U.S. Hits $40 Trillion In Debt & FBI Investigates An Ex-Congressman

Of course, in Europe, Russian, Russian, with the greatest Russian population worldwide.

Many Russian people were waiting for them, with the lack of the refugees and the help of the Russian D.E. The FBI intercepts former congressman Eric Swallwell stepping off an airplane in San Francisco.

“What does this mean for the former Democrat congressman and what did the agents confiscate?”

I'm daily wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Halb. It's Friday, August 21st. This is money wire. The U.S. National debt reaches a staggering milestone, surpassing $40 trillion, almost doubling over two presidential terms.

The fiscal consequences, you know, were ignored, and since then we have not really paid any attention.

And with James Fishback flopping in Florida, are the grippers floundering. We look at the state of play in right-wing politics. The movement that we started here in Tampa, in November, does not end tonight. We merely pick up the pen and write the next chapter.

“Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.”

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Joining us with more is Daily Wire Editor and Chief Brent Schur here in the studio with us great to have you on. Of course. So now your team has been in touch with the administration about this particular case. And there's been a lot that's gone on with Swallwell over the last year, but we've just learned this new information.

“So if you could, can you walk us through what happened over the weekend?”

Yeah, we confirm this with the administration that over the weekend disgraced former congressmen Eric Swallwell was stopped by FBI agents. And he had his personal phone and his laptop confiscated by the agents. He was detained for a brief amount of time. At the same time that this was happening at the San Francisco Airport. The agents were apparently executing a search warrant at Swallwell's DC home. And there they seized additional evidence. So I mean, already a very tough year for Eric Swallwell, but seems like his trouble is just beginning.

And what do we know so far about the investigation and do we know anything about his actual criminal exposure? The Justice Department and FBI have yet to officially comment on the raid or the airport encounter and exactly what it was connected to. Swallwell, of course, has not been charged with any crimes yet. A source, however, told the LA Times that the warrant is connected to a civil rights investigation into those sexual assault allegations that were made against Swallwell and authorities are reportedly considering multiple federal charges against Swallwell.

The Washington Post spoke to one of Swallwell's accusers back from April. And she said that she was also interviewed by the FBI earlier this year. So it's another piece of evidence that kind of ties it to the sexual assault allegations. And there was another woman who says she was contacted by the FBI several times regarding Swallwell.

Swallwell admitted to authorities that they had a physical sexual relationship. So I mean, it's, it's not good for Eric Swallwell.

And this, if you're Swallwell, you're happy that you dropped out of Congress and your governor's campaign back in April, because I mean, it's just crazy to think that just a few months ago, this guy was the front runner to be the Democrat nominee.

“Yeah, to be California's governor. Yeah, really is incredible that he was the front runner like you said, for those who haven't been tracking this, why did he have to drop out in April? What were the allegations?”

Not only was he the front runner, he was still a prominent congressman and he was still a prominent talking head on all of the channels, but back in April, he resigned from Congress after a house ethics probe into misconduct and sexual assault involving employees in his congressional office. So a former staffer told the San Francisco Chronicle that after she was hired back in 2019, she was just 21, Swallwell centered nude photos and messages on Snapchat a few months later, she had drinks with him blacked out and woke up naked in his hotel bed.

In 2024, after she quit working for Swallwell, the two ran into each other at a charity gala after the event they had drinks again, and she says he forced himself on her after she pushed him away and said, no, it wasn't the only staffer, another accuser accused Swallwell of spiking her drink and raping her in a Beverly Hills hotel room. He had swallwell choked her until she lost consciousness. He, of course, completely denied all of these allegations and described it as a political hit job, but it was a big enough hit job that he had to resign and his governor run had no chance, completely plummeted in the polls.

Those are not the first allegations around Swallwell. We had Fang Fang years ago, which clearly the voters have forgiven him for.

“Yeah, and this week, I mean, it came out that he admitted it. Fang Fang was kind of only a thing that existed in conservative media, but like a lot of these things, it turned out to be true.”

And I mean, we're learning a lot about Eric Swallwell. We will see what the FBI learns from all the materials they seized from him, both at the airport and in his office. It's a really stunning sequence of events, and we're going to learn a lot more soon. Brent, thanks so much for coming on. We have caution.

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Meanwhile, the Treasury reported a more than 432 billion dollar deficit in July.

The highest monthly total since March of 2021. It's now on the implications involved in this ballooning national debt as Douglas Holtz Eacon former congressional budget office director.

“As someone with intimate knowledge of how the federal government manages its money, what are you thinking when you see these numbers?”

Well, actually, I was quite struck by the intro because I got skewered a CBO director because we ran a $430 billion deficit in a year. So that tells you where we are now. I don't think people appreciate that the federal government has business as usual. The consists of spending $7 trillion, raising $5 trillion in revenue, borrowing $2 trillion. A trillion in which is interest on previous borrowing.

I mean, that's just run of the null finances days. It's frightening. It's incredible. And it is almost impossible. I think it is impossible to actually understand. To calculate as a regular human, we can understand these numbers.

So because we were running up on the 40 trillion, we spent a little time trying to figure out how to illustrate how big 40 trillion is.

Yeah. So 40 trillion feet is 5,000 amount ever stacked on top of each other. Stuff like that. Unbelievable. It's a lot.

So what's the answer here? Is there a way we can get out of this cycle? Or, I mean, are we kind of into deep at this point? No. We have created this problem.

We can solve this problem. The key is to do sort of everything. Step number one is stop digging the hole. We really are running a business as usual that adds to the debt and alarming rate.

“So you have to slow down the growth of those deficits to stop the debt from growing.”

And then put it on a downward trajectory. And that will take better economic growth. If you hear that from the administration, for example, we're going to grow our way out of it. We won't, but you need to go to growth as you can get. You're probably going to need more tax revenue, but you can't tax your way out of it.

And I want to come back to that point.

And then third, we're going to have to take on the spending.

And the reality on the spending is that more than one half of all non interest spending over the next 10 years is so security medicare. Just those two programs. So you can't deal with this unless you deal with the big entitlements. And we have been unwilling to do so for two and a half decades. Indeed.

What happens to the country and to average Americans if the US were to actually default on its debt? So this is an important point. People fear the default as somehow that's when the pain starts. We're already paying for this. We've been paying for this for the past 25 years.

We have been running very large deficits even when the economy's been doing well. And in the process, that money is not available to send people to college or to train them or to upgrade your software, expand your business. Name the myriad uses that the private sector has for productivity and enhancing investments. They just get pushed out. And when they get pushed out, the standard living doesn't grow fast and we pay for it in real time.

Growth in the 21st century is average to percentage points slower than growth in the 20th century. If we had kept growing at the same rate as we did in the 20th century, all of us would have about $12,000 every year. I'd like my 12k. I don't know about you. I would love them.

And you know, the sort of loose fiscal policy has to be part of the problem. We average 2% in GDP in the 20th century, we're averaging over five and a half. It's just, it's a price for paying every day. And we shouldn't pretend that somehow it's all good now. And we'll have to as fear the default.

We don't want to default. Believe me. But we're already paying a price. Let's fix it. And like we said at the top, look doubling the size of that debt so rapidly.

It's just make sure it's been. Do you think that lawmakers generally understand the consequences of our debt being this high? Will they, or any of them motivated enough to take real action? So far no.

“I think the, you have to just look at the record.”

There's some lip service to, to take action. But, you know, we, we talk about waste fraud and abuse. Uh, we taught, we put caps on quote discretionary spending and then we break those caps because it's uncomfortable and discretionary spending. The things that the Congress does every year is now a quarter of the budget. It's a side show.

The, the big money is in the entitlements and no one has taken those on. Right.

Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.

“This week, James Fishback, the controversial Florida gubernatorial candidate lost his primary for the Republican nomination to Congressman Byron Donald's.”

Fishback, like online personality Nick Fuentes, is a cultural leader among the droppers. That's a right wing movement that is largely operated at the fringe of politics. Daily wire managing editor Dylan Houseman traveled to a small Florida town where fishback and his followers gathered on primary night. But what he discovered about the state of the group was telling. Dylan's piece here lie the groippers is alive now on daily wire and it's a great read.

I got to say Dylan joins us now. Dylan, welcome glad to be here, guys.

First, let's start with the numbers.

How did the actual vote count shake out that night for fishback and his opponents? Fishback got around 10% of the vote. I think it ended up finally being about 10.5%. So he was polling right around 10% mark. That was kind of the the mark people expected.

He pushed some polls saying he was going to do a lot better than that. But that's about where he ended up. He was third place well behind Byron Donald two. One with about 50 and Jay Collins, Lieutenant Governor. It was around the mid 20s.

And heading into this, there's a lot of buzz about fishback. And the sort of online reality was that he was way overperforming. That's not what happened that night, correct.

“Yeah, that's why I wanted to get down there is there's been this online energy around these types of candidates.”

There's been a handful of them that have run for certain offices this cycle. But he was really the main one that had seemingly the best organization behind him. The most energy he went on Tucker Carlson. He got endorsed by Nick Funtas. He had a real campaign operation.

He was doing a lot of events. The one thing he couldn't do was raise money. But otherwise he was running a pretty normal campaign. And so I wanted to get to see how does this translate to the real world. Does this online energy actually manifest itself at the voting booth?

And I wanted to see it up close in person, not just relying on you know, what the vote count ends up at the end of the night looking at it on my computer. And so the idea here is that there was an appearance of momentum for them over the last few years. Here's the political reality this year. Fishback being really one of the guys that best represented in the most official kind of way their voice.

Yeah, exactly. And when he actually went out into the real world, it didn't really pan out. I would say I went to two events with him.

The first one was the night before election night.

It was out in a rural area and I was talking to voters there that were supporting him. Almost none of them were they cared about the Israel stuff, which is kind of his main most known issue for for Beth Fishback when he started in for Fuentes. Very few of them see the care about that. Very few of them talked about you know Jewish power things like that that Fuentes often talks about.

They cared about data centers that cared about affordability kind of run of the mill issues. The church he was actually hosting the event at was home to a pro Israel pastor, which is very interesting. And I talked to one of his campaign advisors after he was an extremely pro Israel person.

So there was kind of a disc and girl that's there between how he was running and what actually happened on the ground. At his campaign watch party on election night itself. It was a lot more of the kind of, you know, early 20s. I would say more strongly gripper crowd, a lot of out of towners that had come down for this is some big event they wanted to attend. And they were a lot more.

Let's say in line with like what Fuentes would be preaching on a daily basis. Now, fishback has been criticized by Republicans for some of his racial attacks on congressman Byron Donalds. But in your piece, you say that he was getting guidance on his messaging approach leading into this primary night. Can you unpack that a little. Yes, so in his to tackle the first part first in his speech, he said it's not personal with Byron Donalds.

It's just a difference of viewpoints. They're just competing politically. And so I went up to him after the speech and I asked him how can you say it's not personal when you've made all these blatantly racist remarks about him. Consely, you've accused him of being a criminal a couple weeks earlier. And he said, you know, it's kind of like with my wife and I snipe it each other.

You know, it's just playful, you know, fun. It's not, it's not personal. So I found that to be a bit odd.

“And as I said, as soon as we ended that conversation, one of the other questions I asked him was, why are you talking about his real and apex so much less now?”

He talked about it all the time at the beginning of the race. And lately he has been talking about it nearly as much. And when I asked him that, he answered him in afterwards and advisor came up to me. At outside advisor, not someone officially on the campaign, but someone who's been traveling with them talking to them. And said, the Israel stuff is dead.

We're not doing that anymore. I told him that he used to cut that out. I'm devoutly pro Israel for theological reasons.

And I would never back again if he's not a pro Israel.

And I've been advising him to get off of that point. And he's been following my advice. And that was just really a bizarre idea here given everything they guys done since he started running. So I think his campaign in a way kind of evolved to be, you know, try to be a little more sane, a little more normal every time. And so that's another reason I kind of suspect that the whole movement as whole could end up going that way to some degree.

Right. It's hard not to draw the comparison with AOC saying, you know, woke 1.0 is over. This is woke 2.0 trying to adjust.

Really moved that party left whereas it seems like the grouper movement is really flaming out here.

“Yeah, that's the biggest difference between the two parties right now, frankly, and how they're dealing with their threats from their extreme wings.”

The Democrats are losing a lot of these fights and Republicans are really not.

None of these candidates have really cracked more than, you know, 15, 20 percent in any race.

And again, the most prominent example here, flamed out at 10 percent and then being able to take them too seriously. I've been a fascinating election cycle already. I can't wait to see what happens. Come, November. Dylan, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, guys. Thanks for waking up with us and make sure to tune in on Monday at 5 p.m. for our all access live. As we reported yesterday, we're going to be featuring a special segment on the beloved cat, mag of mo. If you know, you know.

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