Morning Wire - Trump’s Epic Fury Timetable & The Daily Wire’s Landmark Win | 4.2.26

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

President Trump gives a rare primetime address on the progress of Operation Epic Fury, the European Union swerves right – clamping down on migration in a move that echoes Trump’s hardline stance, and the Daily Wire wins a landmark free speech case in a lawsuit against the State Department. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 2713- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors: Ethos - Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/WIRE Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Quince - Go to https://Quince.com/WIRE for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. - - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning 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 addresses the nation in a primetime speech on Operation Epic Fury. In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield. Victories like few people have ever seen before. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, April 2nd, and this is Morning Wire. Okay, okay, we have many votes to go through, guys. The European Union swerves right, tearing a page from Trump's immigration playbook. And The Daily Wire wins a landmark free speech case in a lawsuit against the State Department.

Basic facts were very often being censored as insensitive or as harmful. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. I am very excited to tell you about our sponsor today, Quince. Quince is an online retailer that sells high-quality, classic clothing and home. items made of real materials like cotton, cashmere, silk, European linen, all for extremely affordable prices. And today I am wearing this linen shirt, which I actually have in several colors, and I really like to wear it as like a layering piece during warmer weather. But they

also have tons of other styles, dresses, shirts, pants, et cetera, made of the same European linen that has a really nice weight to it. So if you are like me and you have a taste for luxury, but you also enjoy a bargain, you must check out Quince. And please use our link, quince.com slash wire, to support our show. Plus, it will get you free shipping and 365-day returns. And by the way, that deal extends to Canadians as well. So go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash wire for free shipping and a full year to decide about your items. That's quince.com slash wire. President Trump gave a rare primetime address last night on the progress of Operation Epic Fury. The speech comes as political pressure has been mounting for a swift end to the conflict. Joining us now with Moore's Daily Wire D.C. Bureau Chief Tim,

Tim, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, John. So the nation tuning in last night for this big address from Trump, a lot at stake, of course. What did we hear from the president? Yeah, well, the top line is that there were no real surprises. And I say that for two reasons. The first is that, frankly, the president didn't give us any new information about our Operation Epic Fury. But the second is that the White House made a big point of prepping the nation for what we were going to hear. As our own Mary Margaret O'Lahan reported ahead of the speech, officials laid out the goals for the president's speech, which included highlighting the success of the U.S. military in achieving all of its stated goals prior to the operation, and making

clear to Americans that the operation has a limited timetable, and that, as the president said, there's just two or three weeks left. So Trump did all that. that. He hit all of those marks, although he did make sure to start by celebrating the historic NASA launch that we saw earlier yesterday. It will be traveling further than any manned rocket has ever flown and will very substantially pass the moon, go around it, and come back home from a distance that has never been done before. It's amazing. They are on the way and God bless them. These are brave people. When it came to the military goals, Trump said,

we've already accomplished most of them. Here he is rattling off some of these achievements. Tonight, Iran's Navy is gone. Their air forces in ruins. Their leaders, most of them, terrorist regime they led, are now dead. Their command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is being decimated as we speak. their ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed, and their weapons, factories, and rocket launchers are being blown to pieces. Very few of them left.

Now, Trump notably rejected the idea that one of the original goals of this mission was to achieve regime change in Iran, but he did note that regime change has kind of happened along the way unintentionally. But regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders, death. They're all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable. And the biggest goal the president stressed is making sure that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. Here's the president addressing that point and stating his rationale for finally taking down the Iranian regime. In June, I ordered a strike on Iran's key nuclear facilities and Operation Midnight Hammer. The regime then sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a

totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons. For years, everyone has said that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, but in the end, those are just words if you're not willing to take action when the time comes. Trump stressed that we've accomplished all of this in just 32 days. What he repeatedly said was a remarkably quick window of time. This was clearly him asking the American people to be a little bit patient for the next couple of weeks as we wrap things up over in Iran. Despite the good news on the energy front, though, he showed that he was all too aware that Americans are very concerned about spiking gas prices.

Because of our drill baby drill program, America has plenty of gas. Under my leadership, we are number one producer of oil and gas on the planet without even discussing the millions of barrels that we're getting from Venezuela. Because of the Trump administration's policies, we produced more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. He also took a moment to address the human cost and honor the fallen American heroes killed thus far in Operation Epic Fury. We think especially of the 13 American warriors who have laid down their lives in this fight

to prevent our children from ever having to face a nuclear Iran. We salute them and now we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives. and every single one of the people, their loved one said, please, sir, please finish the job, every one of them. And we are going to finish the job. So all at all, last night we saw the president

seeking to consolidate his messaging on Iran to put a finer edge on it for what he suggested he hoped would be the final stages of this campaign. We'll now see if that effort helps him win back support in what we're being told is the final couple of weeks here.

Already a lot of buzz about his speech last night. We'll see where the conversation leads today, lots of developments expected on the Iran front. Tim, thanks so much for reporting. Thanks for having. Having the right life insurance is a big deal. Thinking about it may feel overwhelming, but taking steps to protect your family financially is now easier than ever through our sponsor, Ethos. You can get a quote in just seconds and actually apply in minutes with the possibility of same-day coverage. The best part, there's no medical exam required. They offer coverage of up to $3 million and some policies start as low as $30 a month. Not having life

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the European Union is cracking down on migration policies. Joining us to discuss is GB News host, Bev Turner. Bev, great to have you back on. So the EU is adopting policies from the Trump administration that the EU had previously criticized. What's going on here? As you know, the issue of illegal migration in Europe has reached a kind of boiling point. It has been partly political, partly ethical, moral, partly human rights issues, which means that subsequent EU leaders have rejected the idea of processing illegal migrants offshore. But we've hit that wall now, John, and it was voted in the EU, 389 to 206 votes. So it got through pretty easily.

that they will now be taking illegal migrants from France, Spain, Italy, Germany, not yet. The UK, of course, and they'll be processing them offshore. And it's interesting that you make the comparison with President Trump, because I think there has been a sense of inspiration that you've looked across. We here in the EU, I'm actually at home in London today. I normally talk to you from D.C., but here in Europe, we're looking across at America now and deciding that we can't wait any longer. there are hundreds of thousands, millions, some would say, every year. The numbers are extremely inexact.

And it's not just people coming here. It's then when they are told to leave, only about one in five actually leaves. So that's what's given rise to this decision. It is a change of direction for the EU because European voters have been starting to make their feelings hurt. It really does feel like a tipping point here. Now, some leaders say they want to avoid what happens. during the Syrian Civil War in 2015. Can you explain that point to us? There's about a million people came over to the EU during that period of time. And it was a mass

influx. And some leaders from Europe, namely Angela Merkel in Germany, were incredibly welcoming and said, our doors are open. Now, in the UK, we spend about five million pounds a day. That's about probably $6.5 million a day of taxpayers' money. accepting illegal migrants in, taking them to hotels, allowing them to sit there in genuinely, sometimes quite nice hotels, because we have such a huge processing backlog. They could be sat on that system for one, maybe two years.

Now, they're not allowed to work in that period of time, so they're given benefits. And in the UK, this year, John, we will take, I think it's a 331 billion pounds in tax, and we will pay $333 billion in welfare payments alone in the UK. And that is not sustainable for a country. If you said that to President Trump, you're going to give more away in benefits, then you'll take an income tax.

He'd take a massive pen through the whole financial system. He'd rip it up and he'd start again. And it might just be that what we're seeing in the European EU countries at the moment is a potentially head-in-hands moment. We've got to do something. We're going to have to process people in African countries. Like you said, with something that is unsustainable, eventually you do ultimately reach the end point where it has to change.

How are citizens reacting to these new policies from the EU? Welcoming them, genuinely welcoming them. And that's been that distinction, that gap, actually, between the ruling elites across Europe and the normal man and woman on the street who don't recognize their high streets. Or for instance, here in London, we have Park Road,

one of the most expensive areas of London. It has the Lamborghini showroom and the Ferrari showrooms. And in the middle of a patch of land between the two sides of the road, is a tented community, a camp, a homeless camp, of mainly illegal migrants who are there. So when people are starting to see it,

Paris has the same sort of problem. Milan, even Manchester, where I'm from in the north of England, We have a similar sort of problem now. And councils are getting pressure from residents. Voters across Europe are starting to lean towards the political right, voting in people like Georgia Maloney, great friend of President Trump. And so there are politicians now who are saying we have to respond to what the voters want. And this is going to be part of that project, we hope.

It's going to be fascinating to see how this actually plays out when they enact these policies. Bev Turner, thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure. The State Department has settled a lawsuit brought by the Daily Wire over government-sponsored blacklisting of conservative media during the Biden administration. Daily Wire, editor emeritus Ben Shapiro discusses the case in a new special on the settlement. In 2016, the Obama administration created something called the Global Engagement Center, which was designed to supposedly fight foreign disinformation or extremism online. That was then used by the deep state over at the State Department in order to basically target. in many cases, conservative outlets, including the Daily Wire.

The State Department ended up tossing hundreds of thousands of dollars at a variety of entities whose sole job, it seems, was to label and then discriminate against conservative outlets and recommend them as bad brands or untrustworthy brands. Joining us now with the details is Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roziak. Luke, great to have you back on. Thanks for having me. So this is a significant victory for free speech here. wanted to start by noting that the Daily Wire was not seeking money. This lawsuit was for

injunctive relief to preserve the First Amendment. So that said first. Tell us about this settlement. Yeah, so the State Department's agreement not to suppress domestic media comes after the Daily Wire, joined by the Federalist in the state of Texas, sued the Biden administration's State Department back in 2003. The Global Engagement Center was originally set up to combat ISIS and Al-Qaeda, but it was funding and promoting groups that were obsessed with labeling U.S. media outlets as untrustworthy. So while the GEC was not supposed to operate domestically, it ended up very much targeting U.S. media outlets. In fact, it even had an office in Silicon Valley. It was funding groups like the Global Disinformation Index, which said that news outlets like The Daily Wire, the Federalist,

Reason Magazine, and the New York Post were untrustworthy, which severely undercut their ability to sell mainstream advertisements. So in other words, the government was funding these fact-checking entities that assign ratings on media outlets. Yeah, I mean, they would rate entire news outlets, and those ratings were then sold to companies that by advertising is basically a blacklist of who not to do business with. And the idea was that a product was advertised on a news outlet that was toxic. It would be toxic to the product being sold. But a lot of these media outlets that were supposedly so objectionable, we're actually just center-right media outlets that were questioning the government's preferred narrative on things like COVID vaccines or election security.

Right, something I can personally attest to as someone who had to deal with all these fact checks for years. Yeah, I mean, this even went on during the first Trump administration. A lot of government employees back then really just seemed to operate as if Trump wasn't president at all. That's different now. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has permanently shut down this global engagement. Center. But the settlement with the Daily Wire is a big deal because it's going to be binding on

future administrations. Because we're a party to assigned agreement, we'd be able to take it to a federal judge in Texas if a future administration violates the agreement by working with groups that suppress domestic media in the future. And the State Department will actually have to submit annual reports to us showing compliance through the year 2036. And they're going to have to also train their employees on First Amendment rights and protections. And this is called a consent decree, and I've written about other cases where these agreements have been used by left-wing groups to essentially bind Republican administrations on important issues. Stepping back, it really is remarkable that the U.S. government would be involved in determining

the trustworthiness of American media outlets. It seems like a textbook First Amendment violation here. Yeah, it's crazy what happened. And the lawsuit argued just that, that the government was propping up these outside groups as proxies to do things that would clearly be impermissible for the government. Now, we were represented in this lawsuit on a pro bono basis by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is fresh off another big First Amendment win in a case called Missouri v. Biden, which prevented the Centers for Disease Control from bullying social media companies to remove speech. And we should note that this is the second time in a row that the Daily Wire has prevailed against the federal government in a big case like this.

Yeah, of course, we sued the Biden administration when it tried to make companies. companies force employees to get COVID vaccines, another big win. Indeed. Luke, thanks so much for reporting. Thanks for happening. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're listening to the show, now you can watch for free on Daily Wire Plus. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.