In this episode I address the catastrophic failure of the GOP to do anything about Obamacare. This has to be the most embarrassing political spectacle in modern times. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07/28/senate-rejects-skinny-repeal-obamacare-as-3-republicans-vote-no.html Is this the first Democrat candidate for President in 2020? http://bsun.md/2tOdwyo Is tax reform dead too? Can the GOP get anything right? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-28/killing-the-border-tax-solved-one-problem-it-may-create-several Is the fake news Trump-Russia story really a Democrat-Russia scandal? https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-paid-for-the-trump-dossier-1501193386
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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?
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 Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
It's Friday, Dan-O!
Let's go!
Yeah, man, I know.
I love Fridays.
Today's show brought to you by our buddies at My Patriot Supply.
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Why would I need an emergency supply of food?
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All right, again, tremendous breaking news yesterday.
The Republican Party blows it again!
No!
Yes, again, for the umpteenth thousandth time.
It's just, what's the point?
I just got an email.
I don't even know if this guy's comfortable with me sharing, so I'm not going to say who it was or where I got it from, but a guy Who I know from another guy who rolls with a bunch of guys I roll with in a group of guys and ladies, if I can be any more vague.
But he's very smart and he just sent an email to this group of human beings who meet with other human beings, who share human being issues.
And in the email he said, I suggest a new motto for the Republican Party.
You know we did the contest for the new Democrat slogan?
And congratulations to our winner on that one.
I sent the book out last week.
Should be getting it.
He said the new Republican Party motto should be, Republicans, when rhetoric means more than results.
And I'm like, I love it.
That's it.
That's the new Republican Party motto.
R's everywhere.
Republicans, rhetoric, not results.
I love that.
That's the greatest thing.
I bring this up in context of today's show not to repeat again yesterday's show but the show you know there isn't a pervasive narrative through the last two years of Joe and I's content.
One of them has been the futility of the Republican Party and to be fair I have never suggested a you know to give you a I don't want to sound hypocritical in the past I was Vociferously against the idea of a third party for a number of reasons I described yesterday.
Yesterday I told you why I am evolving to use the Obama term on the topic because the Republican Party is totally useless.
Ideologically speaking, Joe, there is no Republican Party.
Yeah.
It's gone.
And based on the feedback, if I had to rank the feedback on shows, number one was the Death Penalty Show by far.
Based on emails, tweets, and Facebook.
The Death Penalty Show, I've never gotten more emails in my life.
I probably got 500 emails, Facebook messages, and tweets on the Death Penalty Show.
Net Neutrality's a close second.
Got a nice email yesterday from a listener explaining to me some different components of it.
He thought I may have missed.
Very nice email, but I disagree with his conclusion.
But still, thank you for the email.
He knows who he is.
But I have to tell you, yesterday's show, now I'm convinced is going to take the cake for emails and communications about the third party.
I got probably 150 emails yesterday alone on the third party thing.
Folks, it's time.
The reason being, and I'm going to discuss one email I got in a second, but reason being, there is no ideological Republican Party anymore.
If the purpose of a party system, Joe, is to make decisions simpler for voters who will never get to know candidates personally.
Then the system has completely failed.
There is no purpose.
Now let me explain what I just said because I know you're probably like, what the hell does that mean?
Can we both agree, Joe, that You, Joe, very few people know me as well as Joe.
I've been involved with Joe for a very long time.
I've known Joe a long time.
Um, but can we at least agree, Joe, that even you, I don't, I don't have a lot of friends and I don't say that as like a personal insult.
I just don't have a lot of time.
I mean, I have about two or three close friends and that's it.
But can we both agree, Joe, that even though you know me better than 99.99% of the population, even you don't know everything about me.
Like every day we talk about something, Joe will be like, I didn't know that.
Sure, and the same way with you.
Same with me.
I don't ask Joe every personal detail.
I know about little Joe.
I know about some things going on in his life.
I've even shared some medical secrets with Joe with me.
He's like, really, man?
You're really falling apart.
But we don't know each other as well as, say, a spouse would or a parent.
The reason I bring this up is the whole purpose to a political party, Joe, is that when you go into the voting booth and you vote for a candidate, Joe Smith or whatever it may be, What's helping you in the booth is the R or the D or the Libertarian L label in front of people.
You can ascribe to them a certain set of values that you think would align what you're thinking, correct?
Agreed.
Because you don't know Joe Smith.
I don't know Joe Smith.
I've never met Joe.
You may have shaken his hand at a county fair or at a parade when he's running for Congress or president or whatever it may be, but you don't know Joe Smith.
Putting the Republican brand in front of his name says to you, this guy stands for X.
So can we both agree, Joe, that's the purpose of a party outside of the technicalities we discussed yesterday.
Ballot access, money, voter lists.
I'm not talking about the technical, I'm talking about strictly, forget the technical side for a moment, we're talking strictly the ideological side.
It is a way to discriminate amongst candidates, I don't mean that in a negative way, but to discriminate amongst candidates that you will never meet personally and get an idea of what they stand for, right?
Pretty easy.
Right.
So if the Republican brand says Joe Smith stands for X, the question we should all be asking folks is what the hell does X mean?
Okay, what you would think X means, what the Republican Party was supposed to stand for, Was patient-centered healthcare, healthcare freedom, healthcare liberty supposed to stand for economic freedom, economic liberty through tax rate cuts, not necessarily tax revenue cuts?
Those regular listeners know the difference.
Supposed to stand for freedom and education, school choice, charters, religious freedom, defense of life, defense of the Second Amendment, defense of federalism, defense of constitutional values, defense of a limited government bureaucracy.
These are all things that vote for candidate Joe Smith.
Candidate Joe Smith is a Republican.
Republican means he stands for X. That's what X means!
The problem, folks, is X doesn't mean that anymore!
Healthcare went down again!
They couldn't even pull off the skinny repeal last night!
And for those of you who missed it...
I probably should have started with this, but we failed on a pure Obamacare appeal.
The Republican Senate, Murkowski, Collins, Susan Collins passed on it.
We had, was it seven Republican Senate turncoats who just voted straight on a repeal of Obamacare.
In other words, do you want to repeal Obamacare?
No, I don't.
Seven Republican turncoats.
Now, last night they said, all right, Let's not even vote on a pure repeal, Joe.
Let's vote on what they're calling skinny repeal.
It wasn't even one.
It was a crap bill.
Let me be absolutely clear on this.
But the idea of the skinny repeal, so you all know what happened last night, was to just get something On the books, a vote, Joe, in the affirmative to get, quote, skinny repeal into conference with the House for a better bill later.
I'm not suggesting it was a good idea.
I'm just saying it was something at this point.
Skinny repeal sucked because here's what skinny repeal would have done.
It repealed the individual mandate.
It repealed the employer mandate for Obamacare.
In other words, it repealed the penalty for you not having health care.
It also repealed the penalty for employers With 50 more employees not providing Obamacare compliant plans, and it also repealed the medical device tax.
That's what skinny repeal was, but it left the rest of Obamacare in place.
That was a disaster!
But the point of the bill was, and I think it was a bad idea, but what they were trying to do, Joe, was not pass skinny repeal to make it law.
They were trying to pass it through the Senate to get some bill back into the House for conference where in conference they could fix it and produce something better.
Again, a crap strategy.
I preferred straight repeal.
Joe, they couldn't even do that!
They couldn't even do that!
They needed 50 senators to vote for it because Mike Pence, the vice president, would have broken the tie.
So Collins, who's... Susan Collins, by the way, if you're in Maine... Listen, this isn't personal.
Don't know the woman.
I can't say that enough.
I'm sure she's great.
Terrific.
Susan Collins is bar none one of the worst Republican senators in the history of the Republic.
If you were in Maine, And you are a Democrat, don't vote for Susan Collins because she's just not principled.
And if you're a Republican, don't vote for Susan Collins because she's not a Republican.
There is no purpose to having Susan Collins in the Senate as a Republican whatsoever.
None.
If you like her personally, vote for her as an independent.
But Susan Collins, on a ballot with an R in front of her name, Joe, which you and I both agree is supposed to stand for X, right?
That's right.
There's no X. Susan Collins has nothing to do with the Republican Party at all.
She serves no purpose in the Senate.
For us.
She serves her own purpose, but not Republican values at all.
Lisa Murkowski from Alaska is the same thing.
Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, I have, I don't have, I really don't have a lot of respect for her.
Again, I don't know her personally, but what she did with Joe Miller was a disgrace.
She lost the Republican primary, for those of you that forgot this, to Joe Miller years ago because she's terrible.
And then went and ran as an independent and wound up winning the seat back in an open election after she lost the Republican primary.
Murkowski's an embarrassment to the United States Senate too.
I see no reason for you to vote or support her either.
I wouldn't give her a dime.
I wouldn't knock on a door for her.
I'm staying away from McCain.
I know I'll probably get negative feedback on it, but the guy's got brain cancer for now.
I'm staying away from that.
You guys can deal with that on your own.
I just don't think it's appropriate.
Again, my apologies.
I know he's taking votes that are going to hurt us, there's no question, but I just don't think it's appropriate to hammer him right now.
We had a Dean Heller from Nevada, just a waste of time.
Dean Heller, another so-called pseudo-Republican.
It's a waste of time.
So again, I don't see a point to not developing a third party.
Now, I did get some email feedback, and the email feedback I got, there were a couple recurrent issues that came up.
One of them was, someone said you didn't adequately address the splitting the vote thing.
You're totally correct.
When I say a third party, I don't mean a third party across the country that should run a candidate in every single district, because there will be a problem with splitting the vote, especially in Senate races and Congressional races.
I think the third party should start with Donald Trump.
He should try to recruit figures with big followings and big names as well, like Lee, Paul, and Cruz, because they don't share anything in common with the Republicans either.
You know why, Joe?
Senators Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz actually subscribe to traditional Republican values, which are X, and very few people represent anymore.
So they should leave too.
There will be a vote splitting problem, especially in some congressional districts, if you run a Republican, say, I don't know what the new party would be, Party X and a Democrat.
Because traditional Republicans, the vote will be split, and say the Democrats are 40% of the district, they'll come out of it with a plurality.
So it wouldn't be appropriate for every district.
But in a national election, with Trump on a ballot, running under Party X and not the Republican banner, and people with big name ID, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, you know, Rand Paul, People with big name ID in those select races, there's a decent possibility they would scare off a Republican challenger realizing they had no chance.
And Republicans would, I think...
The majority of the overwhelming majority of Republicans in those districts would not vote for a Republican, would vote for Lee Cruz and Rand Paul instead.
And I think that would scare off a Republican from running someone on the ballot, would prevent a lot of vote splitting.
I know that sounds a little complicated, but I know on the national level, I think the effect from pulling away from the Republican Party and the negative branding that it's done to itself, Joe, because it can't do anything right, Would actually suck in more Democrats and moderates to make up for the, say, establishment Republicans that would vote for an establishment Republican rather than a third party guy.
I think the math works in our favor.
If, if, this is the big if, if you have someone running with big enough name ID, big enough conservative bona fides, and a big enough audience that they can make the third party matter.
Right.
And that's the Mike Lees, Rand Pauls, Ted Cruz's, and Donald Trump's.
That's it.
But I agree, anyone else, you run Joey Bag of Donuts in Congressional District 472, you know, in Wisconsin.
I get the point, I'm just trying to be funny here, which is probably not working.
But then, yes, you're going to have a problem.
Because someone's going to go in there and just vote for the Republican, because that's what they know, and they're going to be like, I never heard of Joey Bag of Donuts in Wisconsin.
You're going to have some vote splitting.
So we do have a problem there.
Secondly, the idea of term limits came up.
You know, I don't discuss this much on the show, but this is a topic, I'm not going to beat it to death.
But someone said, you know, third party's great, but we need it in conjunction with term limits.
Now, I know I'm going to get some negative feedback on this, but I'm always honest with you folks.
I do deeply appreciate your emails, especially the net neutrality ones that are really detailed.
I read them.
Sometimes people say things and I go, wow, that makes a lot of sense.
And I may not change my position completely, but I look at things different.
So I'm just asking you very respectfully that I know people are, a lot of people passionately believe in term limits.
I get that.
I'm, with the utmost respect, asking you to just open your mind for a second and listen to what I'm going to say because I felt the same way and I've been, to be candid, I've been back and forth on this issue over and over and over again.
And it's because I keep learning and reading new stuff.
It's not that I'm wishy-washy.
I'm not trying to sell you on anything.
I myself have, I myself, I, of course I myself, I have had some, you know, quote Obama, evolved a little bit on the issue as well because I do a lot of homework.
When I was running for office, term limits would come up a lot.
And at first, my default response was term limits would be great.
And just to be clear, I'm bringing this up because I got a ton of email on it.
Oh, we need term limits too.
Folks, I'm not convinced term limits are a great idea.
Now you're like, oh my gosh, that's crazy.
You always talk about the DC swamp and the establishmentarians.
And even my book was called Life Inside the Bubble and bubble was not a complimentary term.
I totally get it.
The problem is I really dug into content on Heritage Foundation, Cato.
They have a ton of work on this.
Maybe I'll put a good article in the show notes today.
I'll go dig one up because there's legions of them out there.
Folks, the problem with term limits is if we're conservatives and we believe in facts and data, there should be some facts and data to back up the fact that term limits actually help lead to measurable metrics.
Does that make sense, Joe?
If term limits were supposed to do what we say they're going to do, lead to better politicians, right, Joe?
Yeah.
Therefore, better politicians will lead to better legislative outcomes.
Those better legislative outcomes are X. Let's say X is states with term limits have more balanced budgets, have lower taxes, have a better economic environment.
The problem is, Joe, that's not the case.
When you look up the data on term limits, and forgive me for not quite, I know I usually, but I have so much to get to today.
It's like 10 stories I have.
I didn't have the chance to find this, and I will get something in the show notes.
Maybe I'll put it up on the debunk this section of the website as well.
When you look at state spending, when you look at the economic environment of the states, you find that states with term limits, it really doesn't make a difference.
So that's problem number one, and one of the reasons they have a problem with term limits, and again, I'm not hard on this.
I'm not.
You could present to me different data, I am open to it.
I want to be crystal clear on that.
But the data I've seen is not particularly good.
Now, one of the reasons that's suspected that term limits don't stop people from... The idea with term limits is you'll get, again, Joe, better politicians who will make better political decisions because they're not incentivized to spend a lifetime in politics.
The problem is, they do!
Because what happens?
You say, well, how's that if they're term limited?
Because offices are term limited, not people!
Folks, never forget that.
Offices are term limited, not people.
In other words, if Joe Armacost were to run for the House of Delegates in the state of Maryland, and Joe's term limited to two terms.
So they're four-year terms, so Joe can be a delegate in Maryland for eight years.
Okay, Joe's term-limited, great, we get a new guy.
Well, what's the problem?
What does Joe do next?
Oh, then he runs for Register of Wills in Arundel County.
Yeah.
Oh, okay, so now he's got 12 years in.
Oh, but he's term-limited, let's say, to one term.
Oh, now we're definitely gonna get him out.
Okay, what does he do next?
Now he runs for state senate.
And he has, what does he have?
Two more terms.
So now he's in there, what, 20 years.
Wait, I thought we were term-limited.
Yeah, yeah.
The office is term limited, not the person.
So that's what you get.
You wind up getting people who are not really term limited.
They're term limited in that office.
And then what does he do after that?
Then he runs for Congress.
Then he spends eight years in Congress.
Then he runs for the U.S.
Senate.
And what do you get, Joe?
You get our good friend Ben Cardin in Maryland.
Ben Cardin, who I ran against for the United States Senate in Maryland, has never actually had a real prolonged job outside of politics.
I think he was a lawyer for like 10 minutes.
Ben Cardin in his 20s won a seat in the House of Delegates in Maryland and has literally, not figuratively, been a politician since his 20s.
I don't even know how old he is.
60?
Around there.
That's the whole point.
I'm not sure term limits are going to help.
Secondly, so we have to term limit people, and that's constitutionally suspect.
How do you term limit people?
Joe, what do you say?
You could do eight years as a politician?
Good luck with passing constitutional muster for that.
You've restricted their free speech and their ability to run for office because they already won an election?
So let's say you get a guy who wins a Maryland state senate seat, and who knows, maybe he's, I'll get to this in a second, or even better, relevant to today's conversation we're going to have in a second.
Say you get a congressman in Maryland, he's term limited, and he wants to run for president.
You tell him he can't?
I mean, folks, that's a little constitutionally suspect, don't you think?
Your voice can't be heard in a presidential debate.
More on that in a second, by the way.
I don't know.
Secondly, outside of the fact that term limits don't term limit people, they only term limit offices, you have a bureaucracy problem.
I read a report, gosh, three, four years ago, which really opened my eyes on term limits.
And they said, you know, one of the problems with term limits is, even in specific offices that are term limited, say you have a State House of Delegates seat, and let's say the terms are two years and they're term limited to two terms, so you can only do four years.
One of the points made in the report show is that government is now, unfortunately, so complicated That by the time you get your sea legs under you as a new delegate in whatever, Maryland, and you figure out how the process works getting legislation moved, you're about two and a half to three years in.
But if you say there were two-year terms and you have two terms and you're out, so by the fourth year, You've now barely figured out what to do, and then you're gone.
And then a new guy comes in.
So you may say, well, what's the problem?
Well, the problem with that, folks, is one of the research reports I read was that it tends to empower the bureaucracy.
In other words, the people that stay behind, Joe, the chiefs of staff, the ledge directors, the PR people, because why would you need them?
You need them because every four years you're getting new people who don't know what the hell's going on!
So who runs the office, the House of Delegates office?
The Chief of Staff!
And the report I read made a very crystal clear point on this.
Do you want people you can vote out of office in power?
Or do you want bureaucrats you can't in power?
Because right now, term limits in a lot of states are leading to a default response where the bureaucracy is in charge and now you can't get rid of these people.
Because they're bureaucrats, they're not elected, Joe, make sense?
That makes sense, yeah, I never thought of that before.
Well, either had I, and that's why when I read it, I was like, wow, I gotta dig this stuff up, because it's, you know, shame on me for coming on the air and talking about it, but I have to do Levin tonight, too, and I just, I wanted to fit that in, because I got a lot, a lot of feedback on yesterday's show.
All right, just quickly touching on this other thing, because I mentioned it, alluded to it in my last conversation.
So I saw some news yesterday which really kind of blew my mind.
Once in a while on Twitter I will go through and put my name in.
It's not an ego thing.
I know it sounds like you're searching your name on Twitter.
Why do you care?
For a lot of reasons related to the show and CRTV.
I promise you it's got nothing to do with most of the stuff that comes up there from liberals.
By the way, it's nasty.
It's not like It makes your day, trust me, it doesn't make your day any better.
And one of them yesterday was an article I saw, um, Aaron Blake taking a shot at me.
I think he was from the Washington Post.
Um, and I saw this and I was like, wow, the article was the guy I ran against, uh, for Congress.
You heard, you know the story.
He shows in Maryland.
In 2014, there's a representative by the name of John Delaney, obviously a Democrat.
He's a very wealthy guy.
I saw his net worth.
I think they were underselling him.
His net worth is $92 million.
I think it's a lot higher than that.
Not that we had like OPPO research digging through his financial records, but I'm pretty sure he's a lot wealthier.
But I saw Aaron Blake tweeted, You know, John Delaney is thinking about running for president against Donald Trump in 2020, which is highly unusual coming from the House of Representatives, especially someone with such low name ID.
And Blake tried to, I think he was taking a pot shot at me, you know, if not, I'll apologize in advance, but I'm pretty sure knowing the Washington Post that that's what they were doing.
He's like, that's what we need, a guy running for president who almost lost to Dan Bongino when a District Hillary won by 15 points.
In other words, like, you know, I'm, I'm a loser and an idiot, which is fine.
It's the Washington Post.
I don't expect them to be credible.
They don't even care that Delaney beat the guy before me by 22 and the lady after me by 15.
No one even bothers to ask how we beat him on election day and lost on the absentee.
Nobody cares because they just don't like me, which is fine.
Seriously, it's fun.
It's just the way it is.
It's the Washington Post.
It's full of idiots, and you expect idiots to do dumb stuff.
So what he was trying to do is take a shot at Delaney, but also take a shot at me.
Get it, Joe?
Yeah.
Like, this guy's gonna run.
Dan Bongino almost beat him.
A twofer.
Yeah, a twofer, exactly, from an idiot who's never run himself.
But, you know, he writes for the Post, so we can forgive him.
But Delaney's talking about running, and this just parlays onto that last conversation, how you can run for Congress and then run for the presidency.
You can do whatever you want.
You're not term-limited from switching offices.
But he's... I'll just say this about Delaney, because I ran against him.
If he is the first... I don't think he's going to announce a presidential run today.
Supposedly he's going to announce... But if he is, and that creeps out, that he's running for president, I'll tell you now.
You heard it here first.
Do not underestimate this guy.
I know a lot of people were laughing yesterday on Twitter, like, oh, this congressman from Maryland, he's crazy.
A lot of people underestimated this guy, including Rob Garagiola, who was a state senator in the state of Maryland, who was running for the Democratic Party nomination.
Joe, remember him?
He was the Elvis-looking guy.
He looks like a younger Joe Armacost.
Oh, but I don't remember him, no.
Garagiola was a big-time up-and-coming state senator, state of Maryland.
The whole Democratic Party machine was behind him to win the nomination for that seat in the 6th District that I ran in and Delaney won, and Delaney frog stomped him.
Now, You may say, well, I can't be that great of a candidate.
You almost beat him.
I'm not giving myself a backhanded compliment.
That was a very unique election and we did a lot of things differently, but you heard it here first, man.
If this guy runs for president in 2020, be very careful.
He is a very kind of, he portrays himself as he's a very pro-business Democrat and he's a, but he's a very likable guy.
So just be careful with that.
Okay.
Yesterday, moving on.
I mentioned this story by Adam Klein.
It was an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, which was interesting.
Umbrella in umbrella terms the NSA metadata program section 702 and really government spying and it was a very interesting piece because Adam Klein I don't know him, but it was it was a well-written article.
I'm not taking a potshot at him I just disagree with where some of his conclusions the point he was trying to make in the pieces this section 702 that allows for the Accumulation of metadata on foreign sources, but also allows that database to be queried Warrant free in some cases for Americans as well He thinks this is an essential asset towards stopping terror attacks in the country, which may or may not be true.
But the case he makes for it is very suspect.
So just to be clear where I'm starting with the show, and I'm really simplifying this in the interest of time, and you can feel free to email me about it if you think I'm missing some details that are relevant.
There is a database that the NSA and our intelligence communities preserve.
That database is for, excuse me, foreign... I sound like Gary Delebate from the Howard Stern Show.
He's always known for clearing his throat.
The database is an accumulation of data of foreign sources, email traffic, call records, foreign sources who have no constitutional protections.
I want to be clear, I have no problem with that at all.
If you are a, Joe, non-American citizen, number one, and you are outside of the country, and you email into the United States or call into the United States, you have no constitutional protections whatsoever.
Dan Bongino has zero problem with that at all.
I love and respect the Constitution.
The Constitution does not protect foreign citizens, not American citizens, on foreign soil at all.
Okay?
It doesn't.
American citizens on foreign soil?
Different.
We're talking about foreign citizens on foreign soil.
They have a database of information.
So if you're terrorist, uh, you know, Joey Bag of Donuts, and you're overseas, and you send an email into the United States, and you are a citizen of Saudi Arabia, or Yemen, or Qatar, whatever it may be, there is a very good chance that email is in a database that the NSA and other intelligence agencies can query.
Copy?
Yep.
The case Klein's trying to make Right now you don't need a PC warrant, a probable cause warrant, to query that database in some cases where American citizens are on the receiving end of that traffic.
So if Joey Bagadonat's the terrorist, God forbid emails Joe Armacost, and let's say it's a mistake.
There are cases where they can get that email or that traffic to Joe Armacost without a traditional probable cause warrant.
Folks, I have a real problem with this, and let me just read to you, so I'm using his words, not mine, because I don't want to screw up what he's saying.
This is his piece from the Wall Street Journal.
Now man, I'm like dying today.
He says privacy advocates argue that agencies could continue to run these searches as long as they obtain a warrant.
That's how I feel.
He says the problem is that the database checks are most useful at the early stages of an inquiry when officials are seeking to determine whether a person of interest has connections to terrorists.
At that point, investigators rarely have gathered enough evidence to demonstrate probable cause.
Hmm.
For that reason, requiring a warrant will make these queries effectively impossible.
Folks, that is a dangerous statement.
Now, I took a few notes on this just to make sure I summed it up for you.
He says a lot of times these database checks to quote, determine whether a person of interest has connections to terrorists.
Then he goes on to say that they rarely at that point have gathered enough evidence to demonstrate PC.
Folks, the entire purpose of a constitutional republic with an established constitution that limits the power of government is to stop the government from searching people's private items without having developed probable cause of the commission of some kind of a crime.
That's the whole point!
I read it yesterday and I really wanted to get to it yesterday because I was hot on it and I thought Okay, Joe, I don't disagree.
I'm not suggesting Klein is saying this, but I think some others are.
I totally get that if you wanted to guarantee, I'm using air quotes here, but let me be very careful, guarantee security for U.S.
citizens.
Joe, we could establish a police state like North Korea.
Yeah.
We could wipe out constitutional protections.
We could search everybody's email for keywords.
We could listen in on everybody's phone calls.
You know, we could put a chain link fence in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere.
You're absolutely right!
I mean, we could quote, guarantee, which, you know, I'm being sarcastic.
You're never gonna guarantee security.
You get my point.
It's a take on the Ben Franklin line.
But, folks, I get that.
But that's not the country we live in, thank God.
Wouldn't be America.
No, it wouldn't be America.
The country we live in guarantees that for the government to search some of these private items, they have to produce a warrant which establishes probable cause that a crime has been committed and the items you're searching, those items may be in that house or may be in that email.
That's the whole point.
I mean, this should not be a complicated point.
I was really stunned by this.
He says, well, you know, if we have to wait for probable cause, we may never get these guys.
What?
Folks.
Some people hate when I say it, but I have to... I did this, okay?
In a prior line of work.
I was not, you know, a MacGyver or TJ Hooker.
I'm not trying to be like... I'm not trying to pat myself on the back.
I'm just trying to say I actually did this.
There are ways to do this the right way.
Now, the right way, Joe, and what I mean by the right way is by establishing probable cause, yes, is a little more complicated.
By going and querying the database based on probable cause rather than just typing in some keywords.
Yes, it is more complicated.
And yes, it is going to require a little more labor on the part of FBI agents and criminal investigators and counter-terror teams in the United States.
But it's not impossible.
And I wrote down just a couple of things.
I wrote capital letters.
Joe, this is the whole point of investigations.
To establish the fact that we can't just randomly search American stuff.
We do investigations to make sure, Joe, to make sure that the Americans' stuff we're searching are actually guilty of something or there's at least probable cause to believe so.
Now, what can we do?
Folks, this isn't complicated.
We can do surveillance.
I've been on surveillance exercises.
Matter of fact, I'll never forget being out with an FBI agent one time.
We're in a car with tinted windows on surveillance.
Maybe I shouldn't say this.
Ah, what the hell.
I love the guy, he was great, but he rolls down the window to start taking pictures with like a long lens camera.
I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
He's going to see you taking pictures.
He's like, you think?
I'm like, bro, bruh, bruh.
You know, like the kids say, B-R-U-H, bruh.
Are you kidding me?
I was like a Beavis and Butthead moment.
I was like, dude, roll the window up.
I don't know if we're going to get a good picture.
You're not going to get any picture because the guy sees you taking a picture of him.
Yeah, that actually happened.
We can do surveillance.
You got a guy who may be in the 702 database.
He's an American citizen.
He may have been emailing a terrorist.
Let's go watch him!
Oh!
You have sources, Joe.
Mm-hmm.
The way we used to do it.
You go into the community, you work your sources.
We used to call it shaking the trees.
You go in, you develop a few sources, guy in the community, hey, got something suspicious going on at this, you know, local community center.
This guy's in there radicalizing people.
I think you guys should give it a heads up there.
Okay, great.
Give the guy 50 bucks or whatever.
You have sources.
You have records checks.
You have Title III wiretaps.
FISA has its own separate system, but you have records checks, Joe.
We find out Joey Bag of Donuts, U.S.
citizen, might be involved in terror.
All of a sudden we get his credit card records.
We get what used to be called Mudd's and Ludd's, his phone records.
We see who he's calling.
Folks, it's not impossible.
It's just harder.
Yeah.
But the whole purpose of a limited government constitutional republic with an established constitution is things are supposed to be hard.
It's not supposed to be easy for the U.S.
government to go and accumulate data on American citizens just because it's easier.
I'm not knocking... I'm sure this guy is a very nice guy.
I've never met him.
But this paragraph I read to you is just... When you read it, you're like, wait, I don't understand.
Like, the whole point of your thing is we shouldn't have to get PC because it's really hard?
Folks, that throws out the entire principle of a limited government, a constitution limiting our government.
You know, as you're explaining this, I keep hearing this.
It's only the metadata.
Yeah, it's only the metadata, which is everything.
Yeah, I mean, they're keeping everything.
And then the metadata, Joe, remember back in that when this... You know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
In 1973, the Supreme Court case they're using to defend the accumulation of metadata was not about metadata.
It was about phone records and pen registers and that kind of stuff.
The metadata now is geolocated, geotabs.
You have all kinds of stuff in there that was never around in 1973.
Folks, we have to be very concerned.
I mean, the thing that concerns me most, I'll be honest with you, is the power of big government.
I have a lot of concerns, but big government scares me more than anything.
All right, I'm going to motor through a couple quick stories I really thought were interesting, too.
But hey, have you signed up for CRTV yet?
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Okay, tax reform is picking up again, which is fascinating.
Just quickly on that.
Looks like that border-adjusted tax is dead, which is a good thing.
You're going to hear some... the establishment crowd is losing their minds.
The border adjustment tax, folks, just to be clear, was a tax on imports into the United States.
It's simply stated, but that's really what it is.
I know a lot of you may say, well, that's great because, you know, we don't want a lot of imports.
We want to export a lot of stuff.
Folks, that's not the way the global supply chain works anymore.
It is not an XY equation, a black-white equation, or apples and oranges.
Folks, exports are imports, and imports are exports.
There are vehicles made in Mexico that 60% of them are made in the United States.
There are vehicles made in the United States where 60% of them are made in Mexico.
There's a German company, you may have heard of it, that makes cars called BMW.
Does it stand for Bavarian Motor Works?
They have a plant in Georgia.
Folks, the global supply chain has been broken up that there are no traditional exports and imports anymore.
There are products that go overseas, are finished, they come back and then they're finished here.
It was a silly idea.
I've already discussed this on past shows, but the border adjustment tax was a terrible idea, but now the establishmentarian crowd is losing their mind.
Some collective minds, because they're saying, well, that border adjustable tax would have raised revenue and that revenue would have allowed the tax cuts to be revenue neutral, which would have allowed them to be permanent, Joe, because they only would have need 50 votes.
I know it's complicated.
All you need to know is they needed to raise money to offset what they thought were the value of the tax cuts.
Now, what's the problem with that if you're a regular listener?
The problem I always have to bring up here.
These are really dumb rules because income tax cuts and tax cuts in general, there's very little evidence to show over time that these tax cuts cost the government money at all.
I read the article today, I was really upset about it because now apparently some people inside the Trump administration, I heard Steve Bannon's name come up, are looking at ways to, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I'm just citing reports that are out there, that they're looking at ways to quote hike taxes on the rich To generate money to pay for a tax cut on the middle class.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm telling you that may sound great in theory.
It is a horrible, atrocious idea that will not benefit the economy one bit.
So that, you may see some feedback on the BAT, that Border Adjustable Tax.
Like, yeah, it fell, but you conservatives, now we got to pay for it somewhere else.
You don't have to pay for tax cuts!
Stop saying that!
I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
I got a little upset about that whole thing.
And now they're talking about cutting the corporate tax rate to only 28% instead of a big drop, which is what we need, of 15%.
The big drop to 15% would help because 28% is the effective rate now.
So the corporate tax rate is 35% Joe, but the effective rate after the deductions is 28%.
So you're not going to help a lot of companies because they said 150 of the United States' biggest companies already pay 28%.
So it's not a tax cut at all.
We got to do something there.
Get on your A-game.
All right.
Another story I read, I don't want to hammer this Trump-Russia thing because I know a lot of people are tired of it, but this is important.
I get it.
A lot of you are fed up with it, but it's important you understand what's going on with this thing because a major, major portion of this is being left out of the mainstream media coverage.
Kimberly Strassel is an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today that is, candidly speaking, damning for the Democrat Party.
There's a big, you know, kind of who-did-it question going on in D.C.
right now, and of course you're not going to hear much about it, Joe, but you know Fusion GPS, the company that paid for the Trump dossier?
Fusion GPS is an oppo company, a research company, that put out the infamous Trump dossier.
Remember the dossier that he liked the golden showers?
It was all stupid, discredited, it was nonsense.
Everybody knows that.
Well now, all of a sudden, I don't know if you noticed this, but Congress had hearings scheduled where Paul Manafort, the former Donald Trump presidential campaign campaign manager, and Donald Trump Jr., of course, the son of Trump, they were scheduled to speak in an open hearing up in Congress, and the Democrats loved this idea, Joe.
They were going to have Donald Trump Jr.
under the lights, and they were going to grill him, and they were going to hammer him, and they were going to cover all this Russian speculation.
Hey, got him!
Where'd that go?
What happened?
Huh?
Oh, all of a sudden it disappeared!
All of a sudden there's been a huge collective democratic retreat on Manafort and Trump Jr.
And they're like, no, no, we don't need you on the TVs now.
We can put you behind closed doors.
What happened?
What happened?
Huh?
Oh, what happened is Charles Grassley on the Judiciary Committee, he was a Republican Senator, they signed the letter and said, okay, we'll have those two testify, but we also want this guy Glenn Simpson to testify.
Who's Glenn Simpson, you say?
Glenn Simpson is the co-founder of Fusion GPS, and in the Grassley letter he says, and we're going to ask this question to Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, who paid you to produce the Trump dossier?
All of a sudden, Joe, the hearing went away.
And conveniently so, Joe.
Not one Democrat would sign the letter to Glenn Simpson asking him who paid for the infamous Trump dossier to be produced.
Can't believe this.
Of course you can't believe it.
I mean this is, now why do you think that the hearing went away and the Democrats don't want Glenn Simpson to testify?
Oh maybe, just maybe the whole Trump-Russia thing is, as Kim Strassel reports in the journal thing in the Op-Ed column, maybe the whole Trump-Russia thing's been backwards the entire time.
Maybe it's the Democrats now have something to hide and the Democrats, there's a theory out there that the DNC may have paid Fusion GPS who may have collaborated with the Russians to develop a fake news dossier on Trump that they could then slip into the mainstream media and all of a sudden when the Democrats got wind of it that that was going to get out, all of a sudden the hearing went away.
See no evil, hear no evil.
Again, you won't hear that story in the mainstream media anywhere.
I'm telling you credible, you may not like Kim Strassel, you may not like the Wall Street Journal, they tend to be moderate.
I totally get it.
I happen to think Kim writes some really nice columns.
But I'm telling you right now, she would not be reporting on this in a more than credible United States paper if there was not a source in the back end telling her, hey, there's a there there.
Can you imagine if this whole time it was the Democrats working with the Russians through Fusion GPS to plant fake news stories on Donald Trump in the media?
And that's the real story?
Don't think for a second that there's not something there.
Interesting.
Hey, one more quick thing and I'll go.
So I did read a piece today about Al Gore, too, and it's just kind of funny.
Al Gore has a sequel to that stupid climate movie, An Inconvenient Truth, coming out.
And he just points out quickly that if, you know, for all the Democrats who believe in, you know, global warming and all that stuff, he says, you know, it's fascinating in the original movie, he's producing a sequel to his already discredited first movie.
In the first movie, he predicted more tornadoes.
I'm lining them out as we go along.
He predicted Mount Kilimanjaro's glacier would disappear.
He also predicted ice-free Arctic summers by 2016.
So Al Gore's first movie was a complete failure, but let's produce a second movie on top of the first movie and double down on the global warming that didn't happen after the first movie.
Nice move, Al Gore.
Cast your checks.
Take our money.
Liberals will eat it up, I'm sure, but don't let facts get in the way of a great narrative.
An inconvenient sequel.
That was good.
That was good.
Al Gore, an Inconvenient Sequel.
That's perfect.
All right, folks.
Thanks again.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for a great week of downloads and listens.
Really appreciate it.
I'll see you all next week.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
