Trump’s Global Energy Gambit & Should Americans Watch an Execution? | 10.12.26

Okay, first, before we give you the facts of the day, Run, Hide, Fight! Infidels is streaming now only on Daily Wire. It's an ode to the great action movies of the 80s and 90s. There's even a love story which nobody expected. And you can support Daily Wire's mission to continue making movies that people actually want to watch. Go check it out. Are you noticing your car insurance rate creep up even without tickets or claims? You're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry handles the legwork by comparing quotes side by side from over 50 top insurers so you can confidently hit buy. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Jerry even tracks rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. Drivers who save with Jerry can save over $1,300 a year. Don't settle for higher rates. Download the Jerry app or visit jerry.ai slash wire today. An American citizen is killed in a strike by Houthi rebels on an airport in Saudi Arabia. The attack comes as President Trump hammers out a deal with Putin to get more diesel flowing. I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howell. It's Monday, October 12th. This is Morning Wire. President Trump weighs in on the planned public execution of the Fort Hood terrorist as the national debate over the death penalty takes center stage. The execution, the live stream execution of the Fort Hood. Did I approve? Did you approve? Absolutely. And Europe braces for more violence as police clash with rioters in Belgium after weeks of chaos in France. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. You know what nobody warns you about when you buy a house? It's not the planned projects that get expensive. It's the Tuesday afternoon when something suddenly stops working. Maybe it's the air conditioning in the middle of a heat wave. Maybe it's the water heater. 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For 50% less your first year, go to HomeServe.com slash MorningWire to find the plan that's right for you. That's HomeServe.com slash MorningWire for 50% less. Savings compared to renewal price void in Florida. An American citizen was killed Saturday by a Houthi strike on King Khalid International Airport in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, with global diesel costs weighing on Americans and hitting crippling levels in Europe, President Trump has worked out a temporary deal with Russia to get millions of tons of diesel to global markets. Joining us to discuss all this is Victoria Coates, national security expert at Heritage Foundation. So first, let's start with this American citizen, who was killed by a Houthi missile strike. What do we know about that incident? No, this was a really egregious attack. It was a ballistic missile, John, shot out of Yemen towards King Khalid Airport, which is the major international airport in Riyadh. And, you know, this did kill an American. It killed another dozen or so people. And it shows that the Houthi are really trying to be the forward-leaning part of Iran, you know, disrupting the region. Creating more trouble, trying to draw attention to themselves. And I think you're going to see a very strong reaction. Right. And as to that reaction, how is Saudi Arabia responding? And also, is the U.S. expected to get involved? Well, I think we're going to see a couple of different things. We did have that Mecca agreement that people are talking about that was between Pakistan and Turkey and Saudi Arabia about six weeks ago. I don't see either of those groups really stepping up to do much to help the Saudis. I think in this case, they're really going to need the Americans. So the question is, is this the moment when we decide it's time to go in, truly clean out Yemen, get rid of the Houthi, make them not a power projection for the Iranians onto the Red Sea? That's a major decision looming there. We obviously have a midterm just weeks away, and gas prices are on everyone's mind here. Trump's worked out a deal with Putin to supply more diesel to global markets. What does the U.S. get out of this? And what does Russia get in return? Well, it's sort of an interesting situation. The United States is one of the major diesel producers in the world, but most of our diesel refineries are in Florida, and sometimes we have a hard time moving that around our country. And this is going to be part of a larger conversation, John, and I look forward to talking to you about this over the course of the next year. How do we take the lessons learned from this Iran and both Ukraine and the Iran conflicts, and how do we look at the United States' energy posture? How do we infiltrate or just insulate ourselves from this kind of shock? Because we should not be having this problem. So, yes, I think increased Russian diesel on the global market will be helpful, but we shouldn't be looking at this in the future where we need to go to Russia for help. We don't need that help. Now, this deal obviously impacts Ukraine. Trump has called on Zelensky to stop targeting Russian diesel supply for weeks now, and now he's announced this energy policy that he's going to use to stop targeting Russian diesel supply. There's definitely a good cop, bad cop kind of arrangement going on here. And, you know, President Zelensky has his job. President Trump has his job. And sometimes those jobs are in conflict. But I think if we can get to that ceasefire where we are not going to be attacking energy infrastructure on either side, and then the critical part is that we're going to have to open up that grain corridor so we can get that Ukrainian grain flowing to some of the most food-vulnerable areas of the world, that would be two positive steps that hopefully would get us to conflict resolution. Now, does there seem to be progress in terms of resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict? These are tiny steps, and we're more than four and a half years into this three-day war. So one doesn't like to get optimistic, but I think if we could get this done, we could get those two areas resolved, particularly when we get past the United States midterms, we could get to a point where everyone's just going to say, OK, we want this conflict to resolve. It's going to be interesting to see what does change politically from the U.S. side after these midterms. Victoria, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, John. A devout Orthodox Jew invited about a dozen friends to pray in his home. His city required him to get a permit and then recruited his neighbors to spy on him. It may sound impossible, but it actually happened in University Heights, Ohio, to a man named Daniel Grand. That's why Alliance Defending Freedom and Orrick, Harrington, and Sutcliffe are defending Daniel at the U.S. Supreme Court. Alliance Defending Freedom never bills its clients, and right now your gift will be doubled by a matching grant while matching funds last. Go to joinadf.com slash wire or text wire to 83848 to defend the freedom to pray at home. That's joinadf.com slash wire or text wire to 83848. Joinadf.com slash wire or text wire to 83848 to defend the freedom to pray at home. It comes out of Tennessee where Governor Bill Lee has halted any further executions this year after Krista Pike, who has been on death row for about 30 years for the really brutal murder and torturing of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, well, she survived two doses of pentobarbital. So she was then admitted to the hospital where she stayed on a ventilator, and she was there for 10 days, and then eventually, released back to prison. But now her lawyers are asking for her sentence to be commuted to life without parole. And then the second case is that of former Army psychiatrist Nadal Hassan. So he is scheduled to die by firing squad on December 3rd at Fort Hood in Texas. And that was where in 2009, while shouting Allahu Akbar, he shot and killed 13 of his fellow service members, including a pregnant mother who was begging for the life of her child. So the Pentagon announced last week that his execution will take place on December 3rd. And they announced that it would also be live streamed so that the public could witness it. This was what War Secretary Pete Hegseth said. Army major betrays his country. Radical Islamist kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course, we're going to do it at Fort Hood and do it on a Thursday. We're going to do it at one o'clock, which is when he did it. And it's going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. And we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public. Because people need to understand that this is a serious consequence for these types of things. So all of this has opened up this big national debate about the morality of the death penalty first, but also whether it should be carried out in public. What are the general contours of the arguments there? Yeah, so a lot of this rhetoric has grown pretty heated, John. Just a quote from outgoing North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis. He called the Pentagon's plans beyond disgusting. And then probably the most prominent critic right now is Pope Leo. So on Saturday, he posted to X, and he basically argued that because modern innovations in prison systems allow us different options now, he said that the death penalty is an, quote, inadmissible attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. So those were his words. Well, as you can imagine, that did get a lot of pushback, including from a number of prominent politicians. Protestant theologians. So I reached out to Frank Turek, who is the president of the apologetics ministry, cross-examined, and he very much disagreed with the pope. Not only was the death penalty obviously in place in the Old Testament, but even in the New, for two reasons. Jesus himself affirmed the death penalty. Why? Because Pilate said to him, don't you know I have the authority to kill you? And Jesus didn't say, no, you don't. Jesus said, you do. But you get that authority. You get that authority from above. What do you mean from above? Well, here's the second point. God set up government to bear the sword to punish wrongdoers and protect innocent people from evil. This is in Genesis 9 in the Old Testament. It's in Romans 13 in the New Testament. The reason we have government to begin with is to protect innocent people from evil. And Turek also disagreed with a number of more theologically moderate voices who are condemning. But I think it's important to know that God has a plan to make the execution at Fort Hood public. He basically said that, yes, he believes that guilt must always be ascertained beyond any doubt in these cases. But he said where we know that there is guilt and it's not in question, it should be done soberly. But he doesn't see a reason why the public should not witness this execution. You don't have to watch it. But I think it not only is something that we ought to make available to people because this is actually what's happening. And we shouldn't have to hide this from people. But it is also a deterrent when people actually see what is carried out in terms of punishment. So interesting that we have a another issue of public policy that has turned surprisingly theological. Well, all policies are, of course, moral questions at their root. Megan, thanks for reporting. Yes, my pleasure. In the latest round of violent protests in Europe, police in Belgium, clashed with rioters in Brussels in an eruption of unrest similar to what's been rocking France for weeks. Joining us now with more is GB News host Bev Turner. Thanks for coming on. Pleasure. So we have more riots erupting in Belgium now. This started on Friday between 30,000, 50,000 protesters possibly. Some of them did turn violent. They say this is about budget cuts from the government. What have we seen and what is actually driving this? There's so much dissatisfaction. There's so much dissatisfaction across Europe these days, John. And when the riots were happening in France and in the suburbs of Paris over the last couple of weeks, I've spoken to you regularly about this. And I was personally wondering whether this would start to spread, because there is an element of social contagion about these kind of protests these days. Kids are looking at it on social media. Belgium, France, I'm talking to you from London. I'm wondering whether we're going to see a similar thing here. The themes tend to be that they've got high spending government, but want even more spending from these particular governments. Massive dissatisfaction, multiple grievances about immigration, integration. Started with education. It hasn't remained that, of course. And now we're seeing more disruption across Europe. Now, what we saw in France, some analysts said that it began with some legitimate complaints about the schools. But very quickly, those protests were taken over and exploited by some other political groups, left-wing groups, Islamist groups. Are we seeing that? Are we seeing something similar play out in Belgium? I think it's hard to say at the moment, because it's quite early for the disruption in Belgium. There's certainly trade union protests in Belgium, which are happening with workers on the streets there. I think it is inevitable, however, that once you get a flashpoint like this in any of our European capitals, there are always the same actors with nefarious intent that go in to whip up trouble, whether they are organized as high up as they can, whether they are high up as the likes of the Soros of this world, or whether they are more lowly, non-governmental organizations, which galvanize and organize, basically, groups to go in there to agitate. They're often masked up. They've got similar placards that they will be protesting with. And, of course, we've seen this in America. We saw it in New York to some degree whenever there are these protests. But now in Europe, it is pretty extreme. And, of course, there are the usual, contingent of Palestinian flags all across the cities. Right. A lot has been made of that. Does this look like it's going to be another week's long string of protesting and riots as in France? Or do Belgian authorities think they can contain this more effectively? Very difficult to say. We understand that there's going to be more disruptions, particularly on Tuesday in France. Now, if that goes ahead, and, of course, Macron has a very difficult balancing act. He walks a bit of a tightrope. Of wanting to sound authoritarian, but also urging the police to be empathic with the protesters. I spoke to you last week, there was a gripping story, a horrible story, of a 15-year-old boy who's who lost his hand when a tear gas grenade exploded in his direction. But, of course, the other element of this, John, is that you've got a lot of young people in Europe who've been told to hate their country. They have no sense of national identity. They're in classrooms alongside students. They're Syrians, Eritreans, Afghani kids, and, of course, the Palestinian children as well, Iranian kids, Iraqi kids. And so they think nothing of burning down their school or throwing grenades and bombs and homemade petrol and incendiary devices at police officers. Because, frankly, there's a sense that they have nothing to feel proud of. It's not excusing it, but it is explaining some of this behavior. Well, I think a lot of Europe is bracing for maybe more. I think a lot of Europe is bracing for maybe more of this kind of violence coming to their country. We'll see what happens in the coming weeks. Bev, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. Thanks for waking up with us. And before you go, we have an All Access Live tomorrow night at 5 p.m. Central. 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