Morning Wire - Nevada, Covid Vax Testing Controversy & Media Trust Crisis | 10.21.22

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

A CDC panel votes to add the Covid Vaccine to the children’s immunization schedule, attention focuses on neck and neck Nevada races, and Republicans’ trust in the media plummets. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a second and highly anticipated decision regarding COVID vaccines for children, a CDC panel voted unanimously on Thursday to add COVID vaccinations to the childhood vaccine schedule. That is a complete departure from how the FDA historically has approved any drug, especially for children. We separate fact from fiction. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howl. It's Friday, October 21st, and this is Morning Wire. More national attention is focusing on Nevada, where several key races are coming down. down to the wire. What unique circumstances are motivating Nevada voters? And why is the GOP gaining

ground in the state? And Americans trust in news media has cratered, but it's one side of the political aisle that's really leading the way in the crisis of confidence. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Did you know that as men age, our body loses free testosterone, our energy drops, our libido falls, and our muscles weaken? If that sounds like you, you've got to try Nugetics Total T testosterone booster. Neumensics Total T testosterone booster. T's safely boost free in total testosterone for better results both in and out of the gym. It contains key ingredients like testifin, validated in five clinical studies and backed by years of research. Right now, you can get a complimentary bottle of Nugenics Total T when you text

wire to 231-231. Text now and get a bottle of eugenics thermo, their most powerful fat incinerator absolutely free. Text wire to 231-231. That's wire to 231. A CDC advisory panel voted unanimously Thursday to add COVID vaccinations to the routine immunization schedule for children. Contrary to popular belief, the agency cannot mandate schools to require COVID vaccinations for enrollment, but states do lean heavily on these guidelines when determining which vaccines they want to require. Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is here to detail what impact the CDC's vote will have and what we can expect going forward. So Megan, obviously the big question on most parents' minds is going to be, does this mean my kids

will have to be vaccinated to attend school. What's the answer there? So that's a little bit of a complicated question. Technically, the advisory panel voted to recommend adding COVID vaccines to the schedule. The CDC doesn't have the power to mandate vaccines, but a lot of states do use the CDC's recommendations to set policy. So we're going to see federalism kick into gear here, with some states requiring and some states not. In fact, I spoke to Dr. Human Hamadi, a pediatric clinical trialist and chief medical officer of a biopharmaceutical company called by Luma about that? There's a major problem here because they're basically giving a green light for governors and school districts to demand that children receive this vaccine as a condition of attending school.

But at the same time are doing it based on extremely weak data. I think this is going to cause a tremendous amount of. of uproar, I think a lot of the concern is justified because even though the CDC lacks the legal authority to issue mandates, you're going to have governors and public health departments and school districts locally and on a state level basically looking at the CDC guidelines and saying, okay, we're going to follow it because why wouldn't they? At this point, many of them have been itching to issue a mandate, but they haven't gotten that green light from high above. Today they have that green light. Right now, 21 states,

but two of which have Republican governors currently have laws on the books that prohibit schools from requiring COVID vaccinations. A few on that list are Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, New Hampshire, as well as most of the southern states. California and D.C. both have school mandates in place that haven't yet taken effect, but they will next year. So that leaves 25 states that are in neutral territory right now with no policy on the books either way. And that's where you're likely to see these battles brewing, particularly as we're only a few weeks away from Election Day. So how persuasive is the argument for adding the COVID vaccine to the schedule? Well, you know, I spoke to a lot of different medical experts this week, and there was some varied opinion. But I will say that a number of them did feel that there's not really solid evidence for this decision.

Here's Hamadi on that. They claim that the vaccine prevents hospitalization and death in kids. And even though children have milder disease than adults, the vaccine prevents long COVID in children. They did this or they made these statements without providing a single ounce of proof. And that's really where the question here was, is, does the FDA have any proof of this? If they do, they haven't put any of it out. And it's highly unlikely they do have any such proof because if they did, they would have said it. Now, by doing this and relying on the weakest imaginable data to recommend adding

these vaccines, the childhood immunization list, further puts the CDC on shaky ground. I think it's frankly shocking that this is happening. The other thing Hamadi and the other medical experts I spoke to agreed on, they're all very concerned for what this means for trust in the CDC and immunizations overall, which they all feel are vital to public health. All right. Well, we're going to continue to see how this plays out in all the various states. Megan, thanks for reporting.

Anytime. That was Daily Wire Culture Reporter, Megan Basham. Coming up, could Republicans run the table in Nevada? If you like this podcast, subscribe to our Morning Wire newsletter available exclusively to DailyWire members. Get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at DailyWire.com slash subscribe. Use code MorningWire to try Reader's Pass membership and get your first month for only 99 cents. With millions of votes already cast around the country, we turn to a midterm battleground that dead even down the stretch.

Who are the latest polls and election news from Nevada is Daily Wire's senior editor Cabot Phillips. Cabot, this is another one of those states that has sort of gone under the radar but could play a huge role in deciding the Senate. Well, you're absolutely right. Democrats view Senator Catherine Cortez-Mastow as their most vulnerable incumbent,

and Republicans are well aware that if they want a majority in D.C., Nevada is a great place for them to start. Right now, after trailing over the summer, Republican Adam Lackselt is ahead in nearly every poll by a slim margin. Most show him up one to four points, though there are some that show Cortez Mastow with the lead. Now, Laxalt's family has a long political history in the southwest. His grandfather was the state's former governor, and his father, Pete Domenici, was the longest serving senator in New Mexico's history, representing the Republican Party for over 30 years. So while many candidates come out of

the primary trying to build name recognition around the state, Laxalt has not had much of an issue there, and it does seem to have benefited him, especially in the early running. Yeah, it does. How has Laxalt been able to build a lead like he has? Well, like most Republican campaigns, he's focused overwhelmingly on the economy, and that's working especially well in Nevada. The state has the fifth highest price of gasoline in the country. They're at 518 right now. And a recent congressional report says they're among the seven states hardest hit by inflation

and rising costs. But one other issue that's hurting Democrats in Nevada is COVID. We talked to an election wire about this, but remember, Nevada's economy is incredibly reliant on tourism, and the casino industry, which are two areas especially decimated during the pandemic, that took a long time to recover. And that left many Nevadans out of work. Republicans there, Laxalt included, have had success, essentially saying Democrats shut your business down and cost to your job.

And one thing that's worth noting, Cortez Mastow has actually outspent Laxalt's campaign by a four-to-one margin. Her campaign spent nearly $40 million to this point, while Laxalt has spent just south of $10 million. So keep an eye on outside spending as this race continues to remain close ahead of November. Now, there's been a war of words over a potential debate between the two. Where do things stand now on that front? Yeah, this is an interesting factor in the race. So we're only three weeks from Election Day. And unless something drastic happens, we're not going to see these two debate.

That would make them the only battleground Senate race without a debate. And essentially, both sides are just refusing to bud, blaming the other for refusing to step up. So it does not look like we're going to see any debate. debate in this race. Well, that's a big loss for voters. Let's shift gears a bit and look at the governor's race there. Where do things stand between Democrats, Steve Sissilac, and Republican challenger Joe Lombardo? Well, this is another race where Republicans are looking to pick off a Democrat incumbent, as Sissalak appears very vulnerable right now. The Republican Lombardo

shocked a lot of people by emerging from a crowded primary field that included people like Dean Heller, a former U.S. Senator. And if you look at the polling since winning the nomination, he first took the lead back in August and has not trailed in a single poll since. He's up on average by one to four points. And one final nugget on the races in Nevada, this is the first campaign since former Senator Harry Reid passed away.

And as you know, re-dominated Nevada politics for 40-plus years and built a powerful Democrat grassroots operation that was known as the Reed machine. So essentially any statewide candidate that got his blessing, the Democrat Party would really fall in line with. And that was a huge advantage.

But now there's a bit of a power struggle within the state's Democrat Party. So we'll see if it affects voter turnout on the left come election day. Yet another fascinating component here to watch in Nevada. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That's Daily Wire's Senior Editor, Cabot Phillips. Americans trust in the news media remains at near all-time lows, according to new polling from Gallup.

In their latest result, only 34% of respondents said they have a great deal or fair amount of trust that news is presented fully, accurately, and fairly. Here to discuss why this trust has been eroded over the decades as columnist David Marcus. Morning, Dave. What do the baseline numbers tell us here? Good morning. So interestingly, the number of people expressing trust actually ticked up to 45% in 2018 before sinking back down to 34% in 2022. Obviously, the biggest story in that time period was the COVID pandemic and lockdowns, and we see that trust among Republicans dropped from 21 to 14 percent, and among independents a staggering 42 to 27 percent. Among Democrats, that held steady around 70s.

Clearly, we know that more conservative-leading voters had a lot of problems with how the media handled COVID, censoring scientists and opinions, concealing information, and look, it's shown up in the polls now. Yeah, it makes sense. 70 percent of Democrats versus 14 percent. of Republicans trusting the news, that's quite stark. Now, beyond COVID, what else is driving this deep partisan division and why are right-leaning and centrist Americans so much more likely to doubt what's being reported? I mean, look, the vast majority of big legacy media outlets skew left, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, network news, et cetera, et cetera. So when respondents think about the general term news media writ large, these are the places they're really thinking

about. So you look at something like Russian collusion, and Democrats thought there was a lot of great reporting and damning evidence against Trump. Republicans thought it was a hoax. There's just two sets of reality at work here. Right. And then the Mueller report really came out on the Republican side there, so you could see how that would have impacted confidence. Now, the polls also track for people who have no trust at all in the news media, and those who have not very much. How have those numbers moved in recent years? It's dramatic and a little scary, actually. The number of people who say, they have no trust at all in the news is the highest overall cohort at 38% compared to only 28% who said not very much. No trust whatsoever is a big thing to say. I mean, do we know if the Phillies

beat the Braves last week or that Joe Biden really likes ice cream? Is it all fake? Right. And that's a number that as recently as 1999 was under 10%. For it to be 38 now, the highest ever, it's an astounding degree of distrust. This should be setting off alarm bells all over the industry, but I mean, it's really not clear that it is. Now, they've run this poll for almost 50 years now. Over the first 30, there was a slow decline in trust, but starting in 2002, the bottom seems to have sort of dropped out and lack of trust skyrockets. Do we know what's behind that? It's complex, but the simplest answer is two words, the internet. First, the blogosphere in the early aughts transformed opinion journalism because suddenly anyone with a laptop and internet connection and chops could and did compete

with the New York Times. And now, even on the straight news side, having a website without a print edition makes being a news outlet a much easier lift. Is this decline in trust to such low levels something that the industry is actively addressing, or are they just ignoring it and going about business as usual? It depends on the outlet. Some recent changes at CNN, you know, who ditched Brian Stelter and basically demoted Don Lemon, both of whom we're seeing as partisans, suggest the new leadership there is reacting. They also just hired Stephen Gatowski, who's a right-leaning, one might say, expert on guns. Other places, notably the Times and WAPO, not so much.

And there's not a ton of reason to expect these numbers to get much better. Well, obviously, the topic of trust in the media is something we're very interested in here on Morningwire, where we're trying to bring some balance to the conversation. Thank you for joining us, David. Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wire contributor, David Marcus. Other stories we're tracking this week. The Pentagon announced it will pay travel expenses

for service members who want to obtain abortions. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made the announcement Thursday, saying the Department of Defense will set up transportation allowances for service members and their dependents. A former investigative producer for ABC News has gone missing. According to Rolling Stone magazine, James Gordon Meeks Virginia Home was rated by the FBI back in April, and friends and colleagues say he has not been seen since. Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring

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