Gaetz Withdraws Nomination & Russia-Ukraine Warpath | 11.22.24
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Matt Gaetz withdraws his name from consideration for attorney general amid damaging reports about his past. Every single pick that Donald Trump makes is going to be a distraction. They don't want to confirm any of these people. Who did Trump pick to replace him? I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, November 22nd, and this is Morning Wire. Europe worries about World War III as rockets fly between Russia and Ukraine.

And Trump vows to support a free and fair media as left-wing audiences punish networks for mending fences with the former president. For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, why wouldn't we? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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See if your company qualifies at oracle.com slash morningwire. In a stunning development Thursday, Congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew himself from consideration for attorney general amid a flurry of controversies. And President Trump wasted no time in finding a replacement. Here with more is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. So Cabot, you've been saying all week that Gaetz was going to face an uphill battle. What ended up happening?

Yeah, the moment this pick was announced, Washington just went into a frenzy. While Trump's base and diehard MAGA lawmakers were ecstatic, saying Gates would bring historic reforms to the DOJ, there were plenty of Republican lawmakers who expressed immediate reservations. They feared his lack of experience in the courtroom or law enforcement, and his checkered past made him unqualified to be the nation's top law enforcement official.

Now, Gaetz huddled with Republican senators the last two days to lobby support for his confirmation. But when it became clear that not enough support would materialize, he pulled out, saying on X, quote,

For his part, Trump said, quote, I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz. He was doing very well, but did not want to be a distraction for which he has much respect. Now, you mentioned that there were some reservations. What were the main reasons why Republican senators weren't on board?

So as we've talked about before, Gates really prides himself on being a sort of rabble rouser on the right. His podcast is called Firebrand, and that Firebrand style has made him plenty of enemies in the GOP, including those who were upset about his role in ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and also single-handedly holding up pieces of legislation in the House. But

beyond that there were also concerns over his personal life gates has been the subject of a long-running house ethics investigation involving allegations that he had sex with a minor while in office the findings of that report were going to be released to the public last week

but ultimately were kept private because he resigned from the House to try and become Attorney General. So it sounds like Trump hit the ground running and found a replacement very quickly. Who did he end up picking? That's right. On Thursday night, Trump appointed former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to the position. Bondi previously worked on Trump's legal team during his first impeachment trial and earned a reputation in Florida as a hardline conservative on immigration and crime specifically.

In a statement announcing the pick, Trump said, quote, Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years where she was very tough on violent criminals and made the streets safe for Florida families. He went on to say the bondee will shift the, quote, partisan DOJ's focus back to its original mission, fighting crime and making America safe again. The move was cheered by the GOP base. Now we'll see how Senate Republicans respond. So what does this mean now for Gates?

Well, he could technically return to Congress in January as no special election has been held yet to replace him. But again, that would open the possibility of that ethics report being made public. So that does seem unlikely. And remember, Florida has an open Senate seat left by Marco Rubio, who was tapped for secretary of state. Some are already lobbying Governor DeSantis to appoint Gates for that position.

And of course, there are rumblings that he could make a move for the governor's office once DeSantis is term limited out in 2026. So a lot of possibilities here to track. Well, and it sounds like a lot of possibility for reshuffling in Florida specifically. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime.

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The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is on a path of escalation as the end of the year approaches. In recent days, President Biden has lifted restrictions on Ukraine's use of US arms, and Moscow has reformed its nuclear doctrine and fired the first ICBM of the war. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pearce is here to discuss. Hey, Tim. So catch us up on the latest in this war.

Sure. There's been some major changes in how the war is being fought on both sides recently. It started with Russia receiving 10,000 additional troops from North Korea, with a possibility of up to 90,000 more on the way. President Biden then relaxed some restrictions on Ukraine's use of U.S. assistance. Administration officials have said the move was calculated to deter further involvement from North Korea.

For Ukraine, Biden approved the use of long-range U.S. weapons inside Russia, the provision of landmines, and for U.S. contractors to enter the country. Ukraine quickly took advantage of the new parameters with a missile strike on Russia's Kursk region that reportedly wounded a top North Korean general.

Ukraine is trying to hold on to gains it made in Russia's Kursk region, while Moscow currently holds about 20% of Ukrainian territory, mainly in Crimea and the Donbas. And what about the fallout? How is Russia reacting to these changes? Moscow isn't happy. After Biden loosened Ukraine's use of long-range weapons,

Putin issued changes to Russia's nuclear doctrine. The new doctrine now says Moscow will consider any attack by a non-nuclear state that is backed by a nuclear state to be a joint operation and one that could warrant a nuclear response. In addition to that, Russia appears to have launched a number of intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Up to this point, ICBMs hadn't been used in the war in Ukraine. That changed on Thursday. According to Ukrainian officials, Russia sent some into the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Military experts told the Wall Street Journal that the use of the missiles for this strike didn't make much tactical sense, but were likely meant as a warning against further escalation. Putin put out his own statement on the attack. Here's what he said through an interpreter. The Russian forces...

have carried out a combined strike on one of the military industrial facilities in Ukraine. And this included the test of a novel intermediate range Russian missile system. A ballistic missile with a non-nuclear hypersonic payload was used.

Recently leaked plans from Germany show that Berlin wants 800,000 troops ready in case World War III breaks out. Worth noting that the Germans are taking that risk seriously. Yeah, clearly. Now, what's been the response in Washington to all this?

Well, allies of President-elect Trump say that Biden is doing this to escalate the war and limit Trump's options for a negotiated peace. Biden allies say that the president is rushing aid to Ukraine because of concerns that Trump could scale it back once in office. Either way, it's about Trump. Of course, administration officials give a different account and say that Biden's changing stance is...

purely a response to what's happening on the ground in Ukraine. It's worth noting that we haven't heard much from Trump himself on this. His incoming national security advisor, Mike Waltz, said earlier this month, though, that taking restrictions off Ukraine would be one tool he'd look at to pressure Russia to negotiate. Here's Waltz on NPR on how to get to a peace deal.

First and foremost, you would enforce the actual energy sanctions on Russia. Russia is essentially a gas station with nukes. Putin is selling more oil and gas now than he did pre-war through China and Russia. And you couple that with unleashing our energy, lifting our LNG ban, and his economy and his war machine will dry up.

very quickly. I just spoke with the Speaker of the Parliament of Lithuania. He buys 85% of their oil and gas from Texas and Louisiana. She said, what do you want me to do? Go back to buying from Russia? Because we've constrained our energy supplies. So I think that will get Putin to the table. We have leverage like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well. And then, of course, I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelensky to get them to the table.

So responses to this have been all over the map, but it may be that we won't get a good view of how Trump views this until he takes office in January. Right, and he's the most important piece that's going to change here. Tim, thanks for reporting. Good to be on. President-elect Donald Trump promised this week that he's committed to ensuring America has a free, fair, and open media. Here to tell us about the context and significance of Trump's remarks is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.

So, Megan, there's been a lot of discussion about how Trump is going to handle the media this time around, just given how contentious his relationship has been with some of these outlets. What was the context of these remarks?

So Trump said this during an interview with Fox News, and it came up as a result of his meeting with MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. Now, the pair have long been known for being virulently anti-Trump. But on Monday, they announced that they went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him the first time they had spoken to him in seven years.

This meeting, President Trump was cheerful, he was upbeat, he seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues. We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump's actions and words in the coarsening of public debate. But for nearly 80 million Americans,

Election denialism, public trials on January 6th were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote.

Now, Brzezinski and Scarborough framed this meeting as a journalistic effort to mend fences so that they're better able to report what's happening inside the new administration. But unnamed sources in MSNBC told CNN that that was not the whole story. These sources say the two hosts are concerned that they could face retribution from Trump. Now, has Trump indicated that he would go after MSNBC in some way or another?

No, he hasn't. And that was what he told Fox. He described this meeting as cordial. He said that he appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication and that though Scarborough and Brzezinski disagreed with some of his cabinet appointments, he hopes to have more contact with them.

Of course, that said, Morning Joe could face retribution from their own fans. Viewership has reportedly dropped 12% since the news broke that they were trying to cozy up to Trump. But for Trump's part, he also said that he expects to have similar meetings with other legacy media outlets, including those he described as being very hostile to him in the past.

In fact, he said he believes he has an obligation to the American public and to our country itself to be open and available to the press, even though, he added, some of those outlets have treated him, quote, badly beyond comprehension. Now, that said, he added that if they continue to treat him unfairly, then their access may end. Now, in that vein, do we know how Trump is going to handle things like White House briefings?

You know, that's a really good question because there are only 49 seats in that briefing room. And typically, legacy outlets and wire services that tend to lean left have had priority access to those seats. But during his first term, Trump's administration provided press credentials directly

to some conservative and religious outlets that had not traditionally been included before. In fact, I worked for the evangelical Christian outlet World Magazine at that time, and I was one of those who was welcomed into some of those briefings.

And that was very different from the Obama administration. So there are reports that we could see this kind of shift again to an even greater degree in Trump's second term. And there are some pretty well-known Trump supporters like Fox News contributor and former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer who are openly pushing for him to do this.

So Fleischer says that the major outlets like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, all of those, he says that they have historically dominated the briefings even though they have much smaller audiences now, possibly due to a loss of audience trust so that they no longer have the influence that they once did. So,

So Fleischer says the Trump White House should assign some of those seats to reporters from conservative media outlets, podcasters, the more respectable social media influencers, basically people who are, and I'm quoting here, more in tune with the news-consuming habits of the country today because Fleischer says they're not part of an activist press corps that's out to damage Trump. Well, it would be fantastic to have a more balanced press pool. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime. Anytime.

Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.