In this episode I address an explosive hidden camera recording of a CNN producer acknowledging that there's no proof of the Trump-Russia connection and that they're covering it for "ratings." http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/26/project-veritas-undercover-investigation-cnn-producer-admits-network-hyping-mostly-bullsht-trump-russia-scandal-for-ratings/ I also cover a powerful new study addressing the damaging economic effects of minimum wage on low income employees. This is another example of liberal policies hurting those that they purport to "help." http://dailysignal.com/2017/06/26/seattle-hiked-its-minimum-wage-heres-how-its-impacting-low-income-workers?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT0dSbFpEVmlaV1psTTJVNCIsInQiOiJLaDRmTXd4QWhPRGhJQTBzRG5PakxJcVMydUZlMFJhdytLbnpJdFwvTGxOR01LMWpieURGMTB3eWZ6b1NcL0RGXC9pKzZROHhkQTl1WExqTnVYZXgzcU8yeXVpd1czT3ZvcjAxNGFYOWZxaDlaMjUxcHl0TzE4Skk2UG5vNzRoQUNnbyJ9 Finally, I address the CBO's GOP Obamacare replacement report and the problems with their analysis, along with the Trump travel ban victory at the Supreme Court.
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All the Sanders supporters love throwing bombs at me and I throw them right back.
I'm not here to pull any punches, right?
The Dan Bongino Show.
This is the great irony of conservatism.
Even liberals win under conservatism.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
Are you suggesting you're that stupid that other people can run your lives better than you can, even though the cost and quality of what they buy, quote, for you doesn't even matter to them?
On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
Hi, welcome to The Vanity Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm pretty good, Dan.
How are you doing, man?
Man, I'll tell you, you know, some days I wake up like raring to go for the show because there's so much great stuff to talk about.
I feel like I want to get out there that I jumped in today and I'm feeling, I'm still sore, man.
You know, I'm still readjusting to getting back into the grappling game and, uh, man, my joints, I can't get the swelling out of my elbows.
And I went to the gym yesterday and was doing dumbbell bench presses and, uh, I had the big boys up.
I had the hundred pounders.
I was moving and my elbows are all swollen today.
So, uh, yeah.
Yeah.
I think I'm going to have to take like an 800 milligram whop of, uh, ibuprofen tonight, you know, and, uh, get that down because I really, boy, I can't take it.
It's really hurt.
I can feel the swelling in my elbows.
All right.
So I have to prioritize today.
Because we have Trump-Russia imploding on the Democrats.
We have Seattle's minimum wage imploding on liberals.
We have a fake news scandal imploding on CNN.
We have the Obamacare replacement imploding, to be fair, on the GOP.
And I got to prioritize.
So I'm going to try and oh, by the way, and we have the travel ban imploding on the liberals and the liberal courts again.
So I'm going to try to get through this.
So let's just get a read out of the way here.
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All right.
Let's start quickly here with this Trump-Russia thing.
Absolutely exploding.
And I want to, if you wouldn't mind, give a shameless plug for my book.
Listen, I don't really need the money, but if you want to buy it, buy it.
If you don't, don't.
I totally understand.
But there's a portion in my book where I go into this a little bit about what's going on with the Trump-Russia thing.
This is exploding on the Democrats right now.
And here's what's going on.
And let me wrap it up for you in a nutshell.
As we've been covering for months on the show now, Joe, I think you and I have been at the tip of the spear on this.
The Trump, there is no Trump-Russia scandal.
That is becoming unbelievably obvious.
I don't need to rehash every show I've ever done.
There's no scandal.
There's just, there's nothing there.
There's no story.
So now the problem is the boomerang effect that's turning around on the Democrats.
People even in the left-wing media are starting to ask a very common sense question.
If we can accept - let's start this debate here we're about to do with our liberal friends
listening with two premises, okay?
Number one, the Russians tried to intervene in the election.
Everybody accepts that, Joe, okay?
In some way, shape, or form.
There is some evidence, even at a small level, that the Russians tried to intervene in the
election.
Now, on behalf of who?
That is still an open question despite the fact that liberals want you to believe they were trying to get Trump elected.
I don't believe that at all.
I believe they thought Hillary was going to win and the entire time they were trying to gather negative information on Hillary for potential bribery material later.
I believe that with my heart.
So let's accept premise number one.
The Russians are always trying to get involved in our elections and have been trying forever.
All right.
Premise number two, that Trump colluded with them to win the election is outrageous.
It's debunked now repeatedly.
There's no evidence there.
It's never happened.
Democrats are even acknowledging that now.
The problem is, Joe, left-wing media types are starting to ask the question that if premise one is correct, Joseph, that the Russians were trying to get involved in our elections, then what the hell did Obama do about it?
And the answer is, he did nothing.
Zero.
Now, when we're operating from that premise, and that's widely understood now to be true, that Obama sat by and did nothing, what does that tell you?
That tells you the Obama administration was weak, that they were feckless, and frankly, they were reckless, too, in allowing the Russians to get involved in our election process.
So, former Obama administration officials now.
This was reported in an article by, I think it's Adam Credo in the Washington Free Beacon.
It's a really good piece.
It's on my Twitter feed.
You know what?
I'll include it in the show notes today.
By the way, they're up now at bongino.com in a tab called show notes.
You can't miss it, I promise.
They're also up at Conservative Review under the podcast tab, but if you have a tough time finding that, just go to my website, bongino.com, and there's a show notes tab until we can find a better solution, right?
I will put the article up.
But the Free Beacon piece is amazing because it says, Joe, that former Obama administration officials are now scrambling to protect Obama's legacy because they realize Obama looks weak.
He looks like a clown.
The Democrats are complaining about Russian intervention in the election.
Everybody's going, well, Obama was the president.
Why didn't he do anything?
Oh, because he didn't?
I don't understand.
What's your line of attack?
So, in their desperation to protect Obama's legacy, they are reaching back into the government to former friends of theirs, because these Obama administration officials are out of the government now, Joe.
And they're trying to get, and they're leaking information to the Washington Post about, oh, well, this is what Obama was gonna do, and this is what Obama, let me just, poor Joe, let me put you on the spot again.
This would be like, Joe is the engineer at WCBM, and he does a great job, let me just put that out of the way, but let's say Joe was terrible at CBM, and they had a huge ratings failure, and it was due to the fact that the station was skipping all over the place, because Joe couldn't handle the soundboard.
Of course, that doesn't happen, Joe's a genius on that, but let's just play the game with poor Joe for a second.
That would be like Joe, he gets fired, let's say, because the ratings go down, and Joe then leaking information to the media about how when he was there it really wasn't his fault, it was that the radio talent kept coming in and spilling coffee on the machine and all this other stuff.
Whether it's true or not, Joe's leaking information that breaks his non-disclosure agreement with WCBM, okay?
Oh yeah.
None of that is happening, but just to be clear, because analogies tend to make people think in narratives and stories.
That's what's happening with the government.
The Obama people are reaching back into the government going, well, this is what Obama was going to do.
Obama was going to tell the Russians, you guys were, were wee-wee-wee-wee bad.
Like, remember Bugs Bunny?
Who was that from the Bugs Bunny thing?
Elmer Fudd.
Elmer Fudd, yes!
Like, I'm so terrible at how he screwed this stuff up.
Yeah.
Those queasy Russians was wee-wee-wee-wee bad.
You're always so much better at this than I am at terrible at imitations, right?
Yes!
It's an Elmer Fudd moment!
They're reaching back to say with the Russians what they would have done.
But the catch is, folks, let's be crystal clear about this.
It's not what they did.
It's what they would have done.
And some of the information about available techniques that Obama could have done against the Russians is highly, highly sensitive.
In other words, Joe, it speaks about U.S.
capabilities for things the Russians aren't supposed to know.
Now, I'm making this up for effect here, but it would be like some Obama administration official leaking to the Washington Post like, Obama was going to activate the flux capacitor against the Russians.
What?
The flux capacitor?
Oh, my God.
The Russians don't know we have the flux capacitor until now.
You see my point, Joe?
Obviously, the flux capacitor, it's from like Backs to the Future, right?
That's the thing that powers the time machine.
I think it was called the flux capacitor.
But we do have one.
Yeah, I always screw this stuff up.
But the flux capacitor, the Russians don't know we have the flux capacitor.
They're giving up serious national security secrets only to protect Obama's legacy.
Now, I bring this up in relationship to the book.
I don't do gossip in my books, but my third book, which by the way, thank you again.
Last night we had a huge jump in pre-orders on Amazon, an enormous jump.
We went from like 170,000 to like 5,000 or something last night because I did a Facebook Live.
I don't do gossip, but there's a chapter in my book where I talk about the personal characteristics of a lot of these Obama people who are now... I don't get into specific names because I don't think that's necessary and I don't want to do that, but I do talk about the tone that they set and some of the behavior these people engaged in overseas that was highly detrimental to national security.
And you know what?
I never like to get personal.
But this is important that you understand the character of the people that are doing this.
These are not good people.
These are not patriots.
These are not people who care about the country, folks.
These former Obama administration officials care about one thing, and one thing only.
That's their golden calf.
Their Obama God.
With a small G. That's all they care about.
If they have to leak the flux capacitor to the Russians, we could have used the flux capacitor, they're going to do it.
These are bad people.
And please, my new book is called Protecting the President.
If you want to pre-order it, it's available on Amazon now.
I think one of the chapters for you is going to be a real, a sincere eye-opener about what the heck we're dealing with here.
And you're going to be like, no way.
I mean, it's that eye-opening in my opinion.
I mean, I wrote it.
Alright, a couple other ways this thing is exploding spectacularly.
Loretta Lynch now is the subject of an investigation into... I mean, almost hysterically, Joe.
Obstruction.
This is amazing.
The Democrats tried to nail Trump on an obstruction charge for a crime that never happened.
That's now imploding completely because there's no crime.
You can't obstruct an investigation into a crime that didn't happen.
So what's happening now?
Even Democrats are calling for an investigation into former Attorney General Loretta Lynch because Loretta Lynch, who was outed during the Comey testimony, Loretta Lynch Asked former FBI director Jim Comey to call the investigation into Hillary Clinton a matter, not an investigation.
So now even Democrats are saying, well, we need to hear from Loretta Lynch too.
So implosion number one, we're starting to find out who the Obama administration officials really are.
They're leaking highly classified information to preserve Obama and hurt the country, to preserve his legacy.
Secondly, it's imploding on Loretta Lynch, who is now the subject of an obstruction, at least inquiry, in Congress, which is going to look really bad for the Obama administration.
Third, the Trump-Russia investigation is completely exploding on CNN.
You have that cut ready, Joe?
Yeah, man.
Here's a couple things on CNN.
CNN decided, and listen, I'm not piling on you, okay?
I've been on CNN before, but it's pretty clear right now that they've been engaged in a pretty robust fake news campaign.
I'm just going to give you their own words.
But before we get to this cut, though, which is absolutely devastating.
CNN ran a story the other day about a Trump advisor and his connection to a Russian investment fund.
They discussed it on yesterday's show.
Completely without merit.
And without merit is a quote from people involved in the investigation.
They had to retract the story and three people have been let go from CNN over this horrible story about how Scaramucci, who was a Trump associate, was involved with this Russian investment fund.
Which, by the way, is just a regular investment fund.
Be like you investing in the South Korean stock market using your account.
So they had to retract the story and embarrassingly three of their people had to be let go.
But in case you thought CNN was interested in the truth and the Trump-Russia fairytale, which Joe, Me and you should take a victory lap, along with many others.
It's not just us.
I don't want to sound in any way pretentious about it, but how long have we been saying that this is a total scam, there's no truth to it, and it's being done for ratings?
I mean, what, four or five months now?
That the thing is a mess.
There's no there there.
This is a cut of a CNN producer caught on tape by James O'Keefe's group, Project Veritas.
A CNN producer caught on tape talking about how CNN has nothing on the Russia scandal, they have no proof, and that they're doing it just for ratings.
It's about, what is it, about 50 seconds show?
Something like that, yeah.
Play the cut, this is devastating.
Why is CNN constantly like, Russia this, Russia that?
Because it's ratings.
Because it's ratings?
Our ratings are incredible right now.
But honestly, you'd think that whole Russia shit is just like, bullshit.
Could be bullshit.
I mean, it's mostly bullshit right now.
Like, we don't have any big giant proof.
I just feel like they don't really have it, but they want to keep digging.
And so I think the president is probably right to say, like, look, you are witch hunting me.
like you have no smoking gun, you have no real proof.
And the CEO of CNN said in our internal meeting, he said, good job everybody covering the climate
accords, but we're done with it.
Let's get back to Russia.
Whoa.
Folks, regardless of what you think about James O'Keefe and Project Veritas, he's done
a lot of good work exposing the far left.
This is just devastating audio.
And, you know, again, be fair on this because I don't like to do pylons.
I've been the subject of an illegal recording on my end.
Now, I think they're legally covered because where they did it, I'm pretty sure it's a one-party consent state, meaning as long as the guy who's recording consents to be recorded, it's okay.
Florida is a two-party consent state, meaning if you're recording someone, they have to agree to be recorded.
So I think they're legally okay on this one, but I'm not a huge fan of that type of stuff because everybody, you know, we could all get caught saying things in moments, but This has to be exposed because this is what basically the essence of what Joe and I have been talking about for months.
There is no Trump-Russia story.
It's made up.
This is the CNN producer, the senior producer's own words.
I took a couple quick notes during that.
Number one, the CEO of the company, Jeff Zucker, he says he was in a meeting with the CEO of the company, the senior producer on tape, and he said that, remember when Trump pulled out of the Paris Accords?
And apparently the CEO of the company said, oh, you know, that's great, you know, but let's get back to Russia.
In other words, that's where the ratings are.
Second, he mentions that Trump is right, that this is a witch hunt.
And third, he says, listen, we don't have any real proof.
These are all quotes.
You know, the nice part about a podcast, I don't have to play the cut again, because you can just hit rewind.
This isn't a live show.
I encourage you to listen to that again.
This is CNN's own producer acknowledging that this is a total witch hunt, and there's nothing there.
And yet, astonishingly, Joseph, astonishingly, there will still be liberals who will tweet me And send me nasty emails that, oh no, the evidence is going to show up soon, despite Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who's seen the classified information, saying there's no evidence, despite even that that clowny guy, the Congressman Swalwell, who's like a joke from California.
Even this guy can't even find evidence.
There's no evidence.
You got CNN saying there's no evidence.
You got the CEO going, hey, you know, we need to get back to Russia.
We do it for ratings.
Guys, ladies, you're being scammed.
I'm begging you as liberals just for a second, because I know we have liberal listeners.
I got an interesting email from a guy yesterday.
He said, you know, can you do a top 10, you know, debunk this liberal things?
I can't, unfortunately, because my whole show from episode one to 490 today is a debunk this for liberals.
So you have to go back and listen to the library.
But on the Russia thing, I'm just asking the liberal listeners if CNN Democrats who've seen all the classified intel on the Senate Intel Committee, and just about every news source out there is starting to acknowledge that this thing is totally made up and is a witch hunt.
Why are you the last holdout?
Why do you want to be the one imbecile left turning the lights out on the way out of the room?
I mean, when are you going to realize you've been suckered?
How much embarrassment, politically, are you willing to take for this?
You're being made a fool of!
Gosh, I mean, it's like... This is what I always appreciated about being a conservative, not necessarily a Republican, Joe.
We did a whole show yesterday about how the Obamacare replacement bill sucks, right?
We will go after our own principled conservatives when we do something that's dumb.
We do it all the time.
And the proof is in the pudding.
Just listen to the library of shows.
I've defended Trump when he's right.
I've gone after when I think he's wrong on trade and other issues.
Because we have principles.
What do you guys have left?
You are actively propagating a lie that everyone acknowledges is false.
Anyone who's credible.
No one with a professional reputation left is sticking to this.
It's only you on Twitter, the crazy liberal in his room in his pajama boy outfit, with his hot cocoa, playing his video games all day with no job.
You're the only one, and the resist hashtag in your Twitter feed, you're the only one who still believes this is true.
How long are you going to be made a fool of?
I don't want to drone on about this, but you look like an imbecile.
I mean, I just saw a poll today.
73% of Americans now are like, all right, it's time to move on with the Russia thing.
It was on Fox this morning.
How long are you going to cling to this?
I mean, you're losing elections, you're being destroyed in special elections, you have the least amount of political power you've had since the 1920s, nobody who's seen the evidence, who's not seen the evidence, in the media, anywhere, believes this is true.
Oh my gosh.
All right, so that's number three.
So first, again, we found out who the Obama administration officials are.
Second, Loretta Lynch is going to go down.
This is all the implosion of the Trump-Russia thing, which is totally boomeranged on them.
CNN's going down.
The New York Times is going down.
Remember Jim Comey's testimony, Joe, where he was asked about the New York Times?
And Jim Comey, who I'm not a huge fan of, but said that the reporting from the New York Times on the FBI investigation is almost completely false.
So the New York Times has been discredited.
It's just amazing that all of these left-leaning entities, Loretta Lynch, Loretta Lynch's DOJ, the New York Slimes, CNN, Obama, all of these people started the Trump-Russia thing and ironically are all going to go down and there's one more.
The Susan Rice unmasking thing is turning into a total disaster.
I don't know if you saw this story, but Judicial Watch is trying to get a hold of the records.
Susan Rice, the former National Security Advisor to Obama, who is not an investigator, folks.
She is a political appointee.
I cannot emphasize this enough.
She is not a federal agent.
She is not supposed to be gathering intelligence.
She's supposed to be consuming intelligence.
She's a political appointee.
She has no law enforcement powers at all.
There are records of her unmasking requests.
In other words, the people she wanted to spy on.
Let's just call it what it is, Joe.
She's already admitted to spying on the Trump administration and Judicial Watch tried to get a hold through a FOIA, Freedom of Information Act request, of who else she's asked to unmask or spy on.
And conveniently, Joe, what did they say?
They said, well, I don't know if you saw this.
They said, we can't give that to you now because it's all going to the Obama library and it's for five years.
And everybody's like, wait, what?
Folks, I'm telling you right now, Obamagate, in other words, the spying scandal with Susan Rice and the Obama team spying on the Trump team, is going to be one of the biggest scandals we've seen in politics in 50, 60 years, maybe 100 years.
You have not heard the end of this.
When they get a hold of those records, remember this episode, 490, mark it, it's about the 22 minute mark, roughly, depending on how long the intro is, this is going to explode.
They are trying to hide the records because the records show something that is really going to damage the Obama administration.
So again, those four things sum up how the Trump-Russia scam, conspiracy theory, X-Files story completely imploded on the left, and it's going to wind up ironically taking the left down.
Okay, I got a lot more to get through here.
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Joe, bombshell report, and I mean it.
If you're into economics, which I, if you're a regular listener to the show, you know I love.
It's my, it's everything to me.
I enjoy it so much that I like to dig through academic reports just to filter through what I think is what you need to hear about.
I didn't even have to go look for this report yesterday because this report was everywhere.
Even the Washington Post wonk blog, which is unquestionably left-leaning, Joe.
How to take a look at this minimum wage report in Seattle and acknowledge that we were right the whole time.
Now, you and I discuss minimum wage on the show often, just like we discuss the mythical Clinton surplus for a reason.
It's not that I really think minimum wage is going to destroy the economy.
I think it's a bad policy.
And it's not that the Clinton surplus is about the Clinton surplus.
It's about the media's propagandizing effects when they know something to be patently false.
Now it's obvious to anyone who has common sense that there was no Clinton surplus.
It's also obvious to people with common sense that asking employers to pay employees more
than their productivity is worth to the company is eventually either going to bankrupt the
company or cause the employee to be fired.
Joe again, this is only a mystery to liberals.
I always use the lemonade stand example.
You have a lemonade stand, right?
You want to hire a new worker.
You hire a new worker, that worker's gonna bring in $10 more an hour because if you hire that new worker, you can serve 10 more people in an hour at a dollar a glass.
Folks, you cannot afford to pay that worker $15 an hour.
It doesn't make sense.
You will lose $5 an hour.
I don't know.
I really, to this day, cannot understand why liberals find this difficult.
I don't think they do.
I think it's just a propaganda effect.
And I think a lot of it has to do with unions.
I mean, just so you know, I always say the why matters.
Yeah, I'm with you on that one.
Yeah, of course.
I mean, for those of you wondering why liberals...
Smart liberals.
I'm not talking about the lemmings that just follow whatever the Washington Post says.
I am convinced liberals know minimum wage doesn't work.
And this study, which I'm going to get to in a second, you know, I don't want to say proves, but it provides really strong evidence that everything we've been saying is true.
Liberals fight for minimum wage increases because union workers that primarily donate to Democrat lawmakers and Democrat activist groups, and I'm not knocking the employees, I'm knocking the union management here, their wages are indexed, a lot of them, to minimum wage type scales.
So they get a percentage above minimum wage.
So Joe, if minimum wage workers get a raise from $10 to $15 an hour, union employees who are not Working for minimum wage, but maybe working for 20, and it's indexed to minimum wage, would get, say, maybe a $5 or $7 raise.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Even though their wages had almost nothing to do with minimum wage other than the indexing.
So when you're asking yourself, well, why do liberals keep fighting for this?
They keep fighting for it because they want the campaign money to keep coming in from union management that's giving them money to get them elected, to bump minimum wage so they get a de facto raise too.
I don't think any sane liberal really believes minimum wage works in increasing wages.
Now, this report came out yesterday.
When I say bombshell, I mean it because everybody picked this thing up.
It was on Fox this morning.
It was even covered by some left-leaning outlets like the Washington Post.
Here's the study.
The University of Washington conducted this study on minimum wage effects in Seattle.
And it was a very robust study.
Now, again, a lot of this stuff, I want to be clear on this because it's not fair for me to bash the results when they come out defending the liberal narrative.
But then not to do it when they defend our narrative.
Now, I think this was a well-done study, but folks, be very, very careful when it comes to data like this from the social sciences.
Economics is not a hard science.
I don't care what any economist tells you, Joe.
It's not.
It's a largely theoretical-based arena.
It's very hard to conclusively prove results.
How do I know that?
Because even if you look up minimum wage now, you will still find some studies that show that, oh, minimum wage doesn't have any effect at all, even though you and I know it's arithmetically ridiculous.
The money had to come from somewhere.
There's no money fairy.
So just be cautious.
But this report was pretty damning.
And the reason it was damning is it used a new aggregation method for the data where they were able to really distill the effects down to almost hourly type wages, Joe.
And this is one of the first times they've been able to do that.
So just so we're clear, in the past, a lot of it was average data, you know, relegated to this versus that.
This, they were able to really distill the wage data down to almost hourly stuff.
Make sense?
So it was good.
So here are the results from the University of Washington study on the Seattle minimum wage hike.
It decreased unemployment for low-wage workers.
Okay.
Think about what I just... I know I just said that rather anti-climactically, but think about what I just said!
I didn't say that wrong.
The minimum wage hike decreased unemployment for low-wage workers, but the average hours for low-wage workers declined.
Sorry, I didn't throw the second half in.
That's why you're probably like, well, what's the problem with that?
The average hours for low-wage workers declined.
So what does this mean?
What happened here, folks, The unemployment they held on to because of the hike in the minimum wage, in other words, demanding that people pay more than the amount of productivity the person was producing.
So if you're at the lemonade stand, you're producing, say, $10 an hour worth of productivity, right?
So that's what you're worth to the company.
What happened was that now they're demanding they pay $12 an hour, what they did was they got rid of some of the employees, well they kept some of the employees, and they wound up paying other employees that were more productive more to come in and replace them.
You can't... I know it's hard to understand, but if the government's demanding that you pay people $12 or $15 an hour, and they're worth $10, what wound up happening is that... Let me read to you exactly, because I'm not explaining this well enough.
This is a piece from The Daily Signal, which I'll include in the show notes here.
Hold on, I'm getting emails today.
This is from the Daily Signal piece, which again, I'll put in the show notes.
One of the more explosive findings was that the wage increase to $13 an hour reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9%.
So reduce the hours.
So people, when the minimum wage kicked in, people who are low-income lost hours.
While hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3%.
Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees' earnings by an average of $125 a month.
So low-wage income employees earned $1,500 a year less.
Because what happened is they replaced the workers I don't know where I got this first line.
That's how I confused everything.
Forget that line for a second.
All you need to know is the average hours of low-wage workers declined.
Because they were not worth the $12 an hour in productivity.
It's not a moral judgment.
It's not an ethical judgment on the character of these people.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
They weren't worth the money, so they replaced them with higher-skilled workers.
Let's say a guy... I'll give you a lemonade stand example.
It's pretty salient here.
So now instead of $10 an hour, the government mandates a $12 an hour minimum wage.
The $10 an hour employee gets canned.
And what happens?
They replace him with a guy who's going to cost more, but the guy's faster than the $10 an hour guy because he has more lemonade skills, Joe.
And what does he do?
He produces $12 an hour.
So the irony of this whole thing, ladies and gentlemen, Is that the whole purpose of this was to help low-income workers, and it actually screwed them and cost them $1,500 a year.
Now, one of the things that's always bothered me about liberalism is that it doesn't help people, it actively hurts people who they try or say they're trying to help.
What upsets me about this They're kneecapping these folks.
You have these low-income people who are actually losing money because of this.
And the sad part is it won't change the national argument one bit because people will continue to rely on the liberal talking points that, oh, well, the people who stay in the jobs, they're certainly benefiting.
Yeah, but everyone else is getting canned!
It's not helping.
Now, there was one other thing from the file that Dan Bongino renegade Republican archive here.
There's one other story I saw yesterday about liberal policies that are supposed to help people who are lower income and really screw people over that never meet their target.
There's a thing going on in Nevada.
The Republican governor, which is really disappointing, just signed a piece of legislation reinstituting net metering.
Have you heard of this, Joe, net metering?
No.
I mentioned it on the show briefly before.
This is crazy.
If you put solar panels on your house in Nevada.
Did I say Nevada before?
It's Nevada.
In Nevada.
If you put solar panels on your house.
You can sell the excess power generated back to the electric company.
You're probably like, oh, well, what's the problem with that?
The problem is through net metering, the government regulations dictate that the electric company has to buy it back at retail rates, not wholesale rates.
Okay, so what's the problem with that?
They don't need it!
They can get the power somewhere else cheaper!
So you're like, well, what's the problem with any of this?
Well, what's the problem?
If you don't have solar panels, you're now paying a bigger electric bill to subsidize the electric company that now has to buy power back from a lot of rich folks who put solar panels on their home because they have to pay more.
They could get the power for wholesale prices elsewhere.
Folks, again, minimum wage, screwing people at low incomes, costing them $1,500 a year, And secondly, net metering, which is supposed to be some green initiative, we're going to help the environment, we're going to help people, is actually costing lower income people more money on their electric bills because you're subsidizing rich people who put solar panels on their home.
But again, guys, ladies, don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument with the left.
This is just absurd, it's totally outrageous.
Alright, I gotta power through this quick because this is important.
So the Obamacare replacement CBO estimate came out yesterday and it said 22 million Americans would lose insurance.
That's not what the bill said, that's what the media said.
We're going to lose insurance.
I've cautioned you against this for days.
That's the liberal talking point.
22 million are going to lose insurance.
Folks, that's not what the report says again.
The report says that 22 million people, the large majority who will choose not to get insurance, will choose not to buy insurance because the penalty went away.
So if the argument you're making here is that 22 million people will lose insurance, you should be saying to your liberal friends, how?
How?
Is it being taken away from them?
No, it's not.
You didn't read the report.
The report clearly says that the majority of those people, due to lack of a mandate, will choose not to buy overpriced insurance.
So unless your thing is using the barrel of a government gun and the monopoly on force they have to force people to buy something they don't want, then you have no argument at all.
Choose, not lose.
Another thing about this, which I brought up in the past, be very skeptical of CBO estimates.
The original CBO estimate, Joe, for Obamacare when it was passed in 2016, they said in 2016, when Obamacare was passed, was it 2009, 2010 or so, they said that in 2016, 24 million people would be insured under Obamacare.
The actual number is 12 million.
So the CBO estimate was only off by 12 million people.
No big deal.
I would say that sarcastically.
They also said by 2017, 26 million people would be insured, and 10 million people are now.
So they were off there by 16 million.
So folks, be very skeptical of the CBO.
And one thing on this too, about this bill.
I'm not a huge fan of this Obamacare replacement bill for reasons I described in yesterday's show and the day before that.
But Obamacare expanded Medicaid, folks, by 29%.
It now covers 74.5 million Americans.
We have to start asking ourselves some really critical questions.
And one of those questions is, Are you telling me that one in four Americans cannot find the money to buy insurance for their houses, for their household, and you and I have to pay for their insurance?
Folks, this doesn't sound right.
Now, listen, you can believe in a safety net, and certainly I believe in charity on my end, but are you seriously making the case to me that one in four people ... I mean, walk down your block.
One in four people, not one in four households.
Are you telling me one in four people cannot afford a couple hundred bucks a month or maybe a couple thousand dollars a month for a catastrophic mini-med plan or something that you have to pay for them?
I don't know, folks.
That's a tough argument to make.
The reason I bring that up is because the Senate plan, which I'm not a huge fan of, but it puts a cap on Medicaid spending and liberals are going nuts.
We're going to throw granny off the cliff.
People are going to die.
It's all nonsense.
These are choices people are making.
They're choosing not to buy.
Healthcare and they're choosing to take it as a government benefit, which means you have to pay for it, which is insane.
All right.
Last story, because this is an important one.
The travel ban yesterday, unanimously, was not overturned.
They agreed to hear the case, but it was a 9-0 ruling, and it was pretty bad for the opposition.
And I think what's going to happen is the Supreme Court is going to rely on that.
What is it?
I had it bookmarked here in my book.
I have a book of notes I use.
Oh, here we go.
The 1972 case, Kleindienst, I think that's how you pronounce it, versus Mandel.
And the Supreme Court, this is where, in the Wall Street Journal op-ed today, I think they're gonna go with this.
This was the findings.
Aliens have no constitutional right to enter the U.S.
American citizens have no constitutional right to demand entry for aliens and denying admission must be upheld if it's based on a facially legitimate and bona fide reason.
In other words, if the bill gives a reason, and Trump says the reason's national security, then folks, that's a bona fide reason, and I think they're gonna lose, if this case is even heard.
But one quick note about this, they upheld right now, they let them install the 90-day travel ban while they figure out what to do and institute new vetting requirements for people overseas.
Right.
By the time the Supreme Court hears the case, the 90 days is probably going to be up.
They even noted in their decision that an expedited hearing wasn't requested, so this may all be a moot point at the end.
But either way, this was a huge victory for Trump, which the liberals refused to acknowledge.
Hey, sorry for getting crossed up, and I wrote that quote wrong on the minimum wage.
That kind of screwed me up.
But remember, the takeaway from that is the average hours for low-wage workers declined, and they lost $1,500 a year.
I don't know where I got that from.
Decreased unemployment.
I'm still looking at it now.
How did you take that note backwards?
It's totally screwed me up.
But this is really important stuff.
A lot of breaking news, and I had to power through it today.
I wanted to get you all the talking points you needed for today.
