Ep. 517 Must Hear Audio of a Confrontational WH Brief and a Ben Shapiro Debate
Please, if you have just a couple of minutes, would you be kind enough to answer a few questions about the podcast in the attached survey. It would be very helpful to us. Thank you. http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=8_95LllfD43z&ver=short Have you seen the attached video of White House aide Stephen Miller crushing CNN's Jim Acosta on immigration? http://video.foxnews.com/v/5529306221001/?#sp=show-clips Did the Seattle Mayor collude with a prominent researcher and a PR firm to hide a study about the dangerous effects of minimum wage? http://freebeacon.com/issues/union-pr-firm-seattle-mayor-coordinated-pro-15-minimum-wage-berkeley-study/
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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.
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On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
Hey, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
All set, my brother.
Little Arthur Fonzarelli moment.
Hey!
Hey!
I used to love that show, Happy Days.
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Okay, getting back to a continuation of yesterday's show.
So we were talking about this guy from the Young Turks who debated, he's a liberal, he debated Ben Shapiro, who's a conservative at Politicon, and I said I'd produce some audio for you and I would kind of double down a little bit on the stupidity that he decided to put on display at this debate.
Now, I don't even know how to pronounce this guy's name.
I've heard of him before.
Zank?
Kank?
I don't know.
Who cares?
I don't know what his name is.
Really, I didn't even bother to look it up because I don't listen to his show, but I think it sank or something.
But this guy's from the Young Turks.
He's just a jerk.
He's just an annoying jerk.
I mean, he comes out like, go, go ahead.
So he's debating Ben Shapiro.
And I brought up yesterday his rather unique economic theory of the recirculation of money.
So rather than me Reiterating this stupidity and re-mentioning it again today.
Play cut one, Joe.
By the way, Joe was hysterical this morning.
I sent him these audio cuts.
He sends them back to me named, and I kid you not, Blanking Idiot One and Blanking Idiot Two.
I'm like, dude, really?
Like I said, I chuckled a little bit.
So this is Idiot Number One.
F.I.1.
It would be preposterous to set the tax rate at zero.
It would be preposterous to set it at 100%.
So what we have to do as a society is figure out where we can maximize the most amount of good for the country.
So, for example, the reason why when taxes are higher it winds up being better for the economy is because it recirculates the money.
So if you give it to the rich... This is hilarious.
If you're uneducated, please at least don't...
Don't make it obvious.
So if you don't know the concept of recirculation of money, then go look it up.
This is the funniest joke.
I'm serious, man.
We've been at this a long time now.
517 episodes as of today.
This guy, I kid you not, could be one of the dumbest human beings I've ever heard in my life who attempts to be smart.
There are a lot of dumb people on all sides of the political spectrum.
Joe and I have met most of them, sadly.
But there are rarely dumb people who claim to be smart and then insult the audience for being uneducated like this utter buffoon.
I didn't even give the Shapiro response because the guy, he's just a moron.
Now, a couple things I wanted to bring up about this, not to redo yesterday's show, but this is just, the more I listened to it yesterday, the more I'm like, man, you know what?
I was not going to talk about this, but now I'm going to.
This guy, He mentions the Laffer Curve, although I'm sure he doesn't know what the Laffer Curve is.
L-A-F-F-E-R.
He probably thinks it's a measure of a clown's effectiveness, named after Art Laffer, an economic advisor to Republican presidents in the past.
He mentions the Laffer Curve, again, although he has no idea he's mentioning the Laffer Curve, I'm sure, and he says, Well, if the tax rate was 0%, we wouldn't raise taxes.
And if it was 100%, we wouldn't raise any tax rate either.
So there's got to be a sweet spot.
So he mentions the Laffer curve, and that is generally a conservative idea.
Yeah.
And he'd be correct if he had stopped it there or advanced those ideas.
So Joe, the point he's trying to make, to be clear, let's educate Kank, Sank, whatever the heck his name is, the young Turks.
Let's call them the young jerks.
I mean, this guy's just an, I want to say something.
He's just a jerk.
I want to say he's a mmm, but you know, it's a family-friendly show.
He's like, you are uneducated.
Educate yourself.
You would think if he understood the Laffer Curve, he would say, well, what is that peak of the Laffer Curve that generates the most amount of federal tax revenue while at the same time not impacting growth rates, economic growth rates, Joe, which are necessary to Raise tax revenue, because if you don't have any money coming in or flowing into the economy through income, through corporate profits, which are taxed, you don't have taxes.
Now, now, kink is not that smart.
Cake.
I know his name isn't Cake, okay?
What a visual.
It reminds me of, I know, it reminds me of George H.W.
Bush.
He used to call him Saddam.
Saddam Hussein.
Supposedly, that drove Saddam Hussein crazy.
He did it on purpose.
Saddam.
Saddam Hussein.
Remember that, Joe?
Oh, yeah.
You're a voice guy.
I do.
Do you have a George H.W.?
No, I don't.
No, I'm still working.
You need to incorporate that.
Saddam Hussein.
Dana Carvey used to do a good one.
Yeah, no, not bad, right, for a guy who doesn't do this professionally like you.
But he mentions the Leffer curve, but then he never takes the next intellectual step and tells you what that rate is.
All he says is that, now, just to be clear on this, historical experience would dictate that if you went back and looked at the top marginal tax rates, And you tried to figure out what an effective rate to produce government tax revenue and economic growth would be, you would look at the Reagan years, or the Clinton years, which had the, measured by the percentage growth in GDP each year, had some of the largest GDP jumps, Joe.
And you would find out that in the Reagan years it was 28%, and under Bill Clinton it was 35%.
So you may say to yourself, unlike Kenk, who really has no interest in additional analysis or any intellectual exercises whatsoever, because he's a dope, He would probably say something well you know based on the Reagan years economic growth and the effectiveness of doubling tax revenue in the Reagan years and the Bill Clinton years where tax revenue jumped as well and economic growth was substantive under those years as well we would look at a rate between 20 and 35 percent but he doesn't do that.
He goes on to then completely refute everything he just said by suggesting that The rich, Joe.
Taking the money from the rich is a good thing because they are, and I had to write this down, saving for their yachts.
And then he goes on again to cite his apparently proprietary, unique, and brand new econometric theory of the recirculation of money.
By the way, which he mentions, Google it.
And I Google, I don't see anything.
There is no recirculation of money theory.
So it's fascinating that he calls out the audience for being uneducated as he completely humiliates himself by mentioning a recirculation of money theory that doesn't even exist.
Apparently it's only his.
Kenk's.
Who, this guy, I mean, this guy is really one of the most arrogant jwads I have ever heard on this.
I'm so glad Shapiro humiliated him.
So, it's interesting that he mentions this concept of recirculation of money, but then talks about, well, you can't give money to the rich because they will save it for their yacht.
Again, I don't want to redo yesterday's show, but do you understand how those two ideas can't possibly marry up and correspond?
One, there is no recirculation of money theory, because the money is always recirculating, as Kank says in his next statement about saving.
Saving!
For their yacht, Kank.
So Kank, if you're saving, Kankster, where does the money go, you dope?
Oh, in a financial institution.
Again, what happens to the money?
Kank apparently thinks they burn it.
Wow, Kank, you really are a dope.
Have you ever heard of an interest rate?
You ever heard of a mortgage?
You ever heard of a car loan?
You ever heard of a personal loan?
You ever heard of a credit card?
Where do you think that money comes from, Kank the money fairy?
Oh, rich people's savings who lend it to middle class and lower income folks who use the money to go buy cars and then pay an interest rate Which the so-called evil rich people and middle class people who put their money in banks get in return for lending their money to other people based on the risk of getting paid back.
Joe, is any of this like econ 772?
This is like, I kid you not, my daughter learned this in fifth grade.
Taking one of those classes where they, you know, you pretend to be a banker and the other one pretends to be a doctor.
This is not complicated.
But Kenk, who thinks everybody else is uneducated, proceeds again to mention the Laffer Curve and then refutes the Laffer Curve and then mentions his unique economic theory of the recirculation of money while then refuting the recirculation of money by indicating that money recirculates anyway because rich people save to buy their yacht.
So part two of the saving for the yacht kink statement refuting his own stupid recirculation of money proprietary theory would tell you that if they are saving for their yacht...
And then they buy their yacht.
Kenk's proprietary recirculation of money theory that doesn't apparently work for the rich is then refuted by his own statement because, Joe, if you buy a yacht, what happens to the money?
It goes back in the economy, apparently fitting Kenk's recirculation of money theory, which he says does not apply to the rich.
Oh my god I mean I would debate this guy but seriously I think my IQ would drop 30 points because he's such a dope and he's one of these arrogant dopes like the the you know what it is they it magnifies the dope like I live in Florida you put a magnifying glass under the sun and put it on paper you're going to start a fire in 10 minutes this guy's a dope magnifier He is like a magnifying glass for dopes.
Like they look through the magnifying glass and the dope power becomes concentrated into a fire of dopiness.
I mean, this guy is really stupid.
And then he doubles down like, Google it!
Google it!
Like the internet's gonna back him up for stupidity.
I mean, this is incredible.
Oh man, I got a lot to get to today.
I really didn't want to do this because I know Shapiro annihilated this guy and I hate to even give this guy time on my podcast because he thinks his show, The Young Jerks, is like the greatest thing ever.
It's funny because there's this guy...
I did a little YouTube piece taking a shot at Kank.
And he says how, you know, the Young Turks guy is like, you know, the Kankster's like, our show has been blowing up.
It's in that clip, I say, Joe.
He's like, our show is amazing.
We're the young jerks.
And the guy goes to this website tracker or podcast tracker and he's like, actually, you know, the Kankster's show has been declining in audience.
So I don't know where he gets it.
Apparently, Kank can't tell the truth about anything.
All right.
We got one more cut from Kank.
Play Cut 2, Joe, and I'll refute this stupidity in a moment.
The way that it works is that when the middle class, when the middle class has more money, disposable income, they spend it.
Why?
Because they're not living in a lap of luxury, they're not saving it for their yacht.
So they need to buy food for their family, they need education for their family, so they spend it and it goes back into the economy.
Oh my god, Joseph.
Joe, we talk a lot, right?
Yeah.
You know this is not an act for the show, right?
That this crap really drives me crazy.
Yeah.
Like, I can't take it.
The stupidity, this guy is really, I know folks, I don't want to waste your time with a lot of emotional uh you know rants against just liberal dopes because you already get it but i'm dead serious this guy is one of the top 10 dopes i've ever heard in my life he just says the exact opposite thing in the same sentence and i don't i guess nobody caught it i i don't like has anyone else heard this folks
He's now again introducing, reintroducing his proprietary, unique, kink from the young jerks, recirculation of money treatise.
I don't even know what to call this thing.
And he refutes it again in the same sentence.
He goes, well, when you put money back in the pockets of the middle class, they're not living in the lap of luxury and they spend it.
Holy Moses, kink!
Kink!
Kank, seriously, are you this dumb?
Think about what you just- I'm just asking you to think about what you said.
Forget about what anybody else said.
Think about what you just said.
Putting money back in the pockets of the middle class.
Okay.
That works.
Well, yeah, we agree.
But you're not talking about doing that.
You're talking about raising taxes in the economy, which literally takes money from the middle class.
Now, Kenk will respond and go, nah, I'm only talking about business taxes.
And I'm only talking about taxing the rich.
Okay, none of that actually happens.
Look at historical data and research because we're all uneducated, Kenk.
When you look at corporate and capital gains taxes, so-called taxes on the rich and investment, a lot, not all, but a significant portion of those taxes are passed on to middle-class consumers, Kenk.
Do you even read?
You dope!
The money comes from the middle class!
So in your opening, anything you say after your opening is already wrong, but I'll address your other stupidity in a second.
These taxes come from the middle class, so how are you putting money back in the middle class's pocket by taking it out of their pockets, running it through the government that takes about a 40 cents on the dollar bureaucratic fee to pay the bureaucrats to take it from you, to then give you 60 cents back on the dollar and now you're richer?
Google it.
Gosh.
Google it, Kenk.
Google it.
Try the interweb.
You dope.
I mean, is this guy serious?
Then he goes on to say, and I'll wrap it up because it's, I mean, I'm seriously losing IQ points and I have a heavy lifting session today planned and I'm going to need it.
He then goes on to say, and they wouldn't be living, they're not living in the lap of luxury, the middle class.
They would spend it.
Joe, can you please process that statement for a minute because you're a reasonable guy?
If you're rich, let me ask you something because you are the audience ombudsman.
Yes.
If you are one of Kank's evil wealthy people, right?
You're the evil rich guy, the Thurston Howell on the island, right?
And if you are living in the lap of luxury, does the lap of luxury mean to you that you've actually bought goods and services?
What does that mean?
I don't know.
I'm too busy living in the lap of luxury to think about it.
Apparently Kank is too, because he hasn't thought through what he just said.
The rich are living in the lap of luxury, so if you take their money, the middle class will spend it.
Well, what is it?
Does spending money and recirculating it in the economy matter, or does it not?
Because if you're living in the lap of luxury, to quote Kank, right Joe?
Yeah.
You must have bought something.
A Bentley, a condo, a beachfront property.
You know what I'm talking about.
Gilligan's Island, whatever Thurston had.
Remember Thurston always had stuff the others didn't?
I always wondered why no one robbed Thurston Howell.
He had all the fancy clothes and everything on Gilligan's Island.
You would think if we went like, you know, Lord of the Flies style, that they be taking his stuff.
But the whole point of the thing is, Kank refutes his own statement by saying the rich are living in the lap of luxury.
So, Kank, what is it?
Is the money recirculating by the rich buying stuff, or is it not?
Is it being burned like you're somehow implicitly suggesting by your proprietary recirculation of money theory?
No, it only matters that we take it from the rich to money, take away the stuff they were going to recirculate, let the government take a cut of it, and then give it to the middle class to recirculate, in addition to the taxes we hit the middle class with as well, because the taxing of the rich also filters down to them.
And there you go.
Oh my gosh.
I mean, folks, I've listened to this stuff and I'm like, can these people be this dumb?
Well, the amazing part to me is that there are folks that will sit there, shake their head in agreement with, with this guy.
Oh, they love it.
They eat it up.
The guy does have a substantial audience.
I'm not going to sit here and, and bash him, but I mean, he's, he's overly dramatizing the growth of his show.
I'm a, you know, he's, he's, and he's an arrogant jerk.
You know, so the more I listen to it, the more upset I get, so that's why I brought this up.
Alright, I got some more audio with Stephen Miller yesterday, the White House aide.
I don't know if you folks saw this, the press conference.
Stephen Miller really just annihilating CNN's Jim Acosta at a White House briefing on immigration.
I have some audio.
If you haven't heard this, You are sincerely missing out.
Stephen Miller.
I don't have a lot of heroes and all, but this guy is rapidly moving up my charts.
It was a masterful performance.
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All right.
Another reason I was super excited about the show today, raring to go, and Joe usually texts me, all set.
I was like, good, let's get this thing on the road here.
So again, Stephen Miller gives this press conference at the White House and he spars with Jim Acosta.
Now, I'm going to set up this audio now.
The first cut here is CNN's Jim Acosta.
Asking Stephen Miller about the RAISE Act, which Joe, remember we mentioned yesterday?
Yeah.
It is an immigration proposal by Senator Tom Cotton in conjunction with the White House, they're imprimatur here, to reduce legal immigration, Joe.
I want to be clear on this, folks, before we go forward.
Legal immigration to the United States from about 1 million per year to about 500,000.
Now, of course, Acosta, who I've never had a personal problem with, but I just can't understand, like, where Acosta's going with this opening question.
It seems like Acosta doesn't understand the numbers and Miller just annihilates him.
So, play cut one.
This is Acosta's question at the White House press conference.
What you're proposing or what the President is proposing here does not sound like it's in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration.
The Statue of Liberty says, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, your aim to breathe free.
It doesn't say anything about speaking English or being able to be a computer programmer.
Aren't you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you're telling them you have to speak English?
Can't people learn how to speak English when they get here?
Okay, I had to write down where to go because even in that question, there's so much wrong that I didn't want to get lost in the nuance.
So two things I want to hit on.
Number one, he mentions the American tradition.
He says, well, is this in quote, in keeping with the American tradition?
Folks, the American tradition of immigration, that's not, I don't understand, like, what does that mean?
This is a typical press statement and this is where they start editorializing and not being journalists.
What exactly does that mean?
If you were doing a Joe Friday and you were an actual journalist, Joe, and you were interested in the Just the Facts, right?
The old... Is that Dragnet?
Yeah.
It's a little pre-year, but you know I always get this stuff wrong.
Now, if you were doing a journalistic endeavor and you were interested in Just the Facts, folks, what does that mean?
That is an inherently open-ended question that is not...
Subject to a precise answer.
Why?
Because, Joe, I mean, listen, you and I have the same political leanings, but I'll be honest with you, if I asked you, Joe, hey Joe, what do you feel the quote American tradition on immigration is?
I guarantee you, you would give a different answer than I would.
I might mention chain migration, you may mention numbers of legal immigration, number of legal immigrants, I might mention our policy towards asylum, When, you know, people come here from Cuba because I live in Florida.
Do you understand how that's not a journalistic question?
That's an opinion question.
He's editorializing clearly.
Absolutely.
Now, when we play Miller's answer or part of it in a moment, you'll see how Miller just completely annihilates him because Acosta is clearly unfamiliar with the actual tradition when it comes to numbers.
But one more thing I wanted to bring up on this.
I said I had two points and I'm going to stick to it.
Folks, this guy's a journalist, Acosta.
A poem on the Statue of Liberty that says, give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.
Yeah, that's a nice poem.
It's a beautiful poem.
Everybody loves it.
We are a great country.
We have taken in millions of people around the world who've been oppressed.
But Joe, this guy's a journalist.
Can we both agree here, and again, this isn't a complex statement, I'm not trying to be funny or witty, that that's not the law, a poem on the Statue of Liberty?
That's not the law, right Joe?
I'm not crazy?
No, it's a poem.
The poem was not incorporated into the Constitution.
The poem is not part of federal immigration law or some state's incorporation of federal immigration law.
It's a beautiful poem.
It's a nice poem.
It nicely sums up the United States' position on rescuing people from tyranny.
But it's a poem!
Folks, can we be clear on this?
This is a journalist, or he says he's a journalist, asking a White House aide about a law The RAISE Act, and citing a poem on the Statue of Liberty.
That's an editorial question.
That is in no way, in any way, shape, or form, a question about the law they're proposing.
You're citing a poem on the Statue of Liberty?
Alright, get a cut to ready for me from Miller here.
This is Miller's answer and I'm gonna kind of double down and explain a little bit what the argument really is and why the left wants to run away from the argument.
They want to talk about open-ended, kind of nearly meaningless stuff.
And I say meaningless because it could mean two different things to two different people, which means it doesn't have a meaning at all.
Alright?
Let's talk about this.
Jim, let's talk about this.
In 1970, when we let in 300,000 people a year, was that violating or not violating the Statue of Liberty law of the land?
In the 1990s, when it was half a million a year, was it violating or not violating the Statue of Liberty law of the land?
Tell me what years meet Jim Acosta's definition of the Statue of Liberty law of the land.
Tell me what years, tell me what years, tell me what years meet Jim Acosta's definition
Nice!
Yes!
of the Statue of Liberty poem Law of the Land.
Nice!
Yes!
Finally, Joe!
Finally!
A spokesman at the podium who does what I've been begging Republicans to do for a long
Do not answer a misleading, nonsensical question with an answer.
Answer it with a question asking them to clarify the question.
Because when Jim Acosta asks about the American tradition, nobody knows what that means!
No, no.
Let me rephrase.
You know what?
I'm wrong, Joe.
Everybody knows what that means.
But it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, therefore it's meaningless.
What are you talking about?
So Miller, expertly... If you're listening, Miller, and I know there's someone in the White House, a friend of mine who listens, please pass this on.
It has two thumbs and loves Stephen Miller after yesterday.
This guy!
I'm pointing at myself.
Good job, two thumbs up.
Siskel and Ebert, two thumbs up.
Finally turning the tables.
He then turns around and says to Acosta, what do you mean by the American tradition on immigration?
Are you talking about the 500,000 people we admitted in a year in the 90s?
Under?
Bill Clinton?
Because Joe, if you remember back then in the Clinton days, there was no big uproar from the Democrats about, oh, 500,000 is not the American tradition.
We need to let in a million people.
I don't remember any of that, do you?
But let me get this straight.
Now that Donald Trump is looking for a more sane immigration policy where we cut the number of legal immigrants so we can let people here assimilate and we go back to the number of the Clinton years, now all of a sudden it's a really big deal even though it wasn't under the Clinton years.
That's called a double standard for those who aren't familiar with logic and reason.
It wasn't a big deal under Clinton, 500,000, but now that Trump proposes it, it's a huge deal.
And Acosta has no idea how to answer.
Why?
Because he does what the press does, and if you ever run for office, do not sleep on this trick.
They will give you an open-ended term that has no definable meaning.
They want to catch you in an answer so that you can't use facts to refute what they're saying.
They'll do this all the time.
Let me give you an analogy.
They do it on tax cuts all the time.
They'll say something like, well, well, these are just tax cuts, you know, for the wealthy.
And instead of coming back with a question to them, Joe, like, here's how I used to do it when I was running.
I'm not patting myself on the back.
I'm just saying, like, I've been hip to this for a long time.
A lot of people are.
It's not just me.
But you say, well, how do you define the wealthy?
And then they'll panic.
They'll be like, well, you know, the tax cuts proposed for people making over $250,000 a year.
Say, well, what's your evidence that these tax cuts are going to cause them to pay less money?
Well, because they're hiking your tax rates.
What are you, an idiot?
No, I'm not.
I'm just suggesting, and if you look at the research of Stephen Moore and the Heritage Foundation and a number of think tanks out there, that the Reagan tax cuts, where tax rate cuts were cut on the wealthy, that the wealthy not only paid more in total amount, but they paid more as a percentage of the total tax load as well.
You're familiar with this research, right?
And then, Joe, watch them panic like Acosta did.
But the only way to get them to panic and put them back on their heels is to ask them to define their open-ended nonsensical terms.
The tax cuts for the rich.
Okay, what does that mean?
What does that mean?
Watch them panic!
Because, folks, here's the dirty little secret about journalism.
You know, in my prior line of work, I was around them all the time.
There are some good people.
I'm not bashing them all.
Even some of the liberals are nice people if they're ideologically wrong.
But I can't give you a percentage, but I'm telling you right now, a good swath of them are some of the dumbest people you have ever met.
You would be stunned at the level of ignorance.
I'm not kidding.
I would talk to them on the press plane, on Air Force One, when I was the press agent.
When you first get to the Secret Service detail, you're the press guy, because that's where you can do the least amount of damage, frankly.
You're far away from the president.
You would be stunned at some of the conversations I overheard.
If you think for a second Jim Acosta has the first idea about detailed immigration policy, with all due respect to his family, I know his father was an immigrant, I'm not talking about his personal story, I have a personal story with immigration as well, I'm talking about his policy, his legislative acumen, his historical knowledge base on immigration, I guarantee you you'd be stunned at how little he knows.
Yet he's there as some kind of authority in the White House press room, Joe, on immigration theory.
It's just absurd.
It's just absurd.
All right.
I got a couple more great, great, great stories to get.
You probably tell I'm really excited about today's show.
If I don't finish it all today, I'm going to get to them tomorrow because there is just a cornucopia of beautiful stuff today.
All right.
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But you know what?
The Patriot supply stuff is not.
This may have been a waste of money, the extended warranty on the Raptor, Joe, but after some of my problems with cars in the past, I was like, you know, I'm not even paying for car service.
You're like, well, what else would you buy?
I'm not.
You know what I'm paying for?
Sanity.
Seriously, right?
You know, Joe, with all my problems with cars in the past, I have an expensive car now.
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It's this Raptor.
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I'm just paying for sanity.
So it's worth it.
My dad's like, yeah, good move.
Love my father.
By the way, it was, I don't want to say the day, but my father and my wives have birthed my wives.
Dude, that's hysterical.
My father and my wife, my multiple wives.
Dude, don't even cut that out.
That's hysterical.
I know, even if I told you, you'd keep that in, because he knows Paula.
My wife, my father and my wife, I was going to say have birthdays, and I put the plural of wives, have birthdays this week, so a big happy birthday.
My father's a really good man, super hard worker, and my wife is just everything to me.
She's just the greatest woman I know, so I wanted to give her a shout out.
She's just terrific.
And she helps a lot with the show, folks.
She keeps, as Joe well knows, she keeps the cost way down by doing a lot of the internet stuff.
So thank you to Paula.
Alright, one last story.
So much I wanted to get to.
Do you remember the story we mentioned a few weeks ago?
This is a bombshell.
It's not getting any, of course, publicity by the mainstream media, which is interested only in advancing the cause of the Democratic Party.
But remember the story about minimum wage in Seattle, Joe, and that study that came out and the mayor tried to bury it?
Well, the Washington Free Beacon has a bombshell, and I made a bombshell story about this.
There was a kind of a FOIA request, a public records request.
Obviously, FOIA wouldn't apply to the states and the cities, but a public records request about emails.
Let me just sum it up for you quickly, and I'll put the free Beacon story in the show notes available at Bongino.com, and if you sign up for my mailing list, we'll send them to you every day, these stories.
They got this public record request for emails, and what happened was Seattle instituted a $15 phased-in minimum wage.
And in order to advance this liberal union-backed initiative, they wanted a research study to put out, you know, the data to say, hey look, look at what this is going to do for low-income workers, Joe.
Well, what's the problem?
Well, the University of Washington took it upon themselves in conjunction with, I think it was the National Bureau of Economic Research, to do a study on the effects of this $15 an hour minimum wage, and the study, when the mayor, the mayor's name is Ed Murray of Seattle, when the mayor got wind of the results of the University of Washington's study on the $15 an hour minimum wage in Seattle, they panicked.
Well, why?
Because the minimum wage study, as we indicated in a prior show, showed that the lower income folks who were supposed to benefit from the $15 an hour minimum wage would actually lose $179 a month.
I'm not laughing, it's not funny.
I only laugh because facts and data don't matter to liberals.
They only matter when they're their facts and data.
Again, just like Jim Acosta, open-ended questions so they can fit the, you know, put the puzzle pieces in with their own facts and data and not the real facts and data.
So, this University of Washington study, which was cited widely by conservative outlets, Has yet to be in any way debunked.
I'm not saying it's this positive on the issue, but Joe, I'm just going to suggest to you when a research study confirms what most sane people would understand to be a rule of thumb or common sense, you should probably lean in the direction that it's a well-done study.
The common sense here should be common.
If you ask employers to pay more for labor, Employers will decrease the amount of labor they use or they will decrease the salaries of the labor they have up to, you know, up into a point.
Folks, there's no other way.
I mean, I've used the lemonade stand example and I'm going to use it again because it's the only simple way to explain to liberals basic math on minimum wage.
If you own a lemonade stand and you have two employees and by hiring a third employee, you can earn an additional $10 for the business an hour.
In its most simplest form, you cannot hire that third employee at $12 an hour.
Joe, is this complicated?
Now, why would that be?
Not at all.
You hire the third employee, you will make 10 additional dollars an hour.
Well, I'm demanding $12 an hour.
OK, but I'm not going to lose $2 an hour by hiring you.
I'm not going to pay you $12 to make me $10.
Now, that's complicated for liberals.
I get that.
So what happens in the real world, and the University of Washington study was pretty clear on this, is that when you up the minimum wage to $15 an hour, either employees do not bring on additional employees that they would have, Joe, Because they're not worth that, to them, productivity-wise, $15.
The skills aren't there.
That's just a fact.
Or they let go employees to pay the employees they have left the additional money they have to pay.
Joe, again, being the ombudsman, is any of that complicated?
No.
Of course it's not.
No.
So there's the setup.
So what happened?
So the mayor, one of his staffers is Carlo Calderola Davis.
Sorry, I'm reading as I go through this here.
In one of the emails, he emails a Berkeley researcher.
This researcher, Michael Reich, is apparently very sympathetic.
Apparently he's a liberal and very sympathetic to higher minimum wages.
So they asked this guy, Michael Reich from Berkeley, to do another study and get it out fast.
So that they could refute the University of Washington study saying minimum wage was going to hurt, hurt people at the lower end of the income scale.
So here's a quote from one of the emails from one of the mayor's staffers of Seattle, the liberal mayor, to this liberal researcher trying to refute the report here.
He's talking about the press release about his liberal study.
He says the release still calls out the University of Washington study.
Don't want your positive news to serve as a teaser for the University of Washington study.
Folks, why did I pick that specific email out in that specific quote?
Because it's not just that liberals are trying to hide the truth.
And it's not just that liberals basically coordinated with a new liberal researcher at Berkeley to put forth a new quote study, Joe, that would show liberal minimum wage was helping lower income people.
It's that they want you in the press release about the new study to not even hear about, Joe, to not even hear about the University of Washington study.
Folks, this is liberalism.
And why do I bring it up?
Because what's a constant theme of this show over and over?
Gaslighting!
This is what liberals do.
They gaslight.
They say something they know is untrue.
Forcing companies to pay more will benefit people at the lower end of the income scale.
They don't ask basic questions like, well, where are employers going to get the money?
Oh, they're not.
They're just going to fire some of their employees.
Oh, OK.
So say something silly.
Forcing employers to pay more will benefit people at the lower edge of the income scale.
Say something untrue.
Say it confidently, which liberals always do.
Just like Kenk, right, at the beginning?
Google it!
Google it!
Even though what he's saying is dumb and he refutes his own statement.
Say a lie, repeat the lie confidently, and then isolate people from the truth.
That is gaslighting.
This email, and I will put the Washington Free Beacon post in the show notes.
Look it up.
They have the emails in there.
This email says it all.
He asked a new liberal researcher for a study that refutes the University of Washington study, but he says, do me a favor, don't even cite the University of Washington study, because he doesn't want you to understand reality.
He doesn't want you to know the truth.
He doesn't want you to weigh, Joe, the pros and the cons, the positives versus the negatives, the marginal benefits of a policy or a legislative approach.
The liberals don't want you to do that.
They want you to be gaslit, and gaslit is saying something, saying it confidently, lying about it, and isolating you from the truth.
So the gaslighting?
Fight for 15!
Fight for 15!
Scream it over and over.
Never talk about the consequences of that policy.
Tell another researcher to not even tell the public about a research study saying that the fight for 15 is actually costing people $179 a month.
And then isolate people from the truth completely and lie over and over and over again.
Folks, this is why I will never ever be a liberal.
Ever in my life.
And hopefully no one in my family will be either.
Because I cannot be dishonest.
This is pathological dishonesty.
Folks, name me an issue, I'll tell you where the liberals have followed the exact same approach.
The liberals will never ever publish data about the deficits, annual deficits growing under the Clinton years.
Ever.
Either with the liberal media.
Despite the fact that they'll tell you there was a Clinton surplus.
The media will never tell you that tax revenue doubled under Reagan, even though they cut the tax rates.
Even though it's out there for anyone to see because they want to isolate you from the truth.
They won't even mention it as a counter-argument.
They won't even mention it.
One more thing on this.
Folks, there's a very Troublesome replication crisis in the humanities right now.
Psychological research, economics research.
These are not hard sciences, okay?
The hard sciences, biology, chemistry, physics, organic chemistry.
These are the hard sciences.
These are You're always going to have confounding variables, even in the hard sciences, but they're relatively easy to control using statistical analysis.
You can randomize the effects of it.
I'm not going to go into the details.
I've discussed this before.
But when you're in the hard sciences, Joe, and you're trying to detect the biological effects on a human being of a drug, it's relatively uncomplicated.
To give that drug to a randomized group of people and to see if it helps or not.
If I give Joe Armacost a blood pressure drug, I don't only want to give it to Joe.
Because there could be a confounding variable.
Let's say your blood pressure goes down.
I cannot conclusively say, Joe, that drug A caused your blood pressure to go down.
Even though after you took it, it did.
Well, why can't I conclusively say that?
Because I know Joe just started, you know, got back in the gym again.
Joe's a healthy guy.
It could have been because Joe's walking on a treadmill, lifting weights.
Those are confounding variables.
Now, you can control some of those, but you can't control all of them.
It's impossible.
We don't live in test tubes.
Folks, that's hard enough in the hard sciences.
When you start getting to the, you know, humanities, social sciences, and when you get to, you know, economics, and you get into psychology, do you have any idea how complicated it is to control the variables?
Imagine saying, like, well, we're going to determine the effects of minimum wage on University of Washington.
We're going to compare it to Kansas.
What?
They're two completely different states.
Different regulations, different court systems, different systems of policing.
Two completely different states, Joe.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to control those variables?
The only point I'm trying to make is, even though the University of Washington study said what conservatives already know, that minimum wage is actually taking money from people on the lower end of the income scale, I'm telling you and I'm telling Kenk and all these other people who like to quote liberal research studies, folks, if it violates a common-sense rule of thumb, like asking employers to pay more for labor will cause them to use less labor, I don't care what your economic research says, there is a replication crisis now, which is showing That these folks, they can't, in other words, when I say replication crisis, Joe, they can't replicate a lot of their own studies.
Either way, because it's just impossible to control all of these variables in the humanities.
Does that make sense?
If you do a study that says, you know, Joe Armacost's raise, you know, minimum wage gave Joe more money, you're going to have a difficult time replicating that to Tommy Armacost or Or Joey Bag of Donuts, because you don't know the variables in their lives.
I'm just asking you to use common sense.
And sadly, people like Kank have none of them.
And this report shows you that liberals will cherry-pick data even though they can't replicate the data nine out of ten times for themselves.
All right, so folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
I got a lot more on tomorrow's show.
The show was way too stacked today, so please don't miss it.
There's some really juicy stuff out there.
I'll see you tomorrow.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
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