Morning Wire - Tucker Breaks Silence & South Korea Deal | 4.27.23

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Tucker Carlson speaks out and hints at what’s next for the popular former Fox news host, President Biden finalizes a nuclear weapons agreement with South Korea and the defamation civil lawsuit against former President Trump continues. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.  Genucel: 70% off Most Popular Package + FREE Shipping + Free Spa Essentials https://genucel.com/WIRE  Epic Will: Save 10% off your complete will package: https://www.epicwill.com/wire Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And sometimes, a smooth, silky latte just wins. It's exceptional but effortless. Like actually effortless. Simply press, brew, and explore. Nispresso, what else? Keep exploring at nespresso.com. President Biden met with his South Korean counterpart Wednesday to solidify a nuclear arms agreement in an effort to deter North Korean aggression. No two countries are better suited to meet the challenges ahead than the Republic of Korea and the United States.

What action will the U.S. take and what does it mean for relations with North Korea? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, April 27th, and this is Morning Wire. Former President Donald Trump is fielding another lawsuit. This time, a defamation suit surrounding an alleged rape. The minute I was in there, he shut the door and pushed me up against the wall. Bang, bang my head. So it's a total false accusation, and I don't know anything about it.

We break down the details of the case. And three days after parting ways with Fox News, Tucker Carlson breaks his silence. Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state. That's a depressing realization, but it's not permanent. What did Carlson reveal? And what have we learned about why the network dropped its most popular host? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

On Wednesday, South Korean President Yun Suk Yul visited the White House to finalize a nuclear weapons agreement that will strengthen relations between the two countries and counteract North Korean aggression in the region. Here with more on the details of the accords and what it means for America's role in Asia is Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips. So, Cabot, tell us a little bit about this deal. Well, on Wednesday, President Eun joined President Biden to announce what they dubbed the Washington Declaration.

As part of the deal, South Korea swore off any and all plans to develop a nuclear arsenal of their own in exchange for an expanded role in military consultations with the U.S. Now, while South Korea did sign a non-proliferation treaty in 1975 that barred them from developing nuclear weapons, the country is increasingly called for more U.S. support if they're going to remain without such weapons. As part of that frustration in January, President Yun implied his country would consider

developing nuclear weapons of their own without assurance that the U.S. would offer stronger military support and also give them a seat at the table for conversations regarding how the U.S. would deter and respond to a potential attack for North Korea. And now they're getting that support. The deal will also allow U.S. nuclear subs to dock in South Korea for the first time in four decades, a clear indicator of U.S. willingness to use its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against the North. Here's President Biden speaking from the White House yesterday morning. Our mutual defense treaty is ironclad, and that includes our commitment to extended deterrence,

and that includes the nuclear threat and the nuclear deterrent. According to the text of the agreement, the U.S. will, quote, make every effort to consult with South Korea on the potential deployment of nuclear weapons against North Korea. The deal also establishes the so-called nuclear consultative group that will allow officials from each military to meet regularly to discuss the topic. And it'll also lead to increased joint military training operations between the two countries. Now remember, this declaration comes amid a time of tension between the U.S. and South Korea. Last month's Pentagon leaks showed that American intelligence agencies were spying on high-ranking officials within the South Korean government.

And while officials on both sides publicly downplayed the impact of those leaks on our relationship, South Korean leaders reportedly felt betrayed by what they viewed as a breach of trust. So in many ways, this deal could be viewed as a means of shoring up relations with one of our most important allies in Asia. So what does this agreement mean for U.S. and North Korea relations? Yeah, the White House has essentially admitted that any hopes of diplomatic measures between the U.S. and North Korea are gone. That is a notable departure from the previous administration. Remember, President Trump famously became the first U.S. president to step foot in the country and also held numerous meetings with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un in an attempt to reach a diplomatic agreement on nuclear weapons. While those talks ultimately fizzled out, it's noteworthy that the Biden administration has been unable or unwilling to hold similar discussions. What's the Biden administration's strategy been towards North Korea?

So to this point, they've had no official contact with North Korean leaders. White House officials say off the record that they now believe the days of trying to dissuade the North from developing and maintaining nuclear arsenal are behind us. It no longer seems feasible that they'd give their weapons up under any circumstances. And that's big. It's especially concerning when you consider just how far their nuclear program has come in recent years. The country conducted more missile tests in 2022 than the previous five years combined, and it appears they have ICBMs capable of reaching any city in the continental United States. And that's on top of the unknown number of nuclear warheads at their disposal.

So while international focus is understandably on Russia and China, the stakes on the Korean Peninsula remain incredibly high. All right. Well, Cabot, thanks so much for reporting. Anytime. That was Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips. Coming up, another lawsuit against Trump gets underway. Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll testified this week during her civil defamation and battery case against former President Donald Trump.

Thus far, Trump himself has not yet appeared in court. Carol is suing Trump for defamation because he publicly denied her rape allegations from approximately 25 years ago. Here to discuss the allegations is Daily Wire's senior editor Ash Short. Hey, Ash, first, remind us what exactly Carol is alleging. Well, Carol says that at some point in the 1990s, she ran into Trump at a Bergdorf-Goodman department store in New York City. Carol claims he asked her to help him buy a gift for a woman. Carol suggested he'd buy her a handbag or a hat, and somehow the two moved to the lingerie section and joked about having each other try something on.

She said they ended up in a closed dressing room, and Trump allegedly began kissing her forcefully, pulled down her tights, and raped her. Though she initially refused to call the alleged incident sexual assault, saying it was instead of fight. Carol never went to police or attempted to have Trump held criminally responsible. She wrote about the alleged incident in her 2019 book, also accusing CBS Corporation Executive Les Moonvess of sexually assaulting her in an elevator in the late 1990s. Moonvess has also denied the charges, but Carol hasn't sued him. So this allegedly happened sometime in the 90s.

Why is this going to trial now? Well, this is a civil suit. Carol published the allegations in 2019, at which point Trump denied it categorically. Carol sued Trump in 2019 after he told the Hill that Carol was totally lying, that she's not his type, and it never happened. The case has taken this long to get to trial because of a procedural back and forth over whether Trump was acting as an employee of the federal government when he made those claims. The issue still hasn't been resolved.

The case will be thrown out if it's determined Trump acted in his official capacity, at the time he made the claim, because citizens can't sue the government for defamation. So does Carol have a case? Normally, she probably wouldn't. She says the incident happened in the mid-90s, but critics point out that she didn't say anything about it until 2019. The major problem for Carol's case is that she can't narrow down a timeline for the alleged incident, as Trump's attorney Joe Takapina said in his opening statement.

He said that Carol can't tell the date the incident happened, or even the month or season or season or year it occurred. Yet she claims to remember the event itself in vivid detail. Carol initially said she thought the incident occurred in 1994 or 1995. But since her friend Lisa Bernbach published an article about Trump in New York Magazine in February 1996, she believed it must have happened after that, since Bernbach wouldn't have written the article had she known about what Trump allegedly did. Burnbach and another friend, Carol Martin, told New York magazine that Carol confided in them after the alleged incident.

But in Carroll's favor is a deep hatred for Trump in New York, especially in New York City. Carol was able to add an allegation of battery to her defamation claim because of a recently adopted New York law that allows people claiming to be survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker, even if the statute of limitations has run out for the crime. Well, Ash, another case against Trump, and definitely one will be following. Thanks for reporting. Anytime. That's Daily Wire senior editor, Ash Short. A couple of days after parting ways with Fox News, primetime host Tucker Carlson broke his silence in a two-minute video statement

that has sparked lots of speculation. Meanwhile, conflicting reports on why he parted ways with Fox continue to stream in. Here to discuss Carlson's cryptic statement and the latest reports on his split with Fox is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. So, Megan, first off, let's get to the video from Tucker. Yeah, it was intriguing to say the least. His fans and the media world had obviously

been waiting for any direct statement from him for days. And finally, he drops this video that you have to say was the quintessential Carlson monologue, albeit, of course, under much different circumstances. When honest people say what's true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars who've been trying to silence them shrink, and they become weaker. That's the Iron Law of the universe. True things prevail. Where can you still find saying true things. There aren't many places left, but there are some, and that's enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon. So sure to please his fans, as it does tease more to come, but no explanation for what just happened. Right. Now, to that

question of why he's out at Fox, there have been a variety of theories flying around, and a number of outlets are now making claims based on supposed inside sources. What are they saying? Well, I'd say the story that's getting the most attention right now comes from Vanity Fair. So their reporter said sources at Fox told him that a lot of factors, of course, played into it. But the final decision to pull the trigger came down to a speech that Carlson gave at a gala for the Heritage Foundation. So Carlson framed the political divides the nation is facing right now as a spiritual battle. But when the Treasury Secretary stands up and says, you know what you can do to help the economy get an abortion? Well, that's like an Aztec principle,

actually. There's not a society in history that didn't practice human sacrifice. Not one. I checked. What's the point of child sacrifice? Well, there's no policy goal entwined with that. No, that's a theological phenomenon. And that's kind of the point I'm making. None of this makes sense in conventional political terms. When people or crowds of people, or the largest crowd of people at all, which is the federal government, decide that the goal is to destroy. things, destruction for its own sake, hey, let's tear it down. What you're watching is not a political movement. It's evil. After that, he encouraged the audience to take 10 minutes a day to pray for the country. Well, Vanity Fair Source said that Fox Corp Chair Rupert Murdoch didn't like, quote,

all the spiritual talk. And he particularly didn't like Carlson framing these debates as a struggle between good and evil. The story framed it as a last straw for Murdoch, who who they say personally made the call to pull the plug on Carlson right then. Vanity Fair says that explains why this decision seemed really abrupt. So that's one theory. You mentioned, though, that there are other factors that may have played into this as well. What are we hearing as far as those go? Well, a lot of focus immediately after the news broke, of course, centered on that $800 million

dominion settlement and whether some of the blame for that was being placed at Carlson's feet. But reports since then have mostly dismissed that. especially since Carlson's departure has already cost Fox about the same amount and market value. So the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal both say that people inside Fox told them that the bigger issue was Carlson's private text that came out of the discovery process for that lawsuit. He spoke disparagingly of Fox bosses and said that they were hurting the network's credibility. He also used some fairly vulgar language referring to former Trump attorney, Sidney Powell. And then there's the other lawsuit that Fox is facing.

So the Los Angeles Times said their inside sources, apparently everybody's got different inside sources, told them that the decision came down to a former producer, Abby Grossberg. She's suing Fox for discrimination and claims that Carlson created a hostile work environment. Now, that video that dropped last night, notwithstanding, there's been some discussion of whether he'll have the freedom to take other jobs or start new media ventures on his own. What do we know about that? Well, Carlson's contract reportedly runs through 2024 or 2025,

and it's pretty certain that Fox had a non-compete clause in place. And what that's going to mean is that Carlson wouldn't be able to take another job or launch any other new program on his own before the end of 2024. It's not even totally clear whether he's actually been officially fired yet, so he might be navigating some sort of exit agreement. And what all of that could mean is that he could conceivably be benched for the entire presidential election season. All right.

Well, Megan, thanks so much for reporting. Anytime. That was Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham. Another story we're tracking this week. The Department of Justice filed a complaint Wednesday challenging a Tennessee bill that seeks to ban transgender medical procedures for minors. The department argues that the law violates the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. The Tennessee bill bans doctors from Connecticut.

conducting sex change surgeries in administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children. The DOJ is asking the court to issue an order to prevent the law from taking effect on July 1st. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.