Morning Wire - Saturday | October 9, 2021

Episode Date: October 9, 2021

NASA announces historic defensive mission, new polling spells trouble for President Biden, and controversy erupts at ESPN. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NASA announced this week that it's launching a planetary defense mission that involves firing a spacecraft at an asteroid. I mean, we've left footprints and tire tracks and things like that on various bodies, but this will be the first time humanity has changed a celestial motion. We'll discuss the details of NASA's historic mission and its implications for the safety of the planet. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's October 9th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire. President Biden faces increasingly grim poll numbers, with new polling showing him at his lowest point yet. Well, look at what happened. September 1, the net, minus 2, the disapproval above

the approval, and now minus 5. So essentially going in the wrong direction, not good, clearly underwater at this point. What's driving the drop in the president's approval? And are Democrats standing by him despite the decline? And ESPN once again made headlines this week over how it handles employees after one of its reporters gave her opinion on some hot-button issues. What sparked the controversy, and how are other members of the sports media responding? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This show is sponsored by Birch Gold Group. Inflation is destroying the dollar. Birch Gold Group can help. Protect your IRA or 401k with a precious metals IRA.

Text Wire to 98989-98 to claim a free info kit on physical. gold and silver. There's zero obligation. Text the word wire to 989898-9-8 to protect your savings today. NASA recently announced that it's launching a historic defensive mission, which could have huge implications for the safety of our planet. Here to tell us more is Daily Wire's Ian Howarth. So, Ian, what's going on with this new NASA mission? This week, NASA announced that they're going to be launching a spacecraft to hit an asteroid

on purpose. They want to test what they're calling a method. of planetary defense to see if they can change the path of the asteroid. So this sounds like the movie Armageddon. Yeah, sort of, although I don't think Bruce Willis is lacing up his spaceboots anytime soon. Oh, too bad. NASA are calling this mission the double asteroid redirection test, or Dart for short, and it's set to start on November 24th at 120 Eastern. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is going to be launched from California

and will be aiming for two asteroids which orbit the sun and sometimes come close to Earth. Now, do these two asteroids pose a potential threat to Earth? No, NASA said that these asteroids won't come close enough to Earth to pose a threat. What they want to do is test this defensive technique. These asteroids are apparently prime candidates for a tool which could help save us from a dangerous asteroid in the future. We're going to make sure that a rock from space doesn't send us back to the Stone Age. And how would that actually work? Well, there are two asteroids being targeted.

The first is Didymus, which is about a half mile in diameter, and the second is dimorphous, which orbits Didimus and is about 500 feet across. The Dark Mission is going to try and hit Demorphus, the smaller asteroid, at almost 15,000 miles per hour. And the goal here is to change the orbit of the smaller asteroid around the bigger asteroid by about 1%. While this doesn't seem like a lot, it would be enough to drastically adjust the course of an asteroid that actually threatens Earth. What's really cool here, beyond the fact that we might not have to rely on Hollywood to save us from deadly asteroids, is that this will be the first time humanity has changed something in space. Wow, they've got to get this right. So how likely is it that we're going to actually have to use this technology in the future?

So NASA actually released a bunch of data on this subject. They said there were 26,815 near-Earth asteroids that we know of, with almost 10,000 of these being larger than 500 feet. 891 of these are larger than a kilometer, around two-thirds of a mile. According to NASA, there are also 15,000 near-Earth asteroids larger than this, which are still yet to be found. But it's actually not unusual for asteroids to pass this close to Earth. NASA said that 14 known asteroids

passed closer to the Earth and the Moon just in the past 30 days and 127 passed closer to the Earth and the moon in the past year. But most don't pose a threat, even when we consider the objects that actually hit Earth, and NASA haven't detected an asteroid which poses a risk over the next 100 years at least. But it

is nice that we might have an option beyond handing Bruce Willis and nuclear codes if we do spot an asteroid hitting our way. Ian, thanks so much for coming on. That's Daily Wires, Ian Howarth. Coming up, new polling spells trouble for President Biden. You can get this show and all of the content you love, wherever you are, on the Daily Wire app. Even if you're not a Daily Wire member, you'll be the first to know what's trending with mobile notifications for the latest news.

And you'll get content from all of your favorite Daily Wire shows. Download the Daily Wire app and keep up with effects, no matter where your day takes you. Following the widely criticized withdrawal from Afghanistan and amid growing economic uncertainty, President Biden's approval rating continues to sink, with a new poll showing fewer Americans than ever approve of the job he's doing. Here with details on what's causing the drop and how Democrats are responding is Daily Wire managing editor Cabot Phillips. So, Cabot, walk us through the numbers here.

What sort of drop are we looking at? Well, the drop we've seen this month is dramatic to say the least. That poll you mentioned comes from Quinepeiac and shows that just 38% of Americans approve of the job the president's doing right now. For context, that same poll had him at 42% approval three weeks ago and all the way up at 50% in February. So pretty big drop. Yeah, pretty precipitous there. Is this a dip that's normal for a president in the first year of his term?

Yes and no. A certain honeymoon phase is typically experienced when presidents take office. But a dip in approval this drastic is not something we typically see. According to polling, one and four people who approved of Biden in the winter no longer do. So that's more than just a slight drop-off. So a quarter have lost faith in him. Yeah. What are the main reasons?

So there are a few key issues, but it's worth noting that he is under 50% approval on every major issue in the poll. But the areas where he performs the worst are immigration, foreign policy, and the economy. On immigration, just 25% of Americans approve of the job he's doing. A big part of that has been the border crisis.

People have responded negatively to the images they've seen showing record numbers of migrants flooding across the border. On foreign policy, nearly twice as many Americans disapprove as approve of the job he's doing. He's at just 34% approval there. The president's handling of Afghanistan is the main thing cited there when people were asked what they don't like. Right. What about the economy? Yeah, we've started to see a huge dip there as well. Some people might be surprised by that when they see the falling unemployment rates and record numbers of job openings. but the impacts of inflation are really starting to be felt,

and you can kind of see that in the poll here. Prices on everything from cars to appliances are soaring, and food prices are now at record high, jumping almost 10% in the last year alone. And the bad news for Biden on that front, the economic part, is that there aren't really any signs that inflation is going to taper off anytime soon, with many experts saying it's going to get worse in the coming months.

Look, obviously a president's approval impacts his party. how are Democrat leaders responding to this downturn? Are we seeing any signs of cracking in unity? The party leadership in D.C. is still standing by the president publicly, but we are starting to see signs that things could change on that front. This week, leading Democrats expressed frustration over the president's role in killing the infrastructure bill. And we started to see candidates distance themselves as well around the country.

Terry McCullough, the Democrat nominee for governor in Virginia, was caught on a recent conference call saying, quote, the president is unpopular and we've got to plow through. And we've also heard reports of other Democrat candidates saying they don't want Biden campaigning with them because he's unpopular in their districts. So that's going to be the next thing to watch his midterms approach, how they handle the fact that the leader of their party is not particularly popular. How is this all affecting the midterms?

Yeah, midterms are typically viewed as a referendum on the president. And obviously that's bad for Democrats with how unpopular Biden is right now. that Quinnipiac poll and another last week from Gallup have Republicans with a three-point lead when it comes to who voters want to see gain control of Congress. So don't be surprised if you start seeing Democrats in vulnerable districts,

taking occasional shots at Biden or more likely simply just keeping their distance. Yeah, President Biden's got his work cut out for him. Thanks, Cabot. Anytime. Daily Wire Managing Editor, Cabot Phillips. An ESPN employee is once again in the news after giving her opinion on something other than sports.

Sage Steele was off the air this week after discussing the COVID vaccine, women in sports media, and former president Barack Obama. Bringing us the latest updates is Daily Wire Sports Reporter Joe Morgan. So, Joe, give us the rundown here. What exactly did Steele say that caused so much backlash? Sure, I mean, I'll start with this.

Steele has not been one to go along with the left-wing narrative in her career. She was reportedly iced out of a June 2020 ESPN special. on race after two colleagues said that the biracial steel, quote, would not be accepted by the black community. So last week, Steele went on former NFL quarterback Jay Cutler's podcast. She discussed ESPN's vaccine requirement. For those that don't know, all employees must have been vaccinated by September 30th, calling the mandate sick and scary. I respect everyone's decision. I really do. But to mandate it is sick. And it's scary to me in many ways. And these comments presumably have steel in hot water with ESPN.

Just slightly, yeah. On Tuesday, Steele issued an apology and ESPN came out with her own statement saying they're, quote, having direct conversations with Sage and those conversations will remain private. Also on Tuesday, front office sports reported that Steele will not be on air for the remainder of the week and that her comments did have something to do with it. But I do want to note this because I think it's important. Front Office Sports also reported that Steele has tested positive for COVID, which obviously could be one of the, the reasons behind her absence. Got it. But Steele discussed more than just the COVID vaccine. Oh, yeah. It's a podcast and it was wide-ranging.

She spoke on former President Barack Obama, who came up when Steele recalled a colleague asking her to choose to identify as either black or white. When you felt your census, I'm like, well, I don't know when the last time I filled out my census was, but if they make you choose a race, she's like, what are you going to put? I go, well, both. She's like, well, you can't. She goes, well, Barack Obama chose black and he's biracial. I'm like, well, congratulations. to the president, that's his thing. I think that's fascinating considering his black dad was nowhere to be found,

but as white mom and grandma raised him, but hey, you do you. I'm going to do me. Steele also dove into women working in sports media and how they deal with inappropriate comments from athletes, putting some of the onus on women to be aware of the way they present themselves. So when you dress like that, I'm not saying you deserve the gross comments, but you know what you're doing when you're putting that outfit on, too. Like, women are smart.

So don't play coy and put it all on the guys when we, and again, I'm not saying anybody deserves anything. Yes. But we need to be responsible as women, too, because we know what we're doing when we put certain things on. And then return to certain text. Are you expect somebody's not going to see you if you go to dinner with this guy? Like, that's on us. And what's been the reaction from the left to Steele's comments? Well, they're not pleased.

Former ESPN anchor and the Atlantic writer Jemel Hill called Steele's comments. comments, clown behavior. Keith Oberman called for ESPN to take her off the air. Former ESPN colleague Kerry Champion said Steele, quote, clearly has issues with women. Issues with women. That's an interesting take. I seriously doubt this is going to be the last time we're going to discuss this. All right. Well, Joe, thanks for reporting. Yeah, anytime. That's Daily Wire Sports reporter, Joe Morgan. Other stories we're tracking this week, the World Health Organization has approved a malaria vaccine for at-risk children. WHO Director General called it a historic moment and said,

using this vaccine on top of existing tools to prevent malaria, could save tens of thousands of young lives each year. And Playboy magazine debuts its first ever male cover model on its October issue. While Playboy has featured male covers before, beauty influencer Bretman Rock is the first male to don the iconic bunny suit. The magazine is celebrating its cover as a milestone for the LGBT community. And a 100-year-old man is on trial in Germany this week, accused of war crimes related to serving as a Nazi SS guard

at a concentration camp near Berlin between 1942 and 1945. The defendant, identified as Joseph S., is charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder. 100-year-old survivor Leon Schwartzbaum, who was imprisoned at the same concentration camp, was able to attend the trial as a visitor. If you like this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening,

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