Transcript of Trump Pressures Tehran & Economy Gains Momentum | 1.14.26

President Trump calls off all meetings with Iran, telling anti-regime protesters to take over and that help is on the way.

Save the name of the killers and the abusers that are abusing you because they'll pay a very big price.

I'm Georgia Howe. Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley is off today. It's Wednesday, January 14th, and this is Morning Wire. Amid the administration's focus on affordability, inflation holds steady, something the White House says is not by accident.

Productivity is soaring. Investment is booming. Incomes are rising. Inflation is defeated. America is respected again like never before.

And as another shutdown deadline approaches, Congress workshops a funding package that would keep the lights on until October.

In this current round of appropriations, We have been very strong on the fact that this whole bridge to nowhere type funding has to end.

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President Trump put Iran on notice on Tuesday, cutting off discussions with Iranian leaders and telling protesters, help is on the way. Daily Wire reporter, Tim pierce, is here to talk about the latest in Iran. So, Tim, first What talks did President Trump cancel and what's his strategy?

Yeah, apparently all of them. The President appears to be through with negotiations, at least as long as Iran is cracking down on protesters. Trump posted on True Social yesterday that the killers and abusers in Iran will pay a big price. He said he has canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the killing stops, and he urged protesters to take over institutions while suggesting that help will come soon. He talked about that post yesterday afternoon in Michigan.

You said to Iran this morning that help is on the way for protesters. What did you mean by that? What help?

You're going to have to figure that one out. I'm sorry.

He also recommended that any Americans currently in Iran should probably leave now. That followed a government alert sent out Monday that advised US citizens should expect continued Internet outages, plan alternative means of communication, and if safe to do so, consider departing Iran by land to Armenia or Turkey.

Now, we're seeing a lot of mixed reporting on what's actually happening on ground in Iran. What do we know for sure?

Yeah, the Internet blackout over Iran has made it very difficult to get news from the ground. One of the big questions is the number of people killed by Iranian forces over these protests. The number there seems to be more people have been killed during this round of protests than probably any other in recent years. The US-based human rights activist news agency estimates that 1,800 people have been killed, which already is a huge number, but that's on the low end, actually, of the estimates. The Saudi funded outlet, Iran International, estimates a much higher death toll at around 12,000. And thousands more Iranians have been arrested, and punishments are already being carried out for those. Reports say that 26-year-old Irfan Sultani is expected to be hung today after the government found him guilty of, Waging war on God.

Now, President Trump said, Help is on the way. Do we have any sense of what he's planning?

Reports have said that the President has been given a range of options, from military strikes to cyber and psychological attacks. He's already placed new economic pressures on Iran. He did that on Monday and said that any nation that conducts business with Iran will be subject to a 25% tariff on all business with the United States. But the administration has been pretty tight-lipped about what other action the President wants to take. Now, some have pointed out that the US doesn't actually have an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East right now, which would suggest a military response is less likely. But Senator Tom Cotton, the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told you here at Monday the US military shouldn't be underestimated here.

I think it's fair to say after Operation Midnight Hammer last June that blew up Iran's nuclear facilities and the operation to apprehend Nikolaus Maduro, that the United States military has amazing capabilities that never puts any operation outside of its grasp, no matter where this or that military asset may be located on the globe.

Caden also said that the Iranian regime seems weaker now than at any time since it took control in 1979. And that sentiment has spread. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz the other day actually became the first world leader to predict that the regime will fall soon. He told reporters, I assume that we are now witnessing the final days and weeks of this regime.

Well, we could be watching history right now. Tim, thanks for reporting.

Good to be on.

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The latest Labor Department report showed Tuesday that inflation continues to cool, once again defying expert predictions. Daily Wire senior editor, Kabbit Phillips, has the details. Kabbit, you've been digging into these numbers. What did you find?

Well, put simply, we learned that inflation remains low. On Tuesday, the labor department released their highly anticipated CPI report for the month of December, and it showed inflation sitting at 2. 7% that is tied for the lowest mark we've seen since March of 2021. Now, that still means prices have gone up a bit compared to the same month last year. But more broadly, the pace of inflation has now fallen dramatically. Remember, we were dealing with 9% at its peak in 2021, and across Joe Biden's four years in office, the average inflation number was about 5%. So relatively speaking, 2. 7% is a welcome respite. It's worth noting this latest report once again surprised experts who had projected a slightly higher number. I know some of our listeners might accuse me of sounding like a broken record because they've heard me say that plenty of times before. The experts were wrong. But that is the reality. Month after month after month, inflation has come in lower than expected, again defying expert predictions and thrilling the White House. For his part, President Trump celebrated the news Tuesday, saying it was further proof that Fed Chair Jerome Powell should lower interest rates.

The inflation numbers just came out and we have very low inflation, so that would give Tulane Powell the chance to give us a nice, beautiful big rate cut, which would be great.

For more context, I spoke with E. J. And Tony, the Chief Economist for the Heritage Foundation. He said that he believes the Labor Department is not accurately measuring a few inflation indicators and that the true inflation numbers are even lower.

I think overall, these are very good numbers. We've seen them come down, obviously, significantly from where they were under Biden. But we also have to remember that there's a huge lag in some of the components that are contributing the biggest increases in this index. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is not accurately capturing many markets in the country where rents are declining right now. Instead, the indexes are still rising. So inflation is most likely even cooler than these prints are suggesting.

Now, like you mentioned, there's been lots of predictions that the tariffs would cause inflation to go crazy, but that hasn't happened. What can we glean about the impact of the tariffs from these numbers?

Yeah, I remember last year when Trump launched his Liberation Day tariffs, most economists, as you mentioned, predicted consumers would be hit the hardest as businesses would be forced to raise prices to compensate for the tariffs, and then inflation would in turn go up. But each month, the data shows that's just not happening. President Trump spoke at the Detroit Economic Club yesterday, and it really drove home that point.

Every prediction the critics made about our tariff policy has failed to materialize. The evidence shows overwhelmingly that the tariffs are not paid by American consumers, that they're paid by foreign nations and middlemen. Once again, the so-called experts were 100% wrong, and Trump was right.

I He did ask Anthony for his take on that aspect, and he elaborated on who exactly is footing the bill for these tariffs and how the Trump administration is working to make sure that it's not consumers.

The vast majority of the tariffs have not been passed on to consumers. That's due to a couple of different factors. One is the fact that the administration is simply refining the tariff strategy. When they find markets like bananas or coffee where the costs are likely to be passed on to consumers, the administration has rolled back those tariffs to make sure that consumers in America aren't paying the cost. But when you have cases where middlemen or foreign exporters are going to bear the brunt of that tariff, the administration is leaving those in place or in some cases, ramping them up. That has resulted in revenue coming into the treasury with minimal costs being passed on to consumers.

Now, it's worth noting, all that good news on the economy doesn't really mean much if folks don't feel tangible relief for themselves. The latest polling from Marist shows that 61% of Americans still feel the economy is, quote, not working well for them. So Trump still faces an uphill battle to shift that perception and convince Americans that the economy is on the right track.

Well, and all of it could get blown up if his tariff don't prevail in court this week. Kabbit, thanks for reporting. Absolutely. The House is set to take up a two-bill funding package this week after the Senate advanced it, and now they're facing an end-of-month shutdown deadline. The bipartisan legislation would fully fund agencies like the State and Treasury Departments, the IRS, and the federal courts, but it currently omits funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Joining us to discuss is Minnesota congressman Brad Finstad. Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Now, we have this funding package. The Appropriations Committee just released the full text of it. What are the top policy priorities that are in this, and how does it differ from the administration's original proposal?

For the first time in many years, we're getting back to what we in Congress call regular order. The appropriations bills that we have in front of us this week are a reflection of our intent in Congress to reduce spending, to try to get some fiscal sanity back. We know there's a lot of work to be done, but we're looking at a 16% decrease in funding, and it's an opportunity for us to rightsize government and really get to some of the things that are really frustrating to the average everyday Americans. That is, how do we have a government that has fraud at every corner? How can we get a handle again on our spending in Congress? We're looking forward to passing these bills one at a time through Congress in the next couple of weeks here.

Now, you mentioned avoiding fraud. That's obviously top of mind for a lot of Americans right now. Are there specific provisions or guardrails in place in this current legislation to prevent the funds in this package from being routed towards fraud or misuse?

Yeah. A couple of the specific packages call for a defunding of the USAID programs that we saw an enormous amount of fraud, an enormous amount of mismanagement, lack of audits. We've also seen a lot of just asking for additional reporting. A lot of these funds are federally funded. The taxpayers of our nation are funding these programs, but then they're administered by the states or by NGOs. What we're saying is no longer will you have free reign to take our federal tax dollars and run willy-nilly with it. We're going to ask for some reports. We're going to ask for data. If you can't provide that, you're not going to get the fund. A lot of those pieces of teeth, I would say, are put into these bills that make it a lot more clear to be able to follow these dollars. To ultimately go to where I think most Americans would say, if our neighbors are in need, we would give the shirt off our back to help our neighbors in need. But if it's going to be mismanaged, misused, if it's wide open for fraud, the money train has to end.

Now, there have been a few reports that Homeland Security Funding was dropped from this package. Why was it cut?

I think what we've seen in the last couple of days, we've seen more uneasiness from the Democrats and Congress that we're negotiating that. There is political pressure from the extreme left to not take law enforcement serious and to actually defund or reduce funding for critical things like our border security agents or homeland security. I think it's the worst of politics, and they're using this last minute ditch to try to derail that process. But hopefully calm, cool heads will prevail, and we'll have an opportunity to negotiate that in the days ahead.

Now, speaking of Homeland Security, you represent a district in Minnesota. There's a lot going on in Minnesota right now. What's your take on ICE's presence there? And then more importantly, what are you from your constituents about what's happening.

Yeah. So this was brought on to Minnesota by the complete mismanagement of Governor Tim Walls, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and the mismanagement by the Democrats in our state legislature. They've opened the door wide open for very liberal fraud ridden policies, whether it is free college tuition for illegals, whether it's driver's license for illegals, sanctuary cities. And lo and behold, now we have people that are put in jail. We have about 80 people put in jail for extreme fraud. We have up to $9 billion of fraud that has happened. And so the federal government is saying, Listen, something is not going right in Minnesota. We need to go in and make sure that this has ended. It has made for some uneasy times. Minnesota prides ourselves on being Minnesota nice. We are the land of 10,000 Lakes, and now we wake up every day to the land of 10,000 fraud stories. There's a need for sanity. There's a need for calm, cool heads to prevail. But ultimately, we can't continue down this path. The taxpayers of our state and our country have been fleeced long enough.

All right. Well, congressman, thank you so much for coming on.

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Georgia.

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