Morning Wire - Tariff Time & Marine Le Pen Convicted in France | 4.1.25

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

President Trump’s tariffs are set to take effect, France’s leading candidate barred from presidential ballot, and Musk and DOGE uncover Social Security abuse. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Lumen: Head to http://lumen.me/WIRE for 15% off your purchase. 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's tariffs go into effect at midnight tonight as foreign leaders and state governors scramble to negotiate last-minute deals. President Trump doesn't want American industries to survive. He wants them to thrive. And that's exactly what his tariff in trade policy is going to do. How do voters feel about the new economic order? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, April 1st, and this is Morning Wire. populist leader Marine Le Pen is barred from running for office in France after being found guilty of embezzlement. If this stands, I think you can't argue that democracy is alive in France. And Elon Musk uncovers millions of non-citizens on the social security roles, including thousands who allegedly voted. If you create a massive financial incentive for people to come to the United States illegally, then that's what they will do.

The thing that actually has the Democrats losing their mind is that we're going to turn off the payments to illegals. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. When your metabolism is working correctly, you feel the benefits in every aspect of life. With Lumen, the world's first handheld metabolic coach, you can gain insight and stay on track when it comes to improving your health. By simply breathing into your Lumen each morning, you'll discover if your body is burning fats or carbs. The app then provides personalized nutrition plans and lifestyle guidance. based on your unique metabolism.

Take the next step in improving your health. Go to Lumen.com.me-slash-wire to get 20% off your L-U-M-N. That is L-U-M-E-N-D-M-S-Wire for 20% off your purchase. Thank you, LUMMIT for sponsoring this episode. Just hours out from Donald Trump's Liberation Day, consumers, corporations, and international trading partners are preparing for a slew of new tariffs that could reshape the global economy.

Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips is here with more on the economic ramifications heading into this crucial deadline. So have it all eyes on the White House as we wait for the final details of Trump's tariffs. What's the latest? Well, if there's anything we've learned from Trump, it's that he is full of surprises, and that is certainly the case here. For weeks now, the president has floated a variety of ideas on tariffs, sometimes saying he would match the rates set by other countries, then floating the idea of a universal 20%

rate, and then saying that he could be, quote, much more. generous with our trading partners. So to put it simply, we are in the dark on what exactly this liberation day will look like. And that sort of plays into Trump's strategy on these things. So what is the strategy there? Why is he waiting to unveil the full plan? Well, by waiting until the last minute, he leaves the door open for more negotiating. On Friday, for example, Mexican President Claudia Shinebaum met with Trump officials to discuss her plans to improve border security, clearly hoping to ease looming tariffs on her country. recent days, the president has fielded calls from the prime ministers of Canada and Great Britain.

Both men reportedly made their last-minute pitches seeking to dodge tariffs. And more broadly, in the last 72 hours, lawmakers in both parties have been lighting up the White House phones lobbying for exemptions for particular industries in their states. And of course, we've also seen a flood of business leaders making their case to the president, some vowing to bring manufacturing stateside and poor money into investments and jobs in exchange for lower tariffs. So Trump is seemingly content to let the pressure build and make final decisions once all offers are on the table. So let's talk about the political ramifications of some of that uncertainty. What are we seeing when it comes to voters? So amid the market swings and concerns

over potential price increases from these tariffs, there is no doubt that more voters have soured on Trump's handling of the economy. The issue typically he's been the most popular on. Numerous polls this week show his approval rating when the economy lower now than at any point in his first or second term. The Associated Press, for example, had him at 40%, Yahoo had him at just 39%. So if Liberation Day results in considerable price increases, there is a real risk those numbers could fall even further. Now, for their part, the White House has been adamant that consumers will not foot the bill, and that even if there are temporary price hikes, our economy will be stronger in the long run. I spoke with Heritage Economist E.J. and Tony, here he is making that

case. It's a fallacy that the entirety of a tariff is always and everywhere passed along to the end user, to consumers. If that were the case, for example, American dairy farmers who are facing a 270% tariff trying to get their products into Canada, they would simply pass that cost along, but they can't because it would make them uncompetitive, right? A lot of the equations I've seen have it penciled in at about 50%. So again, that's not great because that means consumers are still going to bear some costs, but the idea that they're going to bear the entire cost, you know, again, it's just a fallacy. Antonio was also quick to add that these tariffs are not taking effect in a vacuum and will

be coupled with tax cuts and deregulation, which he says will lessen their impact by lowering inflation and hopefully raising purchasing power. The White House has also been quick to argue that they are essentially cleaning up the mess left by the Biden administration, which in their view created massive trade disparities and sped up the hollowing out of America's manufacturing capabilities. Here's Antonio to that point. You know, the Fed cut interest rates when they had no business doing so back in the autumn. That caused commodity prices to spike.

That is now turning into higher wholesale prices and higher retail prices that UI and all the listeners have to pay. That's one of the reasons why we're still dealing with some inflationary fallout. So that's basically the mess that has been dumped into this administration's lap and that they're now having to deal with. So a lot riding on these next few days, Liberation Day now upon us. Well, no doubt everyone's going to be watching the markets. Cabot, thanks for reporting.

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Go to Shopify.com slash morningwire to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash morning wire. Marine Le Pen, the populist frontrunner for France's 2027 presidential race, has been convicted of embezzlement and banned from seeking office for five years. Her supporters say this is pure lawfare. Here the latest is Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham. Hey, Megan. So for those who don't closely follow European politics like we do, give us the background on Le Pen and these charges against her. Yeah, so Le Pen is the prominent leader of the right-wing national rally party.

She's a very Trump-like figure in France, very much feared by the political establishment who characterize her as an extremist. But she's also very popular with the French public. Recent polls and elections show that nearly 40% of French voters back her and her party. and no other candidate comes close to that. So she was found guilty of misappropriating several million euros in European Union funds. Essentially, her party was entitled to a certain amount of European funding

for things like paying staff to work on general European political operations. Well, the court found that she used that money to the benefit of her national party, essentially a co-mingling of funds. But Ellen Fantini, managing editor of the European Conservative, told me that virtually every major party in Europe does this same kind of thing.

She says that the way this conviction is being carried out makes it very clear that this is about sidelining Le Pen as a candidate. What's crazy about it is that under French law, of course she can appeal the conviction like in the United States, which means that while she's pending appeal, she's not going to have to serve any parts of her sentence, which were house arrest, two years of house arrest, as well as then kind of probation after that. But the prohibition on running for office is in execution as of basically today, even though she has the right to appeal. So it's obvious that that's the real thing they wanted. Fantini compared it to the same kind of lawfare

that Donald Trump experienced. Yeah. So what will this do to the presidential race in France? Well, I'd say it's hard to overstate just how seismic this shift is. It's a huge setback for national rally, which has been gaining ground as France's largest parliamentary party after last year's legislative elections. Now Le Pen was poised to win the presidency as well. Fantini says she expects to see serious pushback from Le Pen supporters now. The 38% who would vote for her, I think that's more than 18 million people.

And then you think about all of the people who might not have voted for her, but now, seeing how she's being treated, might consider that. I think the disenfranchisement of 18 million people will result in some kind of uprising in France. I also think that she's going to be more popular than ever. And as some people, some commentators have pointed out, you know, don't count her out yet. People were ready to count out Donald Trump a number of times. So, I mean, I think this will certainly result in a greater popularity for her and for her party. And I'll add, you're even hearing some saying that French authorities are inviting civil war here. That's some heightened rhetoric there.

What are other European leaders saying about this? Not much from those on the left, but those on the right are speaking out loudly. So on Monday, Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, posted, Jaisouet Marine, I am Marine, Italy's deputy prime minister, Mateo Salbini, leader of the far-right League Party, called the ruling a declaration of war by Brussels, meaning the European Union establishment. Populist party leaders in the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, all of them are characterizing this as an attempt to stymie the success that the right has been experiencing across Europe. Many are comparing it to Kalin Georgescu

of Romania. He's another popular right-wing presidential candidate who a court just banned from running. Pantini also expects the Trump administration to weigh in here in support of Le Pen. If we think about J.D. Vance's comments about Europe, particularly at the Munich Security Conference, where he set the world on fire by telling them the truth, the fact is that anybody who says, oh, J.D. Vance is exaggerating about the state of democracy in Europe. We should probably think twice about that assessment. It's an exoneration of him for having criticized. European democracy. Le Pen herself says she's a fighter and she says she is not going to allow the courts to eliminate

her from this race. Very interesting that so many of these same political shifts are happening in Western countries. Megan, thanks so much for reporting. Anytime. Elon Musk and venture capitalist Antonio Gracius are alleging widespread abuse of the social security system. The businessmen said Sunday that millions of non-citizens have been given access to benefits and many have even been allowed to vote.

Here to discuss what Musk and Gracius found is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So, Tim, these two have been digging around the Social Security Administration. What have they found? Abuse and a lot of it. Musk brought Gracius up on stage to town hall on Sunday and had him explain. In 21, you see 270,000 people goes all the way to 2.1 million in 24. These are non-citizens that are getting social security numbers. Yeah, this is a lot of people.

mind-blowing charge. Yeah, just this literally blew us away. Like, we went there to find fraud, and we found this by accident. My parents, immigrants, yeah, this country has been great to us. I'm pro-legal immigration. This is not, this is not political. This is not political. Again, that's 2.1 million non-citizens who received social security numbers last year alone, 4.8 million under four years of Biden. I should note that this isn't necessarily fraud. Non-citizens in the country under certain rules are eligible for Social Security numbers, but the number of non-citizens receiving them surged under Biden. Gracius went on to say that many of these non-citizens are receiving max benefits from the system.

The defaults in the system from Social Security to all of the benefit programs have been set to max inclusion, max pay for these people. And minimum collection, that's what's happening. We found 1.3 million of them already on Medicaid as an example. And this is on top of an already struggling social security system. The trust fund that handles retirement benefits, for instance, is expected to run out of money by 2033. Once you're in the country and you've got asylum through one of these pathways, and we map the whole thing out, you can apply for a work document. You get this form called the 766, that's the authorization, and then Social Security Administration automatically send you in the mail your social street number.

no interview, no ID. So a lot of Americans would be shocked to learn that. What else did they say? Well, Musk gave a theory on why this happened under the Biden administration. He thinks it's intentional. They were to sleep at the switch. It was a massive, large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible, ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States

and disenfranchise the American people and make it a permanent, deep blue, one-party state from which there would be no escape. And Gracia says that these non-citizens who received Social Security numbers actually showed up to vote in many cases. So we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records.

And we found people here registered to vote. In this population, yes. And who did vote? And we found some by sampling that actually did vote. And we have referred them to prosecution at the Home Ad Secured Investigation Service. Yeah. Already.

Already. That has already happened. So potentially millions of non-citizens voting in U.S. elections. Well, definitely worth an investigation. Tim, thanks for reporting. Good to be on. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.