Morning Wire - Trump’s Campaign Gains & Washington Post Shakeup | 6.7.24

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

Trump makes major campaign gains as Biden looks to close the gap, many of the legal cases against the former President hit snags, and Washington Post’s first female executive editor abandon’s ship. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. A’Del Cosmetics: Get 25% off your order with promo code WIRE at http://www.AdelNaturalCosmetics.com Shopify: "Get a $1 per month trial at https://www.shopify.com/morningwire " Black Rifle Coffee: Drink America's coffee at https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As former President Trump's campaign makes massive fundraising gains, President Biden's appearance in France comes under scrutiny. America's unique ability to bring countries together is an undeniable source of our strength and our power. We discussed the dueling campaigns and how the battle for the battlegrounds is shaking out. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley, with guest host, Emily Jashinsky, D.C. correspondent at Unheard. It's Friday, June 7th, and this is Morning Wire.

Two of the cases against Donald Trump hit roadblocks, while one of Trump's biggest proponents is ordered to serve four months of jail time. This is about shutting down the MAGA movement, shutting down grassroots conservatives, shutting down President Trump. And the media world is shaken after a massive shakeup at a legacy media giant amid amid collapsing readership. What drove the Washington Post's first female executive editor to abandon ship? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.

Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Hey ladies, it's Leanne from Team Morning Wire. Does your makeup game need a change? Then you need Adele Natural Cosmetics. Their products are made in Texas, and they carry everything for your daily skincare needs, including a full line of color cosmetics. Their cream blush line is so vibrant and light,

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a polling and fundraising advantage over President Biden. Here to discuss the state of the race and Biden's latest effort to gain momentum is Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips. Hey, Cabot. So this week, the president has made a highly publicized trip overseas. What can you tell us? Yeah, Biden is in France this week to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Biden's advisors are hoping to take a page from the Gipper's book and have reportedly been studying

Ronald Reagan's 1984 trip to France, where he gave that now legendary boys of point to hawk speech, which really galvanized the country. To that point, Biden, we'll give an address later today from the very spot that Reagan stood 40 years ago, hoping for his own memorable address. But there is no question the visit got off to a rocky start yesterday. Yeah, there were a number of moments from the president's appearance that went viral online. What happened? Well, it's no secret that the White House has struggled consistently to combat the perception among voters that Biden is too old for the job.

They routinely argue that he's sharp and alert behind closed doors. But that's just not often what folks see from Biden during his rare public appearances. And yesterday was no exception as one clip showed him appearing to fall asleep on stage after seemingly forgetting where his chair was. Others showed him looking just confused and disoriented. There's no other way of putting it as he shook hands with world leaders. Now, supporters of the president argue he was simply jet lagged or that those viral clips were taken out of context. But when polls show that 75% of voters are concerned with his age, moments like that are difficult to shake off. Yeah, they really can be.

So heading back stateside, what's the latest from the campaign trail? So the big story this week was the jaw-dropping fundraising hall for the Trump campaign following his guilty verdict last week. According to the campaign, they and the R&C brought in a staggering $141 million in the month of May, 70 million of which was raised in just 48 hours after his conviction. For context, the previous monthly record for the campaign had been 76 million. So they nearly doubled that figure. And on top of that, the largest pro-Trump's super PAC brought in 70 million dollars of their own last month, after raising just 12 million the month before. Altogether, Trump's campaign and allied organizations reportedly brought in, get this, $291 million last month. We've just never seen anything like that in

American political history. Right. And about the polls, what are they saying so far following the guilty verdict? So Emerson released their latest post-verdict numbers this week and found Trump up nationally by six points in a three-way race with Biden and Kennedy. That mirrors similar findings from Rasmussen last week that showed Trump ahead by five points. So bad news for Democrats who would hoped a guilty verdict would result in a major shift, but there are still some positive signs for Biden here. The New York Times, for example, contacted around 2,000 voters they polled in April and May. Originally, Trump held a three-point lead with that group, but this week it had fallen to one point, so a more modest shift. We're still waiting for the latest batch of battleground

polls, which will hopefully give us a better idea of how the verdict is playing more broadly. But one point to note, betting markets, which are often more accurate predictors of electoral outcomes, have swung considerably to Trump in the last week. He now holds a 20-point advantage in Las Vegas, his largest of the campaign. Yeah, that makes sense. Kevin, thanks for reporting. Anytime. business selling a little or a lot. Shopify helps you do your thing, however, you to ching. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business,

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see come down in this classified documents case? Morning, John. Judge Eileen Cannon agreed to reschedule hearings on a number of issues that will certainly further delay an eventual trial and could, in some cases, see the entire case against Trump badly damaged. These include questions about whether federal law enforcement mishandled the very classified materials found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, and even before that, a hearing as to whether Jack Smith's appointment as special counsel was legitimate. Many do these legal longshots by Trump's lawyers to get the case dismissed before a trial is very unlikely to succeed, but it does slow things down, very possibly pushing a potential trial

date close to or past a November 5th election day. All right, so developments very much in favor of Trump's team. What was the reaction to this ruling from Democrats and liberals in the media? I'm guessing they weren't applauding canon for being extra careful. Indeed, they were not. They accused canon of stalling for political reasons in order to help the former president. And it's interesting to see some of the same commentators like Norm Eisen, who's been accused of being the architect of these lawsuits and others who praised Judge Juan Moshan for supposed even-handedness. Even when he was making hard, controversial decisions, they just basically claim that Cannon must be in the tank because she's a Trump appointee.

As to the Georgia case with the news this week that an appeals court will hear a motion to remove Fannie Willis on October 4th. That trial almost certainly won't happen pre-election. Might this have been the one case that Democrats hoped could really damage Trump the most? There's no question about it for one simple reason. It would have been on TV, not with scrolling texts from inside the courthouse, but like a Law and Order episode. Viewership would have been off the charts. I mean, we saw the New York case take over the news cycle without live cameras.

This would have been a bomb cyclone. And you add to that the fact that it's about the effort to over the effort to overruner. return the election, which is a key Biden message. And there could have been cooperating witnesses testifying against Trump. So yes, given their druthers, I think most Democratic political operatives would have preferred to see this case instead of Bragg's hush money case, even with the convictions. Meanwhile, another important figure in Trump's orbit was ordered to report to prison on July 1st for failing to appear before Congress. Who was it? And how have the president's allies reacted? It was Steve Bannon, long an associate of Trump once his campaign manager, who was told he must report to federal prison on July 1st to begin his four-month prison sentence.

Noticably, this will put him out of commission throughout the entire election. Bannon addressed the sentence in front of reporters yesterday. Here's a bit of what he said. I want to say something specifically about the Justice Department. Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, the entire Justice Department. They're not going to shut up Trump. They're not going to shove Bannon, and they're certainly not going to shove MAGA. He'll join another Trump aide, Peter Nabarro, who is already behind bars at a time when other MAGA world figures like John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani are still being indicted over the 2020 election, as we recently reported on.

Not just hardcore Trump supporters, but Republicans in general argue that Democrats who have committed similar offenses never faced these kinds of prison sentences and allege exactly the same kind of double standard and rigged systems. here that they pointed to in the New York prosecution. This is an issue that Republicans are likely to stick to because at the end of the day, John, no matter how you slice the bread, some of Joe Biden's harshest political critics keep winding up in prison. Yeah, that pattern is hard to ignore. Dave, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Following a drastic decline in readership and revenue, Washington Post's executive editor Sally Busby is out. The paper shakeup has the media world rattled. Here to tell us more about what led to Busby's abrupt departure and how owner Jeff Bezos plans to fix the post's problems is Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham. So Megan technically Busby resigned, but it's clear from all the internal leaks that the post showed her the door.

Why? Well, you know, the biggest factor here was simply profitability. So last summer, the New York Times reported that the Post was set to lose about $100 million for the year, not chump change. A few months later, the Post cut its staff by 240 people or about a quarter of its total staff. And of course, that all comes down to a lack of paying subscribers and general readership, which also in turn affects advertising rates. So the Post's readership is down by about half since 2020, from $3 million to $1.5 million. I think we can say it's fallen off a cliff.

But the way Busby's ouster was handled has really added to the media intrigue about the Post pushing out its first female executive editor. But we have to remember here that we're only months from a presidential election. So it's fairly shocking that the Post would make such a drastic move now rather than wait until after November 5th. And I think that gives you some indication of just how dire leadership feels that the situation right now is. Okay.

So how did the Post staff take that? Apparently not well. So an all hands meeting took place the next morning that has been described as tense and heated. CEO Will Lewis, who only joined the company from the Wall Street Journal in January, informed the staff that from now until at least the end of this election cycle, they're going to be answering to former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Matt Murray and that the paper will be restructured into three newsrooms, traditional news, opinion, and now a new division for quote-unquote,

social media journalism that's reportedly going to focus more on video storytelling. Busby had been offered a demotion to run that social media division, but in the end, she decided she didn't want it. Vanity Fair reported that one reporter said to Lewis, the most cynical interpretation sort of feels like you chose two of your buddies to come in and help run the post, and now we have four white men running three newsrooms. So in response to all, all of this, let's say, pointed commentary from his staff, Lewis said, quoting, we are going to turn this thing around, but let's not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around. We are losing large amounts of money. People are not reading your stuff. I can't sugarcoat it

anymore. So pushing Busby out was just about the bottom line? Well, I mean, we have had some reports that owner Jeff Bezos has been fuming about his paper's performance since Busby took over in 2021, not surprising. But there are also rumblings that Lewis and Busby clashed over the post's coverage last month of a years-long lawsuit involving Lewis's former employer, News Corp, and Prince Harry, to get a little splashier. So one of the British tabloids that News Corp owns allegedly hacked a phone that belonged to Harry, and Lewis was an executive at News Corp at that time and was himself at risk of being named in that suit. The bigger issue seems to be that Lewis is a veteran of the very buzzy, very hard-charging world of Fleet Street, while Busby came from the much more buttoned-up

proper world of the AP, and he simply found her news judgment too slow, too conventional, too boring. Seems like maybe the Washington Post's readers may have agreed with that assessment. Thanks so much, Megan. Anytime. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know. Black Rifle Coffee is a veteran-founded company that's doing their part to honor the last of the greatest generation who fought at D-Day while they're still here with us. A portion of every purchase you make at black riflecoffee.com goes to support veteran and first-responder causes. From providing funding and equipment to first responders to helping veterans fight cancer, your money goes a long way toward giving back to those who serve our nation.

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