In this episode I address the curious connections between the "Never-Trump" movement, the Obama administration, and the Russian lawyer behind the latest Trump Russia conspiracy theory. http://www.ibtimes.com/why-was-natalia-veselnitskaya-former-nsc-special-assistant-michael-mcfauls-2014-hfac-2564577 I discuss the pending Republican Party sellout on tax cuts, which should trouble every conservative. http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/14/the-sickening-effect-of-obamacare-taxes/ I address the push by the Trump administration to eliminate a tax deduction that may impact your home's value, and your tax bill. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-trump-targeting-tax-write-off-may-hurt-republicans/ Finally, I address the FBI Director nominee's comments on "torture." http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fbi-nominee-wray-torture-is-wrong/article/2628396
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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.
All right, welcome to The Renegade Republic with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Happy days are here again, I guess.
Yeah, no kidding.
You know, I'm looking around my office, and I have the greatest collection of Daredevil memorabilia, I think, ever.
You know the Marvel character?
It all started when I ran that campaign, and this guy was, and I used to love Daredevil growing up, and a guy goes, man, you remind me of Daredevil, Matt Murdock, the man who had no fear, which I thought was a little exaggeration, but believe me, I fear a lot.
But it was cool.
I was like, wow, what a sign.
I have Daredevil No.
1, Daredevil No.
7.
I have this Secret Wars Marvel superhero dude.
You had a Daredevil that you used to keep down in the studio, a little figure?
Yeah, yeah.
He's still up there.
He sits on, when I do my Facebook Lives, he sits on my bookcase.
He was the jacked one, and I have another one.
I have it.
I'm looking around.
They're all over the place.
Hey, folks, just a quick thank you.
The contest is rocking and rolling.
We had a lot of submissions yesterday.
Right.
I'm still trying to figure out which the best Democratic Party slogan is.
You can listen to yesterday's show to figure out what the contest is.
But a lot of them are really funny.
So I'm still going through it.
If you win, you'll get a CRTV subscription for free for a year and you'll get a signed copy of one of my books.
Haven't decided which one yet, but listen to yesterday's show in the beginning, you can get the details for the contest.
But a lot of good Twitter submissions, really funny stuff.
And thanks to everyone who went to Bongino.com, has been reading the show notes.
I know we've had some difficulty getting them at Conservative Review.
They are also available at Bongino.com.
Traffic is significantly picked up.
Over there, and I've been sending out these show notes and links to Bongino's News Picks, as I call them.
I know Joe's a member now.
Every day.
So if you want my five or six top news stories of the day, you don't want to be bothered scouring the entire internet for what you need to know, go to Bongino.com, sign up for the email list, and I will get you those links and why you need to know about them in your email box every single day.
It's a family operation here.
So my daughter's been helping me out with that because she's really good.
All right.
All right.
A lot of good stories to get to today.
So the plot thickens again with the Trump-Russia story.
I'm not going to spend as much time on this today as I did yesterday, but there's been an interesting new angle that's developed here, which is absolutely fascinating.
So if you listened to yesterday's show, you know that a Russian lawyer was reached out and met with Trump Jr.
through a Trump Jr.
intermediary who they knew, an entertainment figure in Russia.
And basically Trump had a meeting, Trump Jr., with this Russian lawyer who was alleged to have information on Hillary Clinton.
She didn't.
She was there to lobby for something completely different.
No information of any significance on Hillary Clinton changed hands.
That's the story in a nutshell.
Again, yesterday's show I go through it in detail.
But what's fascinating and what started to break yesterday a little bit is a picture went viral on the internet.
Social media is great.
A fascinating picture.
Of the Russian lawyer, I'm not even going to try to pronounce her name.
There's an International Business Times, IB Times article I'll put in the show notes.
You can look at the picture.
You can read her name if you'd like.
It's far too complicated for me not to butcher.
But an interesting picture went viral yesterday of her at a, let me make sure I get this right, 2014 House Foreign Affairs hearing.
This Russian lawyer that met with Trump, 2014.
Now remember, the meeting with Trump, so I get the dates right, is June of 2016.
So at this 2014 hearing, she's sitting behind Mike McFaul in Congress.
Now you may say, who the heck is Mike McFaul and why should I give a rat's caboose about that?
Well, you would care because Mike McFaul was Obama's ambassador to Russia.
Now, The woman was given special access into the United States as well.
Apparently she tried to get into the United States for a meeting, was prohibited from getting into the United States, and was granted some kind of a waiver from the Southern District of New York.
These are all little curveballs.
Now, play the game for a minute.
I get it.
I know what you're thinking.
I know my audience.
I'm smelling it.
Yeah.
So she's sitting behind at a congressional hearing Obama's ambassador to Russia.
With, by the way, a weird little look on her face.
The same lawyer who tried to get a meeting with Trump saying that or someone kind of intimated that she had information about the Hillary Clinton campaign when she didn't.
She's behind Obama's Russian ambassador and she's given a pass to get into the United States when she was initially denied and it was approved by the Southern District of New York Which was led at the time by Preet Bharara, who was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Preet Bharara is a Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton fan.
He was an appointee in the Obama administration, a huge fan of Chuck Schumer, by the way.
And Preet Bharara is also a big anti-Trumper because Trump fired him, and now he's been going after Trump as often as he can.
Now, you may say, okay, so what do you got?
I got one more curveball for you.
This Russian lawyer has a history of working with a company called Fusion GPS on various litigation cases.
Yeah, I know you know who they are, but I'll bet some of my audience has no idea what that means.
So she's sitting behind, just to sum this thing up for you.
She's pictured sitting behind the Russian ambassador, appointed by Obama, Mike McFaul, the ambassador to Russia, in a meeting.
The picture's gone viral.
She was granted special access into the United States by the Southern District of New York when Preet Bharara, a Democrat loyalist, was in charge.
And she has a history of working with Fusion GPS, which is the company responsible for the infamous dossier.
Remember the dossier, Joe?
Yeah, Pee the Bed.
Pee the Bed, right, that Trump likes.
It's a family-friendly show, but the dossier was that Now widely debunked, discredited, basically humiliating document that said that Trump had engaged in these various sexual escapades overseas and been caught on tape by the Russians.
The story's been debunked six different ways from Sunday, even by Never Trumpers.
There's the dossier that said that stuff, which was compiled by a guy named Christopher Steele, who's a now discredited and in hiding Former intelligence agent who is alleged to have sourced the information from, of all places, Wikipedia or stuff.
The dossier has been totally discredited.
I can't say that enough.
Fusion GPS is the company linked to the dossier.
Wow.
Who has worked in the past with the Russian lawyer who, again, alluded to the fact that she had information about Hillary Clinton when she didn't to get a meeting with Trump about something completely different than Magnitsky Act.
Now, folks, I'm not gonna do, because this is a responsible show.
We've always been responsible here.
We try, we correct ourselves.
We've had to, sometimes.
I'm on, Dan-O.
Yeah, I know, but you know, there's a part of me, man, I'll tell you, brother, really, I just wanna go for it and be like, do what they do to us.
I just do, but it's not the right thing to do.
It's not.
I hear ya.
But there's a part of me that really wants to go Mmm these mmm. What do you want?
What do you need?
What?
Okay.
Well, send me a test.
It's my daughter.
See, I told you it was a family operation.
The email's ready to go for the show notes.
She doesn't know I'm taping, I guess.
Hello, Isabelle.
I want to go after these people and say, look, Joe, conspiracy theory!
Here's what a conspiracy theorist, meaning a liberal, would do.
You would say, oh my gosh, this lady knows Mike McFaul, Obama's Russian ambassador?
This lady is connected to Fusion GPS, the creators of the fake dossier?
Oh my gosh, this lady was at a House Foreign Affairs meeting?
Oh, this is devastating information.
There's clearly a conspiracy and Obama put them up to it.
Obama did all of this.
But folks, that's not responsible.
We don't know that.
And I'm going to give you the truth.
I don't know what her connection to Mike McFaul is.
I have no idea.
Now, to be fair to McFaul, unlike he is to everyone else, because he's been a vicious never-Trumper, anti-Trumper on Twitter, McFaul, the former ambassador to the Soviet Union under Obama.
McFaul says, hey, I have no idea who this lady is.
I was testifying at this hearing.
I don't determine the seating chart.
She was sitting behind me.
I think she was seated next to his kids, actually, from a report I read.
But McFaul says, I don't know the lady.
All right.
You know what, Joe?
I don't have evidence otherwise.
I know that stinks.
Now, on the Preet Bharara angle, I know it smells a little bit, but I have no evidence, so I cannot accuse, fairly, unlike the Democrats who are due to us, I cannot accuse Mike McFaul of being involved in a big Obama administration conspiracy to set up Trump.
I know there's a little bit of evidence there, but I don't have the proof.
But I'm just going to throw that out there for you.
I'm not going to make the allegation.
I'm going to let you figure this stuff out.
On the Preet Bharara angle, where she was given special access into the United States, I can tell you as a former federal agent, the story's very convoluted and confusing, but to sum it up in a nutshell, I read somewhere that she was involved in a criminal case.
Now, whether she was providing... I don't think she was the subject of it.
She was a lawyer.
She may have been representing a client.
To get access into the United States upon an initial denial, if you were needed for testimony or for legal defense in a criminal case, Joe, is not particularly unusual.
So I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe Democrat supporter Preet Bharara, the Southern District of New York, again, another now who's become a seemingly vicious anti-Trumper, maybe it was all on the up and up.
Maybe she was just a legal defense team.
Okay.
Sounds plausible enough.
I don't have any issue with that.
But this third thing, this association with Fusion GPS, on the legal front, that was responsible for the dossier.
You know, folks, again, if I'm going to go by the liberal theory of whether there's smoke, there's fire, then the house is burning down.
I'm just telling you, and I mean it, to be a responsible producer of well-received, thankfully to you, content, and I appreciate that, I'm not going to ruin my credibility like the Democrats have ruined theirs by saying, it's an Obama conspiracy, he did it.
I'm only going to talk about what I can prove.
I know Susan Rice unmasked Trump.
I know Susan Rice is given no good reason to unmask Trump affiliates and Trump campaign people.
Susan Rice being Obama's National Security Advisor.
She is, in my opinion, at least unethically spied on them, if not illegally.
That I know.
I don't know this other stuff.
Now, do me a favor.
I'm gonna put this piece in the show notes in IB Times.
I only put credible sources in the show notes, by the way.
I don't put crap stuff, okay?
I love bloggers, and a lot of them are very good, but there's some shady stuff out there.
So the stuff I put in the show notes and on the email list, if you want them emailed to you, is from credible sources.
I don't know the people personally, but I know that the sites are reputable.
Read the piece, and you're gonna say to yourself, smell some smoke there.
But unlike the Democrats, we're not going to do what they do to us because I am not going to sell out my ethics to become one of these turds.
I'm not going to do it.
I'm sorry.
Alright, moving on.
Before we get to that, today's show brought to you by our buddies at BrickHouse Nutrition.
Again, love these guys.
Huge fan of their products.
You know, I'm really proud to be associated with these guys because they were my first sponsor ever when we started taking on sponsorships to keep the show free.
The show, thanks to all the downloads, got very expensive.
For those of you who don't podcast, Joe knows as well because he lived through the whole thing with me.
You know, when you're getting 500 downloads a year, it's, uh, you know, the costs are minuscule.
I mean, Joe worked for free in the beginning.
It cost us an hour on the weekends and that was it.
Uh, that's not the case now.
The show is about start to finish about a four hour endeavor, Joe.
About right.
We start about eight, but show prep about noon, it's wrapped up, uh, show notes and things like that.
It's about a four-hour endeavor.
It's expensive.
The sponsors keep the show free for you.
So I really, really appreciate you giving our sponsors a look-see.
I appreciate even more when you buy their products.
They're really good products.
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All right.
Again, here's another story here I picked up that the show here we were ahead of the curve on, which we are often, and I think it's because I read ahead and I do the whole syllabus in week one.
Yeah.
I warned you.
Remember this story a week ago, Joe, about the Republicans getting ready to fold again on a major tax cut initiative?
And I said, I just I can't believe it.
I cannot believe how gutless of a party we've become.
Well, I was right.
So it broke yesterday.
I saw the Wall Street Journal had a piece.
You know, a couple things I saw on Twitter, I think Fox ran some stuff.
The Republican-controlled Senate right now, yes, I said that right, of course, we have 52 of 100, we control the Senate, is now kind of quietly floating the trial balloon, Joe, that the Obamacare investment tax, the 3.8% tax on capital gains, and the 0.9% payroll tax on Medicare, they're gonna stay.
And I took notes here, and I put 3.8% investment tax.
Stay?
I put it in capital letters with an exclamation point.
Like, I can't.
One, I wanted to be wrong, but I wasn't.
I warned you this was going to happen.
That they were going to capitulate.
Not only now can they not just repeal Obamacare, even though they promised to do it and already voted to do it in 2015.
They already voted.
They won't do it again because now Trump will sign it and they don't want to be on the record for repealing Obamacare.
So if you are still a member of the Republican Party that's living in a fantasy land where the Republicans actually want to repeal Obamacare, I strongly encourage you to get out of that fantasy land.
It's not true.
Now, the Mike Lees, the Ted Cruzes, the Rand Pauls, and a couple of good House members, and some other Senate members want to do it, but the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party does not want to repeal Obamacare.
Stop pretending otherwise.
It's not true.
They have no interest in it at all.
Now, they have the votes.
Folks, and if you deny this, I have one simple question for you.
They have the votes to do it right now in both houses.
Why won't they?
Because they don't want to!
That's the answer!
Stop looking for the other answer.
That's the answer.
They don't want to.
They have zero interest in repealing Obamacare.
You've been lied to.
You've been hoodwinked.
What was it, Malcolm X speech?
You've been flamed.
You've been flim flam.
Remember that speech?
You're being lied to.
You're being totally smoked up.
It's a smoke job.
As my friend used to say, one of my cop friends.
You're being smoked up.
This is not, they don't want to repeal Obamacare.
What's even worse now is they don't even want to repeal the taxes in Obamacare.
Now, this 3.8% capital gains tax, percentage point increase in the capital gains tax, which to be clear, in case you missed last week's show, is a tax on investment income, or what the Democrats prefer to call unearned income, which is total crap and is Democrat-focused group lingo.
There's no such thing as unearned income.
There is none.
You had to earn the income at some point or someone else did.
You think I'm wrong?
Where is the income facility where they just give out income?
Where?
Is there an income distribution center?
I'm talking about outside of the government just takes the income from others.
I mean, where is the income distribution center?
What, it's like Income Warehouse?
IncomeWarehouse.com.
Maybe we should put that on.
By the way, people are killing me about Joe's t-shirt company.
They are.
I got to get on that.
But that's incomewarehouse.com.
There is no income warehouse.
It's called a job, folks.
A J-O-B.
Or a J-O-B-B if Joe Biden was spelling it.
It's a job.
Now, whether you earn the income in the 80s and in the 90s you invested it in stock and it's given you returns on those stocks, that's not unearned income.
It's simply returns on income you earned earlier that you have foregone the immediate effects of consumption on to save for later.
That's an overly fancy way of saying you earn the income at one point, Joe.
Yeah.
Rather than go buying Daredevil No.
7, the first appearance of the red suit, which I love, you said, you know what?
I'm not going to buy it right now.
I'm going to invest in a, you know, whatever, IBM and Apple and stuff.
And you know, I'm going to let them use my money for now.
That's what a stock is, Joe.
You're giving IBM your money.
Right.
Or you're buying the stock from someone else.
You're allowing them to invest it and you're hoping later on you get a return.
None of that is unearned.
You earned it.
You lent it to IBM.
A worker in IBM used it to build more stuff.
And then they returned you some of the proceeds of that later.
And never at any point is that unearned.
Don't call it unearned income.
That is a stupid liberal focus group talking point to get you to believe that a bunch of fat, stupid, happy Republicans are sitting around with foie gras bow ties and cigars, not working ever in their entire lives, and living off the Indiana Jones Temple of Doom child labor camp where they're digging in the mines.
And you're just sitting there smoking and joking and taking all the proceeds of the Indiana Jones Temple of Doom mine.
That is why they call it unearned income.
It's not.
It's investment income.
Investment is not unearned.
So, Democrats love the capital gains tax because they want you to believe, again, it's unearned income, and they can sell it as, oh, only the rich people pay this, which is garbage.
It's junk.
So Obamacare hiked that tax for people, married families making $250,000 or more and singles making $200,000 or more.
From 20% to 23.8%, which is a big deal.
They also hiked the Medicare surtax.
I'm not going to get into that right now, but it was a 0.9% bump in that as well.
So, you basically got screwed over.
Now, I get it, a lot of you are saying, well, it's only going to affect people who make, you know, $250,000 a year or more.
Married folks.
So?
That's not the question you should... What are those, evil people?
Oh my gosh, when you make $250,000 a year or more, you should burn in hell because...
Uh...
Well, you're successful?
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
The left hates success.
There's no reason.
They hate success.
There's no reason other than they want to make a stupid emotional argument that people who make money suck.
There is no reason to do it.
Now, you may say, yeah, well, the reason to do it is because someone's got to pay for the government and the rich people should.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
I don't accept your stupid argument, but let's play that game.
Now on this show, we do facts and data, unlike the morons who do liberal talk radio.
So let me give you some facts and data, if you're interested in that kind of stuff, and if it doesn't get in the way of a good argument.
I know the liberals aren't.
Tim, the tool man.
Facts and data.
That's right.
Oh, let me pull this.
I took a screenshot of it, because sometimes I write the stuff down.
But this one I took a screenshot of.
This is a piece in the Washington Times by Stephen Moore, who just does tremendous work, I might add.
I will link the piece.
It's a little bit older.
It's a couple months old.
It's from May.
But I will put it in the show notes and on the email blast.
I want you to read the piece about the Obamacare tax.
It's only a couple months old, but it's a really good piece.
Here's a quote from the piece about the Obamacare capital gains tax for the dopey liberals who may listen to this show or not, you're always welcome, but who think that increasing the capital gains tax raises money for the government.
I'm quoting.
For example, after the capital gains tax hike in 1986, when Reagan wasn't charged there, from 20% to 28%, capital gains revenues fell from $44 billion a year to $27 billion a year by 1991.
Let me repeat.
Yes, Ronald Reagan did hike the capital gains tax.
It's a long story why, but it's a bad call.
He cut the income tax, but Reagan hikes the capital gains tax in 1986, folks.
Follow the numbers here.
20 to 28% capital gains revenues fell from $44 billion a year to $27 billion a year by 1991.
Fell!
Okay, so the facts and data, if you're into that kind of crazy stuff, Joe, you have the abacus?
Do you have that Jay's abacus?
Yeah.
Get Jay's abacus, okay?
There we go.
All right.
What we got?
$44 billion, right?
You got that?
Move some things around.
$44 billion.
Is that greater than Or less than $27 billion.
Is $44 billion more than or less than $27 billion?
Hold on.
It's greater than.
Did you double check your work?
Yeah, I got it.
Okay, okay, here we go.
Jay's abacus is never wrong.
$44 billion was raised at the 20% rate.
At the height capital gains tax rate of 28%, $27 billion was raised.
They lost money because what happened?
What happens every time the government raises the capital gains tax, people hold on to their investments and don't sell because they don't want to pay an extra 8%.
This is only complicated to liberals who don't have Jay Zabikus and can't do basic math.
His name was Jay, right?
The guy who gave us the abacus?
That was his first initial and that's what he went by.
Jay.
Okay, great.
So Jay, he will be memorialized on our show as Jay Zabikus.
Okay, wait, the quote goes on here.
Now I'm quoting again.
After Bill Clinton cut the capital gains tax down to 20% again, capital gains revenue surged from $54 billion in 1996 to $99 billion in 1999.
Lower rates means more revenues, end quote.
Get the abacus out again because here we go again.
I'm working on it already.
Cuts the capital gains tax, I said that right, back down to 20%.
He did the inverse of Reagan, by the way.
Reagan cut the income tax rate and hiked the capital gains tax rate.
Bill Clinton hiked the income tax rate and cut the capital gains tax rate.
So he cuts it back to 20%.
Now Joe, at the 28% rate, 54 billion came in.
Now I want you to tell me if this number is... Let me do this slowly because this is going to be hard.
Is this number more or greater than 54 billion or less than 44 billion?
Is 99 billion greater than or less than 54 billion?
Do the math.
Let me check.
Double check.
It looks like it's greater.
No!
Oh!
Jay Zabikus strikes again!
Bill Clinton cuts the capital gains tax rate and nearly doubles the revenue from $54 billion to $99 billion.
Where is your data?
I'm not kidding.
To our liberal kookadoodle listeners, thank you for being here.
But Jay Zabikus is never wrong.
Where is your data that this stuff actually works?
Where?
So you're suggesting somehow that Obamacare's capital gains tax hike is going to lead to this long-term, it may, listen, it may lead to some temporary fluctuations.
I'm not suggesting here that the effect is causal.
I want to be clear.
I'm not suggesting that.
Every capital gains tax hike is going to lead to a decrease in revenue, nor am I suggesting that every capital gains tax cut is going to lead to an increase in revenue, even though, Joe, the evidence is strong that it does.
I'm suggesting to you there may be a lot of third-party factors, and there may be a lot of people just holding their money.
Capital gains tax goes up, Joe, you don't sell your stocks.
Why?
Because you wait for a capital gains tax cut to set.
You know what I'm saying?
And then you sell.
But folks, the point I'm trying to make is if your whole premise is rich people should finance the government and less money comes in, your point is garbage.
You just made that up.
It's literally not true.
You're just making it up.
Oh my gosh.
Now, I have a couple other numbers because I love facts and data and I think that's what we do differently here, okay?
By the way, read that Washington Times piece.
It's great.
That quote is in there.
It'll be in the show once again.
Here's another factoid I had in my, I have a, like an iNotes thing on my iPhone, and every time I see an interesting factoid anywhere on the net that I can verify, I copy and paste it.
Forgive me, sometimes I forget the link where it came from, but I saw this one time and I found this fascinating.
Here's two factoids about the capital gains tax, I'll give you two.
One, after the Clinton capital gains tax cut, Joe, tax revenue from the richest 400 Americans from that tax doubled.
So again, Clinton cuts the capital gains tax.
Cuts!
Not hides, cuts!
And the richest 400 Americans pay twice as much.
I mean...
I just don't get it.
This is what so frustrates me, arguing with liberals.
It's like the stupid is so strong.
It's like the midichlorians from The Force in The Phantom Menace.
It like attracts them in this magnetic way, this black hole of like, the stupid is with you, Luke.
I mean, they can't get rid of it!
They have nothing to ever back up their arguments and these dopes just take it in by osmosis and they think it's true because a dopey liberal said it or they heard it on CNN.
Another factoid, for those of you, you know, screw the rich crowd out there, if we confiscated every dollar, Joe, from every American making over 250k a year, you know how much it would raise in tax revenue?
A trillion dollars.
So you may say, wow, that's a lot.
Really?
You know what our budget is this year?
The federal tax budget?
$4 trillion.
And our deficit's going to be anywhere from $400 to probably $600 billion, depending on how well the economy does this year.
So you'd barely balance the budget this year, and you would have confiscated literally all of the wealth.
I'm not talking about a percentage.
I mean all of the wealth from Americans who make $250k or more.
Uh, again, I mean income.
I shouldn't say wealth because it doesn't include their houses or things like that.
But then you have what?
Then you have nothing.
Then you have an economy to totally shut down because the government confiscated everything.
But again, don't let that get in the way of a good argument for all you people obsessed out there with class warfare.
Now, I bring this up today because the argument, this one, it just broke.
But I thought, You know what?
I like to tie this into other breaking news of the day, because, you know, maybe you get something different here you haven't heard somewhere else.
And conveniently, I was going to Zero Hedge, another email list I subscribed to.
By the way, this is the benefit of being on the Bongino.com email list.
I scour everything, and I take the best of the best and put it on my one list.
It's five or six stories.
You read them every day.
By the end of the week, you'll know what's going on.
I promise you.
That's my pledge to you, okay?
I saw another piece at Bloomberg.
Again, it'll be in the show notes today.
About a renewed push to get rid of the local and state tax deduction by the Trump administration.
Now, we talked about this too.
Ahead of the curve.
Proud to say it.
Love to do some homework.
This is now getting really hot and heavy.
This is a doozy.
Now, to be clear on what we're talking about, the Trump administration wants to get rid of the deduction that you have now for local and state taxes.
So if you live in a place like Maryland, where I used to live and Joe lives now, where the state tax rate is very, very high.
The Democrats have run that place forever.
Larry Hogan's a Republican governor.
He's trying to do his best, but he's up against a super majority, and it's really, it's a loser.
I mean, it really is.
There's not much he can do.
If you live in a state like Maryland, New York, or Illinois where the state and local taxes are confiscatorily high, if that's even a word...
You can deduct, if you itemize, you can deduct that amount from your federal tax bill.
So to be clear, if your federal tax bill, let's say you're doing okay for yourself, if your federal tax bill is $30,000 and you pay an additional tax bill of $10,000 to Anne Arundel County, where I used to live in Maryland, and the state of Maryland for a state and local tax show, You can deduct that $10,000 from your income and you can claim a tax deduction.
You can itemize that.
So you basically won't be paying $30,000 to the federal government anymore.
You'll be paying $30,000 minus what the deduction is worth.
Make sense?
You paid $30,000 before?
You pay whatever, 27, it depends on, it's not a simple one for one thing.
You maybe say, well, why don't you pay 20?
That's not the way it works.
And I don't want to get into like the math of how it works because we're limited on time and it's not really, it doesn't matter for the sake of the argument I want to make here.
I'm going to tie this together with the Obamacare thing in a minute.
It's going to make sense.
There's a renewed push to get rid of that.
And the reason is, it is a... conservatives hate this tax deduction.
Now you may say, well that doesn't make sense.
Anything we can do to pay less tax to the government, Joe, you would think conservatives would fight for.
And if a state and local tax deduction Results in a lesser federal tax bill, then conservatives should fight for that.
But they're not, and there's a reason why.
There's a very specific reason why.
Because it incentivizes local localities and states that are high-tax states, New York, Maryland, Illinois, and California, It incentivizes them to not push for local and state taxes because their citizens aren't feeling the full brunt of it.
Does that make sense, Joe?
They're not feeling the full brunt because they get to take that amount off their federal tax bill, so all they know is that, yeah, they may have paid one guy or the other, but their wallet still stays generally the same.
I know this is tough to understand, folks, but if you had a $30,000 federal bill and a $10,000 state bill, and they were totally unrelated, you would pay $40,000 in taxes.
That's not what you're paying, because you get to deduct the $10,000 from your federal bill.
So you may be paying, Joe, let's say $37,000 instead of $40,000.
But you're not feeling the full brunt of taxation.
The full brunt of taxation, Joe, should be $40,000.
Yeah, I understand.
What's essentially happening is you're just sending less money to the federal government, and you're giving it to the states.
Right.
Conservatives' argument, which is a sound one, good conservatives, I'm not talking about chumps, I mean real good conservatives have said, Well, that takes all the heat off the states.
They can say, well, you know what, we can maintain a 10% state income tax here because they just get to write it off.
So they're getting some of it back.
So it's not really, it's not, Joe, air quotes, it's not really 10%.
Yeah.
Well, what if it was really 10%?
And Trump is saying, you know what?
It should be.
You want to tax the living snot out of your citizens in Maryland and New York, then let them feel it.
Why should the federal government get less money that other states have to make up for to balance the budget?
That's insane!
And I agree with him!
It's one of the reasons I moved out of Maryland, in addition to all kinds of family stuff.
But believe me, when it came down to, after we made the decision to go and I got with my accountant, he's like, listen, because, you know, we were wavering for a while because of some other stuff unrelated to the show.
But he's like, look at, you see that there's no state sales tax.
I mean, income tax in Florida.
I got like an 8% raise right away.
Folks, this is odd because the same... Remember when we've had these conversations about liberals, how they say one thing and they mean another and they have no principles?
Yeah.
Why am I bringing this up in relationship to the past story about Obamacare?
Because liberals, again, are using the exact opposite argument in two different scenarios.
Now, if you have principles, Joe, the scenarios are irrelevant.
Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter.
You hold people to a principle.
You don't care what's in front, right?
You get what I'm saying?
If you have no standards at all, you apply one principle to a Republican and one principle to a Democrat, one principle to one situation and a different principle to another one.
That's not being principled.
That's being a loser.
Now, it's fascinating that the Democrat Party is lobbying the Republicans to keep the Obamacare capital gains tax, what we talked about before, Joe, because it taxes the rich and the rich should pay to finance the government.
Now, this is insane.
The Democrats are lobbying against the repeal of the local and state tax deduction Even though this only applies to people who itemize and it is known throughout the entire federal government by anyone who deals with the budget as a tax deduction that Joe exclusively benefits the rich.
So let me get this straight.
You're fighting to advance a tax deduction that benefits the rich in one case The local and state tax, that makes sense Joe.
But in the other case, a tax deduction that would benefit the quote rich, a capital gains tax decrease by wiping out the Obamacare that you're arguing against it completely saying we don't want to benefit the rich.
No!
Why would they do that?
Why?
Or as our buddy Sebastian Maniscalco, I actually don't know him, but I watch his YouTube and he's very funny.
Why would you do that?
He says it all the time.
Think about this.
One of them, in one of those situations, there are constituents that are going to get a heavy, heavy hit, and they can't hide their money.
And in another situation, they can.
Now, in the capital gains tax hike situation, the reason the Democrats aren't going to feel it at the polls right away, henceforth they can continue the class warfare.
Don't repeal the Obamacare capital gains tax.
Tax those rich idiots.
The reason they can do that and run on class warfare and still keep their base and their rich liberal intelligentsia, Joe, is because they know the liberals can hide the money.
They won't pay the capital gains tax if they just hold it.
Hold your assets for a little while.
We'll win a few elections, no big deal.
Folks, I'm not making this up.
This is not a conspiracy theory.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
If you're a rich liberal, you can vote Democrat, you can vote for a capital gains tax hike, because it's not going to affect you.
Just hold your stocks.
You don't sell them, you don't pay.
In the case of the deduction, rich liberals that live in New York and California on the coast and in Illinois and in Chicago, are going to get wizarded by this.
They are going to get worked over like you would not believe.
Why?
Because only rich, almost exclusively rich people itemize.
Now, I know this is a complicated show, but it's really critical you understand this because it points out the unbelievable stench of hypocrisy from the left.
The deduction for state and local taxes, Joe, is only available if you itemize.
There are two ways to file your taxes, okay?
You can take the standard deduction, or you can itemize.
The standard deduction, which is now $12,700 for married couples, means you can't take the deduction for anything else within limits.
You can't take a mortgage deduction, you can't take the state and local tax deduction.
We clear on that?
Yep.
Most people take the standard deductions.
Now, Joe, why would they do that?
Because they don't have $12,700 worth of deductions.
You get what I'm saying?
They don't have a tax bill at state and local for that much.
They don't have a mortgage interest payment that high.
So, does this make sense?
Yeah.
There are two ways, I just want to be clear on this so you won't get this, because it explains liberal phoniness to a T. There are two ways to file your taxes.
You can claim the standard deduction, meaning you get to deduct, if you're a married couple, $12,700 off your income, no matter what.
Or, you can itemize your deductions, add them all up, hope they lead to more than $12,700, and you can get even more deducted from your tax bill.
You can only pick one.
But if you pick the standard deduction, all the other stuff goes away.
You don't add anything up.
You just get that amount, no matter what.
Why does this matter?
Only 30% of the population itemized, Joe.
They don't take the standard deduction because they have more than 12,700 in deductions.
Who are those people?
Rich people!
Ah!
Ah, the rich!
I thought they were so horrible!
Where do these rich people live?
Oh, in New York!
And in California!
Oh, so now, all of a sudden, when you have, literally, Joe, $200,000, $300,000 in deductions, and that's probably high because you get the AMT, the alternative minimum tax, but let's say you have $50,000 or $60,000 in deductions.
Joe, that's a big, you know how much that's worth to you?
Say the tax rate's 30%, you have $50,000 in deductions, you're looking at about $15,000 you're gonna lose if you lose those deductions.
Wow.
Now, this is what's crazy about this whole thing.
Trump is talking about increasing the standard deduction to $24,000 in exchange for getting rid of the local and state tax deduction, and the liberals still don't want it.
What does that tell you?
Folks, only 30% of people itemize when the standard deduction is $12,700.
Trump is going to double it.
And the liberals are so rich in blue states and the taxes are so high that they still don't want it.
They would still rather itemize.
Think about what I'm telling you.
They are ripping their citizens off so badly that even when Trump doubles the standard deduction for everyone, the liberals go, no, no, our bills are still higher than that and we need a federal tax deduction for them.
Oh my gosh.
Now, let me give you some political numbers to show you why this is all politics.
Remember my point here.
Point was that the liberals will go after the rich when the rich don't have to pay, which they won't for the capital gains tax because they'll just hold it on Obamacare.
But when the rich will have to pay and they're tax filing every year and they can't escape it because they will no longer get a deduction for local and state taxes, even when the standard deduction is doubled, the libs go crazy and they go, no, we don't want to pay the government more money.
We were just kidding about that, that class warfare stuff.
There are 136 house districts, Joe.
This is from the Bloomberg piece.
It'll be in the show notes.
136 districts that pay above average in local deductions.
In other words, they get deductions worth more than the average in America.
You know, whether it's home interest, local and state taxes.
So this basically benefits 136 house districts.
Only 51 are represented by members of the GOP.
So far, less than half.
So the overwhelming majority of these are represented by Democrats, and the Democratic members of Congress are catering to their rich liberal friends, bottom line, summing this whole thing up, who just don't want to pay more taxes.
What?
I thought this is their whole ethos!
Their whole credo!
Taxes are great!
Big government's wonderful!
No, not what I have to pay!
What do you mean you're taking away my deduction?
These people are frauds!
You know, that's why I say to you listening to this show, be proud to be a conservative or a libertarian.
Really, at least you stand for something.
These people stand for nothing.
They are total, complete phonies.
They are defending a tax cut from the rich when rich liberals are going to have to actually pay, and fighting for a tax hike for the rich when rich liberals can avoid it.
They're frauds!
They're total frauds.
They're total fakes.
Now, one more thing here.
And I don't want to sell this short because I like to give you the information in totality and not leave things out that, you know, may hurt people or Republicans.
This will hurt some Republicans.
There are a lot of Republicans who live in Maryland in conservative districts.
You know, Joe, what is it?
About 19 of the 20 plus counties in Maryland, they're generally conservative.
You know, I mean, outside of Baltimore City, Montgomery, Maryland is a very conservative county.
So there are conservative counties in Maryland that are going to get hosed by this too.
So I don't want to be Pollyanna-ish.
If you lose that local and state tax deduction, a lot of people who do pretty well are going to, their tax bill is going to go up.
Maybe.
But a lot of people are gonna benefit, and you're gonna have a more streamlined tax code, and frankly, it's gonna put pressure on the states to engage in more responsible tax policy, Joe.
And even if it hurts me personally, that's the right thing to do.
We all have to get big, for those regular listeners to the show and people who read my second book.
We all have to get big.
That was Secret Service talk.
Take the bullet, get big, right?
We're all gonna have to get big.
But, this may hurt the value of your home as well.
Here's why.
And outside of blue states as well, Joe, just to be clear.
If they wipe out the ability to itemize, which is on the table and everybody gets the standard
deduction, if you have an expensive home where you can now write off the mortgage interest, Joe,
So if you have a home, and let's say you're paying, you just got in your home, it's a $500,000 home, and you're paying a year $10,000 in interest on your mortgage, not principal, interest, which is very likely, by the way, you can write that off now if, if, if, if you itemize.
Now, that's a big nut.
Yeah.
$10,000, that's a lot of dough to write off.
If they wipe that out, you're going to lose that.
So the real estate lobby is going crazy over this and is saying, listen, this could reduce the value of homes, which could potentially happen, Joe.
I mean, I'm not going to lie to you.
It could reduce the value of homes.
But again, folks, you would have a far more streamlined tax code.
You would get a standard deduction, which would benefit middle class Americans up to $24,000, meaning you could write $24,000 off your income tax every year.
And you know what?
You know, 51% of people streamlines the tax code and stops the misallocation of resources.
We got to get big and defend it.
But I'm not going to lie to you and say it might not impact your home.
Because remember, they wipe out the itemization, everybody gets a standard deduction.
Well, I guess if I didn't sum this up correctly, you won't be able to write off that mortgage interest deduction anymore.
So the value of your home is the actual value and so is the payments you're making.
Because right now, think about it folks, if you itemize and you're writing off $10,000 in mortgage interest payments every year and you're getting a lot of that back in the form of a tax deduction, you're really not paying $10,000 in interest.
You may be paying $5,000.
Now you're going to be paying the full bore.
And the real estate lobby is saying, well, people are paying the full, you know, the full boat on this one.
That they're not going to be willing to buy bigger homes because they don't want to pay the full value because either way it's coming out of your wallet.
Fair analysis, they're not wrong.
But something that, you know, just keep your eye on.
Hey Walt, one more quick thing here.
Hey, have you signed up for CRTV yet?
And I just got one more story.
If you haven't, go check it out please.
Folks, I promise you, I've been getting a lot of questions about the show.
We are a little delayed.
I don't want to spin your wheels, but it's not for the reasons you think.
We had a little bit of a change of plan for the better, but the show's coming.
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We're just tinkering with some things here.
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Hey, one last story.
So, Christopher Wray, the FBI director nominee, was up there yesterday, and they asked him about torture, and he said, you know, I oppose torture.
I did a Fox Business hit yesterday on this, actually.
And, okay, that's fine, folks.
I just, when you have this argument with your liberal friends, because I feel like this is going to come up again, there's a reason Democrats ask these questions, show at hearings, and it's never for the reason we know right away.
They may be talking about the John Woo memos and the Bush administration.
I'm not sure where they're going with this, but remember, it's easy to talk in Talking Points, but you have to ask yourself, what is torture?
What are we talking about?
I mean, are we talking about sticking hot swords in the bottom of people's feet?
Okay, I agree.
It's probably a really bad idea.
But remember, the Democrats are defining torture as sleep deprivation.
In that case, Joe gets tortured every single night getting up at two o'clock to work at WCBM, okay?
I'm just asking you, so just to be clear, the FBI director said he opposes torture yesterday.
Democrats asked the question about torture.
There's a reason they did that.
I haven't figured out why yet.
We will over the coming days, but they never do anything without some focus group or some activist group asking why.
We'll figure it out.
But he said, oh, I oppose it.
The question you should be asking is what exactly are we calling torture?
Because one of the things that the Bush administration used and classified as a use of whatever torture was sleep deprivation.
Like, really?
So you have a terrorist who has potential information about an explosion and it's like, oh, God forbid we deprive him of a few hours of sleep.
That's insane.
Well, I agree with you.
I mean, should we be engaging in cruel and unusual punishment?
Of course not.
I'm a Christian first.
But...
Torture's a loaded word, Joe.
You get what I'm saying?
Ask what they're talking about first, okay?
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
I will see you all tomorrow.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
