Morning Wire - Trump Warns Tehran & Judge Releases Kirk Case Hearings | 12.30.25

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

President Trump puts Iran and its proxies on notice, the judge in the Charlie Kirk case rules on the side of transparency— despite the suspect not wanting cameras in the courtroom, and the U.S. sees the largest single year drop in murders in history! Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Jeremy’s Razors: Visit https://jeremysrazors.com Ep. 2555 - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - 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 issues a stark warning to Tehran and its proxies as he hosts Israel's Prime Minister at Mar-a-Lago. They're going to be given a very short period of time to disarm, and we'll see how that works out. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. It's Tuesday, December 30th, and this is Morning Wire. The court hereby orders the redaction of the portions of the transcript corresponding audio-referencing security measures identified in the party's joint status report, and further pare down during the closure hearing. The judge in the Charlie Kirk case rules on the side of transparency,

as TPSA calls for more public access while the suspect wants the cameras out of the courtroom. And alongside a historic decline in illegal border crossings, 2025 saw the largest single-year drop in murders in U.S. history. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. The best deals of the year are still live right now at Jeremy's Razors, and you can score up to 50% off. Now's the time to stock up.

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guys who show up, work hard, and refuse to cave to the nonsense. Head over to jeremysrazers.com right now. Deals expire soon, so don't wait. That's jeremy'sraisers.com today. President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mara Lago on Monday. as both countries face new tensions with Iran. Here to talk about how that meeting went, his Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.

So Tim, President Trump followed up his Ukraine sit down on Sunday with a big Middle East meeting on Monday. What took place at that meeting? Right. Nanyahu met with the president at Mar-Lago on Monday as Trump makes an end-of-year push on some of his big foreign policy priorities. Now, the U.S. and Israel took out dozens of Iran's top-ranking military and intelligence commanders and nuclear scientists earlier this year, but there's some concern that Iran may try to rebuild.

Trump addressed those concerns. Speaking of Iran, I hope they're not trying to build up again because if they are, we're going to have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup. I hope they're not doing it because we don't want to waste the fuel. The two leaders also discuss the future of Gaza. The U.S. is trying to move the peace deal into its second phase. That involves setting up some kind of international peacekeeping force in Gaza and the beginning of major reconstruction.

The Israelis, however, are concerned that terror threats, including Hamas, may reconstitute and need to be dealt with first. Here's what Trump said about Hamas. If they don't disarm as they agreed to do, they agreed to it, and then they'll be held to pay for them. The two leaders were also very warm to each other in public. Trump again called for Netanyahu to be pardoned, and the prime minister announced that Trump would receive the Israel Prize. Well, President Trump has broken so many conventions to the surprise of people, and then they figure out, oh, well, maybe, you know, he was right after all. So we decided to break a convention to or create a new one, and that is to award the Israel Prize, which in almost our 80 years, we've never awarded it to a non-Israeli, and we're going to award it this year to President Trump. Now, earlier this year, the U.S. and Israel did a combined strike on Iran's military capabilities

and really dealt a pretty significant blow to their nuclear program. Where do things stand now with regards to tensions between the U.S. and Tehran following that operation? Yeah, well, I guess the big question is how much of the rhetoric coming out of Iran is bluster and what is the regime actually capable of? After all, Tehran hasn't softened its rhetoric at all after the joint U.S. Israeli operations. Over the weekend, Iranian President Massoud Pasechkin told state media that Iran is in a state of total war with the United States, Israel, and Europe. Nanyahu and Trump seemed to take those threats seriously, but as tough as Iran sounds, it has serious domestic and international problems. After Pazchchian's threats were published, civil unrest broke out across Iran for two days.

Iran is on the verge of economic collapse. On Monday, the Rial's collapse continued and was trading at about $1.4 million to the dollar. The collapse is paralyzed commerce and fuel triple-digit inflation for essential goods. A lot of this is due to sanctions pressure from the United States. Tehran has reportedly raided its National Development Fund after it exhausted all of its oil revenues this year. There are reports that $6.7 billion of that revenue was lost to regime corruption. And that's on top of the damage done to Iran's leadership during the 12-day war. Now, the president also appeared to break some news about U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday.

What did he say there? Right. As he was walking into his meeting with Netanyahu, the president said that the U.S. took out a dock area that was used to load up boats with drugs. Here's that moment. We hit all the boats and now we hit the area. It's a implementation area. That's where they implement. And that is no longer around. He didn't say it was a military strike specifically, but it's certainly a notable and major step from the president of the United States.

Right. Well, Tim, thanks so much for reporting. Good to be on. A Utah judge has ordered the release of sealed hearings in the trial against Charlie Kirk's alleged killer, Tyler Robinson. Meanwhile, TPSA presses ahead with its mission. Joining us with the latest details is Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Bashamay, Megan. So Robinson's case back in the news this week with another hearing. First, can you tell us what materials are covered by the judge's order and why is he releasing them?

Yeah, John. So yesterday afternoon, during a hearing on how. much access the media should have in this case, Fourth District Judge Tony Graff ordered the release of transcripts and also an audio recording from a previously closed door session that was held back in October.

Now, Graff ruled that given just how high profile this case is, the public does have an interest in certain portions of the hearing, and he said that those portions that could risk the safety of anyone involved in the case can just be redacted. Nevertheless, and as the parties recognize,

the court need not see the entire transcript and audio of the October 24, 2025 hearing to protect the safety interests of all those involved. Redacting selective portions of the transcript and the audio that reference security measures will serve safety interests while allowing for as much public access to the remainder of the record as possible. Graff also added, and I'm quoting here that the court's sole objective in this process is to ensure a fair, orderly, and lawful proceeding that reflects the constitutional rights of the parties while honoring the public's qualified right of access. And it looks like the public is going to get a look at

most of that hearing as Graff only ordered 246 words of an 80-page transcript to be redacted. Did we learn anything new from this release now that it's out? You know, nothing really earth-shattering, I would say these transcripts show more procedural negotiations. So essentially, the defense asked for Robinson to be allowed to wear civilian clothes in court and also to have one of his hands free from shackles so that he could take notes. And Graff did later rule that Robinson can wear civilian clothes, but he cannot have his hands free. Why was Robinson's team asking that this hearing be kept from the public? You know, this was more of a pro forma argument. Robinson's attorneys have consistently argued that broad media coverage in general, including things like

cameras in the courtroom, could prejudice potential jurors and jeopardize his right to a fair trial. They're also saying that they're concerned that sensationalized images of Robinson risk inflaming public opinion before any sort of judgment is made. In fact, earlier this month at Robinson's first appearance in court, Graff blocked a media live stream of the hearing, and he also ordered that a camera be moved after Robinson's attorneys objected that their client was being shown in shackles. Graff at that point ruled that the media is not allowed to show images of Robinson in restraints or really anywhere in the courtroom except sitting at that defense table. On the other side, though, you have a coalition of news organizations, including the Associated Press and Fox News, who filed a motion

arguing that transparent proceedings are essential to justice and to public trust. And they said in this motion that, quote, every high-profile criminal prosecution has significant pretrial publicity, no matter where it occurs. But then another interesting wrinkle here is that Erica Kirk has joined that media call for transparency because she says that her family and the public deserve to have cameras in there, in part to prevent misinformation and conspiracy theories from taking hold about the case. And, you know, a lot of people have noticed that a sort of cottage industry of wild unfounded theorizing has sprung up around Charlie Kirk's murder. So I think TPSA is hoping that greater public access to all of these proceedings can help tamp that down. Right. Now speaking of

TPSA, it's been three months now since Kirk's death. How are they weathering this ongoing storm? You know, I'd say remarkably well. There are reports that over 32,000 students have signed up to start new chapters, and the organization is now opening dozens of chapters daily. Fundraising we're hearing is pouring in from major donors, and you have a lot of analysts pointing to the fact that TPSA has played a major role in shifting young male voters in particular toward Republicans, and a lot of commentators are noting that Democrats are now struggling in that demographic. And then, you know, I would say that maybe one of the greatest indicators of their growing influence was the appearance of rapper Nikki Minaj at their America Fest conference just this month.

So, of course, Minaj is about as mainstream pop culture as it gets, and she was there to advocate for Christians being persecuted in Nigeria, but she did also praise Trump and TPP USA, and that really does seem to mark a pretty significant cultural shift. Yeah, it does. And meanwhile, the resilience of the organization is, as you said, pretty remarkable. Megan, thanks so much for reporting. Yep, my pleasure. According to a new report, 2025 brought the single largest drop in murders in U.S. history.

Daily Wire political reporter Cameron Arcand is here to break down the stunning trend. So Cameron, we have some very welcome news here at the end of the year. Walk us through the details. Yes, so there was roughly a 20% drop in homicides between this year and last year, according to the Real Time Crime Index. This is an even bigger drop, according to the Hill, between 2023 and 24. which is at 13%, which is still a big drop. Now, you go back to 2021 during the Biden era,

you know, you had a lot of Democrats, a lot of people arguing that there was a pandemic era uptick in crime. Now, Democrats mostly did attribute that to COVID, arguing lockdowns essentially, you know, drove people to do these sorts of things and economic concerns like that. Meanwhile, Republicans argued that the spike during that time period was the result of efforts to defund the police

in many urban areas. Also, you saw the rise. of a lot of soft-on-crime district attorneys in certain areas like L.A. County and other major hubs of populations, for example, as well as judges that might have made it difficult for certain people facing very serious charges or convictions for violent crimes to actually stay behind bars. Now, this is part of a broader trend. What does the other data show when it comes to different types of crime? Yeah, so the data from that index does show that aggravated assaults were down around 7%. Robberies were down around 18% and Carthest were down 23%. Now, the Hill noted that we are

going to get a clearer picture when the FBI releases their own data. Those numbers might take a minute for us to get. As you know, this past year, we didn't get those numbers until August. So we will get a clear picture then, but for now, this gives a really good indicator that we'll be seeing some pretty serious drops once we get those official statistics. So what are the political implications of this? Is President Trump taking credit? Yeah, so, I mean, the White House has said this was one of the reasons that Trump was elected in the first place to crackdown on crime. Now, you look no further than, you know, the effort to potentially strip away federal funding to cities that have cashless bail. We've also, of course, seen this. With the surge in federal law

enforcement in cities like Washington, D.C. and Memphis, there's also been crime reform made at the federal level to Washington, D.C. These actions that are being, taken, especially with these federal surges, with the National Guard, but also other agencies that are able to make arrests and really be able to support local law enforcement could be used in other cities, as you had people like Mayor Muriel, Bowser in D.C., who was initially very skeptical of the surge of enforcement and crime. And then crime did tick down, and, you know, there was that famous clip of her where she was praising the administration for that decrease. And it seems clear that Americans are aware of things getting safer, at least at the numbers we're looking at.

If you look at polling data, President Trump had the highest approval rating on the topic of crime compared with other issues, according to a Gallup poll from last month. Now, this also dovetails with the largest decrease in border crossings, correct? Correct. So there were only 30,000 total encounters at the border in November, according to customs and border protection. Now, if you go back two years to December 2023, that month had over 300,000 encounters at the southern border. Now, nobody's been released from these arrests that were made in the past seven months, and the border has largely gone quiet, which is really fulfilling a major campaign promise made by the president last year and really a push from Republicans on that effort. Now, as that relates to crime, the Department of Homeland Security has been largely touting the arrest of illegal immigrants who have an additional rap sheet in addition to being

in the country illegally. Well, some good news to close out the year. Cameron, thanks for reporting. Thank you. Thanks for waking up with us and some programming notes for this week. We won't be releasing any evening wires, but we will be releasing original content every morning the rest of the week. And as usual, go to Daily Wire Plus for the video versions.

Oh yeah, and happy New Year a couple of days early.