Morning Wire - Helene Government Response & Voting Concerns | 10.3.24

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Residents still suffering after Hurricane Helene, will the Vice Presidential debate matter? And state by state election problems. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Lumen: Get 15% off your Lumen at https://lumen.me/Wire Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The death toll from Hurricane Helene continues to rise, while hundreds of thousands remain stranded with no water or power. FEMA is not on the ground there at all. They are not in these cities, not in these towns, and not in these villages. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, October 3rd, and this is Morning Wire. The fallout from the first and only VP debate continues, with most media outlets agreeing on the winner.

J.D. Vance is much more experienced at this at public speaking, at defending himself, at pivoting. And several states have cleaned up their voter rolls ahead of November, while others are fighting election integrity efforts. There are many states that are doing absolutely nothing to take people who become ineligible off the voter rolls. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, and optimizing your metabolic health helps with, weight management, improved energy levels, better sleep and more. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. I love my Lumen. I just breathe into it first thing in the morning, and it tells me what's going on with my metabolism in real time. Take the next step in improving

your health today. Go to Lumen.me.m.me slash wire to get 15% off your lumen. That's l-U-M-E-S-Wire for 15% off your purchase. In the wake of Hurricane Helene, rescue and relief efforts across the Southeast continue as millions of people remain in need of basic resources like food, water, and gasoline. Meanwhile, local officials and some residents are criticizing the slow government response. Here to discuss this Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta Giacomo. Hey Amanda. So first, what's the latest information we have about these affected areas? Well, unfortunately, John, more than 180 people have been confirmed dead and that number is expected to rise. Search and rescue operations for hundreds of missing people are currently being conducted, and the American Red Cross said they received

more than 3,000 calls in just 24 hours from people searching for their loved ones. As we've reported here, North Carolina was hit particularly hard. Large portions of Asheville, Chimney Rock, Swananoa, and Biltmore Village were wiped out by flooding, and at least 90 people in the state have been confirmed dead. The western part of North Carolina is struggling with limited power, internet, and cell service, and water systems have been destroyed. Now, on this issue of internet access, there has been some progress on this, thanks largely to Elon Musk.

Dozens of his satellite systems called Starlink, they've already been made available in North Carolina. And Musk also announced late Tuesday that he's making Starlink free for those in affected communities. According to Musk, Trump worked with him to get Starlink to those in need. The former president also set up a fundraiser online for hurricane victims. That's already brought in over four minutes. million dollars. What about the federal response? What's going on there? Well, President Joe Biden,

ahead of his visit to the Carolinas on Wednesday, he ordered the deployment of 1,000 active duty troops to aid with recovery efforts. He said this is going to speed up the delivery of food, water, and medicine to isolated communities. One thousand FEMA workers have been deployed to help with their response, as well as thousands of other federal workers. And the agency says they've shipped out millions of meals and liters of water, 150 generators, and 200,000 tarps. Some North Carolina residents and local officials, though, they've harshly criticized the federal and state government

for the limited and slow response. Keep in mind, North Carolina was already in a state of emergency back on September 26th. Here's one resident from Asheville talking to NBC. Nobody's going to help us. Do you have any faith in the federal response here? No, no. Another resident said that in the absence of federal aid, private citizens are stepping up to help one another.

What there is is lines of private planes that have landed and are taking off that have dropped off supplies and personnel. See, America is responding. Joe, Kamala, do you know you have a military? Why can't you use those same resources that we've already paid for here now? North Carolina Representative Chuck Edwards criticized the slow response from FEMA, saying it looked like they had taken the weekend off. Edwards said counties in his area were in desperate need of water, and at one point, 400 pallets of food and water dropped off by FEMA were not able to be located by state officials.

So a lot of chaos there. Biden, as we mentioned earlier, he finally visited the Carolinas on Wednesday. He also took some heat for being away in Delaware over the weekend when people were really struggling in the Southeast. Here's his response when a reporter asked him about that. Come on, what's that came? Went in from the weather and Delaware. It's 90 miles from here, okay? I was on the phone the whole time. Biden is also scheduled to visit Florida in Georgia today. And as for Harris, the Democrat nominee, she surveyed damage in Georgia on Wednesday two days after Trump's visit. She vowed that the administration would be there for the long haul.

So many people still desperate for help there. And a lot of Americans pitching in Amanda, thank you so much for reporting. Yeah, you're welcome. As the dust settles following Tuesday's consequential VP debate, both campaigns are hoping for an edge, highlighting the best of their candidate's performances. Here with Moore's Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot, Phillips, a Cabot. So what sort of impact did Tuesday's Showdown have on this race so far? Well, first, Americans were clearly interested, according to preliminary estimates from ad impact,

a staggering 67 million people tuned in. That is just a hair below the number who watched Harrison Trump last month. And there's no question that the instant reaction from the legacy media was that J.D. Vance was the clear winner. The influential political playbook said their entire editorial team named him the winner, while the New York Times even read a piece titled Vance's dominant debate performance shows why he's Trump's running mate. We heard similar messages from many left-leaning media figures as well. For example, here's CNN's John King. The two issues driving the campaign right now are Harris has a big deal.

deficit on the economy. Harris has a big deficit on immigration, and Republicans were happy tonight, and Democrats are a little bit nervous that on those two issues, Vance carried it. Now, coming into this debate, Harris officials had been saying off the record that they were worried about how Walls would do, noting that he,

like his running mate, has really not done any combative interviews on the national stage, something Vance has done weekly for months. But afterwards, they expressed confidence in his performance, saying he may have started slowly but finished strong. So the media seemingly crowning Vance, the winner.

What about voters? Yeah, according to the few polls we've seen, they felt the debate was much closer. When asked to one, CBS polling had Vance with a one-point advantage, while CNN had him with a two-point advantage. So very close. But if you dig into the numbers, there are some encouraging results for the Trump campaign. For example, Politico found that among those who did not tune in, only 34% of voters said Vance was ready to be president.

But for those who did watch, those numbers jumped to 51%. Now, as we touched on yesterday, the rules said fact-checking would be left to the candidates, not the moderators, but they did fact-check Vance several times. Tell us about the fallout from that. Yeah, they interjected repeatedly and only really targeted Vance. The Trump campaign has since highlighted a number of false claims made by walls, asking why the moderators did not jump in. For example, he repeated that claim that a Georgia woman named Amber Thurman died because of pro-life. laws when she actually died of sepsis after being given an abortion pill. He claimed drug cartels were not using children as drug mules at the southern border, something that's been long confirmed,

and he claimed the flood of illegal immigrants has not driven up the cost of housing, despite data from the Federal Reserve showing otherwise. And perhaps most notably, Walls vehemently denied that his state allowed for babies who survive abortions to be left to die outside the womb. But according to medical records, there have been at least eight such cases under his tenure in Minnesota, state with, again, no restrictions on abortion up until birth. Right. Now, before we let you go, one other campaign-related story, there's a new report about Doug Imhoff that's made the rounds.

Tell us about that. Yeah, a disturbing story. So on Wednesday, the Daily Mail reported that back in 2012, Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, allegedly struck his ex-girlfriend after she flirted with another man, hitting her so hard, she spun around while standing in a valet. line. The report includes three unnamed friends of the woman who confirmed the account with pictures and communications from the time of the incident. One of those women said the ex-girlfriend had called her sobbing immediately afterwards. Now, remember, Emhoff was already at the heart of

another scandal this year. In that case, he admitted to a past affair in which he had impregnated a teacher at his child's school, ending his first marriage back in 2009. So more questions to answer for the Harris campaign. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. Several states have cleaned dust. up voter rolls in advance of the presidential election, but some states, including the battleground state of Nevada, still send mail-in ballots to every registered voter, regardless of eligibility. Joining us to discuss concerns around election integrity is Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation. Hans, thanks so much for coming on.

Sure. First off, what percent of ballots are expected to be mailed in this year? Well, in the last election, 2020, 43% of the electorate used mail-in or absentee ballots. That was a 20-percentage point increase from 2016, so a very large number. And this year, I expect it's probably going to be about the same number, if not larger. Now, a lot of conservatives had concerns about that and the integrity of mail-in ballots in general. Have there been successful efforts by states to strengthen security around the election with regards to mail-in ballots? It has in some states, Georgia and Texas, for example, both of those states extended their voter ID requirement to absentee ballots. Does that stop all of the potential

fraud with absentee ballots? No, but it makes it more difficult to commit if you also have to show a government-issued ID, for example, when you requested absentee ballot. But other states haven't done anything like that. Nevada now mails ballots to every single registered voter, despite the fact that their voter rolls have been shown to be extremely bad, inaccurate, and they don't have any kind of ID requirement at all. Now, what about other security measures like poll watching? Have local GOP chapters made efforts to bolster their numbers in that capacity or just be more involved in the in-person election process as well? They've been trying to do both. You know, transparency.

is vital if you want to have a fair and honest election. And of course, one of the problems with mail-in ballots is they're voted outside the supervision of election officials and outside the observation of poll watchers. We are generally better off in 2024 than we were in 2020. But look, it all depends on what states you're in. I'd say about half of the states passed reforms that improved the election process. Georgia did, Tennessee, Florida, Ohio. unfortunately, other states did nothing or have made things worse. Michigan is an example of that.

Michigan actually used to have a good voter ID law and they gutted that law. So a lot of it just depends on what states you're in. Overall, we're better off, but there are still problems in various states across the country. Now, I want to bring up the recent voter roll cleanups. In North Carolina, they removed about 750,000 ineligible voters. That's about a tenth of their overall. overall voters. Georgia removed about 100,000 voters, mostly due to death and duplicate entries. Are these isolated problems, or do other states have a serious voter roll cleanup to do as well? See, again, it depends on what state you're in. Nevada is a good example, that California is another example. North Carolina finally is doing what it should have been doing all along, which is

taking people off the roles who have died or moved away or otherwise become inel. perhaps because of a felony conviction, that may sound like a lot, about 10%, about 10% of Americans move every year. So taking 10% of people who are ineligible off the voter rolls, that's not that out of the ordinary at all. Now, a recent audit by the Arizona Secretary of State found that 218,000 voters in Arizona may be missing citizenship documentation. Is that a significant issue across a lot of states? It is because Arizona is actually one of the only states that's been trying to do something about that, which is to enforce a law that requires proof of citizenship when you actually register to vote. Now, other states have been trying to find non-citizens. You may have

seen that just recently Texas announced it had found 6,500 aliens on the voter rolls. They removed, Virginia, 6300, Alabama, over 3,000. But that's a significant. from checking DMV records and finding folks who, when they went in to get a driver's license, said, well, I'm not a U.S. citizen. That doesn't help with the vast majority of people who are registering, perhaps, who haven't done it through DMV. And the only way to fix that is for other states to start requiring proof of citizenship. Of course, every time states do that, they get sued by the political left to try to prevent them from being able to do that. All right. Well, Hans, thank you so much for coming on.

Sure. Another story we're tracking this week. Special counsel Jack Smith's 165-page immunity motion was released by Judge Tanya Chutkin on Wednesday. The motion claims Donald Trump acted as a private citizen not as president when trying to overturn the 2020 election. The motion comes in response to the recent Supreme Court decision granting immunity to presidents for official duties. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.