Trump’s Peace Push & Media Power Recalibrates | 8.11.25

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President Trump says he's gearing up for a high-stakes meeting with Putin later this week in America.

We're going to try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and the Russians can live with, where they can live in relative peace, where the killing stops.

The announcement comes as multiple world leaders say they'll now nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe.

It's Monday, August 11th, and this is Morningwire.

The media landscape is shifting quickly as several mainstay left-wing shows prepare to shutter while conservative voices ascend.

Talk about this coincidence.

Jimmy Fallon's contract has just been renewed by NBC through 2028.

You see that, Colbert?

You should have had me on.

And a series of investigations are launched into powerful Democrats who tried to take down Trump.

When we see mortgage fraud, we are going to report it.

When we see mortgage fraud, we are going to prosecute it within the confines of our duties.

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President Trump announced a high-stakes meeting with Vladimir Putin this week after brokering yet another peace deal, this time in Asia.

Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips joins us with the latest, hey Cabot.

So a lot of news since we last talked.

None bigger than this meeting with Putin this Friday.

Tell us about this.

Yeah, on Friday, President Trump announced that he would sit down with his Russian counterpart for the first time since retaking office.

Remember, they've already spoken on the phone, but this will be face-to-face in Alaska this coming Friday.

It comes after a month in which the U.S.

has really ramped up their pressure on Russia to take a peace deal and end this war.

First, Trump increased weapons sales to NATO, then he slapped tariffs and even more sanctions on Moscow.

And then he added secondary tariffs to any country, mainly India, that continued to do business with Russia.

But with none of that seeming to work, Trump is now going to try and secure a deal the old-fashioned way, face-to-face.

Now, skeptics say that Putin will only use this meeting to drag out peace talks even more and buy time, which he'll then use to gain as much territory as possible to hopefully improve his leverage before these peace talks inevitably resume.

But after brokering a string of ceasefires and peace deals over the last few weeks, which we've continued to cover on the show, Trump is clearly feeling confident that he can persuade Putin himself.

They certainly never doubted his ability to win in these sort of situations with an adversary.

Now, what are we expecting to get out of this meeting?

Well, it's important to note: this will almost certainly be step one in the Trump-Putin negotiating process.

Even the White House is tempering expectations here.

They've been tight-lipped about what exactly the two men will discuss, but it'll certainly involve potential security guarantees for Ukraine after the war, and more importantly for Putin, land swaps.

Speaking for the White House, Trump again implied that any peace deal would require Ukraine ceding at least some of the territory they've lost so far in this war.

We're actually looking to get some back and

some swapping.

It's complicated.

There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.

Now, at the moment, Vladimir Zelensky is not set to be at this meeting, but the White House said he could be invited later on in the week.

And if not, he will be included in a separate meeting with Putin later on.

For his part, Zelensky really bristled at the idea of ceding any of his territory, saying he will, quote, not give Russia any awards for what it has done.

But elsewhere, we did see a number of European leaders express optimism at the fact that Putin was agreeing to sit down with Trump.

Here's NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta, for example, saying that Trump has broken the deadlock with Putin.

Starting the dialogue with Putin, I think that was crucial.

We had a great NATO summit under his leadership.

And then he opened the floodgates three weeks ago of American lethal weapons to be delivered into Ukraine.

So Ruta giving Trump a lot of credit.

Yeah, after criticizing him for years, it's worth adding.

Now, this announcement came after yet another peace deal negotiated by Trump.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, nearly every week for the last month, it seems we've seen a new ceasefire or peace deal brokered by Trump.

This time, it was between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The two countries have been engaged in a bloody feud for decades, but on Friday, leaders from each country joined Trump at the White House to sign a historic new treaty.

In exchange for an end to hostilities, the two sides will enter into new energy and trade deals with the U.S., and a number of defense restrictions on Azerbaijan specifically will be lifted by the U.S.

for the first time in decades.

Here's Trump announcing the deal.

As president, my highest aspiration is to bring peace and stability to the world.

Today's signing follows our success with India and Pakistan, also the Congo and Rwanda.

Also, just recently, Thailand and Cambodia.

We got saved a lot of lives.

And then in response, the president and prime minister of the two countries announced that they would be formally nominating Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is a tangible result of President Trump's leadership, and no one could have achieved that.

Trump deserved

to

have a Nobel Peace Prize and

we will promote for that and today's event I think is a very bright expression of that.

So big picture this deal not only bolsters Trump's claim that he is the peacemaker in chief, but also provides the U.S.

with a very important foothold in the Caucasus, a region long dominated by, you guessed it, Russia.

Yeah, certainly notable given these tense talks with Acclaim right now.

Kevin, thanks so much for reporting.

Absolutely.

A seismic shift is rocking the talk show world with Stephen Colbert's cancellation, rumors swirling about Howard Stern's future, and now Jimmy Fallon welcoming Fox News host Greg Gutfeld to the tonight show.

The apparent vibe shift has sparked questions about whether broadcasters are pivoting to appeal to conservative audiences.

Here to discuss is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.

So, Megan, this all really got going with Colbert, which we reported here on this show, but there's since been some new developments there.

Has it been confirmed that he was canceled for being too partisan?

Well, you know, Paramount, which owns CBS, has said that this was purely a financial decision.

And to be fair, Colbert's show was reportedly losing around $40 million a year.

But Colbert has encouraged viewers to protest his firing.

And he's even suggested that Paramount did this in an attempt to appease Trump.

And he's had some choice words for the president himself.

On Friday, Donald Trump posted, I absolutely love that Colbert got fired.

His talent was even less than his ratings.

How dare you?

How dare you, sir?

Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism?

Go yourself.

Anyway, anyway, anyway, thank you.

Thank you very much.

But the numbers here tell a pretty stark story.

So his show's ratings peaked in the 2018 season with 3.1 million viewers, but today he averages only about 1.9 million.

Well, now we're also hearing that Howard Stern might be on the way out.

Where Where are those rumors coming from?

Well, it's not clear yet that his show is canceled, but there are reports that Sirius is planning to offer him a low-ball offer when his contract comes up for renewal this fall, essentially trying to rid themselves of him in a roundabout way.

And while it's hard to track Sirius ratings, there's a lot of evidence that Stern's show has been losing audience too.

According to social media data tracker Tubular Labs, his YouTube channel lost more than 30% of unique viewers from 2024 to 2025 and the new york post has reported that his audience has gone from 20 million a day to only 125 000 now of course if that's even partially true that represents a pretty steep drop off for the king of all media and a lot of analysts are pointing to commentary like his response to being called woke as the culprit here

i kind of take that as a compliment that i'm woke i'll tell you how i feel about it.

To me, the opposite of woke is being asleep.

And

if woke means I can't get behind Trump, which is what I think it means, or that I support people who want to be transgender, or I'm for the vaccine,

dude, call me woke as you f ⁇ ing want.

I'm not for stupidity.

Now let's talk about Fox News host Greg Guttfeld because he's consistently had the best ratings in late night.

Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon welcomed him as a guest last week.

Is that significant?

And if so, what does it tell us?

Well, I think it tells us that Jimmy Fallon can read the tea leaves and he's not willing to go down with a partisanship.

And there's no question that Guttfeld's appearance on the tonight show represents a pretty significant sea change.

And even the legacy media is recognizing that.

New York Magazine, for instance, described it as Fallon kissing the ring of conservatives.

And Guttfeldt himself seemed to see it that way.

I am doing Jimmy Fallon next week.

I'm psyched about it because Fallon comes across as a great guy, nice guy.

And also me going on his show shows him he's not worried about upsetting his peers.

Remember, he got a lot of stick for humanizing Trump when he tossled his hair, but it didn't come from anybody but the people on the left who wanted to teach all entertainers a lesson that if you dare show that Trump is a human, then you're toast.

And so it's kind of nice that he's taking this risk.

And then the even bigger picture here, Georgia, is that these late night shows have long been a Democratic stronghold.

They could rely on these hosts to push liberal talking points and to skewer Republicans.

And now you have to imagine that the Dems are going to be lamenting the fact that the era of those one-sided monologues seems to be coming to an end.

Well, of course, the next big question is what's going to happen with Jimmy Kimmel Kimmel and Seth Myers.

Megan, thanks for reporting.

My pleasure.

Two of President Trump's top antagonists are now under investigation by the Department of Justice, New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Senator Adam Schiff.

Here to tell us more about the investigations is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.

Hey, Tim, so how much trouble are Schiff and James in here?

Yeah, I'll start with James, who has long been seen as a politically driven prosecutor.

And as far as the DOJ is concerned, she's got a bit more going on than Schiff.

So the U.S.

attorney in Albany issued a couple subpoenas recently against James over potential civil rights violations.

One was related to James's 2023 civil case against Trump and the Trump organization.

And the other was related to a corruption case against the National Rifle Association.

Now, obviously, the most infamous of those cases is the one involving Trump.

Remind us what that was about.

Sure.

So essentially, Trump was accused of falsifying business records to get better terms on loans.

But it was an odd case, first of all, because it was a bench trial, not a jury trial.

And it was decided by Justice Arthur Engeron.

Second, nobody ever claimed harm.

So Engeron found Trump guilty, and Trump has been penalized more than half a billion dollars and was barred from running a company in New York for three years, all for a case with no victims.

Trump is appealing the ruling on the basis that his civil rights were violated as James ran for office on the platform of prosecuting him.

And the case she picked was previously passed over by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, no friend of Trump's, obviously.

Yeah, definitely not.

The other subpoena into James has to do with the NRA.

That case is related to the corruption case James launched against the gun group in 2020.

Last year, a Manhattan jury found the NRA guilty of financial misconduct and corruption, and a couple of its former leaders were ordered to pay back millions to the group.

All right.

Now, we also have this separate mortgage fraud claim that involves Schiff.

What's going on with that case?

So James and Schiff are both being looked at for mortgage fraud, and both of their cases are somewhat similar.

And James's, the the DOJ probe came from a prior criminal referral made by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The agency alleged James claimed a home in Virginia as her primary residence to score better terms on a loan.

And Schiff, a noted promoter of the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy, may have done something similar with a home in Maryland.

According to another referral from the agency, Schiff claimed a Maryland home as his primary residence several times between 2009 and 2013 when he sought to refinance.

At the time, he was an elected U.S.

Representative of California.

He allegedly never claimed the Maryland home as a secondary residence until 2020.

Attorneys for both Schiff and James have said that their mortgage fraud cases are political retribution.

And Republicans obviously calling out the irony there in those situations.

Now, Tulsi Gabbard has had a lot of high-profile releases revolving around RussiaGate.

What's the latest there?

Well, we've seen reports of a federal grand jury investigation now into some of those revelations from Gabbard.

And that investigation could sweep up a few top people from the Obama administration.

But that aside, it's clear the White House thinks that there was criminality here that needs to be addressed.

Here was Vice President J.D.

Vance over the weekend.

Look, of course, you've got to have the law follow the facts here.

You don't just indict people to indict people.

You indict people because they broke the law.

But if you look at what Tulsi and Cash Patel have revealed in the last couple of weeks, I don't know how anybody can look at that and say that there wasn't

aggressive violations of the law.

What they basically did is they defrauded the American people in order to take Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign talking points and turn them into intelligence.

So the vice president clearly expects that some charges will be brought over this.

Well, Democrats may want Russia Gate to sort of disappear, but Republicans making clear they're not going to let that happen.

Yeah, no chance.

Tim, thanks for reporting.

Thanks for having me on.

Thanks for waking up with us.

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