Morning Wire - Walz Under Fire & Covenant Journal Published | 9.4.24

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz again takes heat over Stolen Valor allegations, the Covenant shooter’s journal has finally been made public, and new data shows the mounting price tag of the border crisis. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Netsuite: Make better business decisions with NetSuite https://www.NetSuite.com/MORNINGWIRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He came out and said he was going to go all the time working behind the chain of commands back to secure his retirement. Democratic VP candidate Tim Walls is under fire again for allegedly abandoning his men while a family member comes out against him. Why are several people close to Walls sounding the alarm? I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, September 4th, and this is Morning Wire. The full 100 pages of the Covenant Shooters Journal have finally. been made public. We analyze what's in the document and the controversy over its publication. And as a South American gang wreaks havoc in American cities, new data shows the mounting

price tag of the border crisis. We shouldn't be forced to spend billions of dollars on people who aren't even supposed to be here. How much has illegal immigration cost American communities and taxpayers? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. thousand businesses have future proof to their operations with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP. It brings accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. Download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning

at netsuite.com slash morning wire. This guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash morningwire. Again, that's netsuite.com slash morningwire. Kamala Harris's running mate, Tim Walls, continues to face mounting allegations of stolen valor, as former colleagues and now family members are going public with new criticism. Here to discuss is Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips. So Cabot, this is a story that does not seem to be going away for the Harris Walls campaign. Yeah, if anything, it is only gaining momentum. So a quick recap, as there are a few layers to this story.

Walls served in the National Guard for 24 years at one point deploying to Italy, but throughout his political career, he has heavily implied or even outright claimed that he served in combat. There's the now infamous clip of him saying he, quote, carried weapons of war in war, and there are numerous examples of him nodding along during interviews as he's introduced as a veteran of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. And on top of that, when he learned his National Guard unit would be deploying to Iraq, Walls initially told his men he would be shipping out with. them, but he instead retired, leaving them scrambling to replace their senior non-commissioned officer. So how has the Harris-Walls campaign responded to these allegations? Well, Walls says that his mistaken claims that he served in combat were nothing more than a grammatical error, as he put it. And to the latter accusation, Walls and the Harris campaign have vehemently denied that he was actually aware of his units looming combat deployment when he retired. They say the

timing was nothing more than any coincidence. However, a number of high-ranking guardsmen who served in Walls' units say that he's lying. They went on the record this week with Megan Kelly to reiterate that Walls was aware of the deployment before opting to retire, and even told them that he was going with them. Here's Command Sergeant Major Paul Hur, speaking to that effect. He is, again, a liar because he told me and other sergeant majors in the meetings that you can count on me, I will deploy with my unit. That's a morale crusher. It chews away at the fabric of the military and its ability to do its mission, it may not legally be wrong. It is morally indefensible. And here's Command Sergeant Major Tom Barron's, the man who stepped up to replace walls when he

retired just before that deployment. When he quit in May, it was like the rumor went across the state that he had quit and it was like, who the hell does that? I mean, it was just unbelievable that a CSM abandoned his troops. It's like losing the patriarch of the family that quarterback of a football team. I mean, literally what this guy did is he was like Tom Brady training until the Super Bowl, you know, getting to that point. And then Super Bowl comes up and he says, you know, you second stringer get out there and play because I might get hurt. And it's worth pointing out, Morning Wire also spoke to Barron's last month. Our listeners can find that episode from August 17th for a more in-depth conversation. Well, and that's not the only controversy facing

Walls at the moment either. Right. So this week, the New York Post published a series of Facebook comments made by Walls' older brother, Jeff, and they are intense. Writing throughout the last few weeks, the elder Walls said he was, quote, 100% opposed to his brother's ideology before adding, quote, the stories I could tell, not the type of character you want making decisions about your future. He even went so far as adding that he was, quote, thinking long and hard about appearing on stage with Donald Trump to offer an endorsement. Now, some have responded to these comments by saying the opinions of candidates' family members,

shouldn't really matter. For that reason, most legacy media outlets have not covered this story. But plenty of other folks say that it is relevant insight and point out that some of those same outlets spent years giving airtime to relatives of Donald Trump who were willing to denounce him. We also saw plenty of the same coverage this year as members of the Kennedy family appeared on networks throughout the election, slamming RFK Jr. Right. We saw a lot of focus from the legacy media on that. So let's get to Wall's counterpart, J.D. Vance. What are we seeing from the Ohio Senate? Well, first, it remains to be seen whether Vance will have a net positive or negative impact on this race. Republicans say his story of overcoming poverty and addiction in Appalachia will resonate with those crucial Rust Belt voters.

But it's worth noting his favorability ratings are considerably lower than Walls, Trump, or Harris. He's about 10 points underwater right now. Now, the Trump campaign argues that's due to overwhelmingly biased coverage from the legacy media. And they are taking an aggressive approach in response, rather than avoid. media interviews like Harrison Walls. Vance has said yes to virtually every invite. Since becoming the nominee, he has sat for 94 interviews. Many of them, it's worth noting, on combative networks.

Campaign also says Vance has asked for as many events as possible to include Q&As and press conferences. Later this week, he will sit down with NPR and the New York Times. Well, I don't think we can expect a friendly interview there, but it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Yes, it will. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime.

A brief warning to listeners, the following may not be appropriate for younger years. A journal written by the trans-identifying shooter who killed six at a Christian school last year, including three children, has been published. The publication of the journal by the Tennessee Star comes despite a judge ruling that it would not be released under public records laws. We're joined by Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roziak, whose public records request for the journals was also denied. Hey, Luke. So what exactly is in this journal? About 10 journals were found in the shooter's room, but this one was found in her car and includes

entries up to the day of that March 2023 shooting. It is what everybody thought it was, the depressed musings of a mentally ill woman fixated on negative left-wing ideas, particularly that children are sometimes born in the wrong body. It also includes a lot of focus on the idea that whites have privilege that should make them feel bad. What's interesting here is how hard authorities fought to keep us from seeing it, and how a lot of what they said about its contents just doesn't seem to be true. As people wondered whether this was an act of transgender terrorism, or at least a hate crime against Christians, authorities told the media she did not write about specific political, religious, or social issues. But that turned out not to be true. No, virtually

the whole thing is about political, religious, or social issues. A month before the shooting, she drew a diagram with arrows between the words brain, white privilege, embarrassment. In another section, entitled White Nothingness, she said, Poor people resent this, my parents aren't rich, yet I still feel bad, cursed to be looked down upon. A lot of the writing is in the form of letters to a black girl who she had played basketball with back in middle school, and who in reality barely knew her.

The shooter fixates on what she calls the ground girl, who she yearn for, and laments that she did not have the body parts to have sex with her. She wrote, quote, no brown girls, no love. I am nothing. Brown love is the most beautiful. She also reeled against politicians and quote conservative religion, and talked about gay killings and LGBTQ rights.

One passage read, I wish death upon myself because the pure hatred of my female gender. With no rights, anybody's country is a dictatorship. All right, so a lot of focus on gender identity and racial guilt from a left-wing perspective. Yes. Now, her diagnosis of autism, which is something we wouldn't have known about if it weren't for the Tennessee Star releasing this, is important. a large portion of kids who think they're in the wrong body are actually autistic. Look, this journal is sad to read. You can't help but conclude that even if she got the sex change operation that she wished for,

happiness would still elude her. Yeah. I know the Tennessee Star sued under public records laws, but a Nashville judge ruled that none of her writings would be released and even threaten the star's founder with contempt of court, correct? Yeah, there have been numerous strategies to try to keep this thing from coming out. Nashville PD initially said they would release it, but they backtracked after the FBI pressured them. That's another notable element here.

The FBI has no jurisdiction because they say it wasn't domestic terrorism or hate crime, a decision that implied that her motivation wasn't political, even though it turns out these writings certainly are. Then the effort to conceal this document took a really novel approach, claiming the shooter's writings are copyrighted. Of course, public records laws aren't the only way to get a document. The star acquired this through sources. Without the star, we wouldn't know about a number of apparent policy failures. They've reported that two psychiatrists knew the shooter had homicidal ideation but didn't carry out their duty to warn. They also found that the U.S. Department of Education essentially bought the guns for her in the form of a $700 Pell Grant she took out in cash for supposed art school expenses.

It's hard to make policies to prevent shootings like this if we don't know the facts in the first place. Luke, thanks so much for reporting. Sure thing. Massachusetts Republicans say their state has spent $1 billion on the migrant crisis with little explanation on how the money was spent. The state GOP is now seeking a detailed accounting. Here to break down the numbers is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. Hey Tim. So what's happening in Massachusetts? The Massachusetts Republican Party has now filed an open records request to get the dollar figures on how much the state is spent on illegal aliens. Here's Massachusetts GOP communications

director Logan Truppiano on Fox News. It's very simple information. It's all taxpayer funded. And it's information Massachusetts residents deserve to know. The Heliodrisical administration, as well as the Democratic supermajority in Massachusetts, has completely botched every aspect of the migrant crisis in Massachusetts. Republicans allege that there is a $1 billion hole in the state's budget this year due entirely to illegal immigrants.

That's what the recent Open Records request was filed to prove. All right, so $1 billion really unaccounted for. Do we have any data on the overall cost of illegal immigrants to U.S. taxpayers? We do, at least on a national level. Before I get into the numbers, though, I should mention that analyzing something like this is tricky because illegal immigrants are difficult to track since they don't often self-identify as illegals. Anyway, last year, analysts at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, known as Fair, studied the net cost of taxpayers.

They estimated that illegal immigrants have cost about $182 billion. Take away the estimated $32 billion that they've potentially added to the Treasury, and you come up with a net cost of over $150 billion. Fair conducted the same study in 2017, and since then, the net cost has grown by about $35 billion, with most of that being shouldered by state and local governments. In addition to the cost of all this, there's also an intense strain put on communities. We're seeing an extreme example of that going on in Colorado right now. What can you tell us about that situation?

Right. Members of an international gang based out of Venezuela have reportedly taken over several hotels and apartment buildings in Denver suburb. Here's Aurora Mayor Mike Kaufman on Fox News. Somebody put them there and somebody funded it. Whether it's federal government or not, we're trying to find out who these gangs, in fact, kind of pushed out the property management through intimidation and then collected the rents. We have now ongoing operations with a task force, local law enforcement, state law enforcement partners, and federal law enforcement partners.

And arrests have been made, but these operations are still ongoing. The gang members are reportedly affiliated with Tren-Day-Aragua, or TDA, and Aurora officials have said that those buildings are now the scenes of gang-related sex trafficking. Mayor Kaufman said that this is a direct result of the Biden-Harris administration's border policies. I think we're a victim of a failed policy at the southern border because Venezuela does not cooperate with the United States and sharing criminal histories. You've had these massive waves of migrants coming across the border that asked for a political asylum. We're not adequately vetted. We're released into the country. The city of Aurora, we did everything we could to, quite frankly, keep them out of the city because it's not our problem.

This is a federal problem. This is a problem born by the federal government. And in the midst of this takeover by foreign gang members, local residents have complained that law enforcement has been next to no help with the situation. Quite a dangerous situation for local residents to be in. Tim, thanks so much for reporting. Thanks for having me on. Hey, thank you for listening this morning. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and stand with that mission, consider subscribing, giving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon.

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