Transcript of Trump Signs Iran Deal, Rape Gang Report Shakes UK & MLB Faces Backlash | 6.18.26

Sehr gut, sehr gut, sehr gut! Sehr gut? WISO Steuer ist sehr gut! Das sagen ganz viele. Cool!

Wer sagt das?

Stiftung Warentest, Computerbild, Focus Money, Chip, Finanztipp. Such dir was aus. Mega! Aber das ist doch bestimmt kompliziert.

Nö!

Einfach Foto von der Lohnsteuerbescheinigung machen und fertig.

Klingt sehr gut.

Ist sehr gut.

Hol dir dein Geld zurück mit WISO Steuer.

Mounting criticism from Republicans.

Sign the deal. It's signing. Keep your shot.

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, June 18th, and this is Morning Wire.

A shocking new report on Muslim grooming gangs shakes the UK and prompts the reopening of investigations.

The National Crime Agency is ordering police forces across the country to reopen their grooming gang investigations.

And Major League Baseball backpedals after targeting Christian players over Pride Night.

Senator Josh Hawley writing MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, quote, you must answer for what appears to be a pattern of discrimination within MLB against baseball players who profess their Christian faith.

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In a surprise move, President Trump signed the Iran deal Wednesday night at the palace in Versailles and canceled the ceremony planned for Friday. The Iranian president also signed the agreement. This comes amid backlash from a growing number of Republicans after the text of the original memorandum of understanding was released.

Joining us to discuss the latest on the deal and the White House defense of it is Ben Domenech, Daily Wire opinion editor and host of The Big Ben Show. Ben, great to have you on again.

Great to be with you.

So we have this memorandum of understanding now. Uh, let's start with the president's remarks at the G7 summit in defense of this deal. It's garnered a lot of attention. Uh, what did we hear from him?

Well, one of the things that, uh, was primarily heard was his defense of this as an economic action. He want— he basically described this as something that was designed to prevent global economic collapse, you know, a number of different negative effects that would roll out of the continued control that Iran has over the Strait of Hormuz, and his wanting to avoid that. He also admitted to some concessions that were continued within this memorandum that's have surprised a lot of his supporters. And quite frankly, I think a lot of people interpreted Marco Rubio's stone-faced attitude standing next to the president, uh, as being an indication that, uh, it's one that is not going over well with the hawkish community and Republicans. That's definitely the truth on Capitol Hill. I think though, the other aspect of this that seemed to be a little bit surprising is when Peter Doocy from Fox confronted him, uh, on some of the things that he'd said in the past about sending money to Iran, uh, under the Obama administration. You know, his, his response was something like this was different and that there were more guarantees. Those are not necessarily found in that memorandum.

It's going to be something that would have to be negotiated over the coming 60 days. And I don't think that there's a lot of confidence or trust for the Iranians that that's going to be something the president can achieve.

Right.

The president asking for a lot of trust, too, from his supporters. We do have the details from this memorandum now. Are the criticisms from Republicans fair?

Certainly, I think the criticisms that are coming from those America First type Republicans, again, these are people who have been emphatic supporters of the president, and you know, you could probably guess their names. And I think that the issue here now is that a lot of them feel like this deal is not a significant improvement from the way things were before and could actually turn out to be worse in terms of the amount of money that is going to be unfrozen and sent to the ayatollah and to the Iranian regime. Their attitude is that, that, you know, this is a deal that should have been run by them first, that should have gotten their their feedback. The president has a contentious relationship with the Senate right now, and I think that's a big part of why Republican senators are frustrated with this situation. But the truth is that they would probably have objected to what's in this deal anyway, regardless of if they were spun on it beforehand. Uh, I just spoke to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and he had seen the public reports of the MOU, and they were the first time that he had seen it, you know, publicly reported.

That's not the way that you normally do business when you're looking into your allies in the Senate to back up what you're making when you're making a big foreign policy decision.

What concerns did Cruz and some other senators— what are they raising specifically about the terms here?

Well, among the concerns they have, of course, is that, you know, the ballistic missile program is one that is not fully destroyed. And the president seems to be more open to allowing them to retain the ones that they still have. There is, you know, provisions in there about the nuclear program, but it's essentially an agreement to continue to talk about the nuclear program as opposed to any real agreement to have it spun down or shut down. The US commits to getting out of the region. They commit to not, you know, attacking Iran again. And the biggest thing that I've been hearing from Capitol Hill, including from Senator Cruz, is concern about the idea that Iran and Oman are going to control the Strait of Hormuz going forward. Something that after 60 days, they say, could lead to them charging tolls or fees. You know, that's the kind of thing that would be unprecedented in terms of the modern era, controlling the seas and the traffic that needs to go through there and being able to profit from it. That's not something we've seen before. And obviously, knowing the Iranian history, we know how they're going to spend that money and it's not going to be on just rebuilding things that don't go boom.

Indeed. Well, Ben, thank you so much for joining us.

Great to be with you.

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A new bombshell report into Britain's grooming gang scandal says the sexual abuse may have affected more than 250,000 victims across at least 149 local authority areas going back decades.

Joining us to discuss the report today is Sammy Woodhouse, a survivor of the UK grooming gang scandal and a leading advocate for victims of child sexual exploitation and the Rape Gang Inquiry lead. Sammy, thank you so much for coming on.

Hi there, thank you for having me.

Now, you personally dealt with this starting at age 14, and a recent report from Restore Britain is now bringing more details to light about this scandal. First, tell us about this new report. What are some of the new key findings?

Well, the report which was published yesterday, for some survivors, it's the very first time that anyone has given them a platform. They're now women. And if you read the report, it just shows how horrific the abuse and the torture is. Now, something else that's different with this report is that we put a very clear focus on the race and religion factor. Now, there has been other reports published, but, you know, they always seem to shy away a little bit more than what we've done. You know, we wanted to be honest, we wanted to be bold, but what the evidence did show is that majority of the victims were white females and majority of the perpetrators were Pakistani Muslim men. You know, what else we discovered is just how badly failed that children were. There was cop nights held, and what that meant was that the police officers would take it in turns to rape the children and then hand them back to their perpetrators. It also shows that this wasn't just about the police and social care. It was about NHS, about education. You know, it's every single service failed the children of the United Kingdom.

Absolutely horrific. So this is only stage 2 of our inquiry. There is stage 3 coming, so Rupert will be naming the professionals and rapists involved in Parliament, and then we will be starting private prosecution. So there's lots more work to do.

Now, how far back was this scandal going on, and how interconnected were these rape gangs? Was there communication between these individuals, or is this spontaneous happening in various places in the country in an uncoordinated way?

Well, we can show it started in the 1950s. However, you know, we do believe that, um, there's cases before that. Now, yes, these gangs, it was, um, you know, operating throughout the United Kingdom. It is a very organized network of crime. And something else that was picked up on was the fact that these perpetrators had friends and family members in very high places. So, for one example, when I was a child, um, I was abducted by Arshad Asim. His relative was a Labor politician called Jahangir Akhtar, and he and a police officer called PC Hassan Ali arranged a no-prosecution deal. Now, what that meant was if he had handed me over at a petrol station, he would not be prosecuted. He's now been in— he's now, sorry, been sentenced to prison for 35 years for that particular crime. But— and that's how I actually exposed the Rotherham child abuse scandal, because I was naming the politicians and professionals involved.

What specific actions are you requesting that the UK government take now?

Well, we first of all want them to take this seriously and start acting, and there's lots of work to be done. There's one thing that I've been asking for for many years, and that is to pardon victims of criminal exploitation. So we wasn't just blamed, but we was also criminalized. So there are lots of victims throughout the country that still have criminal records, and that campaign has been going for many years now. It's known as Sammy's Law. So we're hoping that's gonna come into effect. But also, you know, we want people deported if they're, you know, coming to our country and committing these crimes. Immigration in the UK is a huge, huge problem. But we're asking for changes within policing, within the NHS, within social care, within education, and lots of policies and laws as well that needs to be changed. Now, I personally think we should have the death penalty. We don't have that in our country, but I think when you are committing such horrific crimes, you should face death.

Now, Sammy, to your knowledge, is this still going on? Has it reduced somewhat since there's been more scrutiny over the past few years?

No, it's actually getting worse, and yes, it's definitely still going on. In fact, we was actually contacted as well to a child who was, you know, actively being exploited. Now, she wanted to come to our hearings. We did say no because of her age, but we did speak to her mum, and mum came and gave evidence. But yeah, that was an active case, and it's still very much going on.

All right, well, Sammy, thank you so much for all the work you're doing, and thank you for coming on our show.

Thank you for having me.

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Major League Baseball boasted earlier this week that it had warned a handful of Christian players who had written Bible verses on their baseball caps during a recent Pride Night game. Now the MLB is backpedaling.

Joining us now is our sports reporter, Lyndon Blake. Welcome back to the show, though we miss having you in studio.

I know, guys, I miss you.

So it seems like the MLB is scrambling a bit to make up for its warning to players that it was kind of bragging about earlier in the week. Uh, what is the league saying now?

Yeah, so they didn't get that warm welcome to that warning they sent out to any players that wrote Bible verses on their caps on Monday. So on Tuesday, they did have to backpedal a little bit, and they did release this statement. I'll read it to you guys now. It said To be clear, this routine verbal warning not to wear the hat in future games is not disciplinary and had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the message. They added that we respect players' rights to free expression. However, writing of any kind with any message is prohibited per Major League Baseball's uniform regulations. So that statement is still getting pushback because it's one message versus another. You had the MLB Pride message with the rainbow logos on the team's uniforms, and then you have the players that chose to write a Bible verse on their hat and that be their message— that's the one that's not okay. And this is going beyond sports. This is getting attention of some politicians. You have Senator Josh Hawley, who is from Missouri. He said that Rob Manfred— he actually wrote the commissioner Rob Manfred a note and said if he finds any players for writing Bible verses on Pride uniforms that Senator Hawley will subpoena Manfred to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and examine why the MLB has an antitrust exemption worth billions.

That's a whole nother can of worms. But the point being, these lawmakers are saying no, this is discriminatory against a certain faith and you can't do this.

And to be clear for our listeners, what did the players actually write on their hats?

The players— and I'll name a few of them— for the San Francisco Giants that did this, you had starting pitcher Landon Roop, and he wrote a Bible verse out of Genesis, and the Bible verse was about a rainbow. It was about God's promise and about how when God flooded the earth that he promised to never do that again, and it had the rainbow symbol. Some other players on the team, including the relieving pitcher Sam Henches, that didn't wear a hat at all. He said, I'm not wearing the Pride hat, period. But Landon Roop was the one that got the attention, got out there on the mound with the Genesis Bible verse, and he even said after the game as a believer, that he just wanted to share that. And it didn't mean hate or anything. It wasn't anti-anything. He just wanted to show what the rainbow meant to him.

Yeah. And as he captures there, really, you have compelled speech from the league where you have to wear the pride flag. And so here's a player saying, here's how I interpret this flag. And he's being reprimanded for that. Have we heard anything else from any of the other players?

You know, there was another player from a different team, actually from the Diamondbacks, that defended Landon and Sam and the other San Francisco Giants players.

I think that there's a perceived negativity with this stuff of like, okay, Landon Raup wrote a verse on his hat. That means that he's anti-something. That doesn't mean that, right? It means that he's pro-something, right? So the rainbow means something to him. It means that he believes in the Noahic Covenant being something that's special to us as Christians, right?

These players all have to enter their name into the ring and into this conversation. But you had the Diamondbacks players saying, no, like, I'm going to defend these guys because this isn't right and they should be able to spread a positive message.

All right, so we're hearing from some of the players and even some political leaders. What about fans? How are fans responding to this whole controversy?

What I've seen from fans, and it's mainly in the form of social media replies, the fans were on the player's side. And again, it's no hate to a certain community, it's just saying that you can't force someone that doesn't morally believe in the message that the league wants to send out to support it. Keep it out of sports, period. The Texas Rangers, they didn't have a Pride night. They're having a Faith and Family night. And a lot of fans are starting to see that this has now been forced on us, not just Major League Baseball, but a lot of other sports leagues to represent this cause, to stand for something. And they're saying no, that that's— you cannot force someone to do that.

It seems like there's a lot of solidarity on that message, and it's going to be interesting to see if Senator Hawley's warning ends up having an effect on the league. Lyndon, thank you so much for joining us.

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