Morning Wire - Nikki Haley Drops Out & CBS Sued Over DEI | 3.7.24

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Nikki Haley ends her campaign, CBS is hit with discrimination lawsuit over its DEI policies, and a look at several notable down-ballot races from Super Tuesday. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Birch Gold: Text "WIRE" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation information kit. Shopify: "Get a $1 per month trial at https://www.shopify.com/morningwire" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that. I have no regrets. Let the general election begin. Nikki Haley ends her campaign without a Trump endorsement. Who will Haley backers throw their support behind and has her door to the vice presidency closed? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, March 7th, and this is Morning Wire.

A discrimination lawsuit against CBS, could mean the end of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in Hollywood and Wall Street. And Super Tuesday wasn't only about Trump and Biden. There were plenty of important down-ballot races and measures voters weighed in on. We break down some of the most notable. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. While experts anticipated rate cuts, inflation in the U.S. is still a significant economic concern. The U.S. is $34 trillion in the hole, and yet we keep printing. money, which just raises the prices we pay every day. You can bury your head in the sand or do something

about it by diversifying a portion of your savings into gold with Birch Gold Group. They'll help you convert your existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA in gold, and you won't pay a penny out of pocket. Just text Wire to 98989898, and Birch Gold will send you a free info kit on gold. That's Wire to 9898-989 today. Nikki Haley suspended her campaign for president a day after Donald Trump's resounding victories across the electoral map on Super Tuesday. Trump won all but one contest and dominated the delegate count Tuesday night, leading Haley, his final challenger, to bow out. Here discuss the effective end of the GOP primary, and where we go from here is Daily Wire

contributor David Marcus. Hey, Dave. So as it comes to an end here, can you break down how Nikki Haley did in her run for the White House? Morning, John. So Tuesday held more or less the result that we expected when we talked on Monday. I mean, not because we're so smart, but because it was clear that Haley had no path to a truly competitive set of results. Haley did net about 45 delegates on Tuesday.

She actually won the always ornery and independent state of Vermont, denying Trump a clean sweep. But for example, in 2016, Ted Cruz racked up several hundred delegates against Trump on Super Tuesday and stayed in the race. Trump now has 995 of the 1,215 needed. to win. The rest could come as early as next week. But listen, Haley did accomplish something impressive by being the last person standing in what had been a field of 14, including early favorite Florida Governor Ronda Santis. Nobody really expected that this would turn into a Trump Haley one-on-one when she got in. But at the end of the day, GOP voters have made a decisive and clarion call that they want Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. And that's why Haley

suspended her campaign on Wednesday morning. Now, Haley congratulated the former president in those brief remarks, but did not choose to endorse them, at least not yet. What should voters make of that and could an endorsement come eventually? In a certain sense, Haley said that she's now a private citizen and a conservative Republican and that she's looking for Trump to earn her vote and those of her supporters. Here's a taste of those remarks. At its best, politics is about bringing people

into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing. And Haley isn't talking about tone or mean tweets when she says Trump needs to earn these votes. She's talking about things like supporting Ukraine and Israel, government spending, and fixing social security. Donald Trump publicly has basically said that he doesn't care if Haley endorses him or not. He certainly won't. beg for it and Haley apparently won't bend the knee in giving it. So this could take a while, but it does seem mutually beneficial for them to come to some kind of face-saving detain. Yeah. With Haley out of the race, where is it likely that her supporters, a mix of Republicans,

independents, and even Democrats, where will they end up landing come November? The Washington Post took a dive into this. They found about half of Haley voters will go for Trump. 37% will go for Biden, leaving 12% undisputed. decided or willing to sit it out. That last group is where Haley has a chance to help Trump, sort of holding these voters' hands, if you will, and saying it's okay, you can vote for Trump, I'm going to as well. And look, it's not a huge number, but given that in 2020, several swing states came down to a few tens of thousands of votes, nobody, neither Trump nor Biden can afford to leave much of anything on the table. No, they certainly can't. Finally, with the nomination

firmly in hand now, where does this leave the Veep stakes as Trump malls anew, is there any other person Trump can choose who would help him with her faction of the party? From the people on his shortlist, Haley's fellow South Carolinian, Senator Tim Scott, appeals to a similar set of traditional Republicans, and his selection could help Wu Haley and her supporters. In a presidential election cycle, there are a few events candidates look at to get a big bounce from, their announcement, the convention, and for challengers, the naming of a running me. Trump is in a position to keep that card up his sleeve for some time and play it whenever he thinks the timing helps him most, whoever he winds up selecting. And really, in the shortest primary

season in modern American history, that is all the suspense that is left in this go-round. Yeah, well, Trump's known for keeping things dramatic, so we'll see. Absolutely. Dave, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. In what could be a watershed civil rights case, a writer is suing CBS over claims that the company's DEI policies illegally discriminate on the basis of race. The suit comes as Wall Street also backs off DEI due to legal threats. Here with more is Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham. So, Megan, Hollywood was one of the most outspoken industries when it came to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. I remember you were talking a couple years ago about a number of

studios that were setting race-based hiring targets. It seemed like a matter of time before someone filed a suit like this. Yeah, it did. And it's worth noting that CBS's parent company, Paramount, was one of the most aggressive studios in setting those targets. They had announced in 2020 that the writer's rooms for all CBS shows must be 40% BIPAC. That, of course, means black, indigenous people of color by 2022 and 50% biopac by 2023. So essentially, 50% non-white at a time when, according to census data, white people do still make up 75% of, of the U.S. adult population. But CBS's DEI targets were announced before the Supreme Court's ruling in 2023

that outlawed racial preferences in college admissions. And technically, that was limited to higher education, but a lot of legal experts at the time said that it could emboldened challenges to racial quotas in the private sector as well under the auspices that they violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. So that's caused a very quick reversal

in a number of industries. Just this week, for instance, there are reports that big banks and Wall Street firms are quietly backing off their DEI policies due to legal risks. J.P. Morgan has opened up internship programs originally designed for black applicants to those of all races. And Goldman Sachs has reportedly done the same with a program that was launched to recruit only black students. Meanwhile, Bank of New York Mellon is reportedly dropping its diversity quotas on the advice of its legal counsel. So what's the basis of this specific suit against CBS? Well, Brian Beneker is a script coordinator for CBS's military drama SEAL team, and he filed a lawsuit last week, claiming that he has been repeatedly denied a promotion to staff writer because he's a straight white male.

His lawsuit points to the fact that he has written a number of episodes of the show, but he says that because the network has a, quote, illegal policy of race and sex balancing, It filled open staff writer positions with members of, quote, unquote, more preferred groups, who he says lack experience and screenwriting credits. By preferred groups, he obviously means racial minorities. So Benekers filing highlights the fact that CBS's CEO, George Cheeks, boasted in a 22 interview that's quoting here, 17 out of 21 CBS shows hit or exceeded that BIPAC target. So Beneker's asking for $500,000 and a full-time producer,

job on the series. And he's also asking the court to ban CBS from quote-unquote further use of discriminatory hiring practices. And what was CBS's response to that? Well, so far they haven't made any statement at all. And the debate will likely hinge on whether Beneker specifically was being discriminated against for being a straight white man. And his complaint claims that one showrunner told him that the reason he was not being promoted to writer was because he, quote, did not check any diversity boxes. And on another occasion, he says that when he asked a different showrunner, why CBS hired a writer with no writing credits,

the showrunner allegedly indicated it was because he was black. So how big of an effect will this suit have on the industry? Is this kind of practice very widespread? Well, certainly it's going to be disruptive to the diversity hiring pledges that most of these major studios and networks took back in 2020 and 2021, and to the new eligibility rules that the Oscars set, in 2020, those just took effect this year and they require best picture entries to meet certain diversity standards. But some analysis has found that those DEI pledges may not actually have

resulted in much. So a University of Southern California study found, for example, that the number of black and Latino characters with speaking roles on screen hasn't really moved. And it also showed that the number of minority directors hasn't really increased much in the last couple of years either. So the report concluded that these DEI pledges were performative acts. All right. Well, Megan, thanks so much for reporting. Anytime. The Super Tuesday results are mostly in, and while the contests were dominated by the presidential candidates, there's plenty to break down-ballot as well.

Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce joins us to dig into what happened on Super Tuesday. So, Tim, before we get to the down-ballot races, I want to touch on the phenomenon of uncommitted voters in the Democratic primary. What happened there? Right. We touched on this a bit on Wednesday, but essentially Biden has drawn a sizable protest vote across multiple states in the form of these uncommitted voters. Minnesota's results came back with the largest share in that category so far. 19% of voters, that's roughly one in five, said they were uncommitted in a primary in which Biden doesn't face any meaningful opposition. That happened to a lesser extent in other states too. In North Carolina, a swing state Biden is targeting,

13% of voters put down no preference. In Massachusetts, 9% marked no preference. But to be clear, these voters aren't threatening to go to Trump. They will all likely come home to Biden, but they're trying to send a message. A lot of these votes have come after activist campaigns urged Democrats to protest vote over Biden's handling of Israel. They want Biden to leverage the Jewish state for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Biden campaign seems to fill the pressure. It put out a statement early Wednesday that said, shares the goal for an end to the violence and a just lasting peace in the Middle East. Morningwire spoke with Signal pollster Brent Buchanan about how this could play in the general election, and he said it could spell trouble for Biden. I think what is a bigger problem is go look at Minnesota. You had some places where uncommitted or anybody not named Joe Biden in the Democrat primary received almost 50 percent.

What did those areas have in common? Muslim voters. I think Joe Biden has a bigger problem in states that matter than Trump might have in states. Now, turning to San Francisco, did we see a return to law and order there? A small one, but yes. In San Francisco, voters overwhelmingly approved two measures, one that would expand police authority and one that requires drug testing to receive public assistance.

Measure F requires drug testing for anyone who receives welfare benefits. 63% of the voters in California's most liberal city approved the new rule. Welfare recipients are not cut off from funds. for a positive drug test, but they must enroll in treatment. And Measure E would expand police powers while weakening the authority of the citizen-led police commission. The measure would allow SFPD to use facial recognition technology and surveillance technology, including drones.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed supports both. So I think the voters send a message loud and clear. They want to see change. They want to see progress on public safety. They want to see progress on the things we need to do for our economic recovery. Now, moving on to Texas, there was some drama there. Tell us what happened. Well, Texas' GOP congressman, Tony Gonzalez, was forced into a runoff by political outsider Brandon Herrera, who ran with a slogan, Let's Go Brandon. Herrera is a gun tuber, a YouTube personality who posts videos on firearms and how to use them.

This is Herrera's first time getting into politics, and he jumped in because, as Herrera puts it, Gonzalez has sabotaged the Republican Party. Herrera has focused mainly on immigration and Second Amendment issues. At the Senate level, Senator Ted Cruz handily won his GOP primary with nearly two million votes. He'll face Democrat Congressman Colin Allred in November. All right. Well, a lot to track. Thanks for reporting, Tim. Thanks for having me. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know. Is your business selling a little or a lot?

Shopify helps you do your thing. However, you chiching. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage. of your business. From the launch your online shop stage, all the way to the Did We Just Hit a Million Order stage? Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout,

which is 36% better on average compared to the other leading commerce platforms. Get a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash morningwire. That's Shopify.com slash morningwire.