

Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. Hey, thank you for listening this morning. we created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and stand with that mission, consider subscribing, giving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.

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