Trump Staffs Up & Harris Campaign Debt | 11.12.24
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President Trump begins filling his administrative team with key figures known for their strong stance on border security. Criminal threats, national security threats are going to be prioritized, and that's the way it's going to be. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, November 12th, and this is Morning Wire. Morning Wire.

— The federal election committee says the Kamala Harris campaign raised over a billion dollars. So why are they now 20 million in the hole? — This is a $1 billion disaster. — And Democrats are pointing fingers at each other trying to assess why voters rejected their party up and down the ballot.

The key thing and the key failure of both Biden and Harris was that they could not say no to the left flank of their party. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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Head over to balanceofnature.com and use promo code WIRE for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer, plus get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com, promo code WIRE. President-elect Donald Trump's administration has started to take shape with top positions already being filled and the names so far of people committed to carrying out Trump's agenda. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about who's been tapped for Trump's second term so far.

So, Tim, sources are saying Trump will name Florida Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state, but we haven't quite confirmed that yet. But things are moving pretty rapidly. Who has already been offered spots in Trump's new administration? Yeah, you know that Trump's campaign chief, Susie Wiles, will be his chief of staff.

Trump also named Florida Congressman Mike Waltz as his national security advisor. Waltz was a Green Beret with multiple tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa, and was decorated with four bronze stars. He has been advising the president-elect on military affairs. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York has been a staunch Trump ally in the House and will be his representative at the United Nations. Stephen Miller worked in Trump's first term as the former president's head speechwriter and will now be Wiles' deputy chief of staff for policy.

The favorite for Treasury Secretary is Wall Street investor Scott Bessant, a highly successful hedge fund manager who has been advising Trump throughout the campaign. Morning Wire spoke with Bessant about Trump's economic revival plan, which includes making his tax cuts permanent, strengthening the dollar, and cutting regulations.

Under Trump 1.0, it worked for everybody, especially working class people. Working class salaries went up more than the managerial class. Working class household net worth went up more than it did for the top 1%. And, you know, the Democrats are divisive. And President Trump's message is America can work for everybody. And I think we're going to have a great four years coming up. The full interview aired this past Saturday.

Then there is the name that's gained the most attention, Tom Homan, who was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump's first term. Homan has since been named as Trump's border czar. He will be responsible for securing the U.S. border while organizing Trump's mass deportation effort. Finally, former Congressman Lee Zeldin will take over the top job at the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, what do these picks tell us about how Trump could govern in his second term?

Well, there's no surprises here, but these picks do emphasize a few Trump priorities. The UN ambassador job that Stefanik will take up won't have a policy impact, but it will affect how other world leaders view the U.S. To that end, Stefanik has a strong record in support of Israel and against anti-Semitism. Her tough questioning of university presidents over pro-Hamas protests on college campuses has been credited for the removal of presidents at Harvard and Columbia universities.

As for Miller and Homan, both men are well known for their tough stances against illegal immigration. Homan is generally thought to be well qualified to run the deportation effort in Trump's second term. And while immigration was one of Miller's top issues, he was influential on a variety of issues in Trump's first term. He was, after all, the man writing Trump's speeches.

Zeldin at the EPA is a little bit hard to say. Zeldin doesn't have a significant background in environmental policy, though he did work to close dredge waste sites on Long Island. Trump said in a statement that Zeldin will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions to unleash the power of American businesses while maintaining the highest environmental standards.

So what's the reaction been to these picks so far? Homan has gotten the most attention so far. After his role was announced on Sunday, clips of his appearances on Capitol Hill and in the media began to circulate online, including this back and forth between him and Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Zero tolerance was interpreted as the policy that separated children from their parents. If I get arrested for DUI and I have a young child in a car, I'm going to be separated. When I was a police officer in New York and I arrested a father for domestic violence, I separated that father from his family. Mr. Holman, with all due respect, legal asylees are not charged with any crime. When you're in the country illegally, it's violation 8 United States Code 1325. Seeking asylum is legal. If you want to seek asylum and go through the port of entry, do it the legal way.

And then there is this one of Homan on 60 Minutes talking about family separation. We have seen one estimate that says it would cost $88 billion to deport a million people a year. I don't know if that's accurate or not. Is that what American taxpayers should expect? What price do you put on national security? Is that worth it? Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families? Of course there is.

Families can be deported together. And here's a clip of Homan on Fox News on Monday morning, responding to a handful of states who have preemptively said they will refuse to cooperate with Trump's deportation effort. I've seen some of these Democratic governors say they're going to stand in the way and they're going to make a hard force. Well, a suggestion, if you're not going to help us, get the hell out of the way before we're going to do it. We're going to do the job without you or with you.

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The Kamala Harris campaign blew through more than $1 billion this election cycle, sparking criticism from fellow Democrats.

Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo. Hey, Amanda. So Harris's team actually broke fundraising records this election cycle, but still ended up in debt while losing the election. What happened here?

Well, Democrats are asking that same question and pointing a lot of fingers right now. Some Democrats blame the money spent on TV ads that just did not land or the huge amount of money allocated to consultants. Others blame Joe Biden for not leaving the race sooner. But let's dig into the numbers a little. Reporting from the Washington Examiner shows that the total was likely more than $1.6 billion when you combine other Harris-aligned groups and consider that there's still another filing due from October.

Still, the campaign reportedly ended up $20 million in debt. So a lot of money. How was that money spent? What's the breakdown? The Harris team outspent Trump in basically every area. On advertising, Harris and her affiliates spent upwards of $654 million. For comparison, Trump spent less than half of that, according to examiner analysis.

On payroll, Harris spent more than $56 million compared to Trump's $9 million. Harris's team had hundreds more staffers.

Aside from ads, Team Harris spent most of its money on polling and travel, and that includes a private jet company. But what really stands out here are some of the expenses Harris racked up on influencers and celebrities. The campaign paid $1 million to Oprah Winfrey's production company on October 15th. That followed a star-studded town hall hosted by Winfrey. Hmm.

The campaign also dropped $15 million on event production. That's been tied to celebrity performances for Harris from Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and others.

In another head-turning expense, they dropped six figures to build a set for her appearance on the sex and relationship podcast, Call Her Daddy. That episode, which focused mostly on abortion, didn't even break one million views. And keep in mind, Harris famously skipped out on the massively popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Additionally, Democrats in general dropped big money on social media personalities to try to influence younger voters. Right. You mentioned some Democrats have shifted the blame to Biden for supposedly staying in the race for too long. Where else is the blame falling?

Well, certainly Democrats are not happy with Harris herself. She's not a particularly strong candidate. But there's also been finger pointing at Harris campaign leaders Jen O'Malley Dillon and Rob Flaherty. Leading Democrats told Nonprofit Notice that the pair let the campaign become over-reliant on analytics and mismanaged funds. Lindy Lee, who sits on the DNC National Finance Committee, tore into the Harris campaign and O'Malley Dillon specifically.

Lee, speaking on Fox News, called the campaign a billion-dollar disaster. General Malley Dillon promised all of us that Harris would win. She even put videos out saying that Harris would win. I believed her. My donors believed her. And so they wrote massive checks. I just, I feel like a lot of us were misled. All right, so switching gears over to the Trump campaign, which raised far less money than Harris, how much did they end up spending?

In October, the Trump campaign disclosed that they spent $354 million this election. According to Forbes, they're in the black tens of millions of dollars. Trump over the weekend said they have a lot of money left over since their biggest asset was earned media, referring to media earned without having to pay any money. And while record amounts spent for this election, Republicans end up coming out ahead. Amanda, thanks for reporting. You're welcome.

As Donald Trump prepares for his return to the White House, Democratic infighting has reached a fever pitch, with party leaders debating what went wrong.

Here with the details is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. So Cabot, quite a bit of finger pointing on the left these days. Yeah, Democrats are undoubtedly reeling and understandably so. It's not just that they lost the White House, the popular vote, the Rust Belt, the Sun Belt, the Senate and likely the House. It's that Americans of all age groups, income levels and racial demographics moved to the right at historic levels today.

and really rejected the Democrats' core arguments. So now their question becomes, what lessons will they learn from this defeat and how the party will change in response? Well, now that the postmortem is underway, it sounds like party leaders are already starting to turn on each other, correct? Yes, they are. So on one side, you've got far-left progressives who say the party did not do enough to energize their base. One of those voices is Senator Bernie Sanders, who said Harris did not offer enough change.

and that it's, quote, no great surprise that the working class has abandoned Democrats. Folks in that camp argued that Harris should have embraced those far-left policy positions that she started to run away from, including amnesty, socialized medicine, a ban on fracking, mandatory gun buybacks, etc.,

Their argument is that Harris never really picked a lane and tried to appeal to both far-left progressives and moderates and just ended up alienating both. For example, in the closing weeks of the race, the Harris campaign ran two separate ad campaigns on the topic of the Israel-Hamas war. In Pennsylvania, where there are more Jewish voters, their ads touted Harris' support of Israel. But

But in Michigan, home to the country's largest Arab-American population, those ads expressed solidarity with the people of Gaza. So kind of this microcosm of that tension and her trying to appeal to both.

Now, what about the moderates who say she needed to tack to the middle? Yeah, and there are plenty of those Democrats who are now saying that the party has become too far left and turned off average voters. For example, Democratic Rep. Tom Swasey said this week that the party is, quote, pandering to the far left and that people are sick of extremism. Others, like Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, pointed to Democrats' embrace of transgender ideology as a reason for their loss.

He said, quote, I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male. But as a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid to say that. That statement was met by quite a bit of pushback from Democrats. Here is defending it on MSNBC. We've got to be able to have these debates. But instead, we have a wing of our party that shames us, that tries to cancel people who even bring up these difficult topics and frankly shames voters.

Well, how they proceed on that and similar issues is going to be closely watched. Now, there's also been quite a bit of tension between Biden and Harris. What do we know on that front? Well, from the moment the race was called, each camp started to blame the other for the loss.

Biden aides have gone to reporters expressing anger at Harris for running away from his record, which they thought was strong, and not letting him campaign with her. Remember, the Harris campaign told Biden, do not come into the swing states. They also say by working behind the scenes to remove Biden, Harris turned off voters who felt the Democratic Party wasn't acting very Democratic.

Others said Harris was simply a weak candidate. As one White House staffer put it to Axios, quote, how did you spend $1 billion and not win? What the, you know what comes next. But plenty of other Democrats say Biden is to blame and should have dropped out sooner to leave time for an open primary. For example, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the New York Times that Biden essentially forced the Democrats into nominating Harris when he endorsed her moments after dropping out.

The anticipation was, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary. And as I say, Kamala may have...

I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don't know that. That didn't happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different. So some really extraordinary comments there. Now the soul searching continues for Democrats.

who at the moment are staring down at least two years of a Republican-dominated D.C. Well, I'm personally very curious to see which way they go. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.