Transcript of Actress Dies at 36 & The War On Drugs Escalates

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President Trump pushes back on media narratives about U.S. foreign policy moves and lays out key priorities.

Is the U.S. shifting its policy on North Korea? And will U.S. troops begin carrying out operations on land against traffickers in Latin America?

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. It's Tuesday, August 18th, and this is Morning Wire.

More details emerge surrounding the shocking death of young actress Hayden Panettiere.

I felt like I was walking blind and there was nobody there that was really able to support me in the way that I needed to be supported.

And a pivotal week in the disturbing Lindsay Clancy trial.

She can be in and out of psychosis, but she did murder 3 children. The courts do not ever have to allow her to leave. Out of the mental health facility.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned, we have the news you need to know.

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President Trump held an at times contentious press conference in the Oval Office yesterday in which he addressed various foreign policy concerns.

Joining us now is our White House correspondent Mary Margaret O'Leary. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

So the president addressed a lot yesterday, but perhaps most importantly, he was asked about several theaters of geopolitical tension. Uh, first, what did we hear from the president on where things stand in the conflict with Iran?

So yes, the president addressed a lot of the drama that's been going on with Iran, with Gaza, with Jared Kushner. He specifically talked about how Jared Kushner held these direct, high-stakes diplomatic talks in Egypt with Hamas leadership before he went to Jerusalem for hours of negotiations with Netanyahu. Uh, the central roadblock here is this dispute over timing. Israel wants Hamas to fully disarm before troops withdraw, while Hamas insists on an Israeli military exit before they lay down any arms. And Trump has expressed a lot of frustration with the stalled timeline, uh, while he's backed Kushner's push to see this measurable disarmament progress within 30 to 90 days. But Kushner's really made it clear that, uh, the international funding for rebuilding Gaza will remain strictly blocked until Hamas is completely disarmed. Now, no final deal has been signed, but negotiators have agreed to establish working groups on disarmament oversight and public health logistics. So that's kind of where we're at right now.

So there was a sense that there was progress from these meetings?

Yeah, I think you could say that there's a little bit of progress, but you know, as we have seen over and over and over with these situations, uh, there's a lot of details, a lot of haggling, and, uh, slow, slow progress over the course of a period of time.

Now, there's also been a shift in the U.S. military's plans for exercises with South Korea. So what did we learn about that?

Yeah, so the president announced in a Truth Social post on Monday that, uh, he is not happy with South Korea. He worded it in kind of an amusing, uh, Truth Social post where he talked about how he wants to substantially reduce joint military exercises with South Korea. And that came less than 24 hours before, uh, the Ulchi Freedom Shield war games were set to begin. So he revealed this move after South Korea refused a recent U.S. request to participate in efforts aimed at denuclearizing Iran. And he had argued that the large-scale joint military drills send an unnecessarily hostile signal to Kim Jong-un while he attempts to kind of have this peaceful, happy relationship with Kim Jong-un. So high operational costs were part of the reason that he said he doesn't want to do this. And South Korean officials were kind of left working out how to scale down the exercise footprint while they're preserving their essential readiness training. So it's an interesting situation, and the president made no bones about the fact that he's doing this because essentially he's angry with South Korea for not helping with Iran.

All right, so a bit of punishment there in that decision. Uh, we also want to ask you about news regarding the Trump administration's plans for military action in Latin America. They're saying they've struck agreements with several countries to conduct operations on their soil, so on land, against drug traffickers. How big a step is this and what more do we know about these plans?

Well, it's a pretty big step. I mean, this sort of stemmed from Pete Hegseth's trip to Panama. What we learned was that Pete Hegseth, he had chaired the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition and observed some joint jungle training exercises. And while he was there, he announced that the US intended to bring the same kind of target and strike tactics used in maritime operations onto foreign land. So this caused quite a stir. Now, Trump announced that we had signed this regional security pact with 12 Latin American nations forming the Shield of the Americas coalition to launch ground-based military operations against drug cartels. Obviously, we know this has been a massive initiative in the United States to target these drug cartels. Uh, we've seen that happen in the water, and now apparently it's going to happen on land. So we'll be moving U.S. combat troops onto foreign land, and that marks a huge step up from traditional kind of sea and air efforts that we've already done. Uh, the White House says it secured these agreements with regional partners like Ecuador, Colombia, and Honduras, but not everyone is on board. Guatemala's leadership has publicly pushed back. They're saying that foreign ground strikes are illegal without explicit legislative approval.

And the Trump administration, for their part, they're designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and they've already done this to establish an international self-defense legal basis for these strikes. So a big deal and definitely something that the legacy media is going to have so many questions about. Of course, we will too. But a massive step in this fight against the cartels.

Lots to keep you busy in the coming weeks and months. Mary Margaret, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

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More details have come to light after A-list actress Hayden Panettiere died Sunday at just 36 years old.

Joining us now with more is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. So Megan, police are saying they found no immediate evidence of foul play, but of course we have seen some speculation based on these early reports. Can you walk us through the facts that we've learned so far?

Yeah, Georgia, Panettiere leaves quite a legacy in Hollywood, and she was still acting, but over the years she had started to talk about some struggles that she had had with her mental health and, uh, drug and alcohol abuse. And so there's a lot of speculation right now about whether those issues may have played a role in her death. Um, what officials are telling us right now is that first responders were dispatched to her residence just before 2 PM on Sunday afternoon, and they found her in a state of cardiac arrest. They administered CPR and other life-saving measures, but it was too late, and she was pronounced dead, unfortunately, only a few minutes after that. And that dispatch audio does include a reference to possible overdose, but it is likely going to be a couple of months before we have any certainty about her cause of death. One thing we do know is that the coroner did say that right now the autopsy did not show any signs of trauma, and the police say that their preliminary investigation revealed no suspicious circumstances. But some neighbors have said that the apartment that she was discovered in was a temporary Airbnb rental.

Now, what about the neighbor who spoke to Page Six about what she witnessed and/or heard, uh, coming from that apartment, and then also about her on-again off-again boyfriend who may have been traveling with her on that day or the day before.

Yeah, so a tenant at Panettiere's complex told Page Six that she was shocked to even learn that the actress was there because she had said, I'm not even sure she ever left her apartment. I never saw her. Now, that boyfriend in question is Brian Hickerson. He is an aspiring actor. He was from South Carolina himself, and their relationship began around 2018, and I think you could call it turbulent, to say the least. So in 2019, he faced a felony domestic violence charge that was later dismissed. In 2020, he was accused of punching her in the face, and in 2021, he pleaded no contest to two different felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend, and he was then sentenced to 45 days in jail as well as, um, some domestic abuse classes. Now, Panettiere did detail his abuse in her memoir that she released just a couple of months ago, and in that, she claimed that he slammed her head into a wall and that he beat her face so badly that she couldn't leave her house for weeks. And it's worth pointing out that Hickerson has since publicly acknowledged that he did abuse her.

Now, flight records place them traveling together from Los Angeles to South Carolina only the day before her death. So even though police have emphasized that they don't believe that foul play was involved here, that has raised some really serious questions about how little support Panettiere may have had at the time of her death and who was present with Well, and it wasn't just that boyfriend.

Immediately after the news of her death hit the media, people were also bringing up some allegations she'd made about being abused in Hollywood. The boat story was particularly shocking. Can you share that?

Yeah, Georgia, I think this tragedy is once again spotlighting how many girls and women in Hollywood have said they have been abused at the hands of predatory men. And that story in particular is getting a lot of attention right now. Just a couple of months ago, the actress told Jay Shetty that she was, when she was only 18 years old, tricked by an older woman that she trusted onto a yacht of an unnamed famous singer in his 30s.

It was this very small room, and she physically put me in the bed next to this, this undressed man who was very famous. I was like, this is not happening. But I had nowhere to hide. And I bolted. There was no jumping off and swimming away.

So I think these incidents are likely to come in for a lot more scrutiny as this story unfolds.

Oh, it's such a tragedy, and people want to see justice for her. I'd love to see those individuals named personally. Megan, thanks for reporting.

Yes, my pleasure.

This week marks a pivotal moment in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial in Massachusetts. The mother is accused of killing her 3 children by strangulation before attempting to take her own life back in 2020. She has pleaded not guilty.

Daily Wire host of That's So Criminal, Lyndon Blake, joins us now with where the trial stands now as the fourth week is underway. So, Lyndon, we haven't covered this case extensively. Can you just go over the basics for our audience?

Yeah, well, this trial is leading every news cycle because it's the unimaginable. You have a mother who has a defense team claiming postpartum psychosis. They are saying she was not in her right state of mind when these killings happened, that she was hearing these voices that were telling her to kill her children before she killed herself. And then you have the prosecution saying that there was premeditation, there was intent, that she sent her husband to run errands to get him out of the house so she could kill the children, and that she was aware that day. She had the, the brain, you know, capacity there to go through, organize, and really take out her 3 children in such a gruesome way. And that's what this week is all about— them trying to prove that despite other doctors saying that Lindsay showed no signs of psychosis, that they failed her, that they did not diagnose her. Like, clearly there were signs of psychosis. And you had the prosecution interview her doctors, her medical providers, and that's when we got to see that long list of medications last week— 13 medications, 5 of them antidepressants that she was on.

It's one of those things where you have to wonder What were the doctors not doing? They weren't communicating. We know a lot of these appointments were on Zoom, and it just seems like no one had the full picture of what was going on in Lindsay Clancy's mind. Now, I will say that she admitted to the killings. She said, 'I did it. I killed my 3 children.' But the defense is saying she should not be held criminally responsible for those killings.

Now, we got some very powerful testimony from her mother and her sister, some insight into her mental state. What did they say.

Yeah, so this was powerful. Her mom went on to say she remembers a text that Lindsay sent her that said, 'I'm really sick. I started taking the medicine the doctor prescribed for anxiety, and I think it's made things worse.' Her sister took the stand following the mother and said that by Thanksgiving of 2022, Lindsay was really off physically and mentally. She wasn't even looking well at the time. She was calling the suicide hotline some days. There was a, a time where she tried to check herself into a psychiatric hospital. They dismissed her shortly after. I mean, there were signs there, and of course that's what the defense is trying to place together and where the gap was. When her mom was on the stand, she was able to testify that she remembered the day that Lindsay came to her and Patrick, Lindsay's husband at the time, and Lindsay said she was scared she was going to harm the children. This was not too much before the tragedy took place.

As you said, postpartum psychosis is a major part of the defense here. How are health and legal experts responding to that.

Dr.

Sunny Slaughter is someone I talked to on Monday. She's this legal analyst who's following this case closely. She says, look, it's hard to prove a mental state. Everyone knows that it's hard to prove that. But the amount of evidence showing Lindsay wasn't okay and that she was taking steps to seek help leading up to the killings is going to be heavily factored in, in this trial. And it's been heavily debated whether psychosis played a role in this this. And Dr. Slaughter made the good point that for those online saying that Lindsay, if she's not found criminally responsible, will be able to walk free soon enough, she's saying that's just simply not true.

Well, if you have a new mom who's verbalizing that she's afraid she's going to hurt her kids, that is a huge red flag, a huge red flag that was missed. Linden, thanks for reporting.

Thanks, of course. And we're going to have the full interview with Dr. Slaughter on That's So Criminal dropping today, so be sure to check that out.

Thanks for waking up with us. The reporting that fuels this show is only possible because you tune in every day and because of our Daily Wire subscribers.

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What if a few minutes with God could change the direction of your entire day? With pray.com, you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories, and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the pray.com app today.