Russiagate Reckoning & Trump v. Powell | 7.25.25

President Trump makes another dramatic move, personally inspecting the Federal Reserve as he ramps up pressure on Jerome Powell.

He's building a building, he's $2.7 billion.

They have a $900 million over on.

What is that?

The move comes as Trump touts more blockbuster trade deals.

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

It's Friday, July 25th, and this is Morningwire.

New bombshell RussiaGate revelations spark a flurry of actions in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

We have the latest on the political fallout.

There is irrefutable evidence that detail how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false.

And amid his ongoing battle with the Ivy League, Trump secures a historic settlement from Colombia.

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In a major escalation in his pressure campaign on the Federal Reserve, President Trump personally toured the Fed building on Thursday while his administration touts big economic wins.

Joining us now to discuss Trump's battle with Jerome Powell and big trade deal announcements is Daily Wire's senior editor Cabot Phillips A.

Cabot.

So a pretty dramatic move yesterday from Trump.

Let's start there.

What happened there?

Well, first, John, I very much like your shirt.

Thank you.

Very cool shirt.

Anyways, so as we talked about on the show, the president has been furious with Jerome Powell for months now, accusing him of intentionally keeping interest rates high to try and damage the economy and damage Trump's political standing.

But the problem for Trump is that he can only fire Powell with cause, and policy disputes do not count.

So he's been looking into the renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters, which Powell is overseeing.

After a number of well-documented cost overruns, that price tag on the project is over $2.5 billion.

President Trump thinks that is far too high, accusing Powell of mismanaging taxpayer dollars to build a, quote, palace for himself, and hinting that he may have committed fraud, which obviously would be a firebrand.

And now, as you mentioned, the president took the extraordinary step of visiting the Fed headquarters himself yesterday.

It is the first time a president has visited the building since 2006.

But unlike that visit, which George W.

Bush took as part of the swearing-in ceremony for Ben Bernanke, this one is all about putting pressure on Powell.

For example, here's Trump directly telling the Fed chair that he wants interest rates lowered.

Are there things the chairman can say to you today that would make you back off some of the earlier criticism?

Well, I'd love him to lower interest rates.

Other than that, what can I tell you?

And later on, when Powell disputed the cost of this renovation, President Trump displayed a piece of paper with what he said was the price tag.

It looks like it's about $3.1 billion.

It went up a little bit or a lot.

So the 2.7 is now 3.1.

I'm not aware of that.

Yeah, it just came out.

Yeah, and I haven't heard that from anybody at the Fed.

This came from us?

Yes.

Now to another major economic topic, tariff deals, with this deadline approaching very quickly.

We're seeing some urgency from some other countries to work deals.

What's the latest?

So remember, the White House has made clear that any country who has not agreed to a trade deal by August 1st will be hit with tariffs anywhere from 25 to 50 percent.

And a few countries seem to be taking Trump at his word, most notably Japan.

After eight rounds of intense negotiations, Trump announced a massive deal that will lower the tariff on Japanese imports from 25 to 15 percent.

In exchange, Tokyo has agreed to open their markets to American cars and trucks.

And perhaps even more importantly, Japan agreed to a $550 billion investment in the U.S.

economy.

That'll include the purchase of 100 Boeing aircraft, billions of dollars in American rice, and billions more in deals with American defense contractors.

I just signed the largest trade deal in history.

I think maybe the largest deal in history with Japan.

A lot different from the deals in the past, I can tell you that.

Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick talked about just how unique this deal is and how Japan will actually be helping finance American growth.

The Japanese government says, I will finance and I will pay for.

Right.

Not finance.

I will pay for.

You want to build a nuclear facility?

Build it.

You want to build 10 nuclear facilities?

You go build them.

You want to go build a pipeline?

You go build it.

And we'll split the lease payments.

90 for you,

10 for Japan.

It's a blockbuster, if there ever was one.

All right.

So a major agreement with one of our biggest trading partners with some unique elements to it, too.

What other deals have we seen?

Right.

So we mentioned earlier the deal between the U.S.

and the Philippines.

And now there is also an agreement between the U.S.

and Indonesia.

As part of that deal, Indonesia has agreed to eliminate all tariffs on roughly 99% of American goods and end pre-shipment inspections on American farm goods, also other non-tariff barriers.

In exchange, the U.S.

will lower its tariff on Indonesian imports from 32 to 19%.

And then, according to numerous reports, President Trump is closing in on a final deal with the EU that will impose 15% tariffs on a variety of European imports.

All of that movement was more welcome news to investors as global stocks rallied throughout the week.

The SP 500 hit yet another record high.

The Dow surged on Tuesday and Wednesday to near record highs.

Markets across Asia and Europe, especially Japan, jumped as well.

All right, so global markets looking very healthy there.

Kevin, thanks so much for reporting.

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In that election in November of 2016, they worked with their partners in the media to promote this lie, ultimately to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump and launching what would be a years-long coup against him and his administration.

That was Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard releasing more bombshell evidence that Obama and his intel chiefs crafted the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about what's in Gabbard's latest tranche of evidence.

So, Tim, a lot of accusations being leveled here.

First, we have a coup from an outgoing president, and then from a declassified House Intelligence report, we've learned that Russia may have actually helped Clinton.

So what's going on here?

Yeah, it's not so much about what Russia did, but what it didn't do.

According to this declassified report, Russia had obtained hacked DNC emails that incriminated Clinton, showing potential criminal bribes.

Under Clinton's leadership, State Department officials took secret meetings with U.S.

religious groups and offered taxpayer funds in exchange for support for the Clinton campaign.

Gabbard said there was also a patronage network inside the U.S.

State Department to bribe employees into supporting Clinton.

And then there are emails that suggest Clinton was not well.

Here's Gabbard.

There were high-level DNC emails that detailed evidence of Hillary's, quote, psycho-emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness, and that then Secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers.

So the claim here is that Moscow had all this dirt on Clinton, but never released it.

Gabbert said that Russia likely planned to use it against Clinton if she had won.

Now, as more of this information comes out, President Obama has been characterized as something of a ringleader here.

What's the evidence for that?

There's quite a bit, actually.

I spoke to Jerry Dunlevy, the chief investigative correspondent at Just the News about this.

Here's what he said.

Obama was deeply involved in the Russiagate scandal.

He was aware of Clinton plan intelligence showing Hillary was trying to link Trump

to the Russian hacking of the DNC.

He personally directed the creation of the intelligence community assessment in December 2016, only after Trump had emerged victorious.

And he was involved in an Oval Office meeting in early January 2017, where he was made aware of some of the crossfire hurricane investigations efforts, including targeting Mike Flynn.

So Obama had his fingerprints on this for months before that January 2017 intelligence community assessment made the fake Trump-Russia collusion narrative official.

Now, President Trump hasn't been shy about leveling accusations.

Is there a crime here?

The Justice Department has assembled a task force to figure that out.

Now, Gabbard has essentially accused Obama of treason.

Here's that.

I'm not an attorney, but as I've said said previously, when you look at the intent behind creating a fake manufactured intelligence document that directly contradicts multiple assessments that were created by the intelligence community, the expressed intent and what followed afterward can only be described as a years-long coup and a treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our republic, and an attempt to undermine President Trump's administration.

Treason is obviously a serious charge, but I should note that to some, it also seems more for effect than substance.

National Review's Andrew McCarthy, we've had him on the show before for his legal analysis, is skeptical about real criminality here, even if it is sordid and dirty and corrupt.

He writes in his latest column on this scandal, quote, political smears and appalling misjudgments are not violations of the criminal law, absent some statutory federal offense.

If there were a criminal offense that fit, Gabbard and Trump would cite it rather than chanting treason.

Now, that is just one cautious legal analysis of the case.

There's also many on the right who think that there is real substance to these allegations.

And this is, of course, being looked at now by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

So we'll see what she comes up with.

Well, there was a recent poll that showed about 60% of Democrats still believe Trump was a Russian asset.

Tim, thanks for reporting.

Good to be on.

Columbia University agreed to pay a $200 million settlement to the government over accusations that it failed to stop anti-Semitism on campus.

The Trump administration is still trying to reach a deal with Harvard, but in the meantime, the two sides faced off in court this week.

Daily Wire reporter Mareta Lordy is here with more Haberade.

So first, can you tell us about this Columbia settlement?

Hi, John.

Yes.

So Columbia University announced Wednesday that it has agreed to pay this massive settlement to the government more than $200 million to restore the federal funding the Trump administration froze over the anti-Semitism allegations against the Ivy League school.

Columbia will also pay an additional $21 million to the government to settle investigations by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The Trump administration called the settlement a seismic shift in its fight with left-leaning Ivy League schools.

Here's Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Columbia settlement.

The fines were stiff.

$200 million

is a stiff fine, but clearly

we're going to see action at Columbia, and I'm really pleased that we were able to come to this agreement because I think the students there that are on campus now can feel safe.

Students Students and faculty know that they're going to be evaluated on merit.

Hiring programs, you know, are being changed.

This agreement also encompasses not only Title VI, but Title IX and other incidents to make sure that there's fairness across campus for all students.

And I think that this is a monumental victory for conservatives who've wanted to do things on these elite campuses for a long time.

Now, meanwhile, Harvard and Trump are locked in a hostile lawsuit over the the same accusation that Harvard allowed rampant anti-Semitism on campus, correct?

That's right.

Harvard was back in court in Boston on Monday to fight the Trump administration, freezing over $2 billion in federal funding for the school.

Back in May, Trump said he didn't want to hurt Harvard, but that Columbia was behaving much better.

You know, Columbia has been really, they were very, very bad what they've done, very anti-Semitic and lots of other things.

But they're working with us on finding a solution.

And, you know, they're taking off that hot seat.

But Harvard wants to fight.

They want to show how smart they are, and they're getting their kicked.

Harvard argues Trump freezing the $2 billion in funds is a blatant and unrepentant violation of the school's First Amendment rights as well as the Civil Rights Act.

While the Trump administration argues Harvard failed to protect students by allowing anti-Semitism on campus after the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel.

On Monday, Harvard students and professors rallied outside the courthouse to oppose the Trump administration.

Here's some of that rally.

The consequences of the recent attacks on Harvard extend well beyond our campus.

Now, things have really escalated clearly, but the Trump administration is still open to reaching an agreement with Harvard, correct?

Yes, McMahon said that even with the lawsuit, talks are going on behind the scenes, and she hopes they can reach a resolution outside of court.

And meanwhile, there are some signs Harvard is bending the knee to Trump despite the schools kicking and screaming.

Harvard is reportedly considering opening a new conservative center amid the pressure from Trump.

And Harvard is also closing multiple diversity centers, including the Women's Center, the Race Relations Center, and the LGBTQ Center.

All signs the school may be looking to end this fight before it gets any worse.

So some movement toward the middle from Harvard.

And the Trump administration has taken other aggressive actions against Harvard as well, correct?

That's right.

This week, the Trump administration opened a new investigation into Harvard's compliance with a government visa program for foreign students and professors.

The administration also threatened Harvard's accreditation this month.

Losing accreditation would mean Harvard loses access to federal student aid, which typically leads to a university shutting down.

Some scary prospects for Harvard.

We'll be tracking this fight to see if Harvard finally backs down.

Murray, thanks for reporting.

Thanks, John.

Thanks for waking up with us.

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