Morning Wire - NATO Pressures Putin & Trump’s Immigration Freeze | 12.4.25

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

NATO ups its support for Ukraine as the U.S. pursues peace talks, the Trump Administration freezes asylum and visa reviews from 19 countries, and a watchdog exposes billions of taxpayer dollars in fraud under Biden-era DEI initiatives. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsors: DeleteMe - Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/WIRE and use promo code WIRE at checkout. Vanta - Visit https://vanta.com/MORNINGWIRE to sign up for a free demo today! - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy morning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Your annual membership for 50% off gets you full access to everything else we're building next. The Cyber Week sale ends Monday. December 8th, when it's gone, it's gone. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join right now. We work hard for peace. We must continue to provide Ukraine with the tool to defend its sovereignty and achieve a lasting resolution. NATO allies are bracing for a longer than expected war in Ukraine, as Russian officials say no compromise is close. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley.

It's Thursday, December 4th, and this is Morning Wire. Following last week's deadly D.C. shooting, the White House is halting all asylum decisions and visas from 19 countries of concern. The Biden administration was responsible for the original sin that led to this tragic killing last week. And more allegations of widespread fraud under the Biden administration as new investigations expose billions in taxpayer money funneled through DEI initiatives. So the more we peel back these layers, the more we're seeing billions of dollars, perhaps tens of billions of dollars. going through a rigged bidding system. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned.

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The only way to get 20% off is to go to join deleteme.com slash wire and enter code wire at checkout. That's joinedeletme.com slash wire code wire today. The United States continues to facilitate talks between Russia and Ukraine while other NATO countries rally support for Keev. Here to talk about the latest on the war in Ukraine is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So Tim, NATO had a big meeting in Brussels

relating to the Ukraine conflict. What happened? Right. NATO wants to be more involved. in discussions over Ukraine than it has been recently. And to that end, almost every foreign minister in NATO met in Brussels yesterday to discuss that and the broader approach to Ukraine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was notably absent from those discussions. It was the first time in over two decades that a U.S. Secretary of State has missed a gathering like this. But that didn't seem to deeply concern many officials because Rubio has built up a lot of trust among NATO allies. Now, the U.S.

has been trying to find an end to the war that both sides can live with quickly. But NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta doesn't seem to be banking on that. He's made plans to keep funding Ukraine through 2026 and maybe longer if necessary. Here's Ruta. The peace talks are ongoing. That's good. But at the same time, we have to make sure that whilst they take place and we are not sure when they will end, that Ukraine is in the strongest possible position to keep the fight going, to fight back

against the Russians, but also in strongest possible position when peace talks really get to a point where they sit at the table. Now along those lines, some members of the alliance have poured money into a program to buy U.S. weapons for Ukraine to the tune of about $1 billion a month. Now, the U.S. met with Russia and Moscow on Tuesday. Were they able to move any closer to a deal? Maybe, but not close enough. The Kremlin said Tuesday that it couldn't find a compromise it could agree with. Russia said that some of the American proposals have been good, probably in reference to the early framework that received so much pushback from Ukraine and the rest of Europe. But Moscow seems to be dead set on territorial gains over what it has control of already. Rubio talked about

that in an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity on Tuesday. What they're literally fighting over now is about 30 to 50 kilometer space in the 20% of the Dinesk region that remains. And so what we have tried to do, and I think have made some progress, is figure out what could the Ukraine that gives them security guarantees for the future. They're never going to be invaded again. Now, the other big news coming out of Europe is that they're finally going to get off of Russian natural gas. How did that come to pass? Right. Since this war has started, Europe has been in this strange position where it supports the defense of Ukraine, but it has been relying on Russia for energy, spending billions of dollars on fossil fuels from Russia. And all that money has gone into funding

Russia's war effort. Ursula van der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, Wednesday that the bloc has finally come up with a plan to end its reliance on Russian fossil fuels. Today is indeed a historic day for our union. Last night, we reached a provisional agreement on the Commission's proposal to fully phase out Russian fossil fuels. We're turning that page, and we're turning it for good. This is the dawn of a new era, the era of Europe's full energy independence from Russia. So a plan is in the works, but still, in the meantime, spending billions more on Russian products. Right. Tim, thanks for reporting.

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Following the D.C. shooting of two National Guard troops by an Afghan migrant, the Trump administration is halting even more immigration. Joining us to discuss the most recent changes to immigration policy is Daily Wire immigration reporter Jenny Tare. So, Jenny, we know the Trump administration already halted the process. processing of asylum applications and also put a pause on visas. What more is being done? There's a lot more being done. In fact, the Trump administration has just directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to also look at 19 countries that they say are of concern because of possible terror ties. Those countries include Afghanistan, but also several others. In the Middle East, in Africa, in South Asia, the Trump administration is wanting U.S. CIA.

the agency that vets immigration applications for legal programs to really scrutinize individuals who are applying or have been accepted to some programs. So what this looks like in practice is the Trump administration is halting all processing of any legal immigration applications from individuals from these 19 countries. And for those who have been already accepted to become green card recipients or citizens, their programs, their swearing-in ceremonies, for example, are, put on pause for now as the Trump administration does a more thorough vetting process here. Now, we're also learning more about the suspect in the National Guard shooting that was an Afghan

national who was led into the country legally. What do we know about that individual? So now the Department of Homeland Security is saying that this individual was, quote, barely vetted. There's some really interesting tidbits that they've revealed here as part of his process into getting into the United States under the Biden administration in 2021. That was when the U.S. left Afghanistan during the botched withdrawal from the country. So he had no criminal background check, they revealed, no biometrics check, no cyber background check, and no financial background check. This is very concerning because he was not the only one who came this way. There were about 77,000 others admitted into the country through what's called Operation

Allies Welcome. And some of this, we already know there was a government watchdog that came out months after we left Afghanistan that said the vetting was poor and minimal at the time. We know of some cases also where individuals who were quote unquote vetted led into the country through this program and then we learned of their terror ties after the fact. Now, while all of this is happening, President Trump also initiated a deportation effort in Minneapolis and in New Orleans. What's going on first in Minneapolis? So the Trump administration is looking at a report that recently uncovered billions of dollars of taxpayer fraud, and dozens of Somalis from Minneapolis have been charged in this.

In one of the cases of this fraud, to give you an example, there was a group that was taking COVID funds from taxpayers that was supposed to be used to feed children. And this ended up actually going to pay for properties overseas in places like Kenya and Turkey. And it was also going to by lavish luxury cars for the leaders of these so-called nonprofits that, you know, these people were funneling this taxpayer money through. So the Trump administration, this is what sparked this. Now they have about 500 targets they're going after in the Minneapolis area. These are Somalis who have orders of deportation. They've already gone through the immigration process, gone before the immigration judge who said, we're denying your applications for asylum,

or whatever it was, and you're getting deported. Here's President Trump talking about the issue. They contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88%. They contribute nothing. I don't want them in our country, I'll be honest with you. Their country stinks. Well, we did report earlier this week that the Somali community

was apparently a major hotbed for fraud and abuse. Jenny, thanks for reporting. Thank you. New investigations from Peter Schweitzer's Government Accountability Institute have revealed just how much taxpayer money has been funneled through federal DEI initiatives, sparking more allegations of widespread fraud and corruption under the Biden administration that still needs to be rooted out. Joining us now to discuss is Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at GAI. Seamus, good to have you back on.

John, great to see you. So look, your team has done extensive research on what's being called the DEI Industrial Complex. We've had our own investigative reporter Luke Roziak digging into this and revealing some pretty alarming findings. First, what kinds of potential abuses are we seeing related to DEI in the federal government? Yeah, I mean, our latest expose, and we give Luke a great shout out in it. He's done amazing work on this SBA Small Business Administration program. It's called 8A, kind of an unwieldy title there, but it is, the devil is in the details with us. It's a multi-billion dollar pass-through scheme that rewards minority contractors or people who are actually,

it's not even just minorities, quote unquote, disadvantaged, which has a very loose definition. I mean, perhaps even just not having access to internet when you're way up in your mountain cabin in Yosemite or wherever could qualify you. But you have these firms that set up, you know, Native American firms or, you know, any other sort of minority group, Native Americans have been pretty blessed by this program to the tune of billions of dollars. And it turns out that they're not disadvantaged at all. I mean, the shareholders are, you know, wear Rolex watches and are very wealthy. Well, in turn, this allows them to partner with real big firms, like the Boston Consulting Group

or McKinsey and Company or firms that are not at all disadvantaged. And they receive no-bid contracts under this program. And for anybody who knows anything about a no-bid contract, it's about as corrupt as it can be. Right. And why are we just now learning about this corruption? Yeah, so the program has been around for decades, but only under the Biden administration did the quotas triple. And so it really exploded just in the last several years. There was a USAID program. The contracting officials at USAID were taking bribes over $1 million in bribes. We've also seen a

$100 million contract. The minority contractor got 65 percent of that $100 million. So well over $50 million. They only did a small fraction of the work. So this really picked up under the Biden administration. Do you think the DEI movement in particular really ratcheted this up? Is that the culprit here in terms of the scale that we're seeing now? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, President Trump deserves an SBA administrator Kelly Loughler and Treasury Secretary Besson. They really kicked off the investigations into this. The problem is, is that even though the Trump administration has declared war on DEI and the federal government, it's not necessarily called a DEI program. So we're seeing this across all kinds of sectors, especially in education. They're getting rid of the word

DEI, and they're using new words, disadvantaged or what have you. And the problem is, is that there are disadvantaged people in America, and we do want to support them and help them. But when you are giving, you know, multi-billion dollar conglomerates contracts under the banner of being disadvantaged, it hurts everybody. Is there a sense that the Trump administration has exposed the worst actors so far? Is this really the tip of the iceberg? I think it's the tip of the I mean, the Pentagon has not yet ordered a full audit, but there are many. We are going through the USAspending.gov contracts now, and we're finding a lot of Pentagon contractors, defense contractors, who partner with these minority groups to get no-bid contracts. So I think the Pentagon

is going to be really where a lot of these billions are hiding out. But yeah, I think it's the tip of the iceberg just in the reports Luke has done and a few others. James O'Keefe did a video expose and some of the stuff we put out last week. Shamus, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, great to see you, John. Thank you. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're listening to the show, now you can watch for free on Daily Wire Plus. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.