A detailed account of the deep-state effort to sabotage POTUS Trump. http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/08/the-slow-motion-coup-detat-picks-up-steam/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29 The West Virginia Governor humiliating Democrats by leaving the Party. http://fxn.ws/2vnDQiS The pitfalls of Universal Basic Income proposals. And, liberal lies about the Reagan tax cuts. https://www.wsj.com/articles/reagan-cut-taxes-revenue-boomed-1501800678 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/federal-tax-cuts-would-cripple-local-governments-2017-08-03 SPONSOR LINKS: www.BrickhouseNutrition.com/Dan www.PrepareWithDan.com
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They've been tweeting to me, Bongino's a nut, Bongino's a blanker, blanker.
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Alright, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
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All right, a thousand things to talk about today.
So let's start with just some news.
So Jim Justice, the Democrat governor of West Virginia, last night at a rally with Donald Trump in West Virginia, left the Democrat party to become a Republican.
Not much to say about this other than here's my commentary on this and I'll move along.
The Democrats suck so badly, the party, that they don't even need an election to lose people.
That's how bad the Democrats are.
Now, regardless of your position on Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States, regardless, you may love him, you may hate him, you may be milquetoast, whatever it may be, You can't argue that the Democrats are in disarray.
I get it.
There's a reasonable argument to be made that there's a lot of chaos going on right now within the Republican Party.
I get it.
We have fake Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and John McCain out there.
We have some chaos going on at the White House, a lot of turnover.
I get it.
But you, Joe, you cannot reasonably make the case with a straight face that the Democrats are just fine and dandy right now.
They are getting annihilated everywhere.
And now they're losing people without even having elections.
I mean, this is just like, yeah, it never ends with these people.
All right, so there you go.
Story number one.
Story number two, I'm getting a ton of emails about H.R.
McMaster.
H.R.
McMaster is the National Security Advisor to the President.
There are two different schools of thought going on right now about what's going on with him.
The National Review crowd, I'm not knocking National Review at all, they're entitled to their opinions, and there are certainly people at National Review who probably have a different opinion, but National Review, I think it was Ian Tuttle who wrote a piece defending McMaster, who's the National Security Advisor, saying, hey, McMaster isn't the problem in the White House.
And for those of you who are wondering where I'm going with this, The other line of thinking right now, the other fork, right, from the fork in the road on McMaster is that McMaster is driving all of the swamp creature internal strife that's going on in the White House.
Not all, but maybe most of it.
Because he is a David Petraeus acolyte and there's a lot of friction going on right now.
He has been eliminating people who are Trump loyalists, who Align more closely with Trump's not-so-much-isolationist approach, but definitely not a globalist approach.
Trump is by no means a globalist.
So there are two schools of thought on that.
I'm not going to beat the topic to death.
I'll give you my humble opinion on this.
I think McMaster is a big problem.
Um, I think McMaster has a, a globalist approach that is not necessarily commensurate where the electorate is in the United States right now, Joe, the United States is not just based on the vote and the election of Donald Trump and his desire to pull back from a lot of our global, um, I'm using this word intentionally, but I was going to get me in trouble, entanglements.
For those of you with policy experience, you'll know where I'm going with that.
People voted for that.
They voted for a slight pullback.
They don't want us all over the world being the world's policemen.
McMaster has the opposite approach.
McMaster's been firing a lot of people, Rich Higgins, Ezra Watnick, people who were Trump, really loyal to Trump, and had a different approach.
Another problem with McMaster has been that there's a I don't want to say a rumor, because it's not a rumor.
A lot of people I know, what I trust, have confirmed that McMaster is not exactly pro-Israel, so to say.
When I say pro-Israel, I don't mean unreasonably so.
I mean, he seems to lean more towards Israel as more of a problem for our foreign policy approach, rather than an asset.
And this has caused a big rift.
So that's going on right now.
Big brawl going on there.
Yesterday, great.
I mean, the breaking news happens all the time.
So I just want to hammer through a few stories, give you my take on them.
The coup d'etat continues.
The soft, slow coup within the United States government continues.
You know, I'm deliberately taking this from William Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection.
He has a story out today about the slow drip coup d'etat, which I will put in the show notes, which is interesting.
And he points out, and I'm going to go through quickly some things that are happening, that it's puzzling, Joe, why this isn't disturbing to the far left.
They just don't seem to care and it indicates to me that they're getting growingly comfortable with a level of tyranny that should disturb everyone who is not part of the radical far left.
So a grand jury has now been impaneled to look into something related to the Trump administration by Special Investigator Robert Mueller, who Joe, this is important, was assigned as the special counsel in order to investigate Russian collusion.
Now, Russian collusion in an election, as Andy McCarthy at National Review correctly pointed out, would be a counterintelligence investigation.
You do not impanel a grand jury in a counterintelligence investigation, which says to me, and to any reasonable observer with familiarity with the federal justice system, and this should bother everyone listening right now, that this has now turned into a criminal investigation.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's not how this started.
Now, you may say to yourself, well, what's the problem, Dan?
If they were doing a counterintelligence investigation and they uncovered some criminality, why not appoint a grand jury?
Because, ladies and gentlemen, this is the United States.
We do not investigate people.
We investigate crimes.
I cannot emphasize this point to you enough that once we take that fork in the road and we go down the road of investigating people and not crimes, there is no turning back.
Now, what do I mean by that?
You do not start a special council with the goal of uncovering Russian collusion and then on the side, Joe, have a side goal in a war room that's closed to the public that says, hey guys, if we don't find anything on Russian collusion, just start digging on Trump and eventually we'll get him on something.
That's not what was supposed to happen.
When I was a federal agent and I was on task forces and I was doing counter-terror cases and financial fraud cases that had a nexus to terrorism, what we didn't do, folks, is we didn't say, well, tell you what, I don't like Joey Bag of Donuts and his pizza shop because I went in there the other day and he charged me $5 for a slice.
So we're going to investigate him.
We're going to start a war room to go get Joey Bag of Donuts.
That's not how it's supposed to work.
How it's supposed to work is someone comes in, a source maybe, and says, hey, I think Joey Bag of Donuts and the pizza shop is selling heavy-duty narcotics over there, selling drugs.
You know, we go out, we maybe develop some other sources, we do a controlled buy, and then all of a sudden we find out there's criminality, and then we investigate the people involved.
You don't investigate the people involved and find criminality later.
Joe, is this making sense how dangerous this is?
Oh yeah, it's pretty scary.
We're impaneling a grand jury.
A grand jury would not be impaneled in a counterintelligence investigation because it's not criminal.
A grand jury's sole purpose, sole purpose, is to investigate to subsequently issue an indictment.
That's the purpose of a grand jury.
A grand jury is impaneled in a case like this to issue subpoenas to investigate a criminal investigation.
It is not a counterintelligence investigation anymore, which was the sole purpose of the special counsel.
Folks, if there's... Now, some of you may be saying again, you may say, well, I still don't get it.
What if they found criminal stuff?
Okay, fuck, we still have an FBI.
Joe, did the FBI go anywhere?
No, they're still there.
They're still there, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
It was not dissolved.
I mean, have you seen any of your kickers in the morning or any news that the FBI was dissolved since Trump became the president?
No, man.
No, right?
They're hanging in there doing real good, yeah.
Local police departments are still... Remember, the President of the United States cannot pardon himself for state crimes.
There are still local police departments.
There are still big city police departments like the NYPD.
So we still have a functioning criminal justice apparatus in the United States that is going nowhere.
So if anyone wants to investigate some allegations of criminality in the Trump administration, they are perfectly entitled to do so.
The special counsel's purpose, just to be crystal clear, was not to do that.
Folks, I don't want to... I know I've beaten this thing up, and I know a lot of you are tired of it.
But I would be doing you a huge disservice if I did not hammer home to you the dangerous point we are in right now because liberals are celebrating and salivating over the destruction of separation of powers in the Constitutional Republic.
You don't understand.
When we start targeting people for political losses, you will find something.
Listen to me.
Every one of you is a federal criminal.
Every one of you.
You say, no, not me.
Are you sure?
Are you damn sure you have not broken a federal law?
That if we were to look into your emails, if we were to look into your bank account, if we were to get your taxes, are you sure you're not a criminal?
Now, I'm not talking about... I should say this better.
Are you sure you haven't broken a law?
I should have said this better.
I'm not saying you're a criminal.
Are you sure you haven't broken a law?
If you say yes, you're lying.
You're lying.
I'm telling you there's something in the tax code.
You have ripped off a mattress tag.
You have probably jaywalked.
You're probably on camera blowing through a red light somewhere.
You've probably broke the speeding limit on a highway.
Every one of you and somehow has broken a law over the last 30 days.
This is why we don't investigate people.
We investigate crimes because investigating crimes keeps our national priority straight.
Investigating crimes, Joe, starts when someone is impacted by the crime deeply enough to report it, to ask for an investigation.
Right.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Like crimes happen all the time.
Joe, why hasn't anybody, have you jaywalked?
I don't know if I've done that, but I'm sure I've done something else.
Of course you have.
I have.
I probably jaywalked.
Well, in Florida it's kind of tough because everybody drives everywhere.
Well, I was in Manhattan recently, leaving Fox News.
I kid you not, there's a Pret-A-Manger across the street.
I love that place.
The sandwich place.
Instead of going to the corner, I crossed in the middle of the street.
I was a criminal!
But we don't investigate people because in our national priorities, we understand that not every incidence of law-breaking is significant enough to waste assets on it.
Joe, why did nobody investigate me for jaywalking to Pret-A-Manger?
You wanna know why?
Because nobody cared!
It impacted absolutely zero people.
Man.
Why don't we investigate every single taxpayer in the United States who probably fudges their charitable donations a little bit at a tax return?
Why?
Why don't we do it, Joe?
Because it's not worth it!
So a guy puts down he donated $150 to charity and it was actually $120.
He broke the law!
You broke the law if you did that!
Why don't we investigate you and put you in jail?
Because we've decided as a country that we're going to triage our responsibilities in order to advance the civil society.
And a civil society does not put people in jail and investigate them for a $30 claim on a charitable donation that was never made.
It's not worth it.
You're paying an IRS agent, Joe, probably $80 an hour to investigate a $30 claim.
We don't do it.
This is why we don't investigate people!
We investigate crimes!
Now, if there was an organization in Florida, New York, whatever it may be, Joe, that was teaching people how to systematically cheat on their taxes by claiming three, four hundred dollar credits that don't exist over and over, was costing the government a fortune, That would be different.
The government's probably taking a bath and even though you probably wouldn't lock up all of the people involved because let's say Joe a million people did a hundred dollars in tax fraud by claiming a deduction on charitable donations they never made.
You're not going to arrest a million people but in a triage of our responsibilities because we don't investigate people we investigate crimes Someone in the government may say, hey, this is getting significant now.
We got this group down there teaching people how to break the law on taxes.
This has to be shut down.
And what would they do, Joe?
They'd probably investigate the ringleaders.
Without locking up a million people.
We don't investigate people.
And we definitely do not investigate the President of the United States to find a crime that nobody has complained about.
Where's the complainant?
Joe, where's the complainant?
Anywhere?
Where are they?
We say, oh, well, what about the Trump University?
Okay, what about it?
There were civil suits.
There was a court proceeding.
What about it?
We didn't need a special counsel for that.
I don't even know what happened with that.
Apparently, no one else cared either.
There was some kind of civil lawsuit, whatever, and people moved on because the legal system, Joe, newsflash, We are in the midst right now of a very serious, slow-drip, soft coup.
Now, you may say, oh, the grand jury, the impounding of the grand jury for a criminal case, nobody can show a crime.
Well, that's not a huge deal.
Well, let me go down the list, and this is all in William Jacobson's piece at Legal Insurrection, which, again, I'll put in the show notes, available at Boggino.com and Conservative Review.
What about the intimidation of electors, presidential electors, that occurred after the election?
You know we have an electoral college.
You need 270 electors to win, chosen by the states.
What about the intimidation that happened, the emails people got, the harassment they got to not vote for Trump after they were supposed to vote for Trump after the election?
Yeah, I remember that.
What about the impeachment threats and the Maxine Waters types now threatening impeachment again for a high crime and misdemeanor nobody can tell you what it is.
So that's not that that's not evidence of a slow drip soft coup?
Yeah.
What about the Russia conspiracy theories again where nobody can prove either collusion or a crime?
Now there's some very strong evidence Russia tried to involve themselves in our election.
There is absolutely zero evidence that the Donald Trump team knew anything about it or assisted the effort.
Zero.
Dano.
Yes.
Didn't the Gestapo used to investigate people?
All tyrannies do, Joe.
All tyrannies do.
You're seeing it in Venezuela right now, where Maduro put Leopoldo Lopez in jail because he's his political opponent.
And what did they do?
They found the crime.
What was the crime?
Felonious skullduggery in the 42nd degree.
Thanks, Dan.
They'll make it up.
Piracy on the open seas.
Felonious mopery.
Disorderly conduct.
They'll just make it up!
Reckless endangerment of Winnie the Pooh!
When the government investigates people, they'll find the crime!
It doesn't matter!
They get to say what the crime is!
That's the joke!
They're the pitcher and the umpire at the same time!
Special counsel appointment.
A special counsel appointment for what?
The way the special counsel appointment was supposed to work is you were supposed to have a crime and a special counsel to investigate the crime.
We had Watergate.
You had Whitewater.
Trump is the first special counsel appointment to investigate a presidential administration for a crime when nobody can tell you what it is.
What about the leaks?
We had, again, to hit on a current news topic, we had an unbelievable leak yesterday.
Transcripts published by left-leaning newspapers, actual transcripts of conversations President Trump had with the Mexican president and the Australian Malcolm Turnbull from Australia.
Folks, this is unbelievable.
Transcripts of diplomatic conversations conducted between chief executives of the United States, Mexico, and Australia.
And to his credit, I'm not a big fan of David Frum, and I hate giving these backhanded compliments in an attempt to be, it's not virtue signaling at all.
But I do want to give David Frum credit, who is a respected, at least by some people, Analyst on foreign policy and world affairs issue.
Frum wrote a piece in the Atlantic saying this is a disgrace.
This is an absolute disgrace.
This is not a right-leaning guy, Joe, by any measure.
But Frum said that the leaks of these transcripts are a total disgrace.
This sets an entirely new precedent for depravity.
Think about what happened now.
The President of the United States cannot have a conversation with a foreign leader without the threat of somebody in the White House In the White House.
Leakers in the White House.
Again, tell me again how there's no soft coup going on without a threat from someone in the White House leaking the actual conversation.
You know, and I get it, I get it, lefty tyrants, you liberals, you clowns, you jokers, you disgusting animals who support this.
You'll say, well, you know, listen, this is, we're holding Trump in check.
You're holding Trump in check?
Are you serious?
You know what you're doing?
You live in the United States of America.
You are preventing any foreign leader from having a conversation with the United States, honestly, without the fear of the conversation leaking to the press, who will happily publish it.
You are forbidding the President of the United States to conduct honest diplomacy anymore.
You disgusting people who support this.
And again, I applaud from for taking a stand.
Because Joe, as I've repeatedly mentioned on my show from our first show two years ago.
Nothing is going to change in this country till left-leaning figures in the media, the overwhelming majority of which are left-leaning, start to take a stand against bipartisan stupidity.
And it's not a problem on the right, Joe.
We have done legions of episodes decrying the ridiculous efforts of the Republican Party to do really dumb things.
So I don't want to hear it.
I don't want lectures from you goofy liberals listening to the show who go, well, maybe the Republicans should stand for something, too.
No, we do all the time.
And most of the time it's standing against you morons because you're tyrants.
But we stand frequently against really stupid decisions made by the Republican Party.
Just look at my Twitter feed.
Oh, yeah.
Nothing's going to change in this country until the David Frums of the world can be absolutely honest with the American people and say, listen, we don't like Trump.
We are going to absolutely vote against Trump.
We're going to organize against him.
We're going to donate money.
I don't like his policies, Joe.
OK, fair enough.
I believe in the First Amendment.
I believe in a constitutional republic.
And I will absolutely defend your right to do so.
But, I applaud Frum for saying all of that's true, but I absolutely do not support a leak of a private conversation between two chief executives of countries that is going to jeopardize the foreign policy diplomatic efforts of the United States going forward.
This is outrageous.
Nothing's going to change until more people like Frum step forward.
Because it offers no ideological home, Joe, to the radical leftists who seek approval from people.
Because they're like barking seals.
That's what they are.
They're like, leftists are so dumb that they expect you to parrot their stupid talking points.
And the minute they're called out by their own leftist friends, you know, the marshmallow sipping latte Obamacare kid with the pajama boy guy, they lose their minds because they're like, what, David Frum didn't agree?
And they start crying.
OK, more evidence of the soft coup.
And again, this is all in Jacobson's piece.
Chuck Schumer, the head of the Senate Democrats, saying that he was going to hold out on Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's appointment because Trump was under investigation when it was conclusively proven that Schumer knew Trump wasn't under investigation.
So he lied to stop the effective functioning of the United States government.
He just lied.
He lied about it.
Jim Comey's refusal to say when he was the FBI director that Trump wasn't under investigation, although he told Trump he wasn't under investigation.
Again, please tell me how there's not some soft coup going on, how we're all crazy, we're all nutjob conspiracy theorists, we talk radio, we're all Looney Tunes.
Please tell me again how all this stuff is evidence of what?
A well-oiled governmental machine?
What are you, an imbecile?
After Jim Comey refuses to tell Trump that he's not under investigation, and after Jim Comey leaks information, the appointment of Bob Mueller, Jim Comey's friend, is made to investigate Donald Trump for a crime nobody could tell you was committed.
Yeah, all fair, Joe.
Totally legit.
Or as my daughter would say, totes legit, man.
Totes legit, fellas.
No worry about it.
Nothing to see here, folks.
Move along.
One more.
Unprecedented obstruction of Trump appointees.
I did a show on it, I'm not going to re-hammer this, a couple weeks ago, where I gave you the actual numbers.
Trump can't get anybody appointed.
The Democrats are obstructing his appointments within the government.
He can't staff the government.
At the current pace the Senate Democrats are at now of allowing appointments to proceed, it's going to take 11 years for Trump to get the government functioning with its full load of appointees.
11 years.
In case you missed it, a presidency is four years, maybe eight.
Folks, I mean, again, please tell me how a soft coup is not going on right now.
All right, I got a lot more to get through, so let me move on.
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Okay, as I predicted, Joe, Oh wait, one more quick news story.
So Susan Rice is keeping her security clearance, the former Obama National Security Advisor, which is just insane.
Again, and who signed the letter?
H.R.
McMaster.
So again, tell me again how this guy's not a problem.
I mean, I tweeted out yesterday, I'm like, this is just insane.
This is absolutely insane.
We have Trump appointees having their security clearances pulled.
Because they're using the security clearance process as a political bludgeon while Trump is the president by the way.
Yet we're allowing Susan Rice who unmasked people and still can't give you a reason why they spied on the Trump operation after they lost the presidential election but before Trump took office and when Trump was a nominee.
They still can't provide a reason but Susan Rice still has her security clearance.
This is incredible.
I mean it really is what's going on right now.
I mean, Trump really needs to take control, Joe.
I mean, he really, seriously needs to take control.
I'm not knocking the guy here unnecessarily, but, you know, we have to do a fair analysis on the show.
It's completely inappropriate to be a cheerleader for anyone here.
He is the President of the United States.
McMaster has got to go.
He has got a bunch of Obama holdovers, he has a bunch of- why hasn't he released the information on the unmasking yet?
He's got a bunch of establishmentarian swamp creatures, and as someone in an article I just saw about McMaster said, I think it was a Daily Caller piece, He's like, our worst fears are coming true.
This swamp mentality is setting in again and nothing's going to change.
Can I just give you one quick backstory on this?
Yeah, man, go ahead.
I probably shouldn't, but I'm not going to say who, to be fair, because the person didn't give me permission, but when...
The Trump team took over.
I had some interest in joining and there was some interest expressed.
It was a two-way street.
I'm not trying to be Mr. Know-It-All or anything like that.
I'm just telling you the truth.
They had reached out.
I had reached back.
I was interested in the beginning.
It was a fascinating conversation, and one of the conversations I had with someone we all know, if you follow conservative politics, who's now in the Trump administration, was that this guy, talking about Trump, Joe, he said to me on the phone, I remember I was in my daughter's bathroom talking, because they were watching TV, and I had to get away, because I yell really loud when I talk sometimes, and he said to me, you have to understand, this is before he took office, and the topic of an appointment came up, he said, you have to understand, this guy is absolutely committed to being a change agent.
He said, and the guy on the phone I trust very much, he's a good guy.
I believed him.
And I believe Trump believed that too.
But I know some people who listen to this, who have some influence there.
He has to grab hold of that idea again and commit to it.
Because Joe, right now we're going down the same old path we did under Bush, the same old path we did under Carter and Clinton and everywhere.
The swamp creatures get control of the government.
You can't get rid of it.
If you're really sincere about change, people are policy.
Some of these people have to go.
It's time for a house cleaning.
Do it now.
It's before the midterms.
It's early.
You've already cleaned out a lot of your chief of staff operation, your press office.
It's time to clean out at the National Security Council and start bringing in people who know what's going on.
All right, moving on.
So, the topic of a universal basic income, which is probably one of our second or third biggest shows ever, people emailed me for weeks about that, has come up again because, actually Rush Limbaugh came up on Limbaugh yesterday, and it's come up again because of Zuckerberg.
Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook, you know, boss over there.
Yeah, the dude at Facebook, there's some rumbles that he's running for president.
Zuckerberg is a big proponent of this universal basic income, so it keeps leaking into the general public conversation.
And it's a topic we discussed a lot, we got tremendous feedback on, and I'm not going to beat it to death again because we've done shows on it, it's back in the library if you want to listen to it, but A guy called in a young guy into Limbaugh yesterday, and he brought up an interesting point.
He said, you know, this is a big thing with kids my age, millennial types, and a little bit older.
They think this could be an effective mechanism because we're worried about robotics taking all of our jobs.
And he said something to the effect, and I have this in quotes, but I'm not sure it's a direct quote.
So let's just say it's not a quote, to be fair.
But he said something like, well, all of our needs will be met.
And what are we going to do?
And I thought, oh, here we go again.
So just quickly on this.
Folks, please, do you understand this conversation has happened literally throughout civilized human history?
Not figuratively, literally.
This has always come up.
Rush Limbaugh brought up the horse and buggy.
Oh, what are we going to do?
The horse and buggy, you have this thing called the car.
People aren't going to know what to do with their horses.
No, you know what they did with their horses?
They use them for recreation.
People still buy horses, folks.
In case you hadn't heard, I have a friend who owns a horse in Maryland.
I mean, they own horses.
They just don't use them for transportation.
They use them for recreation.
That, you know, that was, Joe, keep in mind, 100, 200 years ago, that was probably an insane thought.
A horse for recreation?
That's how I get to grandma's house.
What are you crazy?
The point I'm trying to make is when someone says, and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm going back to what I, what I, what I'm generally quoting the guy saying, all our needs will be met by robots.
How do you know what you need?
Nobody knew horses were recreational.
I'm sure some people rode horses 200, 300, 500, 1,000, 2,000 years ago and had fun doing it, but that wasn't the purpose of a horse generally, Joe.
It was for combat, for transportation.
For, you know, beasts of burden.
Nobody thought, well, I'm going to ride around in a prairie and engage in equestrian activities and do the... What do they call that when the horses jump over the thingies?
I'm not rich enough to do that stuff.
Steeplechase.
Steeplechase!
See, Armacost is a wealthy Thurston Howell type, so he knows about this.
He golfs Armacoste, which I find hysterical.
Like, you're such a middle-class Elvis-looking dude.
The fact that he golfs and his son Joe, too, is so not corresponding to how Joe really is in real life.
He asked me once, do you golf?
I'm like, do I golf?
I'm like, are you kidding me, bro?
Do I golf?
Are you out of your mind?
Do I golf?
Like, I golf.
Can you imagine me golfing?
I'd be like, who's the first Democrat I can chase down with this golf club?
Just kidding.
I'm a Republican.
We don't engage in violence.
Only liberals do.
Or maybe to defend myself against a violent liberal Antifa mob coming after me.
But no, I don't go.
But I figure Armacost would know about steeplechase.
I have no clue about that at all.
Oh, yes.
He is such a sophisticant.
But the point I'm trying to make is, do you understand, Joe, how nobody thought of stuff like that?
Yeah.
Steeplechase probably originated because people were using horses for combat who needed to teach them to jump over ramparts and barriers.
Nobody knew what they needed with horses.
I mean, did anybody in the 1890s know they needed a portable device we now call an iPhone that sends emails and can play music?
I mean, it could do anything.
It could give you a map of the area.
It could do just about anything you need.
Who knew we needed that?
So whenever a liberal says to you, oh, universal basic income is necessary because all of our needs will be met and we won't know what to do with our time, you have no idea what needs are.
You have none.
This has been said about the cotton gin.
This has been said about horse and buggy.
This has been said about ATMs.
You know what happened when ATMs happened?
Bank employment overall in the economy increased.
Because why?
The people now who weren't working behind the counter were doing loan servicing.
They were doing customer service.
They were moved to other jobs where they didn't have to sit there and say, how much do you need Joe? 100.
20, 40, 60, 80, 100.
And then the next guy, what do you need?
100?
20, 40.
That's not what they did.
They were engaging in customer service.
There were other jobs that were people to high-tech jobs to maintain these ATMs.
To maintain the copper lines they use.
I don't know if you know this, but Talk Radio uses ISDN lines.
Joe knows this.
You know who the other people who use ISDN lines are?
ATMs!
There you go!
Now, it's an old, antiquated technology, but shockingly enough, there are still people out there being paid to maintain it.
And you know what?
When ISDN goes the way of the dinosaur, which it is already, I do my show for Levin over internet, not ISDN anymore, although me and Joe used to.
Remember that?
My basement?
Oh, yeah.
There are now people doing what, Joe?
Building Comrex boxes, which are codecs, which work over the internet.
I mean, Joe and I know a guy at WCBM whose entire career, you know, Eric, is based on going out and fixing engineering problems with codecs and ISDNs.
You don't know what you need.
You don't know what you need.
And the fascinating thing about robotics and automation is that people are moved out of really horrible manual labor jobs that will now be handled by robots.
And I don't mean horrible qualitatively.
I mean it respectfully.
I really mean this.
Don't take this personally.
If you're a miner right now, that is a hard job.
My gosh, that's a hard job.
You're up every day at the crack of dawn, smashing rock.
You have no idea the respect I have.
Because I did manual labor growing up.
Really hard manual labor.
And I know what it's like.
That is hard.
I have a world of respect for the fact that you are mining energy products that keep the world moving.
But the nice part in the future about robotics is it's going to enable you to do different things.
You're not going to have to be, your kids are not going to have to be the ones cracking the rocks anymore.
This is not a bad thing.
You don't know what you need.
You have no idea.
And finally, they're like, well, people are going to be bored.
They're not going to know what to do.
Folks, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard in the history of humankind, including kank yesterday.
Did I mention the gangster curve?
I did, right?
On the gangster curve, he suggests zero to a hundred being a hundred is maximum liberal dopiness.
That is up there on the gangster curve.
That's a hundred for stupidity.
People aren't going to know what to do.
Joe, I've got news for you.
I've got a job right now.
It is nothing compared to the minors.
Nothing.
I mean, peanuts.
I get up at about 7am.
I do a good solid three hours of show prep.
I do.
I want to bring you the latest news and the best commentary out there.
I take my show very seriously and so does Joe.
We communicate in the morning about it.
It's not a joke to me.
It's my life.
I give you about 45, sometimes 50 minutes of content.
That content, it is my entire life.
But folks, my job is not hard.
It's challenging.
It's not hard.
My day, let's see, it's probably over by, so I get up at seven.
Candidly, my day's probably over by noon.
I send out the show notes, maybe 1230 or so.
My job is not hard, but it's challenging.
And you seem to enjoy it based on the downloads we've been getting.
And clean.
It's a clean job.
It's a clean job.
Now, the rest of the day, will you think I don't know what to do?
I know what to do.
The only question is not will human beings know what to do with automation, it's how will they figure out how to get paid for it?
Folks, people know what to do.
People want to golf.
You know what I do the rest of the day?
I read commentary.
I go on Facebook.
I write commentary on Facebook.
I tweet.
You may say, well that's not doing anything.
Really?
Are you sure?
Because my brand is content production.
That's what I do.
I get paid to produce content.
I don't sit there after 12.30 in my room with s'mores and marshmallows, you know, watching TV, watching Phineas and Ferb and Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
That's not what I do.
The rest of the day I produce content.
And I have figured out a way to monetize that content to produce content people want.
That's what I do.
And I've got news for you.
In the future, people are going to find things to do.
They may want to pursue art.
I don't know.
There are going to be people out there who may have an interest in robotics who start a YouTube channel, Joe.
Here's how you fix robots.
And they get 100 million subscribers.
And people pay to watch them fix robots.
You will figure out something to do.
The only question is, how will you figure out a way to monetize it?
That's the only question.
And Joe, newsflash, how to monetize something is not a question of automation or progress or universal basic income.
Right.
How to monetize it is a question that has haunted us throughout human history.
How do we monetize fishing?
We became fishermen and caught extra fish and sold them.
How do we monetize computers?
I got news for you, folks.
Not a lot of people figured that out until Steve Jobs came along, until Bill Gates came along and said, well, we can put a computer in everybody's home.
By the way, they were laughed at for that.
Computer in everybody's home?
What are you guys, idiots?
Nobody wants that.
Yeah, good move.
Good call, folks.
Good call.
Yeah, nobody wants a computer in everybody's hope.
Joe, people laughed at them.
Because they said, people don't, to go back to that word, people don't need that.
You have no idea what people need.
If you knew what people needed, Joe, you'd already produce it and be a millionaire.
You have no idea.
The guy who invented the pet rock.
People probably laughed at him.
People don't need that.
You know what he did?
He invented a marketing product.
The pet rock.
Hey, buy a pet rock.
People bought it because they thought they needed it.
You have no idea what people need.
The universal basic income is a dumb idea.
I'm sorry.
It's just a bad idea.
Go back to the other shows.
There are some conservatives who support it.
I don't.
I think there are some positive components to it, but the negatives far outweigh the positives.
And the negative is this, and I want to just move on quickly to one more thing.
The negative is this, a universal basic income will eventually incentivize people to not work and not produce because they can get a base level of income to sustain a lifestyle by doing nothing at all.
Remember what I said?
Don't ask, what are people going to do?
People will always do something.
The only question is how to monetize it.
And when you give people money, monetize, you give people money, they will not figure out what to do.
They will do nothing because they're being paid to do nothing.
All right.
That's important, because this is coming up again with the Zuckerberg stuff.
Put that baby to bed.
The UBI, Universal Basic Income, is a really bad idea.
And I always get negative feedback from this liberal guy.
He's a nice guy.
He's not a jerk, by the way.
He always tweets me about it.
And he brings up these studies that are so isolated and basically irrelevant to the larger national picture.
It's just a bad idea.
You incentivize people to do nothing.
UBI.
Unbelievably bad idea.
Yeah, it's unbelievable.
Seriously, being that I do most of the talking, I think you have an unfair advantage on winning this.
I do.
Because you get to sit back and I say something and you get a couple minutes to formulate these like cool little t-shirt ideas, you know?
You figured it out.
And I don't get to do that, you know?
You got me.
Yeah, yeah, but it's good.
I love it.
I get tons of feedback.
I've gotten probably 500 emails about Joe where people really like him.
I got one who didn't like you.
I forget what his comment was.
It was something dumb, though.
I was like, sorry, dude.
Yeah, but 500 to 1 is a pretty good ratio.
Considering about my own show, I get about 10 negative emails for every 500.
I do, I'm not even kidding.
Some guy thought we spent too much time yesterday on the gangster.
I'm sorry, it was just such a dumb, you know, comment about recirculation of money that I felt like we had to thoroughly debunk this guy because the buffoonery was unbelievable.
Hey, just like we predicted last week and on yesterday's show I think as well, I said to you with the constant talk of tax cuts coming out of the Trump administration and the Republican Congress that there was going to be a re-litigation of the Reagan year tax cuts and what the effects of the Reagan year tax cuts were.
Now, I have beaten this thing to death on the show repeatedly, but I was right!
In today's Wall Street Journal, Phil Graham Who writes some really quality stuff over there, has an op-ed defending the Reagan year tax cuts, and I was sent by a listener, thank you by the way, I forget the listener's name right now, an article at Market Watch, both of which, I'll put the articles in the show notes, I'll give you the pro and the con, but an article about why the Reagan tax cuts were bad.
So, Wall Street Journal piece by Phil Graham, Reagan tax cuts were good, here's why.
Market Watch piece by, I think it's Nick Buffy is the name?
It is Nick Buffy, I'm just not sure if I'm saying it right.
Maybe it's Boofy or something like that, I have no idea.
But in Market Watch where he says, no, no, Reagan tax cuts were not good, and basically here's why.
I'll put both pieces in there, but the Phil Gramm piece, just to sum it up, it makes some really nice points.
Folks, you have to understand during the Reagan years how bracket creep was becoming a really significant problem.
Now, what is bracket creep?
It was happening in the Carter years and it happened in the early years of the Reagan years until Reagan cut taxes and basically defeated inflation because it was significant at that point.
It was whittling away the value of the dollar you had in your wallet.
Bracket creep is this.
Say you have an income tax, Joe, and the income tax, we have marginal rates.
So the rates apply to the last dollar earned.
So in a nutshell, you're going to pay taxes on, let's make the numbers simple, your first dollar you earn to 10,000.
So if you make, say, $100,000, right?
You're going to pay a rate on your first $0 to $10,000.
Say that rate is 10%.
And then you're going to pay $10,000 to $20,000, you're going to pay a different rate, 20%.
I'm making the numbers easy for the sake of analysis here.
Then on $20,000 to $30,000, you're going to pay 30%.
You do not pay one flat income tax rate.
I hope everybody understands that.
I understand.
We have marginal income tax rates where you pay on the dollar you earned in that category.
It doesn't matter what your gross total was.
You will pay on that no matter what.
Now there's an AMT which complicates it, but just for the sake of analysis here, You pay on the last dollar earned.
So, let's say if Joe makes $100,000, that rate is 90% from $90,000 to $100,000.
Joe does not pay that 90% rate on all of his $100,000 income.
Right.
He pays it on the $10,000 he earned between $90,000 and $100,000.
Does that make sense?
Yes, it does.
That's how income tax rates work.
There's a lot of confusion out there.
A lot of people seem to think, you know, we pay a flat rate.
I wish we did.
Yeah.
But we don't.
That's not how it works.
So what was happening with bracket creep in the pre-Reagan years, and in the early years of the Reagan presidency, was inflation was whittling away the value of the dollar.
So people, prices were going up, and so were salaries.
The salaries weren't going up at the rate of inflation, which was causing you to lose money.
Joe, if I double your salary from $10,000 to $20,000 but inflation triples, I got news for you.
You just lost a whole lot of money.
Because although you're making double the money, the prices are three times as high.
Does that make sense?
So what was happening under the inflationary Carter years and the early Reagan years, before the Volcker crushed inflation at the Federal Reserve, Salaries were going up because of inflation.
They're correlated, I shouldn't say because of.
But due to inflationary effects, salaries were creeping up as well.
But they weren't buying you anything.
You understand why, right?
It was buying you actually less stuff.
But the tax brackets were not indexed to go up as well.
So if Joe made $10,000 and then got a raise to $20,000, And then say prices went up three times as high.
Joe is now paying the higher income tax rates on his $20,000 salary, even though his money still buys less stuff.
Okay.
Does that make sense, Joe?
Yeah, yeah.
You were moving up the income tax bracket because of your raise, but your raise was due to inflation.
Your raise wasn't due to pure hardcore economic growth and productivity.
So bracket creep was destroying American purchasing power.
Again, Joe gets double the raise, but prices go up three times as high, and now Joe's paying double the taxes!
Right.
You get the double whammy?
This was a big problem.
So Graham's piece, which is a really good one, by the way, talks about how everybody said Reagan was crazy by cutting taxes, that it was going to lead to an even worse inflationary mess.
And none of this happened because real income tax receipts, which were predicted to collapse under Reagan, because they said, oh my gosh, this is going to be terrible because now we have bracket creep, Joe.
We have inflation and Reagan's cutting taxes too.
Now forget it.
Real revenue is going to collapse.
What happened?
Well, real revenue increased by 19% from the time Reagan got into office until the time he left.
And what happened was, income growth was not just due to inflationary pressures and salary increases due to increasing prices in the economy, Joe.
Salary growth in the Reagan years was due to actual economic growth, where companies were making more money, who then said to Joe Armacost, OK, now that we're making more money, Joe, we can give you more, too.
So Reagan crushed that.
He crushed inflation with help from Volcker.
This other piece, so it's a really good piece I suggest you read for an explanation of the Reagan tax cuts, but just to wrap it up, the Nick Buffy piece at Market Watch is fascinating because the guy attacks Reagan, but he really, I'm sorry, he just doesn't know what he's talking about.
He uses the Clinton example, which is fascinating.
He's like, look, you know, Reagan's growth years were great, but so was Clinton, and Clinton raised taxes.
But what he doesn't tell you, what liberals always say, debunk this point immediately, is, well, Clinton raised the income tax rate.
Okay, well, two things.
He cut the capital gains tax rate as well, which led to investment in the economy.
And secondly, the levels of government spending under Bill Clinton were dramatically lower than they are today in real terms and as a percentage of the economy.
Now folks, government spending is taxation.
Why?
Because where does the government get money from?
Taxes!
Government spending is taxation.
So if you cut government spending, or you control it, then you have effectively cut taxes.
Not only on the current generation, but on the generation in the future you're borrowing from.
So please spare me the nonsense about how the Clinton administration was evidence of some liberal success story.
The minute you trade me the levels of Clinton-era spending, 19-20% of GDP, And about two trillion dollars and we're spending less than we're spending now.
You trade me that tomorrow, then we'll have a conversation about how the liberal years, quote, liberal years of Bill Clinton were such a success.
You just don't know what you're talking about.
So this Buffy piece is just ridiculous.
He basically tries to say, well, Reagan grew the economy, but so did Clinton, therefore tax, you know, tax cuts are a joke.
Come on.
Give me a break, dude.
Seriously.
I'll put the piece in there.
You can evaluate it yourself.
All right, thanks again for tuning in, folks.
I really appreciate it.
I will see you all on Monday.
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