Morning Wire - US-Russia Talks Begin & DOGE Targets IRS | 2.18.25

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

US and Russia set the stage for negotiations to start, DOGE sets its sights on the IRS, and CBS stands accused of advocating for censorship. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Lumen: Head to http://lumen.me/WIRE for 20% off your purchase. Shopify: Go to https://Shopify.com/morningwire to sign up for your $1 per month trial period and upgrade your selling today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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enlarge our clientele to the world entire. Trouve of little enterprises like on other. Onesaw. The Trump administration faces a crucial week

abroad as the U.S. and Russia hit reset while European leaders call an emergency meeting over Ukraine. There must be a U.S. backstop because a U.S. security

guarantee is the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again. Who will be at the table for the peace negotiations and why is Zelensky calling foul? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, February 18th, and this is Morning Wire. Doge and Elon Musk continue to shrink the federal government, setting their sights next on the IRS. If your taxpayer dollars are not spent in a sensible and prugal manner, then that's not okay.

Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely. It's just common sense. And CBS is taking flack for their coverage on free speech in Europe, with some accusing the network of shilling for censorship. I have to disagree with you. That's not an accurate reflection of history. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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Take the next step in improving your health. Go to Lumen.me.orgia to get 20% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N-D-M-E-S-Wire to get 20% off your purchase. Thank you, Lumen for sponsoring this episode. With the U.S. and Russia kicking off negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, European leaders are scrambling to respond. Daily Wire, senior editor Cabot Phillips is here with Morhead Cabot.

So an extremely important week for the new administration abroad that will test Donald Trump's foreign policy. We have this emergency meeting headed up by Macron now this series of meetings with Russian diplomats. First, what is taking place today? So delegations from the U.S. and Russia will sit down in Saudi Arabia today for the most substantive negotiations on the war in Ukraine since Putin first invaded three years ago. On one hand for the U.S. will be Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Walts, and Middle East envoy Steve Whitkoff. The Russians are sending their foreign minister and a top aide to Putin. For their part, the State Department tempered expectations a bit, saying these meetings were viewed as the opening round of a longer process. Moscow echoed that sentiment saying the talks would be, quote, devoted primarily to restoring the entire complex of Russian-American relations.

So while today's talks are unlikely to result in any major diplomatic break, breakthroughs, they're still important because it marks a significant departure from the Biden administration's past strategy, which had been to isolate Putin entirely. Trump is taking a much more head-on approach. The two spoke on the phone last week and now are working out details on a face-to-face sit-down. Here's Trump over the weekend. I think he wants to stop fighting. I see that. We spoke long and hard.

I think he wants to end it and they want to end it fast. both of them. All right, so Trump referring there to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as well. How has he responded to this push from the White House? Well, Zelensky had initially been open to Trump brokering a peace deal. After years of saying he would not agree to any diplomatic solution, he reversed course after Trump's victory, and said he was ready to end the war peacefully as soon as possible. But he's not happy with how the president has gone about things.

And is furious that Ukraine is not present at today's meetings in Saudi Arabia. Now, the White House made clear that he would have a seat at the table of talks with Russia move to formal negotiations, but that did little to alleviate his displeasure. Here's Zelensky talking to NBC on Sunday. I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine. There is no any leader in the world who can really make a deal with putting without us about us. And the next day, he went a step further, saying today's talks, quote, won't yield results if Kiev is not. not at the table. All right, so making very clear he's not happy. He's not the only one. There's some other people saying they should have a seat at the table as well. Tell us about this pushback from other

European leaders. Right. So as we reported yesterday, our allies in Europe have made clear they are not fans of Trump's one-on-one approach to Moscow. In response, they huddled for an emergency summit Monday, as you mentioned with leaders from France, the UK, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the Netherlands. Germany's foreign minister, for example, said it was, quote, an existential moment in time for, quote, Europe to stand up, while Poland's foreign minister made a bizarre threat to withhold the Nobel Peace Prize from Trump. We Europeans control the Nobel Peace Prize. If you want to earn it, that peace has to be fair.

But, look, ultimately, the U.S. has far more leverage here because Europe is just so reliant on our defense capabilities. Even British Prime Minister Kirstarmer conceded that point, saying, quote, U.S. support will remain critical and a U.S. security guarantee is essential for a lasting peace because only the U.S. can deter Putin from attacking again. But it's worth noting, Trump officials say that while European allies are not directly at the table with Russia, they're still being taken into account. Here's Mike Waltz to that point on Fox Sunday. They may not like some of the sequencing that is going on in these negotiations,

but I have to push back on any notion that they aren't being consultant. They absolutely are. And one final note on all this, the American people certainly appear to be tiring of the country's long-term support of the war in Ukraine. According to Quinepec polling, 41% now say the U.S. is doing too much. That number was just 7% back in 2022. And at the same time, support for Zelensky has also cratered. In 2022, 72%, said they were confident he would do the right thing. Today, that number is down at 48%. And finally, nearly 80% of Americans support a peace deal to end the war.

sentiment's been steadily moving toward a piece deal sooner than later. It's very clear. Kappan, thanks so much for reporting. Anytime. What's the secret behind wildly successful businesses? It's not just great products or brilliant marketing. It's the unsung hero, the business behind the business. It's time to make those business goals or reality.

For millions of entrepreneurs, that hero is Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout we use with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash morning wire. all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash morningwire to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash morning wire. The IRS is expected to issue a memo soon

that gives Doge access to the tax agency's systems and data. The review fits within Doge's mandate to seek out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, but critics claim the Elon Musk-led audit would put Americans' personal information at risk. Here to talk

about the IRS and Doge is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So Tim, let's just say Doge gets access to the IRS. What would that actually look like? Sure. So top IRS officials may soon release what's called a memorandum of understanding that would grant Doge access. One Doge software engineer would be given broad access to dig into the tax agency's systems and data, most of which are built on top of 1960s technology.

So clearly there is plenty lacking at the IRS in the way of efficiency at the very least. The draft memo, which was viewed by the Washington Post, would give Doge access to the IRS for, for 120 days, with an option for 120-day extension at the pleasure of the president. What has critics worried is that access to IRS systems includes access to the integrated data retrieval system or the IDRS. That holds personal information and bank information on millions of Americans. It's pretty tightly guarded. Even IRS commissioners traditionally are not given access to it. But Doge's work would presumably be tightly watched. In fact, part of the draft memo requires the Doge engineer to destroy any information from the IRS he has after his work is done.

So a single Doge engineer is tasked with assessing a 1960s-era system. It seems like a big task. What kind of changes could we expect? Automation will be a big part. There will be many roles in the system that a machine can perform better than a person can. And that's no different than what Doge is primarily doing across the federal government. The idea is that at the end of Doge's audit and updates, the federal bureaucracy should be significantly smaller and more focused, as well as more easily controlled by the president. So that addresses inefficiency, but then there's also outright fraud and abuse. Musk released some pretty shocking numbers just in the past few days. What did those show?

Yeah, that was on Social Security. Musk posted the breakdown by age group of the number of eligible Social Security numbers in the United States. On the face of it, it's pretty clear that tens of millions of those numbers are fraudulent. Here's some perspective. The oldest person currently alive is 116 years old, and she lives in Brazil. According to the social security system, nearly 12.5 million Americans have valid social security numbers and are older than that. So major red flag there to say the least. But if that weren't enough, there are actually tens of millions more active social security numbers than there are U.S. citizens. That's tens of millions of suspicious numbers. Must said this might be the biggest fraud in history.

Well, we know it would be bad, but this seems just outrageous. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. As the Trump administration makes protecting free speech a key priority, CBS is drawing massive fire for its coverage of free speech issues in Europe. Critics say the network, along with other legacy outlets, has become an apologist for censorship. Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with more.

So, Megan, what did this CBS host say that was so controversial, and what was the context of it? Well, this all started after Vice President J.D. Vans, gave a pretty bold speech at the Munich Security Conference last Friday. He took European leaders to task for embracing what he called Soviet-style censorship. Last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.

Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected, guilty of thought crime. In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat. And then on Sunday morning, CBS anchor Margaret Brennan interviewed Secretary of State Marco Rubio on her show, face the nation. And she asked him why Vance would irritate our European allies like that. Then she made the historically incorrect claim that the Holocaust was the result of Nazi Germany having too much free speech. Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide. And he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups.

The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right. Well, Rubio pushed back on that very strongly. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany.

And then if you'll hang with me for one more soundbite here, Georgia. On Sunday night, another CBS program, 60 Minutes, interviewed some German authorities arguing for state censorship. And the overall tenor of CBS's segment seemed very, very, favorable to their position. Is it a crime to insult somebody in public? Yes. Yes.

And it's a crime to insult them online as well? Yes. The fine could be even higher if you insult someone in the internet. Why? Because in internet, it stays there. If we are talking face to face, you insult me, I insult you, okay, finish. But in the internet, if I insult you or a politician... That sticks around forever.

Yeah. The prosecutors explain German law also prohibits the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats, and fake quotes. And by the way, that German law also applies to someone reposting illegal speech, even if the person didn't know, for example, that they were sharing a false quote. Now, has CBS attempted to defend those comments? No. In fact, they proudly released the transcript, and there's really been no comment from other legacy outlets on this either. But there was blowback on the right. So how did Vance react?

Well, Vance immediately posted on X, quoting here, insulting someone is not a crime and criminalizing speech will strain European U.S. relations. This is Orwellian, and everyone in Europe and the U.S. must reject this lunacy. Now, that reaction really captured the tenor of most of the conservative criticism,

including from outlets like National Review, which called the segment mildly horrifying. And then you even had some conservative critics suggesting that the U.S. may need to pull out of NATO if Europe doesn't reestablish free speech protections. And so I do think for that reason this goes to the broader point of Vance's Munich speech. And that was that the stakes of this clash are really high. Essentially, he said that the reason the leaders of these nations are cracking down on speech is because they fear the views of their voters, which, as in the U.S. have been trending in a populist direction. So CBS, has appeared to many viewers to be trying to make the case for speech suppression in Europe, rather than challenging these European leaders over that program. Well, very concerning that dissenting opinion could be considered a crime. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime.

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