Morning Wire - Trump Hosts Starmer & Hollywood’s Woke Reversal | 2.28.25

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

UK’s Prime Minister meets with Trump, efforts to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom gain momentum, and Hollywood lays off the woke. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Beam: Head to https://shopbeam.com/WIRE and use code WIRE at checkout for up to 40% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trump hosts the British Prime Minister for an Oval Office meeting centering on peace in Ukraine. You've created a moment of tremendous opportunity to reach a historic peace deal. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, February 28th, and this is Morning Wire. A recall effort against California Governor Gavin Newsom gains momentum as the fallout from the wildfires grows. Governor Newsom and Karen Bass led us all down. And struggling Hollywood is dialing back the wokenness in an effort to win back viewers. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

If you're waking up exhausted, that's no way to start your day. You need Beams Dream Powder, a science-backed, healthy hot cocoa for sleep. Other sleep aids can cause next day agrogginess. But Dream contains a powerful all-natural blend of Rishi, magnesium, L-thianine, apigenin, and melatonin to help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed. If you want to try Beam's best-selling dream powder, get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to shopbeam.com and use code wire at checkout. That's shop, B-E-A-M-com slash wire, and use code wire for up to 40% off. President Trump vowed Thursday to push ahead with tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and European nations as he hosted British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House. Daily Wire's senior editor Cabot Phillips has the latest, a Cabot.

So Trump hosted French President McCrome. Monday, as we discussed, and now it's time for Britain's leader. What was the focus of their visit? Well, the heart of things focused on Ukraine. Speaking ahead of their Thursday meeting, Starmers said, quote, my concern is if there is a ceasefire without a backstop, it will simply give Putin the opportunity to wait and to come again. For his part, Trump says that this new minerals deal with Zelensky will serve as a de facto security guarantee. Here he is during Thursday's meeting. President Zelensky is coming to see me on Friday, Friday morning, and we're going to be saying, really a very important agreement for both sides, because it's really going to get us into that country.

We'll be working there. We'll have a lot of people work in there. That's a backstop, you could say. I don't think anybody's going to play around if we're there with a lot of workers. More broadly, Trump argues that if Europe is worried about Ukrainian security, then they need to step up their own defense spending. He's called for NATO members to raise defense spending to 5% of their GDP. Sturmer responded this week by announcing they'd be increasing their spending to 2.5% of their GDP by 27 and then 3% by 2025. And while Sturmer has made clear in the past, he's not a big fan of Trump, he turned on the charm Thursday, saying Trump was the only reason peace in Ukraine was possible and offering him an invitation from King Charles. Have a listen.

This is a letter from his majesty of the king. It's an invitation for a second state visit. This is really special. This has never happened before. This is unprecedented. I think that just symbolizes the strength of the relationship between us. The two also reportedly discussed tariffs, Starmor, like the rest of the world, is looking to avoid Trump's threat of tariffs. But the president said he's not going to budge unless the UK and others lower their own tariffs. He said Thursday that reciprocal tariffs will officially go into effect on April 2nd.

Remember, that policy will create customized tariffs for each country we trade with based on the rate they charge us. Now, on the topic of tariffs, the president also made some of the president. news regarding Mexico and Canada yesterday. What's the latest there? Yeah, at the start of the month, Trump announced those plans for 25% tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican goods. Within days, though, he paused those tariffs after each country vowed to lock down their borders. But evidently, they did not do enough since then. Writing on Truth Social, Trump said, quote, drugs are still pouring into our country from Mexico and Canada at very high

and unacceptable levels. We cannot allow this skirt to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops or is seriously limited, the proposed tariffs scheduled to go into effect on March 4th will indeed go into effect as scheduled. Here we go. Now, before we go, there have been a lot of rumblings regarding the release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. Tell us about the latest on that. Well, a strange saga playing out. So earlier this week, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that a large batch of Epstein files would be released Thursday afternoon. But ultimately, all that really was released were heavily redacted documents. containing information that was already overwhelmingly available to the public.

And now, Bondi is saying the reason they're not releasing more is because the FBI is withholding thousands of pages worth of documents. She wrote a really remarkable letter to FBI director Cash Patel on Thursday saying that a whistleblower in the FBI had alerted her that federal investigators in New York had not handed over everything they had on Epstein and were intentionally hiding, quote, thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein. Bondi demanded that, quote, by 8 a.m. tomorrow, the FBI will deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office, including all records, documents, audio, and video recordings and materials. Long list related to Jeffrey Epstein and his clients, regardless of how such information was obtained.

And also the plot thickens and the anticipation build. Right. Definitely follow up. Kevin, thanks for reporting. Anytime. The handling of the recent wildfires that devastated much of the Southern California coast is calling into questions. in the leadership of the state's elected officials. The governor faces another serious recall effort, and many are calling for the mayor to step down. Daily Wire contributor, Micah Parker, has the story. So Micah, the fallout continues politically in your state. First, what's the status of this new recall effort against Newsom?

Hey, Georgia. So, yeah, in battle, Governor Gavin Newsom was officially served recall papers a few weeks ago by a bipartisan group called Saving California, amid mounting frustration over the wildfire crisis. The group, pushing for the recall, held a press conference Wednesday where Hollywood heavyweight Mel Gibson actually showed up. Here he is harshly criticizing the governor and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. We deserve much more and much better, and there is absolutely no adequate excuse that governor or mayor can make for this gross mismanagement and failure to preemptively deal with

what they knew was coming. Was it incompetence? Was it indifference? Complacency, carelessness. Yes. Was it negligence? Absolutely. Now, Gibson's involvement adds national attention to this recall effort, and it's going to be interesting to see if other Hollywood figures follow.

Adding to Newsom's criticism, Chevron also just announced it's moving its headquarters to Texas after 140 years, Saudi California's hostile business climate. So that's another range to throw in the governor's troubled tenure. Now, this isn't the first recall effort attempted against Newsom. Is there any reason to think that this one is going to succeed where others haven't? Well, in short, yes, that was four years ago. And politically speaking, the landscape in California and across the whole country has shifted. Consider this. Ten California counties that voted for Biden in 2020 flipped to Trump in 2024. That's a massive swing, even if it wasn't enough to flip the state

entirely. It signals a broader trend, one where voters, even in historically liberal regions, are looking for change. I spoke with Randy Economy, chairman of saving California. That's the group behind the recall. Here's what he had to say. California is in a crisis. right now, and we are very blessed that we have the ability to hold our state constitutional officers accountable by pulling what is known as the recall trigger. We have gotten to the last resort with this politician. So that's why we're deciding to create saving California. Boat to make sure that we can have the ability to fire him before he spends another two years in office. So does this recall stand a real chance? Maybe if California's political shift continues, and that's a big if

then Newsom's once unshakable grip on the state may finally be slipping. Well, some pretty fierce criticism. Has Newsom responded publicly? Well, his office dismissed it as another far-right stunt, releasing this statement following Wednesday's press conference. Quote, the same group of far-right MAGA Acolytes have launched seven different recall attempts against the governor since he's taken office, each of which have failed spectacularly.

But listeners should keep in mind, saving California isn't some fringe group. It includes Democrats, independents, and Republicans who feel abandoned by Newsom's leadership. Now, this isn't just a referendum on Newsom, though, particularly with regard to the wildfires, it sounds like this group is also targeting Mayor Bass. No, that's absolutely right. In fact, Mayor Bass is also facing pressure to resign and facing a possible recall effort herself if she doesn't. She's facing criticism over the recent firing of LAFD Fire Chief Kristen Crowley. Crowley spoke out about budget cuts and lack of support from city leadership, and many

see this as retribution. Also in another bizarre move, Basted an interview with Fox 11 where she tried to deflect blame for lack of preparation and her questionable trip to Ghana, claiming she received no warnings about the fire danger from Chief Crowley and calling for an investigation into why she was allowed to go to Ghana in the first place. Here's that audio. When I talked about it with the fire chief, what she said is that we have warnings of Santa Ana Wins a lot. But predicting this, that level of preparation really didn't happen. So it didn't reach that level to me to say something terrible could happen and maybe you shouldn't have gone on a trip. But to me, I don't know. So it sounds like a lot of finger pointing, which is never a good sign.

Micah, thanks for reporting. Of course. As we enter Academy Awards weekend, Hollywood is showing some signs of tacking to the right, embracing patriotism and stripping out divisive politics. culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with some analysis. So, Megan, a great example of this trend is the departure of Kathleen Kennedy from Lucasfilm. For listeners who don't follow Star Wars closely, what's the significance of that move? Well, you know, Kennedy took over the franchise in 2012, and despite a few successful products like The Mandalorian, she very prominently embraced the girl power model. And meanwhile, the iconic characters that fans love like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, They were kind of deconstructed.

In fact, you could even argue that Luke's character was so subverted that he actually became a bad guy. And so a lot of fans objected to this new sort of feminist bent of Star Wars and also the Indiana Jones franchise. And ultimately, the trend became a cultural punchline, which I think was pretty well captured in an infamous South Park clip. We were just discussing ideas of what to do with the new Prince Eric movie. Put a ticket at Maker Gay. Maybe we should go a different route than we did with Indiana. Indiana Jones. F*** Indiana Jones, put a ticket in and make a name of gay.

Sure, yeah. Well, let's try that again. Bottom line, with each new Star Wars film and series, you saw the fan base diminish. And do you think this is part of a larger shift in Hollywood? Well, there's definitely signs of that. So multiple A-list actors, including Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford, appeared in unmistakably Patriotic Super Bowl ads this year. Really interesting that Ford made a pointed comment about pride.

in his Jeep ad, which was all about freedom and honored military members. Take a listen here. There are real heroes in the world, but not the ones in the movies. Real heroes are humble. They're not driven by pride. Pride is a terrible driver. And keep in mind that every word of these ads is carefully considered. And then, just like the rest of corporate America, a lot of studios have quietly laid off their

DEI executives. And just like the big tech execs, some entertainment bigwigs have been making nice with Trump. Netflix chief Ted Sarandos, for instance, made the pilgrimage to Mara Lago after the election. And I would say that things have been pretty muted politically speaking this award season. We simply have not seen the acceptance speeches condemning Trump or pushing politics in the ways that typically characterize these ceremonies. In fact, when Trump announced that he'd named Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, and John Voight as his new Hollywood. ambassadors to bring back the golden age of the industry, I expected joking and criticism, and there really wasn't even any of that. And then there's the new messaging coming from the

studios. Paramount told New York Times recently that their focus is now on all audience flat out entertaining films. And that's similar to what we've heard from Disney Chief Bob Iger. This is what he told CNBC in April. The bottom line is that infusing messaging as a sort of a number one priority in our films and TV shows is not what we're up to. They need to be entertaining. And he made good on that. Just recently, Disney removed a transgender storyline from Pixar's new streaming series,

win or lose. And after the election, Snow White Star, Rachel Zegler, apologized for posting that she hopes Trump supporters never know peace. And reportedly, Disney publicists were a part of orchestrating that apology.

So a lot of evidence that the political wins are changing. But I would say, that 2020 to 23, those years when the political fracturing was at its most extreme, they allowed a new competition to gain a foothold.

We've seen more conservative-leaning audiences have gotten used to looking for entertainment in more niche ways, and fledgling entertainment companies that cater to them, like Angel Studios and The Daily Wire, which produces this podcast, have had some really big successes. So how

are the numbers these days at the box offices? Well, you will still see the big tentpole successes with movies like Wicked or Deadpool and Wolverine. But overall, box office is still way down from where the industry was before the pandemic. 2024's total was $8.7 billion compared to 2018, which was $12 billion. And that's not adjusting for inflation, which makes those numbers even worse. So we do need to see a lot more movies that draw audiences of all political stripes if we hope to return to that pre-pandemic strength. Well, good to remember Michael Jordan's advice, Republicans buy sneakers, and of course, movie tickets too.

That's right. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you enjoyed what you heard this morning, share this episode with a friend.