Morning Wire - Thursday | October 14, 2021

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Loudoun County parents demand the resignations of school board members, federal drug officials warn about the growing fentanyl crisis, and Dave Chappelle and Netflix come under fire for transgender jokes. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Loudoun County parents are demanding the resignations of school board members amid allegations of school sexual assaults and cover-ups. What is worse than a child being raped at school, the cover-up by those who are entrusted with the safety and well-bed being of children. We have the latest from law enforcement, a response from the school district, and we hear from the father of one of the alleged victims. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, October 14th, and this is Morning Wire. The DEA is warning that Americans are dying from taking counterfeit prescription pills laced with a lethal dose of fentanyl. How are these pills getting into the U.S.?

And what are officials doing to combat it? And comedian Dave Chappelle is under fire for making jokes about transgender women and declaring that gender is a fact. We'll look at what exactly he said and whether or not Netflix is standing behind him. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This show is sponsored by Podium.

If you own a business, you know there aren't enough hours in a day to waste playing phone tag. That's why local businesses everywhere turn to Podium. Podium makes every interaction as easy as sending a text. So everything that makes your business great can get done faster. Get started free today at Podium.com slash wire. That's Podium.com slash wire. Yesterday, we covered a developing story about a Loudoun County father who was arrested for disorderly conduct at a school board meeting where parents were protesting a new transgender bathroom policy.

That father made national news as a potential, quote, domestic terrorist. It was later revealed, though, that that man was actually the father of a ninth grade girl who was allegedly raped by a male student in a girl's bathroom in May. Now, parents are demanding accountability for the school board for allegedly concealing that alleged assault. Joining us as the investigative reporter who broke the story here at The Daily Wire, Luke Roziak. So, Luke, there have been some new developments in this situation since we last spoke. What's the latest on the Loudoun County School Board and the sexual assault and battery cases?

A lot has happened in the days since I broke this story. On Tuesday, there was a school board meeting, and more than 60 parents and residents spoke. Most of them demanding the resignation of Superintendent Scott Ziegler. My reporting showed that Ziegler told the public the schools had zero bathroom assaults on the record three weeks after this one occurred. Hiding evidence from every parent in LCPS about a heinous sexual assault of a student that occurred in a bathroom so you could pass radical policy 8040 is more important to you than protecting the dignity and safety of our children against the likelihood of a repeat occurrence. And as you reported Monday, allegedly the male student accused of sexually assaulting Scott Smith's daughter was transferred to another school where he assaulted another female student.

Has that been confirmed? Yeah. After our original story came out, the sheriff did confirm on the record to other outlets that the second alleged attack was in fact committed by the same male student, just as we reported. The Smith family had been assured that the student was placed on house arrest following the initial sexual assault, but apparently he was being allowed to go to school again. They were, you know, the Smith family was never notified that the student had allegedly struck again. How was Loudoun County public schools responded to Aldus? They put out a carefully worded statement on way. Wednesday, which essentially reiterated the school policy on sexual assault. They said they did report

the May 28th the rape to the police and said school board members generally aren't told about disciplinary problems. Here's part of what they said, and I'm quoting here, the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office was contacted within minutes of receiving the initial report on May 28th. Once a matter has been reported to law enforcement, LCPS does not begin its investigation until law enforcement advises LCPS that it has completed the criminal investigation. Furthermore, LCPS is prohibited from disciplining any student without following the Title IX grievance process, which includes investigating complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

So effectively, just a restatement of their policy and insisting they followed it. Right. And as my story said, though, Smith said the reason cops got involved was because the schools called them on him for making a scene. In fact, the principal sent out an email, which we have a copy of, right after the event, saying the reason students may have seen police at school that day was because there was a, quote, incident in the main office area today that required the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office to dispatch deputies to Stone Bridge. The principal told parents that the incident was, quote, confined to the main office area and the entrance area to the school, and that, again, quoting here, there was no threat to the safety of the student body. So no mention of an incident in the bathroom and a claim that there was actually.

actually no threat to any student. Correct. The fact is LCPS never told the public when alleged rape occurred in the school. And it appears the student was simply transferred. The second assault became public only because the sheriff put out a public statement. What's often lost here is the human element.

Two young girls were allegedly assaulted and traumatized at school. Smith spoke to Laura Ingram on Tuesday about how his daughter handled it. My wife and I had to spend the entire summer rebuilding our daughter. It was hell. Really powerful statement there by the father. Thanks for updating us on this story, Luke.

Absolutely, John. That was investigative reporter, Luke Roziak. Coming up, federal and state officials sound the alarm over the growing fentanyl crisis. You can get this show and all of the content you love wherever you are, all 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 news

notifications for the latest news and you'll get content from all your favorite Daily Wire Shows. Download the Daily Wire app and keep up with the facts no matter where your day takes you. Drug cartels have found a new way to smuggle lethal doses of the drug fentanyl into the U.S. Federal officials warn they're seeing a spike in overdose deaths from fentanyl that comes disguised as prescription drugs. Here are the details as Daily Wire reporter Ben Johnson. Thanks for joining us, Ben. Good morning, John. The DEA recently issued a public warning warning about the threat posed by these counterfeit pills. First of all, which prescription drugs are affected?

We should say up front, the DEA has specified that this warning's only about counterfeit pills sold on the black market or on social media sites. It doesn't affect prescriptions filled by your local pharmacists. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it's not a widespread problem. Federal officials have said they've seized more than 9.5 million fentanyl-l-laced pills that look like drugs like Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin, Adderall, and Zal. That would make these drugs even more addictive, but about four out of every 10 pills they've seized contains enough fentanyl to cause an overdose.

So 40% are potentially causing overdoses, and you're saying 9.5 million pills. 9.5 million, 40% potentially deadly. Wow. One of the victims was a 22-year-old Texas woman named Cassandra Saldivar, who died in June from taking what she thought was a percassette. She left a two-year-old son behind. Her mother, Patricia, has rented a billboard across from AT&T Stadium in Arlington with a picture of her daughter in the message, one pill, that's all it took.

Last week, 11 governors, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott, held a press conference warning that America's southern borders become the epicenter of this new outbreak. This is one of, if not the most urgent matter that we're facing in the United States at this time. Opioids caused about three quarters of the 93,000 overdose deaths last year. To give you an idea of how new this problem is, Penal County, Arizona reported zero counterfeit pills in 2018. So far this year, they've seized more than a million, and that's only a fraction of the total amount of fentanyl that comes across the border. To put it in perspective, it takes two milligrams of fentanyl to kill someone. That's about the size of the point of a pencil. Every single pound of fentanyl could kill almost 227,000 people, a city of the size of Baden Rouge or Des Moines.

So far this year, Border Patrol agents have seized more than 10,000. pounds of fentanyl. Oh my gosh. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey highlighted the enormity of the problem last week. Just think about how many drugs are slipping through the cracks and slipping into the bloodstreams

in our communities. Fetanol overdoses have replaced car accidents as the leading cause of death for people 19 and younger in Pima County. So fentanyl overdoses are now the leading cause of death in some border cities. That's right. amazing. What I don't understand is why the cartels are putting extra opioid into the pills.

Why are they making these counterfeit pills so strong? The DEA says they're doing this to get their customers even more addicted than they would be to other opioids. Fetanil is the most addictive substance on the streets today. It's pretty cynical. Cynical and deadly. So the government also says there's an international criminal element to this as well. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, the DEA released a report last January, tracking the origins of these fentanyl-laced prescription pills. It said that the Mexican pill factories were operated by or with the consent of two transnational criminal organizations, the Cinelloa drug cartel and the Halisco New Generation Cartel. Part of the reason this is so deadly is that the fentanyl looks like a normal prescription.

How do the drug cartels take street drugs and pass them off as regular pills? Well, first the cartels import fentanyl or its components, usually from China or India. Factories in Mexico then assemble these pills and sell them online or carry them across the border. Ben, thanks for the reporting on this important story. Thanks for having me. That's Ben Johnson of The Daily Wire. Comedian Dave Chappelle is no stranger to controversy, but none of his previous stand-up specials created quite the firestorm his latest Netflix release The Closer has. Jokes that poked fun at the transgender movement have particularly drawn the ire of LGBT groups,

and some activists are demanding that Netflix remove the special from its platform. Here to give the latest details is Daily Wire Entertainment reporter Megan Basham. So, Megan, what did Chappelle say that the LGBT activists are so upset about? Well, so essentially when you strip away some language that I'm obviously not going to repeat here, Chappelle simply said that gender is real. Male and female are biological facts. Now here's one example from the show where he's talking about how the trans community

attacked Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. And it canceled her because she said in an interview and this is not exactly what she said, but effectually, she said gender was a fact. I agree. I agree, man. Gender is a fact. You have to look at it.

Okay. And what has to do you? is the fallout from this been? Well, I mean, it depends on who you're talking about, Netflix or Chappelle. If you're talking about Chappelle, he knows he is way too big to be canceled. Right. So in the middle of all this negative media attention, he performed a sold-out show at the Hollywood Bowl that had A-listers like Red Pitt, Tiffany Haddish, John Hamm, Stevie Wonder, all these very big names in the audience. Now, clearly, they aren't afraid of being associated with him, which you might think they would be. And we're talking about very liberal L.A. here. Even there, he got a

standing ovation. And he finished that show by saying, if this is what being canceled is like, I love it. So none of this is hurting him. But you mentioned Netflix. How does that affect Netflix? Right. Okay. So that's a different story. So from an investment standpoint, of course the special is drawing huge audiences. So that's a win. But it's also been kind of a rolling PR nightmare for them. So first, a trans showrunner for the show, dear white people announced they were boycotting the platform going forward. Sorry, Megan, a trans showrunner, that's an exact who just is a trans individual. Right. This is a person who works on the show who happens to be transgender. Now, that caused some bad press, but it really wasn't that big of a deal because a show like that is

only going to draw like a fraction of the audience of something like The Closer. So for Netflix, if it comes down to a niche, diversity, and inclusion series, or Dave Chappelle, well, that's an easy call. Right. But then one of its own employees started sounding off in some viral tweets condemning the company for allowing Chappelle to, and I'm quoting here, attack the trans community. That employee was then suspended. At that point, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos issued a memo saying that the company would not bow to calls to remove Chappelle's special, even if high-level talent joins the outcry. He said that while Netflix has a policy against content that insights hate or violence, he doesn't believe Chappelle's show crossed that line and stand-up comedy,

quote, exists to push boundaries. Now, that statement too drew some negative news stories. Right. On Monday, glad that is the gay and lesbian rights group. Well, they issued a statement saying Netflix needs to live up to its publicized standards against inciting hate and violence, which presumably means they want the company to pull the show. And any chance that Netflix's going to do that? No, absolutely no. Their relationship with Chappelle is way too valuable. But, You know, what it might do is make them hesitate to take a chance on that Neck Chappelle, who hasn't built such a big name yet. Right.

And that kind of illustrates how hard it is to break into comedy these days. You can't say much unless you're already a star. Exactly. Megan, thanks for coming on. Yeah, absolutely. That's Daily Wire Entertainment reporter, Megan Basham. Those are our big stories for the day. If you like this episode and are interested in hearing more,

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