Morning Wire - Iran Cracks Down & Italy Votes Right | 9.27.22

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Iran cracks down on protesters as mass demonstrations continue, Italy votes in a new right-leaning leadership, and millions of dollars in food aid fraud is uncovered in Minnesota.  Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Iranian women are taking to the streets and burning their headscarves to protest the death of a young woman who was punished for not wearing the hijab properly. How is the West responding and what effect will this have on the pending Iran nuclear deal? You will have a wealthy Iran with the capacity that conduct terror around the world. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, September 27th, and this is Morning Wire. Italy is the latest European country to elect a conservative. populist leader. What was Georgia Maloney's winning message and what's behind the rightward shift across Europe? It's important to understand that if we are called to govern this nation,

we will do it for all Italians, with the aim of uniting all the people. We will focus on what unites us, not what divides us. And dozens have been indicted for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in food aid during the pandemic. We look at what's turned out to be the largest pandemic fraud case in the country. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. You buy homeowners insurance to protect your house and auto insurance to protect your car, but what measures have you taken to protect the future of your children? Start with a will from Epic Will. A Will gives you the power to decide who will raise your kids should something happen to you and your spouse. Without one, the state decides. It's your opportunity to direct important family

heirlooms, financial investments, and responsibilities to the proper people in your life. Plus, It's incredibly easy and affordable with Epicwill. It only costs $119 for a single person to create a will, and when you use promo code wire, you'll save 10%. Go to Epicwill.com and use promo code wire to save 10% on Epicwill's complete will package. That's Epicwill.com, promo code wire. Press reports say that more than 40 people have been killed in Iran's ongoing protests, sparked by the alleged killing of a 22-year-old woman on September 16th,

by the so-called morality police, for not where, her hijab properly. There have now been more than 10 days of protests, which have involved women ripping off and burning their headscarves. Iranian critics say the repressive regime is overbearing, beating, and killing protesters, and that the nuclear deal that America is trying to reignite with Iran should be completely off the table. Here to tell us more is Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst with independent women's voice. So Carrie, tell us more about what sparked these protests. Thanks for having me, John. On September 16th, a 20th, 22-year-old Iranian woman named Masha Amini, who belonged to the ethnic Kurdish minority in

Iran, died under suspicious circumstances allegedly due to police brutality. The morality police of Iran's law enforcement command arrested Amini for not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards. Police claimed that she had a heart attack at a station fell on the floor and died after two days in a coma. But eyewitnesses and women who were detained with Amini said she was severely beaten, which, in addition to her leaked medical scans, led independent observers to diagnose cerebral hemorrhage and stroke. Amini's death sparked protests around Iran. Right, and as we've noted, those have gone on for more than 10 days at this point. And this has already begun to have some political fallout, correct?

Right, it has. Just days later, here on Wednesday at the United Nations General Assembly, the U.S. and Iran clashed on security and human rights, with Iran's president demanding U.S. guarantees to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. And President Biden, vowing Tehran, would never get an atomic bomb. We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. I continue to believe that diplomacy is the best way to achieve this outcome. The Biden administration has been trying to revive the Iranian nuclear deal after then President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement,

citing concerns with Iranian compliance and funding used for various Iranian terrorism projects. Iranian President Abraham Raezi struck a defiant time. at the UN by decrying what he called double standards on human rights after Amini's death. Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who served under President Trump, spoke with Morning Wire about the Iranian nuclear deal and why he believes it should be a non-starter. The Biden administration made a commitment to Congress and to the American people that if they re-entered the crappy deal between the United States and the Russians and the Chinese and European countries, that it would be stronger and more important.

posing their bat's shot, signed one that is shorter and weaker. Most of the major provisions expire very, very quickly, and Iran will not only have a clear, unambiguous pathway to obtaining a nuclear weapon, but they'll have hundreds and hundreds of millions more dollars by which to continue their terror campaigns across the world. And as we've seen recently, their efforts to conduct terror right here at home in the United States. Right. He's referencing reports that Iran allegedly hired a hitman who went to an Iranian dissident's Brooklyn home in July in an apparent assassination attempt.

How does Pompeo think the rest of the Middle East will respond if this nuclear deal is signed? Pompeo said he thinks if the U.S. helps broker this agreement, it will have a domino effect in the area and that other nations will follow suit. Other critics say by removing sanctions under the deal, it will enrich Iran's ties with China. Here's Pompeo again. This is a recipe for massive proliferation, because make no mistake, if the Iranians end up with a nuclear weapons program, they will not be the last nation. in the Middle East to deem it necessary to build their own.

Other countries will say, if they've got one, we need one to defend ourselves, and we will start a massive chain of proliferation throughout the Middle East. Reports also indicate that Pompeo faces an ongoing, credible Iranian assassination threat for his role in the killing of Kuds Force commander Qasim Soleimani. Meanwhile, the protests have spread across the country to at least 40 cities and include large numbers of men across Iran. The government has said it will restrict Internet access until calm is restored. Well, this is a story we'll definitely keep tracking.

Carrie, thanks for reporting. Thank you. That was Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at Independent Women's Voice. Italy elected its first female prime minister on Sunday, and she's being described as a conservative firebrand. Georgia Maloney campaigned on a platform of securing Italy's borders and resisting global bureaucracy. Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham joins us now

to tell us more about Maloney and what her victory signals about European. and political trends. So, Megan, the conservative coalition in Italy has completely exploded over the past few years. What's going on? Hey, Georgia. Well, essentially, you're seeing a lot of the same issues that have been driving the populist agenda on the American right. As John mentioned, a key part of Maloney's pitch to Italians, was that she would tighten border restrictions and reject the energy policies that many Italians feel are being dictated to them from Brussels. That's the seat of the European Union. Italian economy, which is the fourth largest in Europe, has also been struggling.

And Maloney is promising an Italy first agenda on that front. But beyond all of those kitchen table issues, she also promised to protect Italy's cultural heritage and religious traditions. That's something that she talked about at a national conservatism conference in Rome in 2020. John Paul II, the patriarch pope, knew perfectly well that there is no Europe without Christianity. a teaching which is more topical than ever today when the Christian identity of Europe is under attack by a distorted secularism that even attacks the symbol of the Christian tradition.

So this message clearly resonated with Italians as the center-right coalition took about 44% of the vote and it won both houses of parliament. By contrast, the center-left Democratic Party and its coalition only took about 26% of the vote. Now, we're seeing a lot of media descriptions of Maloney as fascist. Is that a fair description? You know, that's a pretty loaded term,

and I asked author and political economist Sven Larson about the veracity of those accusations. He said that we need to understand that historical realities mean that many European political parties have either fascist or communist connections in their distant past. But he said it's not accurate to a historical reality. associate those parties with such ideologies today? You have a slew of parties in Europe that have an origin in Stalinist communism.

I can't think of a single party in Europe off the top of my head, but would today say, yes, we want to introduce Stalinist communism in Europe. Likewise, I think you can find maybe one party somewhere on the fringe that would maybe advocate fascism today. So I think it's unfair to throw that label on any of these parties. So I know we've seen other European nations tacking to the right in recent years. The UK with the Brexit vote, maybe the most notable. But of course, there's Hungary, there's Poland. And most surprising to a lot of people was Sweden, which just saw a coalition of conservative groups winning the election just a couple weeks ago. Do these elections signal a change in Europe

overall? Yeah, I think they really do because there does seem to be a large trend pulling European nations to the right, and it is coalescing around a number of common issues that Larson, who is originally from Sweden, highlighted. So immigration is a big one that played a significant role in the election in Sweden two weeks ago. Resistance to international interference is another. There's a sense that the EU has assumed a much bigger role in setting national policies than it should have, particularly when it comes to environmental regulations. Europeans and a number of nations now have a sense that their national economies are being sacrificed to a green agenda.

And then there's also the fear that European nations are losing their cultural identity and being subsumed into some sort of homogenized global secularism. Now, Hungary may be the most striking example of that, but even in Sweden, which, as we know, is pretty secular by American standards, you're hearing these. calls to promote a traditional ideal of family and to reembrace Christianity as part of their cultural heritage. That issue of natural family is something Maloney spoke to very forcefully on the Italian campaign trail. So I think it's really hard to say that what we're seeing isn't a trend with some pretty tectonic implications all across Europe. Right. And certainly a big topic that we'll

have to devote more attention to another time. Megan, thanks for reporting. Yeah, my pleasure. That was Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham. A federal jury has indicted 48 people on fraud charges for allegedly stealing $250 million in food aid during the pandemic. Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marade Alorty, is here with more details for us. So, Marade, what do we know about this massive fraud scheme? Hi, John. Well, the investigation is still ongoing, but the Justice Department announced last week that 48 people have been indicted by a federal grand jury on fraud charges. Here's Andy Lugar, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota at a press conference announcing the charges.

The defendants are charged with federal crimes including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and paying and receiving illegal kickbacks. This was apparently a brazen fraud scheme where the fraudsters billed the government for 250 million in meals they never bought and never fed to needy children who did not even exist. The pandemic was definitely fertile ground for fraud because federal spending, exploded, and oversight struggled to keep up. And this scheme seems to be the biggest pandemic relief fraud scheme we know of in the country. So how did they get away with this? How did the scheme work exactly? Well, according to prosecutors, the conspirators weren't even particularly

careful in their attempts to cover up the plot. One accused fraudster told the government he was feeding 5,000 children a day in his second-story apartment. Other alleged conspirators used the website list of random names.com to make a fake list of non-existent children they claim to be feeding. And others used a number generating program to come up with ages for the fake children they were supposedly feeding. This led to the children's ages fluctuating wildly every time the fraudsters updated their list of children, according to court documents. The conspirators allegedly faked receipts and scammed the government out of money for 125 million meals. Prosecutors said that those charged used the money to buy luxury cars,

jewelry, international travel, and real estate in Minnesota, Kenya, and Turkey. But the scheme was also so successful because the conspirators had someone helping them whom the Minnesota government trusted. Right. This is another troubling element in this case. What was their connection on the inside? Well, according to prosecutors, it was a woman named Amy Bach, who is the founder of the nonprofit feeding our future. Minnesota was actually relying on feeding our future to make sure no fraud happened with the food aid program. Instead, though, when the program received waived, of pandemic aid money, Bach allegedly plotted with the fraudsters and brought in almost 200 new feeding operations that he knew were submitting fake or inflated invoices. Bach herself is one

of the people charged in this case. One noteworthy detail is that when Minnesota Governor Tim Walls, who's a Democrat, raised questions about Bach and feeding our future, Bach reacted by essentially accusing state officials of racism, saying they were discriminating against the East African immigrants her group serves. Well, this appears to be a really, egregious example of criminality. Thanks to the upheaval caused by COVID. Great. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, John.

That was Daily Wire investigative reporter, Moretale Lorty. Other stories retracting this week, hundreds of thousands of Floridians have been ordered to evacuate as Hurricane Ian approaches the west coast of the state. President Biden's plan to wipe out significant amounts of student loan debt

for tens of millions of borrowers could cost about $400 billion. That's according to a report released Monday by the nonpartisan congressional budget office. Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and you stand with our mission,

please consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. Well, thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.