Witkoff Meets Putin & NASA’s Nuclear Moon Plan | 8.7.25

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Vladimir Putin holds a three-hour meeting with the White House envoy to discuss a ceasefire as Trump punishes India for buying Russian oil.

Putin will stop killing people if he gets energy down another $10 a barrel.

He's going to have no choice because his economy stinks.

I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley.

Georgia Howe is off today.

It's Thursday, August 7th, and this is Morning Wire.

Trump takes aim at the practice of de-banking by ending discrimination for political or religious beliefs.

No one should be denied access to financial services simply because of their political or their religious belief.

And NASA accelerates plans to build a nuclear reactor on the moon.

Nuclear power in space is really important for any human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.

Stay tuned.

We have the news you need to know.

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U.S.

Special Envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

The new discussions come as President Trump's deadline for peace fast approaches.

Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about the latest in the Ukraine war and how propaganda has twisted news on the war in Gaza.

Hey, Tim, so let's start with Russia.

Big meeting yesterday.

A lot of eyes on it.

What exactly took place?

Well, we don't know anything concrete, but there were some positive signals.

Now, this was a nearly three-hour meeting, and there was a lot of interest in in how it was framed by the two sides.

President Trump put out a statement shortly after calling the meeting highly productive and saying great progress was made.

The Kremlin had a similar take, describing the meeting as useful and constructive.

More discussions are expected.

Trump said he intends to meet personally with Putin as soon as next week and then bring Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky together.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had more to say.

There's going to be a deal to end this war.

It'll have to require the president to come in at the end and close on it, as I've seen him do numerous times.

Now, lately, Trump has been frustrated with the pace of peace negotiations and what he sees as Russia's refusal to deal honestly.

A few weeks ago, Trump gave Putin a 50-day deadline to come to a ceasefire, but last week bumped that timeline up to this Friday.

According to reports, Putin isn't ready yet to agree to a ceasefire, much less an end to the war, but he may agree to de-escalate some with a pause on airstrikes.

Meanwhile, however, Russia has conducted joint naval drills with China and most recently practiced taking out an enemy submarine just a few days after Trump repositioned a few U.S.

nuclear subs over comments by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Right, that move got a lot of attention just like Trump intended it to.

Now, we saw right after the meeting, Trump ratchet up tariffs on India.

What did that accomplish?

Yeah, the White House wants to put pressure on Russia by going after its source of funding, the foreign countries that are buying its oil.

Here's the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hass, explaining that.

I think the president has decided that it doesn't, India should not be the release valve for Russia, and that one reason why the Russia-Ukraine war might be going on for so long is that Russia has a release valve through India where it can sell its stuff.

And so the president is serious about getting peace in Ukraine and Russia.

And I think that getting a better understanding of India's role is what's moved him to

this move.

To that end, Trump signed an order on Wednesday to lift tariffs on goods from India 25%,

which would bring the total U.S.

tariff on India to 50%,

among the highest Trump has imposed.

That order is scheduled to go into effect in three weeks on August 27th.

All right.

So that's coming in just a few weeks.

Now, in another major conflict around the world, we have the situation in Gaza and a lot of propaganda and just outright false reporting, including from the New York Times.

Tell us about that.

Right.

There's been a lot of flawed narratives around the food situation in Gaza, which is bad, but it needs context.

The best example came courtesy of the New York Times.

Last month, the Times ran a front-page story on starvation in Gaza under a feature photo of an emaciated child.

The caption said the child was born healthy, but come to find out, he suffered from pre-existing conditions.

There was, of course, a blow-up at the Times over this.

Based on its own reporting, finding an image that captures the desperation of the Gazan people shouldn't be hard to find.

Now, obviously, conditions in Gaza are terrible, but one of the allegations in the Times report is that Israel is blocking food and aid into Gaza.

But that isn't true.

The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation ships hundreds of tons of aid into Gaza every day.

The problem is, most of the aid is stolen by Hamas.

Even according to the United Nations, one of the most vocal critics of Israel on this, nearly 90% of all of its aid trucks are looted by Hamas or intercepted by civilians.

Starvation is a Hamas tactic.

Here's a Gaza native saying as much on MSNBC.

Nevertheless, they very much so fell into a trap of Hamas's design.

Hamas wanted to see the deterioration of the humanitarian conditions in Gaza, knowing full well that this may be the only hope for drawing in the international community, for producing horrendous imagery that showcase

the war as being a humanitarian catastrophe, and therefore hoping to bring about a rapid end to the war that it started and it has an ultimate responsibility to end.

So yes, there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but we need to understand the nature of it accurately, or more than likely, the whole thing gets much worse.

Right, in situations like this, accurate reporting is more important than ever.

Tim, thanks for reporting.

Good to be on.

The White House is preparing an executive order banning banks from cutting off customers based on their religious or political beliefs.

This debanking trend grew under the Biden administration alongside the rise in social media censorship.

Joining us now to discuss is Ryan Bangert, Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Alliance Defending Freedom.

Ryan, thanks for coming on.

My pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

So first, how did this executive order come about and was it needed?

Well, John, it's very needed.

And I think there are very few things we can all agree on in America today, but one of them is that no one should be denied access to financial services simply because of their political or their religious beliefs.

Unfortunately, what we've seen is over the past several years, regulators in particular have pressured financial institutions to do just that.

And ADF has been working on this issue now for some time.

And I can say this action is just in the nick of time.

Now, the claim from the left is that this is not happening.

This is a myth.

It's all technical reasons that people are getting debanked.

You're arguing that this is absolutely needed.

It's been happening and there has been a rising trend.

Is that correct?

Well, that's true.

And just look at the facts that we've seen play out over the last several years.

Just last year in 2024, the U.S.

Supreme Court decided a case, National Rifle Association versus Vulo, in which the New York Department of Financial Services was alleged to have pressured financial institutions, banks, and insurers to remove services from the National Rifle Association, as well as gun manufacturers, simply because Maria Vulo, who at that time was running DFS,

was very anti-Second Amendment.

And so right there in the U.S.

Supreme Court, we saw this play out in real time.

We also saw the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of Government, a Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of Government last year release a report showing Treasury Department officials pressuring banks to surveil customers who had purchased items at places like Bass Pro shops, Cabela's, other sporting goods stores.

But beyond that, they were providing guidance to financial institutions to surveil transactions.

with groups identified by far-left pressure organizations as hate groups, groups including the Lions Defending Freedom.

So we know it's happening.

There's evidence that it's happening.

It's been documented copiously by the U.S.

Supreme Court, by the Congressional Committee on Select Subcommittee on Weaponization.

So this is not really up for debate.

Now, we have seen some states take action, Tennessee's among them, to eliminate this kind of behavior.

What have we seen in terms of the national movement leading up to this executive order?

We have seen some positive movement, especially you mentioned Tennessee.

ADF has a client in Tennessee, Indigenous Advanced Ministries, whose bank account was withdrawn by Bank of America.

And the reasons given were they simply didn't want to do business with an organization like that.

So that's clearly an instance where reputational risk or social risk policies are being applied.

And that's really the avenue through which a lot of these banks are imposing debanking.

But Tennessee passed a law that prohibited this kind of political or ideological debanking.

Idaho has also recently passed just such a law.

And we've seen some movement on the part of banks.

J.P.

Morgan Chase, to their credit, recently revised their social risk policies in response to pressure that was brought to bear after Ambassador Sam Brownback's organization, NCRF, was debanked.

So we have seen some positive movement, both from state lawmakers as well as from industry itself.

Are there any concerns that this executive order could overcorrect and actually infringe on the free operating principles of private businesses, the banks?

Certainly, John.

I haven't seen the executive order yet, but certainly things that have been reported in the media and things that ADF has been been advocating for would be the federal regulators removing onerous reputational risk policies that are really covers for ideological and political debanking.

There's no risk that that's going to infringe on any kind of business or commercial rights because those have been abused for years now.

So I'm not terribly concerned.

I think this is a badly needed correction.

And I think it also will be helpful to banks because banks, quite frankly, have been laboring under pressure from leftists and elitists in government who are trying to impose their political will through the regulatory process.

And so removing that kind of pressure, I think, will be a relief not only to the organizations that have been targeted, but to the banks themselves.

Well, as you've laid out, this issue has gained a lot of attention in recent years.

A lot of people are anxious to see this new order.

Ryan, thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

A new space race is underway with the Trump administration announcing plans to build a nuclear reactor on the moon.

Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips has the details on this pretty ambitious plan.

Hey, Cabot.

So this sounds like science fiction.

At first, when you pitched it to me, I actually kind of laughed.

This is real.

It's very real.

I love this story.

It is like something from a science fiction novel, but the Trump administration is very serious.

This week, acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy issued a directive to build a nuclear reactor, as you said, on the surface of the moon by the year 2030.

So they're moving fast.

The reactor itself will be a small one, about 100 kilowatts.

That is enough to power 80 homes here on Earth.

At the moment, no such mini reactor has been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

And to the best of our knowledge, none have yet been built.

But President Trump has made clear that this technology is a top priority for NASA.

He signed a number of executive orders expediting the regulatory and commercialization process for those micro-reactors.

And now we know why.

He wants to put them on the moon.

Duffy says they'll begin accepting private sector proposals for the plan within 60 days and then appoint an official to oversee the project within 30 days.

So again, this is all going to happen very quickly.

We've heard a lot about these mini reactors.

So here we go.

This one's a really ramped up timeline.

What is the reason for this sense of urgency here?

China and Russia.

That's pretty simple.

This year, both countries announced their intentions to put their own reactors on the moon by the mid-2030s, though China seems to have a much better likelihood of making it happen.

Secretary Duffy says that it is crucial, though, that we beat them there.

Otherwise, Beijing or Moscow could, quote, declare a keep out zone, which would significantly inhibit the United States from establishing a base of our own.

Here he is speaking about this new space race earlier this week.

We're in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon.

And to have a base on the moon, we need energy.

There's a certain part of the moon that everyone knows is the best.

We have ice there.

We have sunlight there.

We want to get there first and claim that for America.

So why is NASA focusing on nuclear energy in particular?

Well, first, it's important to remember a day on the moon lasts about four weeks here on Earth.

There's two weeks of continual sunshine and then two weeks of continual darkness.

That means it is nearly impossible for solar panels to get enough juice and batteries simply will not provide enough power for long-term operations.

That leaves nuclear energy as the most cost-effective and efficient option.

All right, so that makes sense, but why the need for this energy anyway?

Yeah, that is the big question.

So this is all part of NASA's Artemis program, which is basically the modern-day Apollo.

At the moment, NASA is hoping to send four astronauts into lunar orbit by 2026.

And then by 27, they want to land a crew back on the moon for the first time since 1972.

And the agency is also working to construct a lunar space station and then eventually a long-term base on the moon.

This reactor will power that eventual station.

And it'll also serve as an important operations center for future longer missions, mainly to Mars.

Because the moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, it's a lot easier and cheaper to launch craft from there.

Think of a lunar base as a sort of staging base for deep space exploration.

Here's Secretary Duffy making that that point.

We're going to set up a base camp.

We're going to stay on the moon.

And what we learn on the moon is what's going to take us to Mars.

And again, as Americans, we're explorers.

You think of the pioneers.

You think of those who moved west.

That's what we do.

And it's worth noting, while the administration says this mission is purely about exploration and it sounds like a lot of fun stuff.

There are plenty of folks who believe this could also all have military implications as well.

While no country has acknowledged it publicly, there is a high likelihood that at least some of our adversaries have secretly launched weaponized satellites into orbit.

Last year, for example, Space Force reported that a number of Chinese satellites were observed moving in controlled formations consistent with dogfighting.

And before that, U.S.

intelligence reported the presence of Russian satellites that appeared to be armed with weapon systems of their own.

So you can see why an increased presence in space, including a lunar base, would be of interest to the Pentagon and not just NASA.

One step closer to real-life Star Wars.

Exactly.

Thanks for reporting.

Absolutely.

Thanks for waking up with us.

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We'll be back this evening with more news you need to know.

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