Morning Wire - Trump Buries Epstein & Farm Labor Finds Future | 7.9.25

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

President Trump fields questions on tariffs, Ukraine, and Epstein during his sixth Cabinet meeting, fallout continues from the Central Texas floods, and the Administration rejects amnesty but hints at flexibility for some illegal immigrant workers. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.   - - -   Today's Sponsors:   Zocdoc - Find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Visit https://Zocdoc.com/WIRE #sponsored   Lumen - Go to https://lumen.me/WIRE to get 10% off your Lumen.   - - -   Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump holds the sixth cabinet meeting of his second term, taking questions on tariffs, Ukraine, and Jeffrey Epstein. Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. I'm Georgia Howe. John is off today, but we have Cabot Phillips filling in. It's Wednesday, July 9th, and this is Morning Wire. Six days after the deadly Texas floods, the community once answers. What failed and who is to blame?

Didn't have any alerts until the water. was already like inside the house. And the Trump administration denies any plans for amnesty, but hints at flexibility for illegal immigrant farm and hospitality workers. I won the farmers by 92% and I'm not going to be abandoning you my farmers. We were strong on the borders, but we're also strong for the farmers. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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during a wide-ranging cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips has more. So Cabot, the president touched on a lot of topics yesterday. Get us up to speed. Well, cabinet meetings traditionally take place behind closed doors. But on Tuesday, President Trump spent nearly the first two hours of his meeting taking questions from the press. For context, that is longer than every single Biden cabinet meeting combined across all four years of its presidency.

The president started by addressing the flooding in Texas, which will get to be. to next, and then from there devoted much of his time to discussing his new plan for tariffs. Right. So there was a lot of back and forth on tariffs. Where did things land? So first, a quick refresher. Back in April, President Trump announced a 90-day pause on his Liberation Day tariffs, saying he would use that time to knock out deals, but that any country who did not come to the table would be hit with massive tariffs on July 9th. But despite early signs of optimism from our trading partners, the reality is we just have not seen the 90 deals in 90 days that the White House initially promised. To date, the only countries with formal,

finalized trade deals are the UK and Vietnam. The White House insists that they're approaching the finish line with the EU, India, and Cambodia, among others, but they clearly need more time. So on Monday, the president signed an executive order extending the tariff deadline to August 1st. And in an effort to speed up negotiations, in the meantime, he sent letters to a dozen plus countries with more on the way, saying that without a deal, they would face enormous tariffs on August 1st. And if they raise rates in response, the U.S. would go even higher. On Tuesday, we heard from Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, who gave details on how much revenue the existing tariffs have already brought in.

We were taking in about $100 billion in tariff income thus far this year. And that's with the major tariff not having started until the second quarter. So we could expect that could be well over $300 billion by the end of the year. Now, President Trump also offered some new details on his stance with, Ukraine. What did he say? So throughout the last six months, the president has started to cut off the amount of support that the U.S. has sent to Ukraine. But with Moscow stepping up their attacks on population centers in Ukraine and then Putin repeatedly backing out of peace talks, president is making an about face of sorts, announcing that the U.S. will now resume weapons shipments to Ukraine.

We want to put defensive weapons because Putin is not treating human beings, right? He's killing too many people. So we're sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine and I've approved that. Now, after taking office, Trump initially took more of a good cop approach with Putin, offering him kind words and saying that he was confident

the Russian strong man was ready to end the war. But that sentiment is clearly out the window now. Have a listen to what else he said at the cabinet meeting yesterday. A lot of people have died and it should end. And I don't know, we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin for you, one another true. He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

And now pivoting a little bit, he also made some comments that turned a lot of heads regarding Jeffrey Epstein. Yes, he did. What did he did? This answer went very viral. So for context, as we talked about yesterday, the Trump administration essentially closed their case on Epstein this week, saying he was not murdered, did not have a client list, and did not blackmail powerful individuals. And given how much the story has dominated the headlines, it wasn't a surprise he was asked about it, but it was a surprise how he responded. Have a listen. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking, we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still

talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time and do you feel like answering? I don't mind answering. I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this. Now, that response, it's worth noting, angered a lot of people, including many people in his base, who highlighted comments from Trump himself on the campaign trail where he vowed to provide total transparency on the evidence regarding Epstein.

The White House appears to be hoping this issue will go away. There's no doubt a lot of folks find the official explanation hard to believe and want to see more for themselves. Yeah, people are not going to let this just go, I don't think. Seems that way. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Absolutely. I've discovered this incredible tool that gives me real-time insights into my metabolism through something as simple as my breath.

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me slash wire to get 10% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N. dot me slash wire for 10% off your purchase. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode. While rescue and recovery operations continue in Texas, some are already asking why communities were so unprepared for this disaster. Tragedy that's killed over 100 people

with many still missing is left officials to face tough questions. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about the fallout from the Texas floods. So, Tim, let's start with the recovery efforts. Where do things stand now? Yeah, despite all the blame that is sure to be passed around, it's important to remember that the tragedy is still fresh and still going on for many. People are still missing and searches are taking place all over central Texas.

Weather has definitely made that more difficult. Rains and flash flood warnings have hindered progress and officials have had to not only look out for the missing, but also protect the emergency responders and volunteers that have joined the search crews near rivers. Texas Governor Greg Abbott gave an update on the situation on the ground yesterday. Here's what he said. Just in the Kerr County area alone, there are 161 people who are known to be missing. Know this. We will not stop until every missing person is accounted for.

Know this also. There are very likely could be more added to that list. Now, there have been a lot of questions asked about what more could have been done to save lives. Where is the blame being pointed right now? Right. Press conferences have started to become a little bit test. You've got local and national news reporters pushing officials to answer pretty pointed questions. In some cases, that's caused blowups like this one from the Curval County Sheriff's Press Conference.

Sir, I think that the community here is asking these questions. What happened? When did it happen? Was the emergency manager awake at the time? Did they push the button to issue an emergency alert? Sir, it's not that easy when you just push a button. Okay, there's a lot more to that. And we've told you several times. Did it happen to you? I can't tell you this time. Curville City Manager had a few more answers for reporters on Tuesday. He talked about the thought process behind the emergency response

and why the location and the type of disaster made this response so difficult. There's been the other question, and I'll just give this one out, evacuations. Well, why don't we evacuate? Well, evacuation is a delicate balance because if you evacuate too late, you then risk putting buses or cars or vehicles or campers on roads into low-water areas trying to get them out, which then can make it even more challenging. flash floods happen very quickly.

Now, what about the criticism that the National Weather Service was understaffed? Texas Senator Ted Cruz took some questions on that. I think there have been some eager to point at the National Weather Service and say cuts there led to a lack of warning. I think that's contradicted by the facts. And if you look at the facts in particular, number one, that these warnings went out hours before the flood became a true emergency level. Number two, the National Weather Service here, New Bronsville's is where they were headquartered. They had additional manpower. In fact, they had three additional people working that night, anticipating that it was going to be a very dangerous weather situation.

Important to note that even the NWS union, which has been very critical of cuts to the agency, says it does not believe the cuts made the weather service less prepared to handle this disaster. So we have heard that some counties have been very successful with early warning. systems, is that something that these counties are now looking into? Kirk County actually looked into getting a siren system a few years ago for situations exactly like this. But the idea never went anywhere because it was deemed too costly. Now the state government may step up to pay for the system if the local government can't. Here's Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on Fox News on Monday. Had we had sirens along this area up and down,

it's possible that that would have saved some of these lives. And so if the city can't afford it, then the state will step up and we need to have these in place by the next summer. Well, hopefully this tragedy will inspire some of these local officials to get a system in place. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. The Trump administration is again signaling a shift on how it's addressing illegal immigration in the farm industry. Here with the details is Amanda Prestiagiochamo. Hey, Amanda, so there's been a bit of back and forth on this topic.

Where does the Trump administration stand right now? with regard to immigration raids on farms. Yeah, so currently ICE does have the go ahead from DHS to continue work site raids on farms to sweeper illegal immigrants. That directive was issued in mid-June soon after the administration said that there would actually be a pause on those raids, as well as raids at hotels and restaurants. Now, while that directive to continue these raids does still stand, we are getting signals from the administration and Trump himself that there will be some nuance here when it comes to deportations. related to farm labor in particular. Here's President Trump, alongside Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, talking to the press earlier this month about protecting farmers

and empowering them with some of these decisions related to illegal immigrant workers. We're going to take care of the farmers and hotel workers and various other people that we're working on it right now and Ron's going to be involved and you're involved already. So we have a case where a lot of cases where ICE were going to a farm and these are guys working there for 10, 15 years, no problem. The farmers know. We're going to put, it's called farmer responsibility or owner responsibility where they're going to be largely responsible for these people. And they know these people. They've worked on the farms for 15 years and all of a sudden

so I have a great, Ron does, Christy does, we have a great feeling for the farmer and for others in the same position and we're going to give them responsibility for people and we're going to have a system of signing them up so they don't have to go. They can be here. illegally. And here's Trump echoing that message just days ago at a rally. And interestingly, he does reference potential backlash from what he calls his radical right supporters. We're going to put you in charge. We're going to make you responsible. And I think that that's going to make a lot of people happy. Now, serious radical right people who I also happen to like a lot, they may not be quite as happy, but they'll understand, won't they?

Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Ollahan was able to ask Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rawlins just yesterday about illegal immigrant farm hands. Rollins made clear that there would be no mass amnesty, though she did say the administration will be handling these deportations strategically to avoid any food supply issues. To your question about mass deportations, the president and I have spoken about that once or twice, and he has always been of the mindset that at the end of the day, the promise to America to ensure that we have a 100% American workforce stands, but we must be strategic. and how we are implementing the mass deportation, so is not to compromise our food supply.

So no amnesty under any circumstances. Mass deportations continue, but in a strategic and intentional way as we move our workforce toward more automation and toward a 100% American workforce. Now, back in mid-June, Rollins expressed her full commitment to the America First agenda, but she did say that deportations were going to be prioritized in a way to avoid, quote, severe disruptions to our food supply. Now, for some context on that, some reports mostly out of California said that illegal immigrant farm laborers stopped showing up to work out of fear of deportation and crops had gone unharvested.

One report cited numerous farm supervisors who said that the number of workers dropped dramatically since raid started in California. So instead of 300 workers, one supervisor said there were only 80 people who showed up. another saw a drop from 80 workers to 17. All told, it's estimated that about 40 to 50% of crop farm workers are here illegally or without proper work authorization. Well, a lot of people will be keeping a close eye on how the Trump administration handles this issue. Amanda, thanks so much for reporting. You're welcome.

Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.