In this episode I address the continued far-left/media fascination with the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory as their motivations for continuing the anti-Trump propaganda effort. http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/341493-opinion-forget-don-jrs-email-its-hillary-clinton-who-colluded-with?amp I also discuss how Hillary Clinton's political team is actually guilty of the crimes the liberal media is disingenuously accusing the Trump team of. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446 I discuss San Francisco's decision to not release surveillance tapes of robberies and assaults due to potential "racism." http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/07/san-francisco-transit-refuses-to-release-robbery-videos-over-fears-of-racism/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29 Finally, I address some of the reasons behind the troubling spike in mortality among white, working-class Americans. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-unhappiness-of-the-us-working-class/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=global
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Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
Where did that go?
The Dan Bongino Show.
It's time we take off the gloves, okay?
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
Right now we have a party that supports American values, and then there is a party that represents everything America isn't.
On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Ready to go on our next 500 shows, Dan.
Yeah, and as always, because it's the Renegade Republican and we do things a little bit differently over here, we'll celebrate the 501st show just like we did for our last giveaway.
So here's the deal, folks.
If you're a regular listener or a newcomer to the show, I appreciate all of you.
Obviously, it doesn't really matter.
As long as you're listening, it is much appreciated.
We want to do a little giveaway.
So here are the rules for the giveaway for the 501st.
Not the 500 show.
You have to be on Twitter because it's the easiest way to do these things, the way we did it last time.
So go to Twitter if you have an account.
Great.
If not, just set one up.
They're super easy.
It's not a big deal.
And follow CRTV.
So you have to follow CRTV.
Real simple.
It's at CRTV.
Many of you already follow that.
And do me a favor.
We're looking for a slogan for the Democrat Party.
So here's the backstory behind this promotion.
So the Democrats, I don't know if you know this, Joe, they sent out an email solicitation from their Democrat National Committee looking for money.
And they said, hey, we're looking for a new slogan.
And this thing got trolled relentlessly on Twitter and everywhere else.
So it's funny because, you know, the Democrat Party slogan, I mean, you could go a million different ways with this.
And I thought, all right, well, let's let the Renegade Republican Dan Bongino show get them a new slogan.
So satire is always appreciated, of course.
The funnier, the better.
So follow CRTV and tweet with the hashtag RR for Renegade Republican, RR 500.
And just tweet me a new Democrat slogan.
We'll pick one out.
I'll send you a signed copy of my book.
I'm not sure yet which one it'll be.
I may send you an advanced copy of my book, which doesn't come out until September 19th.
My third book.
But I gotta check with the publisher.
I'm not sure that's okay to do that.
And the advanced copies have, like, mistakes in them and things like that.
But just FYI, they're traditionally considered, uh...
Advanced copies for any book, not for mine.
It's something special about my book.
But they're like collector's items because there's not a lot of them.
They're only really given to like radio stations and other people and things like that.
But if not, I'll give you Life Inside the Bubble, my first book.
I'll sign it for you and you'll get a free one-year subscription to CRTV where I work.
You can see Levin's show, Crowder's show, Michelle Malkin's show.
So again, go to Twitter, follow CRTV, at CRTV, and then tweet me a new Democrat Party slogan using hashtag RR500.
That's RR500.
We'll pick a winner.
Cool.
Yeah.
Thanks for all the feedback, by the way, again, on the Bitcoin show.
It's just funny.
I said yesterday, wow, the Bitcoin show on Monday did terribly.
And it did, but that may have been a reflection of just it's the summer, because the numbers yesterday picked up terrifically.
And I got all these emails from people.
I love the Bitcoin show.
So thank you for the feedback.
I really adore my audience.
And I just want to thank you all again, because I get all kinds of emails about, hey, you know, I'd love to take you out for a beer at a steak sometime and talk.
Really, you guys are great.
I'm sorry I can't.
I wish I could do that.
Just with the kids and all, if I was retired, it'd be easier.
But it's super nice.
And I'm always flattered that people think that much of me.
I'm honored.
So thanks a lot.
All right.
Let's dig into the material.
I don't want to waste any more of your time here.
So the Trump Jr., Don Trump Jr.
Russia story, we have to cover this.
This is not a news of the day program in that way, but this is important because it's just not going to stop.
The why matters here.
The Democrats formulated this Trump-Russia conspiracy right after the election.
It has no basis in fact.
There's no there there, but they're using it to, and you know, this is what you need to take away from this as I deconstruct this thing.
The why matters, and they're doing it to empty Donald Trump, President Donald Trump's political capital bank account.
Now, this is a concept I've brought up to you many times before.
You know, having run for office a couple times myself, three times to be precise, Having made some, I don't know, decent political connections, I don't mean that in a nefarious way, but just having met people and discussed what goes on behind closed doors, I have a decent take, Joe, on how these things work.
Yeah.
Having been in the Secret Service, dealt with the White House staff, been overseas with these people, I've got a flavor for it.
And with politics there's a There's a misconception out there, I think amongst some people who haven't been involved as deeply in the political scene, that election victories matter.
Election victories do matter to some extent, Joe, but they're not as important as political capital.
Political capital is more important than election victories in many cases.
In other words, if you lose an election, and the person who wins the election is grotesquely unpopular, and has no ability to raise money, and no candidate across the country wants to be associated with them, and then the losing candidate in that race has a lot of political capital, everybody loves that him or her, where she's raising tons of money for her next run for office, you know, Hillary Clinton or whoever it may be, Then really, the fact that the person, one, they may have political power but they don't have political capital.
Political capital matters.
Now, to...
Make political capital a little more tangible, material, and touchable to you, so it's not just some otherworldly concept like, oh, what the hell?
Political capital?
What is he talking about?
Political capital matters, and it can translate into political power for a number of reasons.
Some of them I already alluded to.
Number one is, it gives you the ability to raise money.
When you are a very popular politician, whether you've won or lost an election, Joe, and you are very politically popular, I think of a guy like Ron Paul, who never won the presidency but ran many times and has a huge following.
Ron Paul has the ability, the former Texas congressman, who ran for president a couple times, Ron Paul has the ability to raise money.
A lot of money.
Matter of fact, a disproportionate amount of money for the national support he got in presidential elections.
Ron Paul is a guy that you may want on your side, either in some back-channel way or maybe in a front-channel way, depending on the libertarian lean of your district, right?
Right.
Ron Paul, his political capital is high, even though he's not even a congressman anymore.
Ron Paul has an enormous amount of political capital.
He can raise money, and libertarians love Ron Paul.
Almost anything he says, they will follow.
His endorsement means a lot.
His ability to raise money means a lot.
So he can get you two things, Joe.
He can get you votes, and he can get you money.
That is political capital.
Who has a lot of political capital on the left?
Bernie Sanders.
You may say, well, how's that?
He lost the nomination to Hillary.
I can make the case to you now that Bernie Sanders has more political capital than Hillary Clinton, who beat him for the nomination.
Matter of fact, Joe, you're seeing it in Maryland right now, where you live, where there's a governor's race coming around, and all the Democrats are lining up to take on incumbent Republican Larry Hogan, and Ben Jealous, who's running now, I don't know if you saw the story up there, Ben Jealous, you saw it, right, just got the endorsement of Bernie Sanders, and it's a huge deal.
It's in all the papers, it's in the Baltimore Sun, it's a big deal.
Because Bernie Sanders has a lot of political capital even though he lost.
Political capital, listen to me ladies and gentlemen, is almost everything.
It is raw political power because it can sway votes and it can attract money.
And money and votes is all that matters.
What the Democrats are doing with the Trump-Russia narrative is they are trying to drain Trump of political capital using a fake story.
It's a made-up story.
It's not real.
There was no collusion.
Was there political naivete?
Was there a series of really dumb decisions?
Unquestionably.
I'm gonna get into that.
But there was no collusion, Joseph.
Right.
The story's made up.
They're doing it to make sure Trump His political capital is drained.
That he becomes toxic.
That he becomes untouchable.
And that he can't raise money for anyone.
Nobody wants anything to do with him.
Nobody wants his endorsement.
Nobody wants him around.
And what will that do?
That will make, essentially, the White House a vacuum.
A vacuum media has no power.
It's anything that gets sucked into the vortex.
Anybody who touches Trump gets sucked into the vortex and they won't be able to move legislation.
The why matters.
When you drain a president of his political capital, Joe, he can't do anything.
He can't move on tax reform.
He can't move on Obamacare reform.
Why?
Because what he wants done, no one's going to want anything to do with because no one wants anything to do with him.
That was the goal from day one.
I'm not trying to be a PhD course in political strategy.
I'm telling you how this stuff works behind the scenes.
Political capital is everything.
Now, that's why this narrative continues.
Now, setting up again the premise for this Don Trump Jr.
email.
If you believe, if you're a liberal or whatever, a moderate Republican or whatever you may be, or an anti-Trumper, and you believe in this Trump-Russia collusion fairytale, anything that happens is going to fit your pre-existing narrative.
Anything.
If you understand the truth, that this was political naivete and some stupidity at best, and you get the truth, you understand what's going on, that this is simply a lie made up again to drain Trump of his political background.
So here's what happened, for those of you who missed out on it.
I'm sorry I had to set that up without explaining what happened first, but it's important you understand why the Trump-Russia narrative in and of itself exists before we go into the details of this story.
In June of 2016, Don Trump Jr.
accepted a meeting with a Russian lawyer at the urging of a friend of theirs who was a PR rep.
This gets a little confusing, so just roll with it for a second.
What you need to know is Don Trump Jr.
accepted a meeting with a Russian lawyer, but how the meeting happened matters.
He got an email from a PR rep who represented a singer The singer's dad worked with Trump on the Miss Universe thing.
So all you need to know is there was a personal relationship with this singer's family, this Russian singer, Emin or something.
This guy's PR rep, the singer, knew Trump and so did the family.
The PR rep alleges in an email to Trump that the crown prosecutor in Russia, which by the way is not a real position, so someone should have, this is why I say this was like sincere political naivete.
I'm not knocking Trump, they've never run before.
The appeal to the Trump campaign, they never run for office.
Some of the damage caused by the Trump campaign, Joe, is that they never run for office.
They just weren't familiar with the vetting process for information, so I'm not trying to absolve them of responsibility.
I'm just giving you why I think this happened.
They get an email from this guy, Rob Goldstone, who's the PR rep, who says, hey, this singer's dad has some information from the Crown Prosecutor of Russia, again, not a real position, it didn't even exist, about Hillary's illicit dealings or so with the Russian government.
Now, Keep in mind, at the time, there were no credible allegations in the public arena about the Russians hacking the DNC server.
So there's no way this could have been collusion about the Russians hacking the DNC server, Joe, and offering the information to Trump because it wasn't out yet.
Right.
Nobody had known about it.
Are we clear on that?
That's a very critical point.
Because the liberals are pushing that narrative now that, oh look, this was collusion and evidence that Trump worked with the Russians to hack the DNC server.
That's not possible.
Nobody knew about it in June of 2016.
But what we did know about at the time, and what was in the public arena, was Clinton, Bill Clinton's massive speaking fees to speak in front of a Russian audience.
What we did know about, so they were taking Russian money, the Clintons.
And what we did know about was Hillary Clinton's Now, can I prove to you that that deal was corrupt?
No.
Can I prove to you it stinks?
Hell yeah, I just told you about it.
the only one, where she signed off on the sale of one-fifth of our uranium supply
to a Russian company which subsequently donated 2.3 million dollars to the
Clinton Foundation. Now, can I prove to you that that deal was corrupt? No. Can I
prove to you it stinks? Hell yeah, I just told you about it.
That was out there. So gets an email saying, hey, this Russian lawyer has some information about Hillary's dealings with the government you need to hear.
Now, what should he have done?
Now, I don't need to give my opinion.
I can just tell you what he said last night on Hannity.
He said, looking back, he wished he would have done it differently.
All right, I accept the manor's word.
Did he do it?
By the way, is there any criminal allegation here?
No.
No.
There's nothing criminal about taking a meeting with someone who has information about your political opponent.
Nothing.
As long as there's not a quid pro quo, a payment.
Now, where the story gets a little more complicated here, And just to quote this directly, the email, so we're all talking about the same thing.
The email that went to Trump Jr., the email chain, which he released yesterday, by the way, which is nice, said that they had information that would, quote, incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia.
That's the quote, directly.
Right.
Now, here are the points you need to take away from this.
Liberals are saying, well, this meeting with, by the way, in the meeting with the Russians, with the Russian lawyer, Turned out to be a total farce.
It had nothing to do with Hillary at all.
It was about Magnitsky, the Magnitsky Act, and Russian adoption.
That matters, too.
Folks, I'm sorry this is a complicated story, but you have to understand this because it speaks to the entire liberal ideology.
Make things up, drain political capital, hurt your opponent, never tell the truth, okay?
So, a couple points from this.
The liberals are making the point, number one, that, oh, the meeting wasn't disclosed with the Russians.
So what is Trump Jr.
hiding?
Folks, that is absolutely not true.
Now, I'm gonna post an article, an op-ed.
From Kaylee McNanamy, who I really like a lot.
She wrote at the Hill.
It's an op-ed piece and she's an avid Trump supporter to be, you know, disclosure on that.
But I will put it in the show notes.
And by the way, thank you to everyone who signed up for my email list at Bongino.com.
You got your show notes in your email box yesterday.
So I will be doing that every day now.
So if you want the show notes, I mean in the articles emailed to you, just go to Bongino.com and sign up for my email list.
We got hundreds of new subscribers, so thank you very much.
I will email you, and it'll be up at Bongino.com in the show notes, the Hill op-ed where Kayleigh McNamee just deconstructs this whole thing.
Summing up her points, though, that the meeting was not disclosed.
Joe, it's just not true.
Paul Manafort, who was in the meeting, and Jared Kushner, who was in the meeting, had already disclosed the meeting on their security forms.
It's just not true.
I don't know what else to say.
The left response is, okay, well, that may be true, but Don Trump Jr.
didn't disclose the meeting.
Well, why would Don Trump Jr.
disclose the meeting?
He never filled out the form.
He's not an employee of the White House.
There were no forms to fill out.
Folks, there were no disclosure forms.
Donald Trump Jr.
does not work for the White House.
There were no disclosure forms.
So let me get this straight.
Donald Trump doesn't work at the White House, but he's supposed to go and voluntarily fill out forms he's not supposed to fill out?
I don't even know if you can do that.
Now, let me be absolutely clear on this because I'm not, you know, one of these golden calf supporters of politicians and, you know, I'll be hard on the Trump administration when I need to and I have been if you're a listener to this show on policy stuff.
And I don't think this was, in Don Trump's own words, this should have been done differently.
I mean, I say differently, they should have just reached out to someone in the bureau at the FBI and said, listen, I don't even get this.
But, I'm not going to accept lies either.
Saying the meeting was non-disclosed is just a complete fabrication.
Manafort and Jared Kushner did disclose the meeting, and Trump had no obligation to do it because he had nothing to fill out to disclose it on.
Okay, secondly, The email, again, that this is related to the email hack of the DNC.
In other words, like, oh my gosh, this was nefarious.
They approached them with information about the potential DNC email hack that's nowhere in the email chain and it's not possible because nobody knew about the DNC email hack yet.
So it's not possible.
You're just making that up.
Third.
The liberals are saying, well, sensitive information was disclosed on this.
Folks, again, categorically not true.
Everybody in the meeting, including Joe, this is the takeaway, the Russian lawyer who was in the meeting Have said that it had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton.
I'm not saying they should have taken the meeting.
I'm just saying any allegations that sensitive information from the Russian government was handed off to Trump's union in the meeting is categorically not true.
Nobody in the meeting, including the Russian lawyer, who's no fan of Trump by the way, have said that that's not what they discussed.
They discussed the Magnitsky Act and the adoption of Russian children.
Now, it's important you understand this.
This is why Magnitsky matters.
You may say, what the hell is Magnitsky?
There was a guy named Magnitsky who was killed.
Very credible allegations that higher-ups in the Russian government were involved.
It was about as anti-democratic a move as possible.
So Senator Ben Cardin, my former opponent in the United States Senate race in Maryland, and one of the, you know, one of the few good things he's done, led the way on this, on getting sanctions, Joe, imposed upon people in the Russian government who may have had something to do with the death of Magnitsky.
So they can't travel to the United States.
There's things they can't do.
It's called the Magnitsky Act.
The Russians hate this, Joe.
Because do you want to be a higher up?
Some Russian oligarch billionaire who can't even travel to the greatest country on earth?
The Russians hate it.
The Russians wanted Magnitsky desperately to go away.
I mean, no pun intended there.
I mean, they actually killed him, but they wanted the act to go away, too, because no one wants to go in the United States and get arrested or be sanctioned, because it's the greatest country on Earth.
The thinking now behind this, and again, I know this is complicated, but you have to follow this to understand what they're trying to do.
The thinking now is that the Russians knew That by saying they would have some negative information about Hillary on her dealings with the government, because the uranium story was hot at the time, and so was the Bill Clinton speaking fees story, the Russians knew that by putting out an email like, hey, we have some bad information about Hillary's illicit dealings with the Russian government, they knew that by going through this guy Goldstone, the PR rep, who has no, zero experience in politics at all, that he could reach Trump's junior.
And that he would get a meeting if they put that in there, that they had information on Hillary.
Make sense, Joe?
Yeah, phishing, yeah.
Phishing, for a meeting.
They're phishing for a meeting.
Even though, Joe, they knew the entire time this had nothing to do with Hillary.
Okay.
I'm not saying it's right.
I'm just saying Magnitsky's important because the whole meeting, the pretext for the meeting, we have information on Hillary that's really bad, was crap.
It was made up.
They just wanted, they wanted this woman, this Russian lawyer, to get in front of Trump Jr.
to make Magnitsky go away.
Trump Jr.
goes in the meeting, finds out that it's nothing to do with Hillary.
He's not, from his own words, he's, you know, it turned into, quote, nothing.
He leaves the meeting, never thinks another thing about it.
Political naivete?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Really dumb?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I think we all just have to accept that.
We shouldn't just say, oh, because it's, you know, the Trump team.
And to Don Jr.' 's credit, he admits really stupid.
He said it last night.
Criminal?
Not a snowball's chance in hell.
Collusion?
An even lesser snowball's chance in hell.
Collusion on what?
They didn't say anything.
Dumb decision to accept the meeting.
Politically stupid.
Very politically damaging.
And Joe, no question it's going to do tremendous damage to his political capital.
But criminal?
You're an idiot if you believe that.
You just don't know what you're talking about.
Collusion?
You're even dumber.
Collusion on what?
Lobbying on Magnitsky?
Really?
Collusion on what?
What information was exchanged?
Did I sum that up well, Joe?
Yeah, yeah.
Because I gotta tell you, I put a... I spent all... I'm not kidding, folks.
Like, this is only a 45-minute show, but I spent a good...
Gosh, three hours last night on this?
You gotta see the notes.
Really, I should start taking a picture of this.
I have a whole notebook page filled out making sure that I streamline this so you have the essential takeaways.
So those are the three points that they're trying to make.
The meeting was not disclosed, BS.
That it was about the emails being hacked into DNC, BS.
No one knew about it back then.
And the meeting was disclosed.
Third, oh, sensitive info was disclosed in the meeting.
Nonsense.
Every party there acknowledges nothing to do with sensitive info.
It was really a lobbying mission about Magnitsky.
Very clear.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Now, I appreciate that.
Part two of this, which I'll get to in a second.
I guess my buddy Brickhouse is going to take care of it.
Someone said to me yesterday, and a fair enough question, and I appreciate these questions.
It was a liberal, but a very respectful one, not a jerk.
I think it was Twitter.
I don't know.
I get so much correspondence.
They said, Dan, serious... No, it was on my Facebook when I posted about it.
Serious question.
They said, if the roles were reversed, and this was Hillary, in other words, Joe, Chelsea Clinton had accepted a meeting with a Russian lawyer who said they had negative information about Trump, how would you feel?
Fair question.
Which I'm going to address for you in a second.
Because... It was Hillary.
And it was even worse.
Oh, I'm not kidding.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
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Okay.
So you ask yourself, what if it were Hillary who did this?
Well, Joe, it was.
Now, in the Hill piece, Kaley McNanamy links, or hyperlinks, which I say which drives my wife crazy.
She's like, it's just links!
It's not hyperlink!
So, she hyperlinks to another piece written by Ken Vogel in Politico on January 11th of 2017, which I will again put in the show notes today and email to you if you're on our email list.
And it's interesting, because the Vogel piece talks about Ukrainian government officials attacking Donald Trump and colluding with the Clinton campaign to make sure Hillary wins the election.
Folks, please do not take my word for any of this.
I don't know Ken Vogel.
I've seen a few pieces he's written.
He writes for Politico, Joe, which you know I can't stand, is that for reasons, if you're a listener, you get it.
This is not a conservative.
This is not Breitbart.
It's not conservative.
This is not Conservative Review.
It's not the Daily Caller.
This is Politico.
They are left-leaning at best, if not far left-leaning at times.
They wrote the piece which lays out in stunning detail the Ukrainian government's efforts to help Hillary Clinton get elected by providing negative information about Trump, which they actually did.
Now, Let me read you a quote, again, in case you think I'm making this up.
This is from the Ken Vogel piece.
It was Ukrainian government officials who tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office.
They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump campaign aide in corruption.
Now, they later rescinded the documents.
So folks, let me get this straight.
As a liberal, you're asking me the fair enough question, the one who got to me on Facebook.
You're saying, well, would you be mad if Hillary did it?
Yes.
The catch show is Hillary actually did it.
Trump didn't do it.
Do you understand how that destroys your entire argument?
So you're, it's a, again, I'm, it's a very fair question.
And when people do things like that, they're saying to you, which I appreciate, if you're a principled guy, you would be upset at Trump, because you know you would be upset if Hillary did it, so it's the principle, not the person that matters, right?
Right, there you go.
That's the premise of the whole thing.
Switch the roles, are you still upset?
And if you switch the roles, and you're still upset, that means the principles matter to you, not the Republican or the Democrat label.
Great question.
I am upset about the Trump thing.
It was politically stupid.
But the catch about the Trump Jr.
meeting is nothing happened.
There was no information exchange.
There was no collusion.
Everybody acknowledges that.
What's stunning, Joe, Is this piece actually says that what Trump's alleged to have done and has been shown to be not true, Hillary actually did.
So yes, to turn your question on you, would you be upset if Hillary did it?
Yes, Hillary did do it.
And yes, I'm upset.
Well, it's apples to oranges, man.
Of course it is!
Because, you know, Chris Plant, who's a radio host down at WMAL, one of Joe Station's competitors, but he's really good.
Yeah, I love Chris.
He's super talented.
Yeah, he's great.
He's just a good guy.
He always says if it wasn't for double standards, liberals wouldn't have any standards at all.
And a double standard meaning is one standard for you and another standard for Republicans.
That's not my case here, Joe.
Or the apples and oranges thing.
Right.
It's apples and apples to me.
If you show me Donald Trump Jr.
colluded with the Russian government and got negative information about the Hillary campaign from the Russian government that was illegal, that legally obtained information, and then worked with them to overthrow the Clinton campaign, listen, I'll call them out, but you can't show me that!
You can show me he made a terrible political decision in an email by agreeing to meet with a woman who didn't disclose any information, but then I can show you conclusively that Hillary Clinton's campaign actually did what you're alleging.
Now I turn the question back on you.
Why aren't you upset about Hillary?
Oh, no, no, it doesn't matter that she cavorted with the Ukrainians and colluded with them.
You're the phony, not us.
You have the principal problem, not us.
Okay.
Here's another one.
On the, well, if the roles were reversed and Hillary did it, would you be as mad?
Well, what, and what, and someone, you know, in the, in the piece I'm addressing that the, uh, the comments he made to me first was if Hillary had accepted the meeting, would you be mad?
Okay.
She did.
Hillary's campaign did actually followed through.
Second, well, would you be upset if Hillary was meeting with Russians?
Um, no, because meeting with Russians isn't illegal.
Every politician at some point who has a prominent role in foreign policy, a presidential campaign, a senator on the foreign intel committee, any senator on trade, they're gonna meet with Russian officials.
But what I find odd is, you seem to think meetings with Russian officials are a bad thing when the Trump campaign does it, but the very same people asking me, well, would you be mad if Hillary did it, Joe, have zero problem with, again, Hillary's foundation, the Clinton Foundation, and Bill's foundation.
Accepting 2.3 million dollars from a Russian company that bought one-fifth of our uranium supply and then Hillary Clinton in her official role as the Secretary of State signed off on the deal.
Again, to be fair with other agencies, but you don't have any problem with that, but we're supposed to get mad because Trump met with some Russian people?
Joe, this is insane!
Yeah.
This is insane.
Now, again, we're supposed to be mad that Trump met with some Russian people, but we're not supposed to be mad that John Podesta sits on a board of an energy company with Russian oligarchs, and then when he joined the Clinton campaign, turned the- Joe, he turned the controlling shares over to his daughter.
Oh, then he had nothing to do with it, of course.
And we're not supposed to be mad that John Podesta's brother- brother- John Podesta's brother Actually works as a lobbyist for the Russian government.
We're not supposed to be mad about that, but we are supposed to be mad that Trump met with some Russians.
And nothing was disclosed.
Again, I turn the question on you.
You're asking, well, what would you be mad if Hillary did it?
Hillary did do it!
And worse!
And yes, I'm mad.
Here's one more double standard that I'm gonna throw in there.
So Don Jr.
yesterday puts the email out.
By the way, an embarrassing email chain.
He acknowledges himself.
Don Jr.
on his Twitter, if you don't follow him, you should, put out the entire email chain about the meeting.
Disclosed it.
Now you can, listen, I don't care what the motivation was.
Some people have said, well, he was only doing it because the New York Times was going to scoop it.
Well, he scooped them.
I can't get in the guy's head.
But what I find interesting is you're attributing malicious motivations, malicious motivations to Don Trump Jr.
for disclosing his own emails when you have no idea why he did it.
But he, Joe, he disclosed them.
They're there now.
You and I can read them right there.
You want to read the email chain about the meeting?
Go to his Twitter feed.
It's everywhere.
Yet, Hillary Clinton, we still don't have her 30,000 emails.
Do you understand there are still 30,000 emails missing from when she initially set up her illegal server in her home in Chappaqua because she didn't want to use the Department of State server?
Where are those emails?
So what I find hysterical is you're ripping Don Trump Jr.
to shreds for voluntarily disclosing emails that make him look bad.
They don't make him look good, Joe.
But he got it out there.
Said, I screwed up.
Here, look at it yourself.
But yet you have no problem with Hillary literally hiding 30,000 emails about setting up an illegal server in violation of State Department rules and possibly federal law.
You have no problem with that at all.
So again, I ask you, who has the double standard here and who's the phony?
And the answer is you, not me.
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Alright, a couple other stories I found interesting which I wanted to get to here.
This one's just a quick- I saw this on Tucker last night, and Legal Insurrection put it out on their email list this morning.
So, you know BART?
Not Simpson, but BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit System in San Francisco, Joe?
Yeah, B-A-R-T, yep.
Yeah, B-A-R-T, right, not the Simpsons there, right.
There's been a number of robberies and they're young kids and they go on the BART transit system, the trains, and they steal iPhones and they run off the plane.
Now, a lot of these criminals, these kids, happen to be black.
Again, a fact they're only relevant to the left.
I don't care.
All I care is that they're criminals.
I don't care if they're blue or green, right?
Right.
Now, they have surveillance video of this.
So BART, which is run, by the way, exclusively, it's in San Francisco, by leftists.
There's not a sane mind, I think, to be had anywhere in San Francisco, in the political arena, at least.
I'm sure there's more than enough sane citizens there.
They're not releasing the surveillance video.
Because they're afraid, and we haven't done this in a while, Joe.
That the racists are gonna get a hold of the video.
Now that's an ode to God rest his soul.
Joe and I, our friend Tom Marr, who is the radio host at WCBM, who used to openly mock the liberals, who every time you beat them in an argument they go, you're a racist.
Racist.
No one can do it like Tom.
But it's our ode to Tom Maher.
They're literally afraid that if they release the surveillance video of people assaulting and robbing people, that the entire city of San Francisco is going to become a racist and they're going to start profiling young black teenagers.
Folks, move out of San Francisco as quickly as you can.
I'm serious.
If you are of sane mind.
That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my entire life.
Let's not respect the rights of the people who got their iPhones stolen and punched in the face.
Let's respect the rights, I'm using air quotes, of a couple of kids who decide they're going to beat the hell out of people and steal their iPhones because they're afraid everybody in San Francisco is a racist.
This is the dumbest story I've ever heard.
It's illegal insurrection.
I'll put it in the show notes and read the story yourself.
It's just ridiculous.
The dumbest story I've ever heard, but I want to put that out there as another indicator of complete liberal.
We've reached peak stupidity with liberals.
All right.
Brookings.
I have one more story about community development block grants at Cato.
I'll put it in the show notes.
Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow, but I wanted to get to this other story.
I think it's more important.
So the Brookings Institution, which has been accused frequently of being a left-leaning institution, they portray themselves as centrist and, you know, whatever.
I don't really care.
All I care about is good research.
They have a really good piece out there at brookings.edu.
And again, I'll put the link to the piece in the show notes.
And it's fascinating.
You may disagree with some of the conclusions, but the piece, Joe, is about the decline of the white working class in America.
And the rising mortality rates.
It's really a fascinating piece and I just want to throw some of this stuff out there because folks, this is a really serious problem.
To sum up what I'm talking about, white working class, blue collar job Americans, we are the only country in the world where the mortality rate is going up.
In other words, medicine's getting better, Joe.
Technology's getting better.
No one disputes that.
Every day we're making new advances in gene technology.
All around the world, white working-class people are living longer and generally more prosperous lives.
Except here.
Think about what I just told you.
In the richest, most prosperous country in the history of humankind, white working-class workers are seeing an increase in deaths from suicide, Opioids, alcohol, health problems.
Folks, this is a... this is a... I mean, I'm trying to think of an adjective that's not hyperbolic but sums it up.
An astonishing finding.
Now, the Brookings piece is great.
It avoids a lot of the political stuff, which I like.
But I just want to make a quick political point about this.
I think you can attribute a lot of this to the rise of Trump in states like Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, an assertion you and I made, Joe, before the election, where you and I called the election almost to the T, not patting myself on the back, go listen to the show yourself, because I'd been knocking on doors at the time and telling Joe what I was hearing.
White working class men are being left behind.
They're dying at higher rates.
A lot of them are addicted to opioids.
They're engaged in alcoholism, a lot of them.
There's an increase in suicide rates.
There's a couple of theories in there I want to put out, and a couple of my own, as to why this is happening.
Number one, they bring up the growth in tech jobs.
This is something I've talked about frequently.
Productivity and technology are increasing.
Assembly line jobs, folks, are not what they were 60 and 70 years ago.
You know, when Henry Ford invented the assembly line technology for the Model T, Joe, it was literally like a guy on a line would turn a bolt, and then the next guy would put the wheel on, and then the next guy would put the tire on the wheel.
It did not take more than maybe a week of training to learn how to become proficient in developing that skill of turning the bolt.
That is not what we do anymore in assembly lines.
Even the most low-tech assembly lines that make rubber dog toys have a painting device that sprays the paint on the rubber dog toy that, to maintain it, requires some very serious technological skills.
I kid you not.
The rubber dog toy was painted by hand 70 years ago.
You either learned how to put the stripe on the collar of the rubber dog toy or not.
And you went and got a new can of paint.
That's not the way it works anymore.
Why am I bringing that up?
Because our education system is struggling and people don't have the skills to even get these blue-collar assembly line jobs anymore, so you're seeing unemployment amongst white working class males rise because we don't have an education system, Joe, teaching people the skills to be able to operate high-tech machinery and high-tech assembly lines.
Make sense?
Yeah.
So you're seeing people who would have had jobs 50 years ago because they didn't have to have a lot of these high-tech skills.
I'm not blaming them.
I'm blaming our education system.
I want to be crystal clear on this.
This is why I'm a huge advocate for school choice.
The education system has failed them.
It has not given them the technological skills to operate the computer software and to figure out how to work in these assembly lines.
So they're unemployed.
Unemployment is spiking.
So why are they dying and turning to drugs?
Well, number one, they don't have the education.
They don't have the jobs.
Number two, marriage rates are declining amongst poor white working class males.
Ironically, they make the point in the Peace Show that people think there's a big crisis in the black community with marriage, and there is.
But the same crisis exists amongst poor white males as well.
It's not so much a matter of black and white, Joe, it's a matter of poverty.
Now, why is that happening?
Well, I don't have enough time to dig in on this show about the culture war, but as I've said to you many times, and to sum it up, the left hates the idea of big R rights, rights given by God, not by the state.
And they hate the idea of competition.
The left is always considered the family competition for the power of the state.
Always.
Hence, the left, in a culture war, tried to diminish the family.
The left can't stand marriage.
The left loves divorce, they love abortion, anything that will destroy the nuclear family because they see it as competition for the power of the state.
They want your rights, little r rights, to come from the state, and that's it.
Big R rights come from God, and big R rights are learned and passed down by family.
They see family as competition.
So they've destroyed the institution of marriage, we've seen it over time, the proof is in the pudding.
Marriage rates have gone down, and as marriage rates have gone down, so now you have no job, You don't have the education to get a job, Joe.
You're not married, so you have no one to share your life with.
Number three.
Whereas 50 or 60 years ago, you may have had to go back to work.
Say you didn't get a job in the rubber dog toy factory.
You go, whatever, you pump gas for a while, you work in a local McDonald's, you get back in the workforce, you learn some new skills, whatever it may be.
But you're dealing with people.
You know, Joe, you're out there, you're going out, you're talking to people, you get what I'm saying?
You're out there dealing with the world.
Right.
That's not happening anymore.
We have a labor force participation rate at historic lows and we have a government entitlement state that allows people to get Obama phones, Section 8, welfare payments.
They don't have to work.
So many of them don't.
They sit home, not married, no job, no education.
They sit home and a lot of them are watching Jerry Springer.
There's no social interaction.
There's nothing.
Depression sets in, alcohol's next, death follows.
One more final point because I'm running out of time.
This was a really ingenious point in the Brookings piece.
He says, the reason the white working class mortality rates and depression, suicide are increasing, but it's not happening in black communities, which is interesting.
Even amongst the same income levels, right?
In other words, hold everything constant.
Unemployment, marriage.
Black men aren't killing themselves and engaged in alcoholism at the same rate as white working class.
He says, it's fascinating.
The white working class live largely in rural areas.
The homes are dispersed, Joe.
Black, a lot of the American men, black poor men live in inner cities.
So he says what's interesting here is that when you're out of the workforce, you're out of society, Joe.
You're in the woods, you're doing your thing, you have no one around to talk to.
But when you're unemployed and you're black and you live in a city, at least there's people around, you got your neighbors, you're seeing four or five of your friends every day if you're headed down to the store.
So it's an interesting proposition.
I mean, it's kind of a jump, but I'll take it.
It's a fair jump nonetheless that, you know, you're socially isolated, you're not married, no education, no job, and you're on disability payments.
Meanwhile, at least if you happen to be black and live in an inner city, you're still talking to some friends and you're engaging in the social environment.
You feel like you're part of something.
Fascinating.
Really, really interesting job.
Again, it's Brookings, they're a left-leaning organization, but I think it's a fairly written piece, and I'm going to put it in the show notes today, and I strongly encourage you to read it, because I think it's that isolation that led to people feel like they were feeling, the white working class that traditionally voted Democrat, to feel like the system left them behind, and that's why they revolted and voted for Donald Trump, who was an outsider.
That's my humble opinion.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Remember, go to Twitter, follow at CRTV, tweet me your Democratic Party slogan using hashtag RR500, and we'll get you, if you're the winner, we'll get you a signed copy of the book and a free one-year subscription to CRTV.
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