Morning Wire - Thursday | October 21, 2021

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

The State Department opens several reviews into Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, trust in the legacy media plummets, and Netflix tries to tamp down revolt over Dave Chappelle special. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The State Department is launching a series of reviews of President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan, including the widely criticized handling of the emergency evacuation of the U.S. Embassy and Afghan refugees. What prompted the reviews, and what's the status of the U.S. citizens and allies left behind? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, October 21st, and this is Morning Wire. With the increasing polarization of news coverage, trust in the media is hitting near all-time lows. recent polling shows the vast majority of Americans don't trust their mainstream news sources. What does this mean for the country, and how could it affect news coverage going forward?

And controversy continues at Netflix over the streamer's support of comedian Dave Chappelle's comedy special. Gender is a fact. Why are some Netflix staffers walking out, and will the company give in to their demands? 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 98989898 to claim a free info kit on physical gold and silver.

There's zero obligation. Text the word wire to 989898 to protect your savings today. The State Department has reportedly opened several reviews of President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan. The withdrawal, which has been heavily criticized by both political parties, has coincided with an all-time low approval rating for the Biden administration. Here to discuss the withdrawal and the continuing fallout is Daily Wire senior editor Ash Short. So, Ash, tell us about these reviews. How many are there and what are they going to cover? Well, it appears the State Department has launched a series of reviews.

A spokesman for the department was very clear that they are not investigations. These reviews are looking into the department's special immigrant visa program, the Afghans who are processed for refugee admission into the U.S., the resettlement of those refugees and other visa recipients, as well as the administration's emergency evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. So they're calling them reviews instead of investigations. What's the difference between a review and an investigation? Well, they're kind of like a preliminary investigation or an informal investigation. The inspectors general will gather information and make a determination about whether they will open a formal investigation into the matters. We saw this before with the Biden administration's Department of Justice declining to open a formal investigation into several governors' COVID-19 nursing home policies.

The DOJ collected and reviewed information from those states and then declined to investigate further. That could happen in this case, or maybe the inspector general will decide to open a formal investigation. And who ordered these reviews? They were announced in a memo last week by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. And then which organization or branch of government is going to be responsible for conducting the actual review? That would be the State Department's Inspector General Diana Shaw and her office. So the withdrawal and a lot of the issues that accompanied it were back in August. Why is this investigation happening now?

Well, the State Department is not known for its speed. But it's also not the only department looking into the Afghanistan withdrawal. The Pentagon is conducting its own reviews, including one into the botched drone strike that killed 10 civilians, one into the Department of Defense's screening process for displaced Afghans, and another auditing the Pentagon's support for relocating Afghan nationals. Now, one of the major concerns back in August was that Afghan allies were left behind. What's their status right now? And is that something that's being looked into?

Well, one of the reviews being conducted by the State Department will include the evacuation of U.S. citizens and Afghan nationals from Kabul, so we should get insight into that. It should also be noted that there are still people trapped in Afghanistan. Just recently, a group of American veterans and volunteers known as the Afghan rescue crew work with officials from Qatar to evacuate 374 American citizens and foreign nationals from Afghanistan. Right. And it's easy to forget that a lot of people are. are still trapped there in Afghanistan. Back in September, President Biden actually said he wanted to turn the page on Afghanistan, and it seemed like the whole issue fell out of the headlines at about that point. Yeah, the Biden administration has definitely pivoted away from discussing Afghanistan, and most of the press doesn't seem too interested anymore either.

Ash, thanks so much for coming on. You're welcome. That's Daily Wire, senior editor, Ash Short. Coming up, trust in the legacy media plummets. 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 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.

New polling shows trust and establishment news media crumbling over the last few years, reaching near all-time lows. Here to discuss the development and its significance is Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence-Bond. So Charlotte, fewer and fewer people are believing what legacy media outlets tell them. What is the latest polling about this say? Thanks, Georgia. So, yeah, as you said, trust in the media across the U.S. is hitting extremely low rates. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 36% of Americans said they had a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.

That means almost two-thirds of Americans. Americans do not trust the news media. That's the second lowest number Gallup has seen when it conducts these polls, and it's dropped dramatically in just a few years. In 2018, that number was at 45%. And do we know why this dip is happening now? Now more than ever, we're seeing independent voices gaining enough of a platform to challenge the mainstream in a meaningful way.

One of the biggest examples of this is podcaster Joe Rogan, who commands an audience of millions. Last week, Rogan called out Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his show, for CNN's misleading reporting on Rogan's use of the medication Ivermectin while he was infected with COVID. Gupta is the medical correspondent for CNN, and Rogan basically demanded answers about why CNN misled audiences, telling them that Rogan was taking horsy-wormer, rather than the truth that he was taking Ivermectin prescribed by a physician as an antiviral. It should be noted, however, that the FDA has not authorized Ivermectin for prevention or

treatment of COVID-19 in the U.S. Does it bother you that the news network you work for out and out lied? Just outright lied about me taking horse dewormer. They shouldn't have said that. Why did they do that? I don't know. You didn't ask? You didn't think that was your.

You're the medical guy over there. I didn't ask. I should have asked before coming under the podcast. No, Joe. I watched. And last week, again, we saw another story involving Katie Couric. She admitted in her new book that she intentionally edited her interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader.

Ginsburg that was published in 2016. Currick admits she deleted commentary where Ginsburg said athletes who kneel for the national anthem are showing, quote, contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life. Curric claimed she was protecting Ginsburg because she feared the justice was, quote, elderly and, quote, probably didn't fully understand the question. Well, and this was a sitting Supreme Court justice. Yeah, exactly.

Another recent example came just over a week ago when the New York Times drastically overreported the number of children hospitalized due to COVID, reporting, quote, nearly 900,000 when the real number was actually around 60,000. Wow. In these cases, the misrepresentation seemed calibrated to promote the interests of the political left,

which many suggest is a pattern and maybe the key reason for the drastic asymmetry between Republicans and Democrats in terms of loss of trust in the media. Right. So, I mean, 36% of Americans overall distrust the media, but there's a pretty steep divide within that. What are the numbers along party lines? Yes, the left and right are very divided about news. For example, we see relatively high levels of trust in media among self-reported Democrats at 68% compared with significantly lower rates among independents and Republicans with 31% and 11% respectively. And I mean, as a result, you have a lot of readers and viewers who are seeing the news and saying things like, hey, why aren't my views being represented ever? Or why do these fact errors always seem to go in one direction?

Exactly. And it's shaking their trust. Right. That's actually one of the reasons we started this show. Charlotte, thanks for coming on. That's Daily Wires, Charlotte Pence-Bahn. The controversy over comedian Dave Chappelle's Netflix special, The Closer, continued this week. as a group of Netflix employees staged a walkout Wednesday. The staffers released a list of demands, including asking Netflix to remove, quote, all references to an imagery of Chappelle from their workplace. Here to bring us the latest details is Daily Wire Entertainment reporter Megan Basham.

So, Megan, two weeks later, and we're still talking about this story, what's going on here? Well, you know, as we've discussed before, this has been kind of a rolling PR issue for Netflix. They fired a trans employee for leaking confidential information, then they suspended two others, and then they quickly reinstated them when there was a backlash. It's all been pretty messy. And then came the walkout, which has been, of course, catnip to the media. And then the activists issued a list of demands

that were very reprintable, so to speak. As you said, they want all the posters and images of Chappelle removed from Netflix buildings, and they want the company to hire some trans and non-binary, people for executive positions. They want the company to fund new entertainment that promotes transgenderism. And now, this is the biggie to me, so I'm going to quote here.

They want the company to, quote, acknowledge the harm and Netflix's responsibility for harm from transphobic content. And to go along with that, they also want the company to slap a hate speech warning on Chappelle's special. Any chance Netflix gives in to these demands? You know, maybe the representation demand,

they could put a trans-identifying person in some new leadership role. And very possible they could throw some money at some new trans content. What I don't believe they're going to do is issue that apology or add that label, at least probably not in the way the activist employees want it. The protesters are claiming they're not asking for Netflix to remove the closer from the platform. But if the company were to concede to those two demands, it would also necessarily be conceding that it's kind of, of indefensible for them to leave the special up.

Right. Now, both of Netflix's co-CEOs initially put out strong statements in defense of Chappelle, essentially saying that speech is not violence. But then Ted Sarandos gave a new statement to deadline on Tuesday saying he, quote, screwed up and wasn't sensitive enough to trans concerns. He said he should have led with his humanity rather than defense of free speech. And frankly, I think that was probably a mistake. that screwed up quote immediately became the top story

at every major Hollywood trade publication. Okay, so that's Netflix. What about the stand-up comedy community, any sense of how they're responding to all this? Yeah, I do have some sense of that. And I have to say that everything I've seen suggests that apart from one or two exceptions, like comic Hannah Gadsby,

who put out kind of an explosive statement, they're almost uniformly supporting Chappelle. Earlier this week, for example, fellow comedian Damon Wayans called him the van go of comedy. And he said the comedians have been, quote, slaves to PC culture and that Chappelle has freed them. Well, so he clearly feels strongly about it. Yeah, clearly he does. And I also spoke to another comedian, John Reap. And he's a well-known comic who's on a major club tour right now. He has comedy specials on Netflix and Amazon as well. And I asked him if the response to Chappelle has other comedians, those who don't have that

protection of worldwide fame concerned. Well, here's what he told me. We're supposed to be that little voice that speaks out and says the things that you're afraid to say, but you're thinking. And if you're telling us that we can't even say, we can't do that, then what can we do? Are we just supposed to put clown makeup on and dance around? Well, Reap has a good point about why audiences love comedy specials in the first place there. Yeah, yeah, I think he does. Thanks for the update, Megan. Mm-hmm. Any time.

That was Daily Wire Entertainment reporter Megan Basham. Other stories were tracking this week. The FBI has confirmed that a backpack and notebook belonging to Brian Laundrie, as well as what appears to be human remains, were discovered in a park in Florida on Wednesday. Laundry, the former fiancé of Gabby Petito, is a person of interest in the homicide case. And the Parkland mass shooter pleaded guilty on Wednesday

to murdering 17 students in 17. staff and injuring 17 more at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. Now, a jury will determine whether he will face life in prison or execution. If you like this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know. If you like this podcast, get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at Dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code MorningWire to try a reader's past membership and get your first month for only 99 cents.