Cable news ratings show several legacy media networks losing viewers, Kamala Harris attempts to rebrand as tough on border security, and a new report shows just how deep George Soros’ influence over district attorneys goes. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.
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(upbeat music) - Cable news ratings are in and show that several legacy media networks are suffering viewership losses and credibility problems. - Where's the audience going instead and what's driving the shift? - I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief, John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, August 14th, and this is morning one. (upbeat music) Kamala Harris is attempting to shed a soft-on-border policy she once touted and re-brand as tough on immigration. - Fixing the border is tough, so is Kamala Harris. - We break down her record on border security. - And new reporting shows that George Soros not only funds soft-on-crime district attorneys, he continues to control them while they're in office. - He's doing things that erode the fabric of civilization, getting DA's elected who refuse to prosecute crime. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire, stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. (upbeat music) - Hey guys, producer Brandon here. Black Rifle Coffee helps you wake up each morning feeling dialed in and ready to make the most of your day. And now's your chance to get 20% off your purchase using code dailywire@blackriflecoffee.com. All of their explosive coffees are roasted right here in the USA by a veteran-led team of expert roasters obsessed with crafting the perfect cup of coffee. Every Black Rifle purchase makes it possible for Black Rifle Coffee Company to help provide funding, training and equipment to our nation's military and first responders. Head to their site now for 20% off your purchase with code dailywire. (upbeat music) - Second quarter cable news ratings are out and left-leaning networks like CNN and MSNBC are experiencing a significant loss in audience. Fox News, meanwhile, just saw its most watched month ever. Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestajakamo is here now with more on the cable news winners and losers. So Amanda, before we get into the analysis, what's the lay of the land right now in terms of ratings? - Well, you'd have to say that it's not good for anyone who's not Fox News. CNBC is the biggest loser this quarter. Its primetime demo viewership is down a whopping 20%. MSNBC's primetime programming is down 5% overall and in that key advertiser demo of 25 to 54, they're down 6%. Now, things aren't as bad at CNN. They're looking at a drop of 2% compared to this time last year. And that might not sound like a big deal, but you have to keep in mind that this is an election year. These are the years when these networks expect the news cycle to drive viewership. And right now, Fox is the only channel experiencing that bump. As John mentioned, July was their most watched month ever according to Nielsen ratings. Now, to give a comparison, in primetime, Fox averaged 3.5 million total viewers and approximately 500,000 in that key demo. MSNBC, its closest competitor, drew only a fraction of that. 1.2 million viewers total and 82,000 in the demo. - So it sounds like the disparities are becoming very extreme. What's driving that? - Well, I think in part, there's a real loss of trust in cable news. Recent polling shows that trust and media is now at an all-time low. And that was something that was illustrated pretty starkly when CNN anchor Caitlyn Collins appeared on Stephen Colbert. She was talking about her view that the Trump campaign has struggled with knowing how to attack Kamala Harris. And then you can hear what happened when Colbert tried to frame her network as nonpartisan. - It's kind of been this moment where he has not been able to coalesce around a single attack line. - I know you guys are objective over there that you just report the news as it is. (audience laughs) - Oh, I know. CNN makes a, I know this-- - Well, that's supposed to be a lab lie. It wasn't supposed to be, but I guess it is. - So we're talking about a New York audience for a very left-leaning late night show that this was their reaction really highlights why CNN is experiencing ratings issues. But there's also the ongoing technological disruption from social media. As we covered just yesterday, Elon Musk showed the power of new media when his ex-interview with Donald Trump drew well over a million live listeners at any given time. - Right, I think it was at about 1.3 million live listeners at its peak, which for comparison is much higher than TV news typically gets. - Right, nothing on television can compare to that. And now that was kind of a unique moment as it marked Donald Trump's return to X, but it's clear that a lot of people were happy to bypass traditional media to hear from Trump directly. And there's also the fact that when we see breaking news like the assassination attempt on Trump or Joe Biden announcing that he was pulling out of the race, that news is breaking first on social media. So people aren't waiting to get in front of the TV to find out the latest from cable news. They're hopping on their phones. - Right, if you're hearing it from TV, chances are you're hearing it late. Amanda, thanks for reporting. - You're welcome. - Is your business selling a little or a lot? Shopify helps you do your thing, however, use your Ching. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout, which is 36% better on average compared to the other leading commerce platforms. Get $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/morningwire. That's shopify.com/morningwire. - Kamala Harris, once known as the borders are of the Biden administration, is trying to rehab her image on border security. Harris hit the campaign trail earlier this month and touted her record as California's attorney general and promised to secure the border. - Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about Harris' record on immigration. So Tim, let's start with Harris' current campaign. What's the image that she's trying to project right now? - Tough on crime and strong on the border. Here she was during a rally on Friday in Arizona. - So I was attorney general of a border state. I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and human traffickers. I prosecuted them in case after case and I won. So I know what I'm talking about. - In poll after poll, Americans have said they trust Republicans to handle immigration more than Democrats. Harris wants to combat that perception and distance herself from the border crisis. - So Harris is projecting herself as strong on the border, now at least, but has that always been the case? - No, this is a new Kamala Harris who according to her campaign has shifted her views on immigration over time as vice president. She was much more progressive in 2019 when she was running for president. Here she was in the second Democratic presidential primary debate promising to expand DACA and abolish immigration detention centers. - I will immediately, by executive action, reinstate DACA status and DACA protection to those young people. I will further extend protection for deferral of deportation for their parents and for veterans who we have so many who are undocumented and have served our country and fought for our democracy. I will also immediately put in place a meaningful process for reviewing the cases for asylum. I will release children from cages. I will get rid of the private detention centers. - She also said that she would decriminalize illegal immigration. Here's how she characterized her time as attorney general just five years ago. And on this issue, I disagreed with my president because the policy was to allow deportation of people who by ICE's own definition were non criminals. So as attorney general and the chief law officer of the state of California, I issued a directive to the sheriffs of my state that they did not have to comply with detainers and instead should make decisions based on the best interest of public safety of their community. - And she also has a history of controversial comments regarding ICE, correct? - That's right. During a Senate hearing in 2018, she questioned Ronald Vatello, then President Trump's nominee to lead ICE. She compared the perception of ICE to that of the KKK. Here's some of that. - Are you aware that there's a perception? - I see no-- - Are you aware that there's a perception? - That puts ICE in the same category as the KKK. Is that what you're asking me? - No, I'm very specific about what I'm asking you. Are you aware of a perception that the way that the discretion-- - I see no-- - I'm not finished. - I see none. - I'm not finished. - In a 2019 interview with MSNBC, she said ICE may need to be abolished. - Listen, I think there's no question that we've got to critically reexamine ICE and its role and the way that it is being administered and the work it is doing. And we need to probably think about starting from scratch. - Those clips are obviously very different in tone from the attempted rebranding of Harris on the campaign trail. But White House press secretary, Corinne John Pierre, made clear this week that Harrison Biden have been partners on all key policies, including immigration policy. - I believe, and as you have seen them in the past three and a half years, they've been partners, critical partners. It doesn't matter if it's domestic issues, also foreign policy issues. And that has been the case from day one and continues to be the case. - Unfortunately, we're continuing to see the effects of these policies in places like New York. On Wednesday, we learned of a Senegalese national who was arrested over the weekend for raping a 36-year-old woman in New York City. The suspect entered the US illegally last year and was arrested by border patrol, but was released because of a lack of detention space. And that was the third sexual assault by a suspected illegal immigrant in the city just within the last week. - Right, a terrible story and a terrible trend. Tim, thanks for joining us. - Thanks for having me. (upbeat music) - 8,000 pages of newly obtained communications suggest that billionaire political donor George Soros wields significant influence over local prosecutors. Soros-funded prosecutors have jurisdiction over one in three Americans. - The Media Research Center spent a year investigating the relationship between George Soros and his son, Alex, and the more than 125 prosecutors they've helped put into office. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiac is with us to discuss the findings. - Hey Luke, so what did this report find? - Hi, John. The Sorosists have spent more than $117 million since 2016 to reshape America's justice system. The idea was that not many people pay attention to these district attorney elections, but they're actually pretty important. What if you flooded them with the amount of money usually reserved for high-profile races like Congress? The goal was to install a new breed of prosecutor who was not just liberal, but quote, progressive. That meant they pledged not to enforce laws that they felt didn't advance social justice. Installing a few of these is a lot easier than influencing state legislators to actually change the laws. A couple of the high-profile DAs on the list include Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA who indicted Trump, and Chesaboo Dean who was recalled after overseeing a crime wave in San Francisco. - Right, and this new report says there are far more of these Soros-funded DAs than most people will realize, correct? - That's right, and that's been accomplished by spending a lot of money in areas that most people didn't even notice. Where I live here in suburban Virginia, Soros spent $850,000 promoting a Democrat prosecutor in Loudon County when historically the whole race cost typically about $150,000. She won by 1% and replaced a Republican. In Fairfax County, Soros spent the money on the Democrat primary, which is an even more obscure affair. A radical knocked off the incumbent Democrat also by 1%. - Is it fair to say that all that money in the end has cited these elections that without Soros money, these people would not be in office? - Oh, for sure. And it's not even a donation to the campaign. Soros groups are literally producing the ads and the other voter outreach themselves. They're in the driver's seat. But what's new here is that it turns out that after they take office, they're still taking direction from Soros, particularly through a group called Fair and Just Prosecution or FJP. FJP had more than 50 meetings with these prosecutors, some of which were called mandatory. It placed staff in their offices. It had them sign pledges that obligated them not to enforce certain laws. It ghost wrote op-eds for them. Some of these DEA offices were in contact with FJP on a near-daily basis. The group even hired political consultants to figure out how to spin the decision not to prosecute low-level crimes. They told them to call it quote, "reprioritizing resources to solve more murders." It flew them to Germany so that they could learn from that country, which has Orwellian laws restricting offensive speech. So this group is extremely hands-on. - That very much so. In internal communications, FJP was open about its goals. Prosecutors should be lax when it comes to prosecuting violent and property crimes, but draconian when it comes to prosecuting police and extremists. It sent out celebratory emails whenever a police officer was indicted. And it had Los Angeles, DA, George Gascon, trained Soros's other prosecutors about how to go after police. Gascon's deputy was later indicted for allegedly breaking the law to dig up dirt on cops. - So basically, if you're a Soros prosecutor, you get all these resources to help you stay in office, but they also sort of direct what you do while you're in it. - Yeah, and it's not just a carrot, but a stick. Once Soros's prosecutor in Texas started to second guess the progressive policies after struggling with rise in crime, the machine immediately turned against her and dumped a bunch of money into a primary to replace her with somebody new. - Wow. Now, obviously lawmakers are supposed to make the laws and prosecutors are just supposed to enforce them. Can these individuals really have this much influence? Can they just rewrite and nullify laws they don't like? - Well, in the past, prosecutors of both parties cared enough about the separation of powers not to do that, even if they disagreed with the laws. But how do you punish people who are in charge of punishing others? Some states like Florida do have that ability. Governor Ron DeSantis removed the local DA and others like Georgia are making moves in that direction. - Well, it's a fascinating strategic play on Soros part that's clearly having a massive impact on millions of people at this point. Luke, thanks for reporting. - Any time. - Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know. (upbeat music) (clicking)
Cable news ratings show several legacy media networks losing viewers, Kamala Harris attempts to rebrand as tough on border security, and a new report shows just how deep George Soros’ influence over district attorneys goes. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.
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