Morning Wire - Russia Strikes Again & Cartel Crackdowns | 5.27.25

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

President Trump fires back at Vladimir Putin following Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine, the Treasury Department reveals a new approach to combating cartels, and Hollywood enjoys a record-breaking box office over Memorial Day weekend. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Beam: Visit https://shopbeam.com/WIRE and use code WIRE to get our exclusive discount of up to 40% off. Kikoff: Start building credit with Kikoff today, and you can get your first month for as little as $1 when you go to https://getkikoff.com/wire Shopify: Go to https://Shopify.com/morningwire to sign up for your $1 per month trial period and upgrade your selling today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump rails against Putin after Russia launches an aerial attack on Ukraine. I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. He's killing a lot of people. The boiling tensions come as Europe backs down after Trump threatens more tariffs. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. It's Tuesday, May 27, and this is Morning Wire. Trump enlists the Treasury Department in a sweeping crackdown on drug cartels. We sit down with the deputy secretary. If you engage in these businesses, you have an affirmative obligation to identify the counterparties

and an unawareness of who they are is not sufficient under the law. And a blockbuster weekend at the box office boosted by Tom Cruise. Can Hollywood keep up this pace all summer long? I need you to trust me. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. When my sleep is off, it felt like I couldn't show up as my best self. I spent night after night tossing and turning, waking up exhausted,

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President Trump took aim at Vladimir Putin this weekend after Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Meanwhile, the White House is closing in on a major. trade deal with the EU? Daily Wire, senior editor Cabot Phillips is here with the latest. So Cabot, a variety of news happening over in Europe. We have Trump v. Putin, as well as some movement on the tariffs. First, let's start with Russia. What's going on with the conflict? Yeah, over the weekend Moscow launched a series of air assaults on Ukrainian cities deploying hundreds of attack drones and dozens of missiles. Those strikes killed at least 12 people and injured dozens more, many civilians in what Ukraine called the largest aerial bombardment of the entire three-year war.

In recent months, there had been hopes that a peace deal was soon within reach, but Putin appears to be making clear that he is pushing ahead despite increased threats of sanctions from the West. To that point, U.S. intelligence reportedly shows Moscow is amassing troops near the front line in preparation for a summer offensive. So things could soon get even worse in Ukraine. In response to those attacks this weekend, President Trump offered arguably, his strongest condemnation of Putin to date. Here he is outside Air Force One on Saturday. I don't know what the hell happened to Putin. I've known of a long time. Always gotten along with him, but he's sending rockets into cities and killing people. And I don't like it at all.

We're in the middle of talking and he's shooting rockets into Kiev and other cities. And later on social media, the president appeared to make a veiled threat against Putin, writing, quote, I've always said that he wants all of Ukraine, not just a piece of it. And maybe that's proving to be right. But if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia. So the president, potentially changing his strategy with Putin? It certainly appears that way. With Russia now launching heavier attacks than ever against Ukraine, Trump's cordial tone with Putin is out the window. And it's worth noting, this new anti-Putin rhetoric has not exactly led to friendlier relations between Trump and Zelensky. For example, over the weekend, he said that, quote,

Zelensky is doing his country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems. So while Trump could launch retaliatory sanctions against Moscow, there is a real chance here that he steps back and stays out of all this. Regardless, he's under a lot of pressure to bring an end to this conflict, given his campaign promise to end the war shortly. So some big decisions looming. Now, changing gears a little bit, there was some movement over the weekend with regards to tariffs on the EU. What happened there? So a quick refresher, President Trump slapped 20% tariffs on the European Union during his liberation day. He later slashed them down to 10% for 90 days to allow time for a long-term deal to be reached. But on Friday, he accused the Europeans

of being, quote, difficult to deal with, saying, quote, discussions are going nowhere. So he, in turn, threatened a 50% tariff on the EU that would kick in June 1st. That seemingly got their attention as European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the White House over the weekend to say, quote, Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively. And as a result of that new willingness to strike an apparent deal, Trump agreed to pause his tariff hike on the EU until July 9th, so an agreement could be reached. No doubt businesses and the markets are going to be watching that closely.

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InVigual results may vary. President Trump promised a whole-of-government approach to combating drug cartels. So while DHS, ICE, ICE, and Border Patrol do their part, so do other departments, including the Treasury. Joining us now for an exclusive about how the Treasury Department works to combat cartels as Deputy Secretary Michael Falkender. Deputy Secretary, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. Great to be with you.

Your department took action last week to target the high-ranking members of the Cartel del Noreste. Can you give us the details on that action? Sure. So let me start with saying that one of the most important things the President did upon coming into office was to declare a number of the narco groups terrorist organizations. And what that does is it unleashes additional authorities at Treasury for us to better target some of the financial activities that these cartels are engaging in. It's one thing to have our partners at DHS work on stopping the flow of people and drugs, but we can also use our financial tools to go after the money.

because if the money is not flowing back south, then there's less of an incentive to bring the drugs and the guns and some of the illicit activity up to the north. And so we continue to identify the various smuggling rings that are coming in. And since the president took office, we've engaged in five different actions, going after nine different entities for a total of 16 individuals. And what that allows us to do is work with our partners

to freeze some of their accounts, and take away the money that is funding these activities that are poisoning our kids. Now, there was also this unexpected move against Brinks Global that you guys took. Our audience might know them as the armed trucks that transport cash. You penalize that company for millions of dollars. How and why? Right. So what we did is we said that if you're going to be moving money,

then you have an obligation to fulfill certain requirements that you identify, that you know who your customer is. And so there is a statute called the Bank Secrecy Act that requires that if you're going to facilitate transfers of monetary sums, that you need to know who the party is that is receiving this money, that is engaging in this transaction. And so what we did is our financial crimes enforcement network, which is called FinCEN, they launched an investigation into how this money was flowing south of the border and found that Brinks had facilitated some of these money transfers without knowing who the parties were that were participating in this transaction. And so we engaged in an enforcement action against them.

And we, as you just said, find them $37 million for not following the requirements that we for engaging in these money transfers. Now, I wanted to ask you about the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most notorious and violent drug trafficking organizations in the entire world. They also operate here in the U.S., of course. You've designated six individuals and seven entities involved in alleged money laundering for that particular cartel. How are you disrupting their operations?

So the most important thing that we can do from the Treasury side is stop or make a lot more expensive the flow of money. The president made very clear upon coming into office that we were going to take a different approach to the fentanyl poisoning of our kids. And so it's not just that we have heightened our activities here at Treasury to apply sanctions to these groups, but the president imposed tariffs on the Mexican government and on products that are coming in from Mexico to elicit participation and cooperation from the Mexican government. And so we are seeing the Mexican government willing to work with us to go after these financial networks that are enriching the cartels as they're engaging in this activity in ways that they previously had. And so it is monitoring the money flows, tracking it down, either putting a complete stop to it and seizing that money or at the very least, making it a lot more expensive for them to move that money around and try to deter them from engaging in these kinds of actions. It sounds like some clear progress being made in slowing the flow of money and certainly massive progress at the border.

Deputy Secretary Falkinder, thank you so much for joining us. Great to be with you. The box office for the holiday weekend blew away expectations with Disney's live action Lilo and Stitch and Paramount's Mission Impossible 8, both setting records to kick off the summer blockbuster season. Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with the latest numbers and what they mean for the film industry. So, Megan, what was the story at the box? box office. You know, the story of the box office is that this was just a monster weekend. We saw Lilo and Stitch and also Mission Impossible 8, I think, or Mission Impossible 8, the final reckoning,

coming in with just huge numbers for what's being called the biggest Memorial Day box office in history. So I just want to run through a few of these numbers with you, Georgia. According to studio estimates, Lilo and Stitch gross a staggering 183 million domestically. Now, that's an all-time Disney record for this time frame. And then if we look at its global hall, we're looking at $342 million. And then meanwhile, we've got Mission Impossible, which brought in a franchise best, 77 million domestically and 190 million worldwide. Taken together, Hollywood is hoping that this is going to be a game changer for an industry

that has really been looking to get back that pre-pandemic momentum. And I know that's something you and I have been talking about Georgia for the last couple of years. Right. So a hugely optimistic moment for Hollywood. Now, let's start with the live action remake of Lilo and Stitch. That success really surprised me. Why did it do so well? Well, you know, I think in part that this was a lot of nostalgia for millennials and other

people who kind of grew up with that version. They stuck very close to the script there. Where is he? He escaped. And then you have social media buzz, especially coming from younger women and parents. It's been off the charts. It's got an A cinema score. So that's signaling stream.

wrong word of mouth. And then you look at posts on X that are really capturing this excitement. You're seeing people show up to the theaters in costume, in stitch merch as plushies, turning these screenings into events. And that's really the kind of cultural resonance Disney looks for in its very IP-driven strategy. Now, speaking of, what about Mission Impossible? Is this proof that Tom Cruise can still pull those big numbers? Yeah, absolutely. And I would say he's very much one of the few stars today who still can. While it didn't reach the heights of Lilo and Stitch, Mission Impossible, the final reckoning is unquestionably a triumph for him. So we've all seen for a while that Cruz's plan seems to be to be a one-man chamber of commerce from the film industry, and he's really succeeding

in a lot of ways. M.I's opening take beat the previous franchise record set by Mission Impossible Fallout in 2018 by $14 million, and that's not adjusted for inflation. And then globally, it's already at $204 million, despite not yet opening in China. So taken together, can we see this as evidence that Hollywood is making a comeback? Yeah, I would say no doubt. I mean, it's obviously been a shot in the arm for an industry that's been struggling. The 2025 domestic box office is projected to hit $9.5 billion. That's up from $8.7 billion last year.

And theater owners are being pretty vocal about needing to get these consistent releases of big franchise films, big blockbusters, in order to see these audiences. return to theaters. Well, I really hope so. Summer blockbusters are a great tradition, but we have to support the theaters if we want them to keep going. Megan, thanks for reporting. Of course, my pleasure. Before you go, we're on YouTube now. Watch and subscribe to the video version on our Morning Wire channel. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow morning with more news you need to know. If you run a small business, you know there's nothing small about it. Even the smallest decisions can feel massive. That's where Shopify comes in. Shopify is D-Commerce platform.

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