Morning Wire - Trump’s Safety Blueprint & Russia Peace Talks Pending | 8.25.25

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Trump sets his sights on other crime-ridden cities, peace talks with Russia hit a slowdown, and Spain bucks the European trend on immigration. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsor: Brickhouse Nutrition - Get 25% off when you enter LABORDAY25 at https://brickhousenutrition.com - - - 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

After clamping down on D.C. crime, President Trump's putting other crime-ridden cities on notice. When we're ready, we'll go ahead and we'll straighten out Chicago, just like we did D.C. Plus, what have we learned about the FBI raid of John Bolton's home? I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, August 25th, and this is Morning Wire. Despite more Russian aggression against Ukraine, the White House says their confident peace is within reach. I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict.

And as more of Europe shifts against pro-immigration policies, Spain is doubling down. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. I've got some exciting news. Brickhouse Nutrition just launched their Labor Day sale, and honestly, the timing couldn't be better as we head into the fall. Right now, you can save 25% off everything with code Labor Day 25, and I mean everything, including their best-selling weight loss formula, lean.

This doctor formulated supplement helps turn excess fat into energy while reducing your appetite and curbing those pesky cravings. No needles, no prescriptions, just results. This stuff really works. I have to admit, I had my doubts. But then all of a sudden, my pants got looser, and I was going to the Daily Wire Kitchen a lot less. Also, grab limited time discounts on Field of Greens,

the daily go-to super fruit and vegetable drink that everyone knows and loves. Plus, they've got new Brickhouse whey protein and so much more. Personally, I love their weight protein, so as we move into the fall, I'll be staying stuff. locked up. But listen, this 25% off deal is only good for a few days. So if you've been thinking about getting serious about your health this fall, now is the time. Use code Labor Day 25 and start feeling stronger and more confident than ever. Head over to Brickhousenutrition.com and use code Labor Day 25 for 25. That's Brickhouse Nutrition.com code Labor Day 25. Brickhouse Nutrition.com

today. As crime continues to plummet in Washington, D.C., President Trump says he may take his crackdown nationwide. Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips is here with the latest day Cabot. So it's been about two weeks since Trump took over DC, a lot of blowback from that, but a lot of praise as well. We're starting to see results there. What have we seen? Well, we've seen a much safer city. There's just no other way of putting it when you look at the numbers.

Since August 12th, carjackings are still down more than 80%. Robberies and car breakans have each plummeted by over 40%. And perhaps most stunning, there has not been a single homicide in all of DC for the last 10 days. On Sunday, the White House told the Daily Wire that they were approaching 1,000 total arrests since Trump's crackdown began, with hundreds of suspects wanted for murder, assault, rape, and any other charge you can think of having been taken off the street. As Trump put it on social media, quote, Washington, D.C. is safe again. The crowds are coming back, the spirit is high, and our D.C. National Guard and Police are doing a fantastic job. They are out in force and not playing games.

And the White House says that they're really just getting started. Here's J.D. Vance to that point on NBC Sunday. has dropped over 35% of the nation's capital in 10 days because of what Donald J. Trump has done. I think that there's so much more that we could do. Absolutely not. It's not mission accomplished. When you make such big progress in a matter of a week and a half, I think that you step on the gas and try to make D.C. even more safe. Now, obviously, Democrats have a far different take on this whole situation, correct? Right. And to that point, it's worth noting many on the left and in the legacy media quickly decried Trump's takeover as racially motivated. They said,

that he was looking for any excuse to target and arrest black people. But Trump allies have been quick to push back on that, noting that roughly 95% of murder victims in D.C. each year are black. And so the Trump White House is saying that they're actually protecting black communities more than anyone else. Right a claim there that's hard to argue against, actually. Now, the Trump administration is saying they might take this nationwide to some of these other cities. What exactly is Trump saying on that front?

Well, it's clear that he views the success in D.C. as a blueprint for the rest of of the nation. And he's now signaled a desire to undertake similar efforts in Chicago, New York, and elsewhere. Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent. And we'll straighten that one out probably next. And then we'll help with New York. Now keep in mind, because D.C. is federal land, Trump has a lot more legal authority over the police force and also the deployment of the National Guard there. If you want to deploy guardsmen in Chicago or New York, he'll have to either convince the state's governors to give that

order, which, again, is unlikely, or federalized the Guard units and deploy them himself, which will almost certainly face legal challenges from Democrats. For example, in response to the idea, Illinois governor and 2028 contender J.D. Pritzker called it, quote, an authoritarian power grab of major cities. And here's Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson saying his city would, quote, rise up in response to Trump's efforts. We're going to remain firm. We'll take legal action, but the people in this city are accustomed to rising up against tyranny. And if that's necessary, I believe that the people of Chicago will stand firm alongside of me. But VP Vance says that if state and local officials continue to allow crime to run rampant in their cities, something has to be done, and Trump is the man to do

it. We don't have to live like this. My message to my fellow citizens here in D.C. or all across the country would be that allowing vagrants and armed robberies to take over your city, that's a policy choice. What President Trump is showing is that if you just empower local law enforcement to arrest and prosecute the bad guys, we can take back American streets. So on this topic of Trump's law and order push, we also had this FBI raid heading into the weekend. A lot of headlines on that, a lot of speculation there. What exactly happened? Right. So on Friday, FBI agents raided the Maryland home in D.C. office of John Bolton. We all remember served as Trump's national security advisor during his first term, but it's since become a vocal critic of the president.

According to multiple sources, the DOJ is now investigating whether Bolton legally shared classified documents and other materials with family members and other associates during his time at the White House using a private email server to do so. Following the raid, FBI director Cass Patel shared a simple message on X, quote, no one is above the law FBI agents on mission. Deputy Director Dan Bongino echoed that sentiment saying, quote, public corruption will not be tolerated. Well, no surprise. This raid is engulfed in a lot of controversy and speculation. thanks for reporting. Absolutely. While the White House says they remain confident that President Trump will bring an end to the Ukraine war, Moscow is tamping down expectations of it coming anytime soon.

Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about the latest in the negotiations to end the war. Tim, what signals are we seeing since these meetings with President Trump? Yeah, Trump was able to get himself and President Putin in a room together. Then he was able to get himself and European leaders and President Zelensky in a room together. And now he wants to get Putin and Zelensky together in a room, and that appears to be quite a bit harder to do. But the president last week appeared optimistic about that happening, but the Kremlin says that negotiations haven't progressed enough. Here's Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on NBC News over the weekend. There is no meeting planned, and I'm not challenging this.

But you, you cannot, I think, understand what I am saying. Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky. when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all. Trump officials say that they've seen enough movement in Moscow in recent weeks that negotiations have been able to move forward, but there has been some skepticism that Putin has just built a pretense of wanting peace. Here's Lavrov on that.

Does Russia, does President Putin want peace? Yes. And what say you to U.S. lawmakers here who believe you are stringing along President Trump, are you? It is not for the lawmakers or for any media outlets to decide, you know, what President Trump is motivated by. So not a lot of hard answers coming out of the Kremlin, at least publicly. In addition to that, Moscow is again making noises about its nuclear capability. Russia's nuclear chief said over the weekend that Russia's nuclear program needs to be improved

over the number of colossal threats currently facing the country. So they're saying a deal is not that close, possibly angling for a little more leverage. What about the White House? What are they saying? They're still expressing confidence in Trump's diplomacy. Vice President Vance made that argument on NBC over the weekend. Here's what he told Kristen Welker on whether the Russians are serious or not. They've actually been willing to be flexible on some of their core demands. They've talked about what would be necessary to end the war.

Of course, they haven't been completely there yet, or the war would be over, but we're engaging in this diplomatic process in good faith. And here's Vance on what can be done to bring Putin and Zelenskyy together finally. The president has applied more economic pressure to the Russians to stop this war than Biden did in three years. So the idea that we're not doing anything, we're already doing things right now, and this is how negotiation works. you do something, you talk to the parties, you try to see if there's a meeting of minds, we're going to eventually be successful or we'll hit a brick wall. And if we hit a brick wall,

then we're going to continue this process of negotiation of applying leverage. So as you said, White House projecting confidence, where's Zelensky in all of this? Well, Zilinski has promised to keep fighting until a just peace can be reached. But on the way to that, it looks like the United States may be leaning on Ukraine to avoid escalating the war. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon has blocked you. Ukraine for months from using long-range missiles to hit inside Russian territory. The White House is reportedly concerned that such strikes could derail peace negotiations. Tim, thanks for reporting.

Thanks for having me on. Across Europe, governments are responding to public anger over immigration and cracking down by imposing tougher rules. In Spain, however, the left-wing socialist Workers' Party is making it easier for migrants to move there and get residency. The Spanish Parliament is also discussing amnesty, which could mean granting citizens and ship to one million people. Joining us to discuss is Guy Danpier of the Prosperity Institute.

Guy, good to have you back on. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back on. So what's happening in Spain is pretty unusual for Europe at the moment. Why is Spain taking such a different path? Well, although a lot of people are upset about immigration, the first concern for most Spanish people is the economy, and the economy is doing pretty well. That's partly because Spain did really badly during COVID,

and as a result, the bounce back feels much better. but what also matters a lot is the maker of the immigrants that come to Spain. You know, among those groups, you've got people at Colombians, you've got Venezuelans, I've seen Peruvians working on building sites in Madrid, and those groups have got far fewer issues with integration than people from, let's say, Africa or the Islamic world. Many of them are ethnically Spanish, the other descendants of Spanish colonists, and in return, Spain makes it very easy for them.

Most Latin American immigrants can apply for citizenship after just two years in the country. That is still having a profound effect on Spanish society, however. nearly 20% of the population was born overseas. And if you look at some of the smaller groups, so let's say the 30 to 34s, 35% of them were born overseas. That's a huge number. And although a lot of them are Latin Americans,

it also includes other groups. The largest Moroccan community in the world outside Morocco is in Spain. There's about a million people there, and the average age of them is 34. So that's a big cultural impact. There's also a question of sustainability. The socialist government that runs Spain

says that this needs to happen because Spain has a very low birth rate and it needs workers. But contrary to the stereotypes, Latin America actually is seeing declining birth rates, and in many places, they're not that much better than Spain. So this is a very limited solution. So that probably can't keep up. And what about this pro-immigration trend? Will that last or does that also feel like it's got a limit?

I think we should be skeptical about how popular it is. The socialist government is not doing well on the polls. The rhyming parties, PP and Vox, are now at about 50. 50% in the polls, and there have been a pretty serious reason flashpoint. So in Torre Pachir, there were three days of rioting after a Moroccan immigrant attacked a pensioner whilst he was out on his morning walk. The image of that pensioner with his battered face, with his blood-filled eye, you know, that caused locals to come out onto the streets. They were wearing masks, they were carrying weapons, they were calling the Moroccan's moors, and they were telling them to

go home. And it's not hard to see why. The town's population has doubled in the last 30 years, almost all of that is driven by immigration. You know, immigrants are coming to work in the field, they're growing vegetables, but it means that about a third of the town is now foreign. And in the last local elections, the right-wing populace of Vox won 38% of the vote. So clearly people in the town are upset about this change to their community. And it's not just there. There's also a place called Jamil.

The local municipality there, very recently they decided that they would ban Muslim Islamic religious festivities from being held in public space, Apparently that's because they were having these sort of mass prayer events for Ramadan and for Eid, and the locals just didn't want it. And they feel this is necessary to defend the Christian character of their town and of Spain. So they feel they're having to take some decisive steps to protect their culture at this point. What will all this mean for the future of Spain's government? The current socialist government is becoming more and more unpopular. And immigration is definitely playing a part in that. But it's more than just that. They're also currently facing a raft of scandals

over corruption. In just the last year, we've had Spanish police search the parties' HQ. We've seen the customs authorities raiding the House from the top officials where they discovered an illegal tobacco workshop. Another top figure had to resign recently amidst allegations from women in the party that he was using his position to sexually harass them. And the Council of Europe, so a more neutral body, you know, they've been very critical of Spain's failure to tackle corruption. And you can see how serious that is, by the way that they're actually starting to involved the prime minister. So there was a scandal about his brother being hired in a regular way. His wife is currently subject of investigation over alleged corruption and trading and influence.

So although there are liberals who are hailing Spain as a model to follow in immigration, it has some very unique circumstances. And the mass migration of culturally different populations is just as unpopular in Spain as is elsewhere in Europe. Guy, thanks so much for coming on. Pleasure to be back on. Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.