Transcript of Inside the UFC Terror Plot & The Iran Deal's 60-Day Clock | 6.19.26

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The new 60-day window to negotiate a peace deal begins and VP Vance says it all It all comes down to Iran's actions, not words.

It's going to be a holistic approach where we look at their behavior. Are they funding terrorism? Are they leading to attacks of other people? Are they trying to get centrifuges to redevelop their nuclear weapons program?

I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howell. It's Friday, June 19th. This is Morning Wire.

More details come to light about the terror plot targeting the White House UFC event. Suspected ringleader here was actually a DACA recipient and a Mexican illegal immigrant who overstayed his visitor visa by more than two decades.

And we talked to Senator Josh Hawley about his demands of Major League Baseball after the targeting of Christian players.

They need to knock it off. I mean, they need to quit persecuting these players. They need to apologize to these players, and they need to stop it.

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

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The 60-day window for negotiations is officially open, and the White House has ratcheted up its defense of the Iran deal, including Vice President J.D. Vance holding court in a press briefing to help quell concerns.

Joining us now to discuss is Ben Domenech, Daily Wire opinion editor and host of The Big Ben Show. Ben, 2 days in a row, we're on a roll.

Yeah, it's great to be with you as always.

So the Iran deal continues to dominate the headlines. We wanted to start off specifically asking you about the JD Vance angle. He's really taken a central role in messaging on Iran, including the press briefing yesterday. Uh, first, what did we hear from him?

Look, I think JD Vance has made himself, uh, quite available to the press, uh, in the past, uh, week plus because he's been on this book tour. And, uh, the fact that it's coincident with this Iran deal being announced, this, um, memorandum of understanding, uh, is something that has led to him basically becoming the public face defending this. Whether that's something that he chose to do or not, he's leaned into it and he certainly has, you know, performed, I think, you know, admirably, you know, from the perspective of the White House and the president in fending off a lot of the different critiques that have been laid against this deal, both by Republicans in Congress and by people outside who are concerned that it includes a number of different aspects that could end up with Iran benefiting significantly despite the fact that their military has been largely destroyed. Destroyed.

Right. And what is the defense now that we're hearing? We— you talked yesterday about how the Trump administration is basically asking us to trust them in this 60-day process. Did we hear anything new from Vance yesterday?

What Vance said is that essentially this MOU has a number of different things that aren't in it that they're trusting the Iranians to live up to. He referred to it as a gentleman's agreement. That's, uh, something that I think will, will probably ring a note of a little bit of skepticism in people's ears because it's the same phrase that was used during the Obama years about their deal with Iran. And I think that, you know, the fact is that the critics of this deal will basically say the Iranians can't be trusted. In fact, there's also emerging skepticism just given the backlash from Republicans on Capitol Hill. We saw Roger Wicker, the powerful chair of the Armed Services Committee, we saw Joni Ernst, we saw others today coming out and expressing their skepticism about this $300 billion fund, uh, which of course does not include taxpayer money from the United States but could include a lot of other investment back into Iran, that that go to doing the same kinds of things that they've done in the past. The ayatollah's grocery list doesn't exactly change. He can just Instacart a number of missiles again. And of course, you know, fund the kind of terror groups that they have in the past.

The vice president responded to our own Mary Margaret O'Hanlon by saying that there were red lines that if the Iranians crossed, you know, would lead to them reacting and bombing them again. The president has said as much as well. And I think that there are a lot of people in Washington who think it's inevitable that those lines will be crossed just given the Iranians' his past behavior.

The formal signing of the deal was supposed to be today. Trump abruptly canceled that, signed it himself on Wednesday. We didn't ask you this at the time, but should we read into that at all, or is that just about getting to the next round of negotiations quickly?

I think it's about getting to the next round. I also think, though, that the fact that the Europeans gave him such a warm welcome at the G7 and the fact that so many of them are backing this deal, especially the French, that led him to, I think, want to do it as quickly as possible. Also, the delay, it seems, at least according to the vice president, was somewhat artificial, and they don't really understand necessarily why the Iranians weren't willing to publicize the text earlier in the week. That's something that, you know, the White House basically says, you know, is the clock is ticking now. They say that the 60-day portion of the MOU is starting now. That's, of course, a negotiation period. But again, I just have to express the mood in Washington today is increasingly skeptical that we're going to see much of what's in this document actually come into play. And that in fact, it's really just punting on a number of the biggest questions involved.

Final question, what is next for the negotiators? What should we expect this process to look like?

Well, I think that you're already seeing the oil flowing and you're going to see additional meetings that are followed up likely with Vance in the lead, though Steve Witkoff, of course, and Jared Kushner have also been deployed in the past. And I think that the Iranians will basically come back to the table and demand certain things. The United States will probably balk and say, you haven't lived up to the very things we've demanded of you yet, and we'll go right back to this tit for tat. And then we'll have to see what the Iranians do in the meantime. They've been loath to stop funding terror in the past. They've been loath to stop firing off missiles and attacks on other nations around them. We'll see if they can keep their powder dry.

And hanging over all of this is Trump's threat to just start dropping bombs again. We'll see if it ever comes to that again. Ben, thanks so much for coming on.

Great to be with you.

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Daily Wire immigration reporter Jenny Ter joins us now to discuss. So Jenny, what do we know now about the main suspect, and what was his role in spearheading all of this?

Federal authorities have come out and said that 31-year-old Abraham Alvarez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was apparently the ringleader of this whole plot. He came to the US on a visitor visa as a tourist in 2001, according to the Department of Homeland Security, and then he never left. Now, the Obama administration eventually gave him DACA status, so he was able to stay in the United States through that. The Trump administration is calling him out again as an illegal immigrant and is really laying down the hammer on him. Authorities arrested him on June 14th in Nebraska, just days before this plot was supposed to be carried out. And ICE then lodged a detainer asking those local authorities to hand him over eventually for deportation. Hmm.

Now, what have we learned about the plans that Alvarez had in place? And then also, what have we learned since arresting other suspects?

So there are many charging documents when it comes to this case that give a glimpse into what these individuals were planning. This individual specifically, he was living in Omaha, And he was allegedly recruiting people through group chats on Signal. And these were people across the country. One of them was actually turned in as part of this operation by the federal authorities. He was turned in by his own mother. That's Tyson Proper, a 19-year-old who was living in Ohio. She saw that he was acquiring body armor and ammunition and firearms and talking about certain plans that were very— concerning. They found out through Proper that he was allegedly recruited, uh, initially to an anti-government protest that was happening in DC, and that was through TikTok. And then he started to become active in Signal chats that were actually apparently discussing active plans to carry out an attack at the UFC fight. That's where you have this other individual, the illegal immigrant, who comes in, and he allegedly was discussing pretty detailed plans to carry out this attack. And his role seemed to be a ringleader from those discussions. And a lot of the sentiments expressed in these chats were very anti-Israel and anti-government.

They wanted to attack, uh, high-ranking officials. They wanted to go after people who were funded by AIPAC. Now, the illegal immigrant was apparently arrested in an old church in Nebraska, which he was also trying to make as a fallback location for the group. So he had discussed that in some of those chats.

Now, authorities, of course, intervened just a few days before this event. What do we know now about the terror plot itself that they were hoping to carry out?

Right. So when it comes to what Alvarez was discussing, he was saying that they should go after the president himself, allegedly President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, Elon Musk. But again, discussing all of this on Signal, the chat was named Hunters. He was using the moniker Shepherd. And then again, he was assigning these roles. He was saying who was gonna be the snipers and the drone operators. And he was saying where they would be stationed for drone launch points, for sniper positions across Washington, D.C. And then he was allegedly saying where they should escape once the attack was carried out. So they were saying, you know, "Meet at the Jefferson Memorial. That seems to be the best place to escape all of this and to run from authorities," essentially. The individuals who are accused in this plot, there have been 5 who have been arrested across the country in multiple states, and there have been dozens of others apparently who are tied to this that authorities are still apparently looking at. If these individuals are convicted, they could face up to life in prison and up to a charge of $250,000.

Well, very scary that this stuff is going on on all these chats. Jenny, thanks so much for reporting.

Thank you.

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Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri sent a letter this week to the commissioner of Major League Baseball after the league sent a warning to Christian players who had Bible verses on their mandated Pride Night hats.

The senator joins us now. Senator Hawley, thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

So we've been covering this backlash against the MLB. You sent a strong letter to the commissioner. First, why did you feel compelled to send that letter?

Well, I think it's absolutely outrageous that for years now MLB has forced their players to turn their uniforms into billboards for the most controversial political messaging, endorsing the BLM movement, which is under investigation for fraud, by the way, endorsing the trans movement, trans rights and ideology. And now when a couple of players who are religious believers want to write a Bible verse on their uniforms, they're told, oh, no, no, no, way too controversial. I tell you what it is. It's a violation of the First Amendment. To target religious believers in this way. I think it's probably a violation of their labor contracts. And for a sport that gets billions of dollars in handouts effectively from the federal government because they're exempt from the federal antitrust laws, I think it is a gross abuse of power, and they ought to explain themselves.

Right, those antitrust exemptions is a major element a lot of people have conveniently skipped over here. Uh, what specifically would you like to see the MLB do? And if they don't, what have you threatened to do here?

Well, number one, they need to knock it off. I mean, they need to quit persecuting these players. They need to apologize to these players, and they need to stop it. Number two, they need to respond to me and tell the country why it is they think they have grounds to do this. I want to see all of the rules that have governed all of their political messaging for the last 6 years, where they've been forcing players to adopt and espouse explicitly political messages. I want to know all of the rules that have governed that. I want to know what the rules are now that they say prevent Bible verses, for heaven's sake, from being quoted. And I want to know why they think that they can use their federal antitrust exemption in this way. And I can tell you, if I don't get answers and if the commissioner goes forward with disciplining, so-called, and fining these players, I'm going to ask him to come to Congress, take an oath, and explain himself to the country.

Do you see this Pride Night warning as an isolated incident when it comes to, uh, other sports organizations? Is the MLB particularly bad about this, or is this a trend elsewhere?

Well, it seems like they're particularly bad about targeting people of faith. This isn't the only team that has done this. The Washington Nationals got caught excluding a Catholic player for being too Catholic, for being too Christian, deliberately excluding him from promotional materials. I mean, this seems to be a problem at the management level in baseball. I say again, it probably violates the labor contract they have with the players. I think it certainly violates the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. And they need to quit it. They need to quit using the power that the federal government has effectively given them. In order to persecute people of faith, who by the way make up, I would suspect, most of their fan base. You talk about being out of step with your fans. They need to stop this.

Before I let you go, we reported in the first segment on the Iran deal. There's been, you know, reportedly some tensions between President Trump and Senate Republicans. What have you seen on that front, and what's the mood among your colleagues now that this, this deal is signed?

Oh, I don't know about that. I mean, listen, there's always back and forth between the White House and Congress. That's nothing new. As to the deal itself, I think it's good gas prices are coming down. It's a very important— it's important in my state. I hope fertilizer prices and other prices across the board will soon follow. I think it's good the straits open. I can tell you I would not want to give any money to Iran. I wouldn't want to give any money to them for terrorism or frankly any other purpose. So I hope we don't do any of that.

Indeed. Senator, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

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