Morning Wire - Trump Presses Zelensky & Biden’s Immigration Ignorance | 12.9.25

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Trump leans on both Ukraine and Russia as peace negotiations grind onward, Daily Wire Investigative Reporter Luke Rosiak heads to Capitol Hill to testify this week, and a new memo reveals Biden knew his immigration policies would have chaotic consequences—and chose to continue regardless. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Ep. 2526 - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsors: Equip Foods - Equip’s Prime Bar is a real food protein bar with nothing to hide: just 11 ingredients and 20g of clean protein - made from ingredients you can pronounce like collagen, beef tallow, colostrum, cocoa butter - and sweetened naturally with just date and honey. Morning Wire listeners will get 25% off one-time purchases, or 40% off first subscription orders for a limited time by heading to https://equipfoods.com/wire and using code WIRE at checkout. Shopify - Go to https://Shopify.com/morningwire to sign up for your $1-per-month trial period and upgrade your selling today. - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy morning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump leans on Russia and Ukraine for a swift deal as Zelensky meets with European leaders in London. There are something we can't manage without Americans, things we can't manage without Europe. That's why we need to make some important decisions. Will new allegations of corruption against Ukraine affect the peace talks? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. It's Tuesday, December 9th, and this is Morning Wire. I can say in my opinion that the contracts that I feel were signed felt like we weren't doing 51% of the work. And I never did.

What were you doing? A major hearing on Capitol Hill this week on fraud within the government. We talk with Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roziak, who's testifying before the Senate. And a new memo reportedly shows that former President Biden ignored warnings about the chaotic implications of his immigration agenda. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This episode is sponsored by Equip Foods. The supplement industry is packed with bars masquerading as health foods,

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makes me feel good in my body while hitting my protein goal. Starting today, listeners will receive an exclusive discount on Prime Bar, which has become our team's favorite protein bar on the market with 20 grams of protein in every bar. If you want to try the cleanest protein bar on the market that already sold out once, go to equipfoods.com slash wire and use code wire at checkout to get 25% off one-time purchases or 40% off your subscription order for a limited time. That's EQUIPFoods.com. slash wire and use code wire at checkout. Ukraine's President Zelensky met with European leaders on Monday to rally support for the war. Meanwhile, the New York Times published an explosive report on Ukrainian corruption.

Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about the latest on Ukraine. So Tim, President Trump has been mediating peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Has he made any progress? Where did things stand now? Yeah, there has been some progress over the past few weeks, but talked at the moment are stuck. President Trump seemed a bit frustrated on Sunday when he suggested President Zelensky had ignored the latest iteration of the plan. I'm a little bit disappointed that President Zelensky hasn't yet read the proposal. That was as of a few hours ago. His people love it, but he has it. Russia is fine with it. Russia, you know, Russia, I guess, would rather have the whole country when you think of it.

But Russia is, I believe, fine with it. Zelensky did talk a bit about the current framework on Monday. He said the disagreement is over the Donbass region in Ukraine's east. The Trump administration reportedly wants Ukraine to hand over control of the rest of the Donbass to Russia, which already controls most of it. In return, Ukraine would get security guarantees and financing to help rebuild. But Zelensky doesn't want to give up that land, or rather he says he can't, because the Ukrainian constitution won't allow it.

Now, Zelensky is quite reliant on the U.S. to continue this war. so what's his alternative? Well, Zelensky wants to freeze the conflict along its current lines. And he isn't the only one not really happy about the way the negotiations are going. European leaders are frustrated, too. Zelensky was in London yesterday, and he met with the E3, or the top leaders in Europe, UK Prime Minister Kier Starrmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Murs. Here's Starrmer laying out Europe's position on the negotiations.

The principles remain the principles that we've been raised up for a very, very long long. time, which is that we stand with Ukraine, and if there's to be a ceasefire, it needs to be a just and lasting ceasefire. MERS was the most vocal about disagreements with the U.S. We are still and remain strongly behind Ukraine and giving support to your country, because we all know that the destiny of this country is the destiny of Europe. I'm skeptical about some of the leaders, which we are seeing in the documents coming from U.S. side, but we have to talk about that.

So Europe is siding with Zelensky here. Now, I want to also ask you about some New York Times reporting that has alleged some serious corruption from the Zelensky administration and some people around him siphoning off millions from U.S. aid to enrich individuals. How is that affecting the negotiations? Right. The Time Report essentially says Zelensky's administration has stonewalled oversight and slashed regulations that were intended. to curb corruption. Now, the government says these reforms were necessary for quick action after Ukraine was invaded, but the costs have been astronomical. According to the Times report, anti-corruption authorities say Zelensky's inner circle has siphoned off $100 million from Ukraine's state-owned nuclear power company alone. But while the Times report is new, Ukrainian

corruption really is not. And European officials seem to think that their overriding interest still lies in backing Ukraine against Russia, even if a lot of that money lines the pomp. of corrupt officials. Here's NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda last week, complimenting Zelensky on anti-corruption efforts. I think the Ukrainian president is taking all the necessary steps to root out corruption. Now, this may become more of an issue once the war has ended and reconstruction starts. After the immediate threat of the Russia invasion is dealt with, Europe and the United States may have a lot more to say about how that aid money is being spent.

Well, this has been a concern from Americans from the very start. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Running a small business is anything but small. For business owners, it's all consuming from day one. Every decision feels massive and new challenges arise daily. What makes the biggest difference is having the right platform with all the tools needed for success.

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through personalized experiences and first-party data that gives your marketing team a real edge. Get all the big stuff for your small business right with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period and start selling today at Shopify.com slash morningwire. Head over to Shopify.com slash morningwire. Again, that's Shopify.com slash morning wire. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roziak will testify to the Senate on Wednesday as an expert on what he calls the government's longest running, largest and most corrupt DEI program. The Senate Small Business Committee oversees the Small Business Administration and its government-wide minority contracting program called 8A or set-aside contracting. Luke, you're getting prepared to testify.

It's very exciting. First, how did this come about? It's actually years in the making, right? Hey, John. Yeah, I mean, I guess it was about 15 years ago. I remember sitting in a cafe doing some computer programming on my laptop, and a well-dressed black man was sitting next to me, and he looked over at my screen, and he said, I see your programming in C++. Plus, do you want to come work for me? And the problem was I was not programming in C++. I was programming in a different language that looks nothing like it. And I remember thinking, like, what is going on here? Why is this guy, he doesn't even know what programming is, but he wants to hire me off the street when I'm not even a real computer programmer. I kind of dabble in it on the side. But for all I know, he was ready to task me with building some sensitive government system. Because I said, you know, what's going on? He said, well, it's a day contract. I mean, I just,

I just get the contract and then I basically find random people to do the work. So, you know, I didn't take the job. Instead, I, as an investigative reporter, looked into A-Day, and what I found is that that's pretty much part for the course. Incredible. So this is the same program that James O'Keefe recently exposed a couple of weeks ago. So the new contract is basically close to 100 million. What's the percentage that ATI will retain from that 100 million? It's like a centrist.

And you pay these, like, ascentures to do the $100. job. And so it's really minimal work. So explain this to us. What exactly is going on here? Well, if you're a racial minority, the government can give you a contract without trying to find the best price or the best person. More than 5% of all federal contracts are reserved for these special companies that have predesignated minority or disadvantaged status. And you look at the women-owned companies. I mean, a lot of times it's really just a man who has a company and he puts the company in his wife's name. I mean, there's not really any way to prove otherwise,

and they probably got a shared bank account anyway. So it's almost impossible to police. The program was created way back in 1978, mostly to help black people. But now we have a much more complex ethnic situation in America. And you have a situation where, for example, people from the country of India get preference for contracts, even though they're not. have a higher median income than white people. They're overrepresented, obviously, in fields like IT, which, by the way, didn't even exist prior to civil rights. But, you know, one of the things I'm going to tell the Senate is that the scandal here is a little different than people might think. I mean, it's, it is a DEI program, but really what it is at its core is it's a loophole

exploited by the government and big corporations. You heard Accenture mentioned in that video to circumvent competitive binning. All right. So your position is that the government wasn't being trick they were actually in on the grift? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, they just wanted to get money out the door to a regular firm quickly without doing the paperwork. And so this minority contracting program was a convenient mechanism to do this. But the problem is we have competitive bidding for a reason. I mean, is steering money to particular firms with no sort of assessment of whether it's the best price or these are the best people to do the work, this is like something out of Russia. It enables

corruption. And it inflates the cost of everything because you have these middlemen skimming off the top. But, you know, we've all kind of known that this has been going on for years. I mean, it's really a swampy thing where both sides were looking the other way. Native Americans, but also Alaskan natives, can get even bigger contracts with no competition. And so for years, the head of appropriations in the Senate was a Republican senator from Alaska. And nobody was allowed to point out that this program was just being shockingly abused. Well, the hope is we may be in a different environment now, especially with the Supreme Court putting limits on how the government can use race. So this hearing on Wednesday will be

chaired by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. She invited you to testify, correct? Yeah, Joni is really one of those people who have been in the trenches fighting against government ways since before it was cool. She's chair of the Senate Doge Caucus. And if Congress winds up killing the 8-A program after half a century, it'll truly be a sign that the swamp is being drained. Well, look, good luck. We'll all, of course, be watching here. And I should note that the DailyWire will be streaming the event live on our platform. Great to have you on. Thanks, John.

A new report reveals that former President Biden was told that he could have stopped illegal immigration but chose not to during his tenure in the White House. Here with more on that and other immigration news is Daily Wire immigration reporter Jenny Terry Tare. So, Jenny, first off, what do we know about this new reporting about what was going on behind the scenes with President Biden? It's a really shocking report from the New York Times that, President Biden was warned, actually, before he even assumed office while on the campaign trail,

that some of his policies that were really open to illegal immigration would lead to political chaos. And that's exactly what happened. We saw that unfold at the border and we saw it become a top issue for voters in the next election, which many attribute to President Trump's victory. So what happened was there were a number of memos, meetings, where AIDS and experts brought up this issue and warned the Biden team that his policies needed to be stricter or else the border would descend into what we saw, which was millions of illegal immigrants coming across in an absolute free-for-all.

Have we heard from any Biden officials about any regrets or is there anything on the record of that nature? Right. So, of course, after the fact we're learning that now all of these former officials are saying, well, there were a lot of mistakes made on the Biden team and Biden himself who knowingly went against this advice and said, you know what, I'm going to still go with my guts here, which is to take away things like asylum restrictions, remain in Mexico, which kept people in Mexico rather than releasing them into the United States after they crossed illegally, which really disincentivized more to cross.

And we saw, obviously, the numbers pick up. We saw eight million illegal immigrants cross into the country. Many largely were released. We saw poor vetting because Biden wanted to do things in a very quick, expeditious manner. And that led in terrorists, that led in traffickers, that led in cartel members, that led to chaos across the country like in Aurora, Colorado, where we had train day Aragua taking over apartment complexes. We had communities like Springfield, Ohio, that were reeling from this crisis. So, yes, the Biden administration officials, there are some of them that have come out and told the New York Times that in fact there were mistakes made and Biden should have been tougher on this. Now, the other major immigration story that broke over the weekend was an illegal

immigrant male who stabbed another citizen on a Charlotte train. That's the second Charlotte train stabbing we've seen. What took place? Right. Like you said, the second stabbing, this is four months after that Ukrainian refugee was killed brutally on her way to work, this was a separate stabbing. So now we have this illegal immigrant who was twice deported from the United States, once under Biden and once under Trump. He snuck back into the country without being detected by border agents, and he wound up in Charlotte. He already had a rap sheet when this happened. He was intoxicated on the train, allegedly. He got into an argument with a, man who was sitting on the train, another passenger who was trying to get him to stop yelling in his

face drunkenly. And that's when he decided to stab this man brutally and then run off the train. Later, we learned, actually, that this individual not only shouldn't have been in the country, but also was banned from the Charlotte public transportation system before this happened. So it's a really just shocking story. And it continues to show exactly why President Trump really deployed deployed a lot of law enforcement resources to the area because there was a rise in crime because of incidents like this. And then, of course, the twofold issue of crime and illegal immigration, which we see perfectly showcased here. Alarming stuff. Jenny, thank you so much for reporting.

Thank you. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're listening to the show, you can now watch the show free on Daily Wire Plus. We'll be back this evening with more news to know.