In this episode I address the outrageous claims being made against Attorney General Jeff Sessions. I also discuss the damaging effects of trade wars and tariffs and how they hurt the middle class. Finally, I discuss the problem with the unemployment number and its use as an economic indicator. https://www.cato.org/blog/jobs-conundrum?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=158604f534-Cato_at_Liberty_RSS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_395878584c-158604f534-143016961&goal=0_395878584c-158604f534-143016961&mc_cid=158604f534&mc_eid=3fd7404a34
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I have an obligation to come on the air with data and material and research.
I can't just say, trade stinks!
Thanks for tuning in to Dan Bongino Show.
Let's jump right in because we have no time for nonsense.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
When I was a young man, I don't remember it being sexy to want to allow a nanny state to control my life.
On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
Alright, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Dan-o!
Good to be here.
Hey, a few quick shout-outs here.
One to my friend Brandon McCloskey, who just graduated.
I get a lot of emails, so I like to give some shout-outs.
And to Jay, first initial of his last name, D, who sent Joe, hysterically, an abacus.
You know how we asked Joe to break out the abacus doing liberal math equations.
So thank you to Jay.
Joe wanted me to make sure we did that, and it was a nice move by you.
Thanks, Jay.
And to Corey B, who sent me an autographed copy of 13 Hours.
We don't ask for requests, we don't need any gifts, but it's very nice of people who do that, so thank you very much.
Hey folks, big thanks to you.
Hey, another bit of news from my end, which I'm really excited about, my book!
Book numero tres!
The third book is available now on Amazon for pre-order.
The publication date is September 19th, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd go to Amazon and give it a shot.
Give it a look.
It gives a little summary of the book.
The book is called Protecting the President in an Era of Evolving Threats.
The gist of the book is basically folks explaining away the fall of the Secret Service, and I was inspired to write it, because it's not the Secret Service agent's fault, it's the management's fault.
After the Hillary Clinton incident on the 9-11 episode when she nearly passed out and she did not go to the hospital, and then after the fence-jumping incident, I said, I've got to explain to the public what's going on in the Secret Service.
I promise you will like this book.
About three or four people outside of my household have read it, I kid you not, and it's been Well, the one email I got back from a guy writing a forward was like, wow, this is going to blow some minds.
So you'll be shocked at what happened behind the scenes.
Go check it out.
Pre-order it today at Amazon.
Just look up Dan Bongino in books.
It's called Protecting the President.
All right, so the Sessions testimony today should be fascinating.
Here we go.
Yeah, a lot to get to on that.
Let me point out a couple of things about what's going on with the Jeff Sessions testimony.
Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General.
Many of you already know that.
Sessions has been accused of just about everything under the sun by the kooky Looney Tunes Democrats, from being a Russian spy to being a double, triple, quadruple agent for the Russians.
It's utterly absurd.
I want to point out a couple of things here so you understand some facts about what's going on.
There's an accusation-level kind of Now, I had a conversation with a couple guys yesterday and I was talking about this and I was really offended by this whole thing because, ladies and gentlemen, this isn't a matter of, like, this guy, you know, said this at the meeting and that guy said that.
There was no meeting!
Listen to me.
I don't know where Jim Comey got this.
If he's lying, if he's making it up to make Sessions look bad.
There was no third meeting.
Matter of fact, there wasn't even a second meeting with the Russians.
He ran into the Russian ambassador at the RNC.
I didn't know brushing elbows with someone was classified as a meeting now.
But there is no third meeting with the Russians.
So anytime your liberal friends say to you, well, Jeff Sessions, he's hiding something.
He met with the Russians for the third time and he didn't report it.
It didn't happen.
Listen to me.
You're just making it up.
Don't even refute it.
There's nothing to say.
If someone says to you, well, what about the third unreported meeting?
Folks, you're just lying.
There was no third meeting.
You're just making it up, okay?
A couple other points on this, which I find fascinating.
Did you know the Russian ambassador, Joe Kislyak, the dreaded Russian ambassador, who now whenever he meets with a guy who was involved with the Trump administration at all, the guy's automatically a Russian spy.
Do you know Kislyak met 22 times with the Obama administration?
Oh!
Oh!
Oh, it's awfully inconvenient, isn't it?
So Jeff Sessions, in the course of his work as a U.S.
Senator on the Armed Services Committee, meets with an ambassador from one of the world's largest armies.
What?
Again, that reminds me of the Spider-Man movie when Aunt May comes in the room and Peter Parker's all dirty.
And she says, what happened, Peter?
He says, I was cleaning the chimney.
She goes, we don't have a chimney.
He goes, what?
Folks.
My daughter's giving me a thumbs up.
She loves that movie.
Folks, there was no meeting.
The Obama administration, there was a meeting.
22 meetings with the Russian.
What?
There's no chimney?
Folks, you are... Listen.
I get a lot of emails.
They say, stop saying sorry.
No, I want to apologize to some readers who get tired of the Trump-Russia story.
But I can't get past it because it is just epidemic of the virus of liberal stupidity infecting large swaths of America today.
Jeff Sessions met with the Russian ambassador.
Oh my God!
He did?
He was a senator on the Armed Services Committee.
And by the way, the second meeting, which was just a brush that I just met with the guy at the RNC, like happened to see him there.
By the way, that was arranged by the Obama administration.
Oh, why?
Oh, and they met 22 times.
The Obama administration would kiss.
Why?
There's no chimney.
What the hell is wrong with you idiots?
What is wrong with you?
Are you folks?
And for the never-Trumpers out there, by the way, I'm trying not to start, I don't really start Twitter fights, I don't, except with liberals, but with conservatives and other Republicans, I try not, but I do finish them.
You pick a fight with me on Twitter, it ain't gonna end well, daddy-o.
This story that broke yesterday, there's so much going on that Chris Ruddy from Newsmax, who's a friend of Trump's, seemed to insinuate that Trump was looking at firing Robert Mueller.
Folks, it's fake news.
I don't know where Ruddy got that from.
I like Chris Ruddy.
I've met Chris Ruddy.
I know Chris Ruddy.
It's just fake news.
And this Rick Wilson, who is a allegedly a consultant for the GOP, how many times is this guy going to get suckered by fake news?
Wilson was the guy who it's alleged had some involvement with the dossier matter, you know, the fake dossier.
He got burned by that.
And now Wilson's tweeting, they're going to fire Mueller, all you Trump people, you're idiots.
And you're like, dude, how many times are you going to get suckered?
How many times?
Do you fact check anything?
It's fake news.
The Trump White House said, I don't know what you're talking about.
Now, I will stand duly corrected if they fire Muller.
I don't think Muller was a good choice anyway.
Personally, I wouldn't have any problem with it if they did.
He seems to be way too connected to Comey.
Folks, this is just ridiculous, this story.
Alright, so a couple points.
There was no third meeting with the Russian ambassador with Sessions.
It just didn't happen.
So it's not a matter of, like, he or she or anyone said anything.
There was nothing to be said because nothing happened.
Okay?
The Kislyak meeting.
He met 22 times with the Obama administration.
Nobody seems to care about that.
By the way, when they said that Sessions can purge himself and lighten the road, no.
Sessions was asked by Al Franken in the Senate Committee if he met as a surrogate with the Russians, which he did not.
He met one time as a U.S.
Senator on the Armed Services Committee, and an interesting little fact I was unaware of, I received in an email last night, which was fascinating.
The FBI investigator doing the background on Sessions, when Sessions was involved, was being vetted for the AG spot.
Yeah.
With the questions they asked him, Joe, about contacts with the Russians, clearly said, not contacts a part of your job as a United States Senator, because they knew they would be too numerous, because everybody meets with foreign governments.
So that's kind of fascinating, isn't it, folks?
The left has totally spun this thing, because they're just liars, they're total hacks.
It's just disgusting.
One more thing before we move on.
Circa News, which is breaking- Sarah Carter from Circa News must have like the greatest sources in human history.
She's breaking stories left and right.
She got word from the Inside Baseball crowd that in the Comey classified hearing to members of Congress, Joe, that Comey revealed something astonishing.
That he confronted Loretta Lynch, the former Attorney General of the Obama- you saw this story?
Yeah, we did this story, yep.
Under the Obama administration with a damning email about her allegedly trying to make the Clinton email investigation go away.
So Comey confronts her and is like, hey, what is this?
I'm not defending Comey, but I'm just telling you what the story reports in Circa News.
And apparently, Lynch looked at it, there was this uncomfortable silence, and she dismissed Comey from the office.
Like, hey, you have anything else for me?
No.
Then beat it.
Chump.
I mean, whoa.
That's big, folks.
This is what the Democrats should really be worried about, that this unrelenting focus on the Trump-Russia fairytale conspiracy theory is eventually going to blow up in their own faces.
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Thank you, King Midas.
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We did a King Midas play when I was a kid in third grade and they got a yellow light and they had the, you know, he touches his daughter, right?
And she turns to gold and the white satin dress.
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All right, a couple economic stories I wanted to get to.
But before I get to that, the emoluments clause.
This is coming up again.
This is just ridiculous.
Let me just knock this out of the park right now for all the dopey liberals who just they can't stop trying Trump, Russia doesn't work out, then it's obstruction, that's not working out, then it's Trump, the emoluments clause.
The emoluments clause of the Constitution says in essence that an officer of the United States can't accept gifts or emoluments.
That's really it.
So the left, the kooky, wacko liberals are like, You know, if you're staying in a Trump hotel and a foreign government pays for a hotel room, well, that's an emolument!
Look at Trump and the ridiculous Brian Frosch, who is the Attorney General for Maryland, who's, by the way, is a joke.
I know this guy.
He's a joke.
I have a hit on Square Off on YouTube now, which is a local show.
Still on YouTube, just annihilating Brian Frosch on the gun issue.
The guy is a classical liberal knucklehead with a skull 45 feet thick.
So they're suing Trump in conjunction with the D.C.
Attorney General for violations of the Emoluments Clause.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So now the fair market price paid for a hotel room is somehow a gift from a foreign government.
Hmm.
Well, Levin, hat tip, Mark Levin, who is an actual attorney, by the way, and who's worked in the Reagan administration, made an interesting analogy yesterday.
A lot of liberals haven't considered because they are dumb as a block, a box of rocks.
What about Obama's book sales?
Does that matter?
So if Trump is accepting a fair market price for a hotel room, which by the way doesn't get inserted into his wallet, it goes through the corporation which he separated himself from.
If Trump is accepting the fair market price for a hotel room, how is Obama not accepting an emolument if a bunch of foreigners are buying copies of his books?
Oh, no, no, that's different.
Of course it's different because it's your golden calf god, Obama.
Now, even worse, Joe, did the Clintons share any kind of a joint financial arrangement, Bill and Hillary?
I'm just checking.
Did they have a joint bank account?
Did they have any of that?
Because Bill Clinton was accepting massive speaking fees, and the Clinton Foundation was paying people who were friends of Clinton, who were getting money from foreign governments, while Hillary Clinton was an officer of the United States.
One of the interesting things about the Emoluments Clause, by the way, that the liberals leave out, Joe, is it doesn't refer to the President specifically.
It refers to officers of the United States.
Ew.
Which Hillary Clinton was as Secretary of State, so how is someone from a foreign country buying a hotel room, basically access to a hotel room for a day, an emolument, like that's a bribe, but a six-figure payment to Bill Clinton who shares unquestionably some joint financial arrangement with his wife who is Secretary of State, how is that not a bribe?
Guys, liberals, You're so dumb sometimes, not all of you, and certainly I'm not referring to all Democrats, but to the far left, you wackos who are just filled with rage against Trump.
I did a hit on Fox News yesterday and talked about this.
You're overtaken with rage.
You're making fools of yourselves.
You look like idiots.
You're a disgrace.
You're an embarrassment.
Everything you come out with gets shot down.
Everything.
The Russia fairy tale shot down.
Obstruction.
That was a joke.
I explained that on yesterday's show.
Your emoluments clause.
It's embarrassing.
You're humiliating yourselves.
You look like idiots.
Your credibility is gone.
I mean, I'm not here to give you guys campaign or tactical political advice, but just as an American who really cares about the country, can you get some level of sanity back?
Is sanity even like a factor in the equation right now, or if you agreed, you're all going to go insane and do it together like one flew over the cuckoo's nest style?
I mean, what is going on with you all?
Man, the emoluments clause.
Are you kidding me?
Are you that dumb?
Emoluments for a hotel room.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I was going to ask you a question about the possibility of tapes, of Trump having tapes.
Somebody said they asked the Secret Service if they had the tapes, and I thought to myself, what the hell would they have the tapes for?
Nah, we don't have tapes.
The Secret Service doesn't do that.
You know, it's interesting, Conservative Review sent me an email about this yesterday, and they were like, hey, what's the deal with this, with the tapes?
Folks, the Secret Service does not, we don't do that.
The only time the Secret Service would record a conversation ever would be in the course of their criminal investigations or protective intelligence investigations, and certainly with the consent, at least on the protective intelligence side, if it wasn't criminal, of the person they were doing it with.
No, the Secret Service doesn't do that at all.
There are entities that possibly could, but I don't think they did that.
Like WACA, the White House Communications Agency.
Not like Fozzie Bear.
WACA, WACA, WACA.
I used to kind of mess with them, but it stands for White House Communications Agency.
But I can't imagine that WACA would be involved.
My take is if there are tapes.
I'm always hesitant to speculate.
I threw you a curveball there, but it was on my mind ever since I heard it this morning.
No, listen, since you brought it up, it's a fair question.
I'm sure a lot of other people are thinking it too.
If there were tapes, it had to be done by a staffer.
It had to be.
I can't imagine WACA, the White House Communication Agency, which is run by the military, by the way, folks, just to be clear.
I can't imagine they would be involved in that.
Now, remember, it's not illegal, Joe.
That is a one-party consent area where the White House is.
And that confuses people.
One-party consent.
means that trump can consent if there are two people being recorded him and jim comey one party consents which is trump that says recorded it's okay now florida where i live is a two-party consent state which apparently some writers for politico are unfamiliar with um meaning both parties have to consent to being recorded but dc is not so he wouldn't have broken any laws again was it Smart to do, I'm not sure, but if he did it at all, we still don't know if there were tapes, but I'll make a bet with you, Joe, and again, I'll stay and correct it later on, I'll speculate for a minute here, that if it was done, and if there are tapes, it was done by the staff, it wasn't done by WACA, which is critical.
Thanks.
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Okay.
Another story I wanted to get to here is, on a bad note about the Trump administration, and I want to stay ideologically pure on this.
If we're going to be conservatives, we have to defend conservatism, not people who run under our banner.
I have a little bit of a beef with the Trump administration and the Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, who seems like a nice enough guy.
But Joe, we're back again to this argument about tariffs, and they're resurfacing.
Yesterday there was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about steel tariffs are resurfacing, and today there's an op-ed about sugar tariffs again, and I'm like, gosh, folks.
And let me just put this out there, because I always get negative email on this every time I bring this up, but it's not, you know, I don't do the show to lie to people, and I appreciate the feedback, good and bad.
I get it.
I get that international trade causes dislocations, in some cases severe, in the United States, and I understand that the impact of China has been devastating in a lot of areas.
But compounding the problem by supporting tariffs, and for those of you who may be unfamiliar with what a tariff is, a tariff is, let's say, Let's say Chinese steel is coming into the United States and it's coming in cheaper than American steel.
So what would happen?
Let's say for whatever, a pound of steel, you're paying $20 for American steel and the Chinese are selling it for $15.
What'll happen is a lot of people in that industry don't want the Chinese competition, so they'll push for a $5 tariff, Joe.
Does that make sense?
Oh, yeah.
Because then what would happen?
It would make the steal $20, and they'd say, well, now the competition is fair.
It's a penalty.
Yeah, it's a penalty.
Exactly.
Good way to say it.
It's a penalty at the border for foreign companies shipping their stuff into the United States.
Folks, I get it on its face.
That sounds...
Like, oh, hey, what's the problem?
So now it's $20 versus $20.
Folks, that's not the way free markets, liberty, that's not the way it works.
I mean, we can't just, we can't do what liberals do and ignore the second order effects just because the soundbite sounds cute.
I want you to remember this line when you think about trade and tariffs always, and never ever forget it.
Exports, in other words, what we make in the United States and ship out, we export to other countries.
Exports are simply the price we pay for imports.
Now, it's a lot there, but never ever forget that line.
The best way to frame this, which I've done before, is if the United States was an island of, say, 100 people, and China was another island of, say, 150 people.
You know, they have more people than us, right?
And that other island of China wants to send food and fish and water and medicine over to the island of the United States for nothing, for zero dollars at all.
Why would you not take it?
Now, that's not what happens in the real world.
The way we get stuff from other countries that they can produce cheaper than we can produce it here, the way we get stuff from other countries is we build stuff ourselves.
We ship it out.
Those exports, Joe, are simply the price we pay to get other stuff from other countries that they can make cheaper.
It's a concept called comparative advantage in economics.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, where people get confused here is they think because we can make something better and cheaper that we should.
Now, I know, Joe, you're like, what are you talking about?
I'm following you.
China ships us boxes of rubber dog toys all the time, right?
Rubber, you know, the chew toys?
Yeah.
These are low value added products.
People making them don't make a lot of money.
They don't sell for a lot of money.
They're like a dollar.
They're not worth a lot.
There's not a lot of value added in the product.
Not that people were any, listen, any work is valuable, but there's not a lot of value added in rubber dog toys because they don't sell for a lot.
In contrast to an iPhone where let's say, in other words, let's say the rubber dog toy, there's 90 cents of rubber and labor and everything else inputs, and it sells for a dollar.
You make 10 cents a rubber dog toy.
Right.
I assure you that's not what happens with an iPhone.
An iPhone may have $200 of labor and parts and lithium in the battery, whatever it may be, and it sells for $700, so there's $500 in value added, which gets returned to shareholders, employees, management, workers in the company.
You get what I'm saying?
So the concept of value added matters here.
Why?
Folks, because we can make rubber dog toys cheaper, and we can.
If we wanted to compete with China on rubber dog toys, we could.
We don't want to do that because the workers are... What are you going to do in order to make rubber dog toys cheaper than the Chinese workers make them?
What are you going to work for?
25 cents an hour?
And rotten breadcrumbs for a lunch break?
Why would you want to do that?
Exports are the price we pay for imports.
We don't want to export rubber dog toys to pay for rubber dog toys.
We want to export medicines, cars, robotics, iPhones.
Folks, the reason we build Boeing engines, aircraft parts, military equipment, the reason we want to export one, say, Boeing engine, Joe, For 60,000 crates of rubber dog toys is because the workers making that Boeing engine are gonna make probably $60, $70 an hour for high-tech manufacturing.
We make one, we ship it overseas, and what do they have, China?
They have 10,000 people making crappy rubber dog toys making a buck an hour.
Folks, what we export is only a price we pay to bring in exports.
Just because we can make something doesn't mean we should.
We don't want to race to the bottom.
We don't want to make Coca-Cola bottles.
We want to make the machines that make the Coca-Cola bottles ship that over to China and let them ship us back 10,000 Coke bottles.
There's no money in Coke bottles.
For workers, for stockholders, for management, for the United States economy, there's no money in it.
But there is money in the machines that make the Coke bottles.
Why are we arguing for tariffs?
When you argue for tariffs, all you're doing is telling that 150-person Chinese island, hey, that stuff you were, that cheap stuff you were going to send us for free, don't send it to us for free.
We're going to make it more expensive.
So now the people on our island who are making a ton of money building cars, we're now going to go back to making rubber dog toys because your rubber dog toys are now too expensive because of the tariffs.
Does that make sense, Joe?
Yeah.
This is pure economic madness.
Folks, tariffs are madness.
The only people who get hurt are you.
How is increasing the price of Chinese rubber dog toys, how is that helping you?
How?
Let me give you another quick example, Joe.
The economy overall is not zero-sum, but certain transactional elements of it are.
If the United States economy was worth $100, let's say it's that 100 person island, on that island is $100 in currency, right?
in currency, right?
That $100 in currency, $100 in currency, has to be spent on something, right?
Yeah.
Now, if let's say that Chinese island of 150 people sends you over the food and medicine and it charges you $20 for the food and medicine, then there's now $80 in the economy, right?
$20 was sent to China.
And you don't have to produce food and medicine.
You can do other things.
Cars, create music, movies, whatever you want to do.
High tech stuff.
How does telling the Chinese island of 150 people, hey, by the way, the stuff you're sending in, we want to pay 40 instead of 20.
We're going to put 100% tariff on the price of it.
Oh, okay.
So now there's only $60 left in the economy to pay the people on the U.S.
island to build high-tech stuff.
Folks, this is madness.
It is madness.
I'm sorry if this is a terrible, terrible idea.
Now, because I like to back this up with data, and there's a great piece in the journal yesterday about this that has some numbers in it.
There are, because they're talking about steel tariffs now, like, we have to, you know, build the US steel industry up.
Yes, folks, you know, we should take care of our workers here, but we shouldn't take care of our workers at the expense of everybody else.
Joe, there is 16 times more workers in the steel support industries, in other words, industries that use steel, than there are in the 150,000 people who work in the steel industry themselves.
Now, you may say, well, why do you care about that?
Well, because George W. Bush, yes, a Republican, of course, Also decided in his administration steel tariffs would be a good idea.
How many jobs do you think were lost?
Let's say, oh, 200,000?
And $4 billion in lost wages.
So in order to help the steel industry, which at the time of George W. Bush I think had 178,000 workers, 200,000 jobs in the industries supported by steel were lost, and $4 billion in lost wages.
Now why would that be, Joe?
Think this through.
So they increased the price of steel because they put a tariff on Chinese steel in the George W. Bush administration, which made the price of steel more expensive.
So now if you're a home builder who has, say, a million dollars to build a housing complex, and now the price of steel upped the cost to $1,100,000, Where does the $100,000 come from?
The money fairy?
It comes out of the workers' pockets.
He now has to pay his employees less.
He now has to charge more for the houses.
It comes out of your wallet.
So what happened?
People built less houses in the steel support industry and 200,000 jobs were lost to support an industry of 178,000.
of 178,000. Folks, this is madness. There's another article today about sugar tariffs.
Do you know what the global price per pound for sugar is?
No.
I didn't either.
By the way, I would have been stunned if you would have answered that correctly.
Yes, Daniel, it's 14 cents.
Holy!
Joe, that was pretty good.
It's 14 cents a pound.
Do you know what the price per pound for sugar in the United States is?
23 cents.
But how's that?
Yeah, why is that?
Because we have protectionary tariffs that doesn't let the world sell their sugar to us for cheaper.
So if you're out there buying whatever, sugar-coated O's cereal or whatever it may be, or sugary flakes, or frosted doom, or whatever it may be, I hate breakfast cereals.
Frosted heart attack.
Whatever it may be, and you're buying this stuff with sugar all over it, you're paying more because we have a tariff, because the world can't sell us sugar cheap, and somehow this benefits us.
How?
I'll tell you how it benefits the sugar industry.
I'll tell you how it benefits the steel industry.
But ladies and gentlemen, it hurts everybody else.
This is zero-sum.
The money we have in the economy has to be spent on something, and when we pay more for something, we could get cheaper.
It simply comes from someone else.
There's no money fairy.
You know, I get it.
This is a super sensitive topic, folks.
And as I've said to you repeatedly, we're all going to have to take it on the chin if we want this economy to grow.
Engaging in this endless tariff battle, where now countries just retaliate.
So when we put tariffs on sugar, the Mexicans tariff their sugar so we can't sell them sugar, and then they want their tariff higher, we want our tariff higher.
All of this is money coming out of your pocket that just hurts your neighbor.
That's it.
There is no other explanation, unless you believe in the money fairy.
You know, there's a story I mentioned yesterday.
I want to get to this, because this is a really good one.
So Cato had a piece, and I'll put this in the show notes today.
And I'm going to be putting the show notes up at Bongino.com and Conservative Review for a while, until people can start to find them, because it's been a bit of a hassle.
So we're going to get that tab up soon.
Good idea.
Yeah, I like that.
Cato has a piece by Gerald Driscoll, which is really good.
Yesterday I was talking about incentives.
Folks, there's a real mystery going on in the economy right now.
People are having a tough time figuring out, but Driscoll proposes some ideas, and I've addressed this before.
The unemployment rate, which is really kind of farcical, it was under Obama and it still is now, is down pretty low.
It's down in the low fours right now, Joe, 4%, 4.3%.
But one of the problems with the unemployment rate, which I've explained repeatedly on the show, is the labor force participation rate is still really low.
So if, let's say, you know, that 4.3% number, that doesn't mean 4.3% of the U.S.
population is unemployed, folks.
I want to be clear on this.
That means 4.3% of the U.S.
population that's of a certain age, looking for a job, and eligible to work, and not in prison.
Is looking for a job.
But the problem with that is, folks, and think about this, is you have to be looking for a job.
So if you're not looking for a job, you're not counted in the rate.
Does that make sense, Joe?
So that's not everyone, and I think people confuse this.
Now, the problem we had, the problem we've had under Obama, and the problem that continues, even though the economy's doing better under Trump, no question about that, I mean, amongst reasonable people, is why are all these people still not looking for work if the economy's doing so well?
Now, here's a number for you.
This should really scare you, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm not being hyperbolic here at all.
This is a frightening number.
It has societal impacts, cultural impacts, and moral impacts as well because of the value of work.
25 to 54-year-old men, what are considered, Joe, the prime workforce.
This is not a misogynistic statement.
Certainly, women add just as much value as men to the economy.
But men, this is a problem almost exclusively amongst men.
That's why I'm bringing this up.
25 to 54-year-old men.
6% of them were out of the workforce just a couple decades ago.
You know how many are out of the workforce now?
No.
15%.
Two and a half times.
Think about that, ladies and gentlemen.
This is a major league, moral, ethical, and economic crisis.
Double the amount of working age, you know, ready, willing, and supposedly able men are not working.
This is a BFD, a big freaking deal, folks.
Now, Driscoll proposes a few ideas as to why this may be happening.
He says, listen, we had 99 weeks of unemployment, which was almost unprecedented.
Unemployment insurance, where you get an unemployment check.
And in that time, a lot of people just lost the skills.
It's a technological... He didn't mention this, but I'm just going to throw this on there.
We now live in a different environment, Joe.
If you were a farmer in the past, you didn't really forget your farming skills.
You could walk out the back and till the field again pretty easily.
Right now, if you were a web developer, an assembly line worker, and it's three car model years later than when you left the car factory, all of a sudden your skills aren't valuable anymore.
Folks, this is a new phenomenon.
So some of these people probably went back and figured out the workforce had outgrown them and left or never went back at all.
You're a web designer, you were using whatever, cold fusion or whatever my wife uses and that stuff and all of a sudden nobody uses that anymore.
You got no job.
Secondly, SSDI, Social Security Disability Insurance, has exploded.
People are using, not all, some people who are disabled, obviously, but people are using Social Security Disability Insurance, it's almost an early insurance program, and the limits on it have been loosened significantly.
Folks, this is a moral crisis.
Now, on tomorrow's show, I want to get into how some of this has to do with inflation being subdued, because that's another argument out there.
I always bring it up even with Birch Gold.
Everybody's wondering, where's the inflation?
I'm telling you, it's going to be there.
There's no way to print the amount of money we did and not find the inflation creep up.
No way.
And I have a suggestion on how this ties into the inflation argument.
I'll give you a quick hint, something to think about.
With this pool, Joe, I just mentioned, of unemployed men looking for work, or excuse me, not looking for work, who could be?
Yeah.
Maybe that pool is what's depressing wages.
In other words, that wages aren't creeping up there because there's still this kind of like reserve, like bullpen of people ready to come out of the bullpen.
And maybe because of that, employers are not paying higher wages because they understand they don't really have to.
You know what I'm saying?
There's not as many people.
The demand for the jobs is not as high as it could be if that pool of bullpen pitchers is still hiding in the bullpen waiting later on.
You know what I'm saying?
If there's only one or two workers left for a job, you know, you have a limited pool of people.
You don't have to pay that high.
But if there's a hundred people for a job, you can test low wages.
You can be like, hey, try, you know, throw out $5 or $7 an hour, see if someone takes it.
They can't do that right now because the pool of workers isn't as big as it would be.
But I'll get into a little bit more in a moment because there's an inflation argument going on.
I got a couple other things I want to address tomorrow.
The Obamacare death spiral continues with no end in sight.
