Ep. 522 Why Washington Elitists are so Out of Touch
Is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell serious telling Trump to get familiar with his "line of work"? http://www.businessinsider.com/mitch-mcconnell-on-trump-frustration-with-congress-health-care-bill-2017-8 Devastating survey data highlights the enormous divide between Washington DC elites and the rest of us. https://www.voterstudygroup.org/reports/2016-elections/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond Why are Liberals so concerned about governed by Trump when being governed by liberals is far worse? http://ow.ly/FgOe50d6UAM https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberalisms-summer-of-17-1502320215
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They've been tweeting to me, Bongino's a nut, Bongino's a blanker blanker.
The Dan Bongino Show.
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On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
Alright, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Hey!
Ready to go, Dan.
I'm always adjusting myself in this chair.
I love this chair I have in my office, but the prior homeowner left it for me, and I always have a tough time getting in the exact spot of comfortability for this show.
All right, a ton of news to cover today.
Let me just dig right in.
I don't want to waste anybody's time here.
So this McConnell, Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader for the Republicans, of course, and President Trump feud is heating up.
And let me just tell you, I'm taking Trump's side on this.
Here's the genesis of this whole thing.
So McConnell's giving a speech in Kentucky where, you know, that's his state.
He's a senator from Kentucky, the Senate Majority Leader right now again.
So he's filling dual roles right there.
Absolutely.
leadership role and also his role as a Kentucky elected senator.
And he said in his speech, he basically took a shot at Trump and said, you know, he came in with excessively high expectations.
You know the story, Joe.
Yeah, I heard it.
And he said, you know, blaming Trump, he said, well, he's probably not familiar with this line of work.
I'm not going to harp on this a lot, but let me just say something, Mitch, if I may call you Mitch.
And I'm not really asking because I'm just going to call you Mitch.
Nobody really cares about your quote, line of work, okay?
Like, everybody in America's working hard right now to get by.
The economy's doing well, but it's not exactly like the Ronald Reagan days, okay?
Frankly, it's not even like the Clinton days in some respects.
I mean, it's okay.
We're getting by.
Thank God Trump was elected.
Thank God we've seen some green shoots in the economy.
But people aren't exactly swimming in cash right now.
I'll get to a lot of that in a second, too, on the economy.
But for Mitch McConnell to come out with some absurd statement like...
You're not exactly familiar with this line of work, Mr. President.
Nobody cares, Mitch!
There are people out there in West Virginia, people out there in Kentucky, I got news for you, who are in mines, who are, you know, steam fitters, who are carpenters, who are bricklayers, who are putting up sheetrock every day, who are landscapers, who are engineers, who are architects working on a new building, working 20 hours a day, who don't give a flying about your, quote, Line of work, Mitch.
I don't think I like your tone, Mr. Biden.
You don't like my tone, huh?
But Joe, who cares?
Like Mitch's line, what's your line of work exactly?
I'm sorry.
Like with all due respect, everybody's a child of God.
I don't mean to disrespect anyone personally, but if you're going to take that approach, like you're just not familiar with our line of work in politics, what exactly do you do?
I'm sorry, like seriously, what exactly do you do?
You sit in your office all day, people kiss your ass, all day they come in, you got lobbyists, everybody wants to pat you on the back, they want a photo.
Yeah, you get your foie gras lunches, they deliver your sushi to your office, you know, you have a staffer who picks up your dry cleaning.
What exactly do you do?
Do you know how elitist and pretentious it sounds to make a statement like that?
McConnell, Mr. Trump, you're not exactly familiar with our line of work.
I mean this guy is so out of touch.
You know I know he's not gonna listen so none of this matters and I've suggested this with other politicians before but...
McConnell needs to get out of that position, being the Senate Majority Leader.
He's just not getting it done.
I know he doesn't care.
These people are power hungry.
But it's just outrageous for him to say that.
Can you imagine, like, the cop working a double shift who's on his 15th of 16 hours of the day?
He's tired.
And then he gets a call for a missing kid.
And you know you're going to be one looking for the kid, filling out paperwork and consoling a distraught parent for probably five or six hours.
Do you think he really cares about your line of work?
Are you serious?
I mean, Mitch, really, if that does not speak to the cultural divide between Washington, D.C.
and the rest of the country, I don't know what does.
And there's an interesting report.
Should I bring it up now?
Let me just bring it up now.
Maybe if I can get to it in more detail later, I will.
But in the show notes today at Bongino.com and ConservativeReview.com, I put links up to the show notes for your new listeners, and if you want to get on my email list, I will email you these articles every day.
It's available at Bongino.com.
Just hit subscribe to my email list and we'll send them to you.
But there's a fascinating report by the Voter Study Group.
Voterstudygroup.org.
I'll send the link again in the show notes.
And the author of the report is a Leo Drutman.
I forgot I had the Facebook live camera running.
I'm like scratching my head right here.
I'm so used to doing this on just audio alone.
Oh, right.
So there's a really interesting report by this guy Leo Drutman and he points just to the articles why Trump won and it speaks to this divide between the you don't know our line of work Mitch McConnell crowd and the rest of America.
Here's a couple just quick takeaways.
Number one Joe not surprising to you or me but this may I'm not being sarcastic this may genuinely be surprising to some quote moderates and left-leaning Democrats and I know it'll be surprising to a lot of liberals You know what the premise of the Peace Show is, what killed the Democrats in 2016 electorally?
Go.
The social issues.
Now, again, to you and I, that's not surprising.
We covered the, remember the Kentucky court clerk case, where she wouldn't issue the, we were all over that, she wouldn't issue the marriage license.
And we said, guys, I don't know how to explain this to you in more common sense terms, liberals, but this is going to crush you in the election.
Of course they were, put her in jail, lock her up, throw away the key, you know?
Yeah that went off with her head I mean it was like French Revolution style and Joe remember the shows we did a year ago where we were saying hey this is a huge mistake now you've made the transition fully liberals from winning on an issue you know you won in the Supreme Court on on gay marriage you transitioned from winning an issue to making sure your enemies are punished That's a totally, totally different approach.
Bad winners.
Yes, Joe.
Bad winners is right.
Absolutely.
Yes.
You were all over this.
We talked about this story for days.
How regardless of your position on gay marriage, whatever it may be, jailing a woman for not wanting to take part in it, regardless of if she's a government servant or not, there were other ways to get this done.
It may have made you feel good as a lib.
Yeah, we put her in jail.
We got her.
No, you didn't get her.
You lost.
People left you in droves.
So one of the premises of the piece is that social issues killed the Dems in 2016 electorally, not economic issues.
Takeaway number two from the piece, and please read through it.
It's not very long, but it's very, very good.
Explains a lot.
Again, this is going to be a shocker to liberals, but to almost no one else listening, Joe.
National identity matters.
In other words, Joe, wait, get ready for it.
You ready?
People like being American and are generally proud.
Oh my, liberals are freaking out everywhere.
Now, I wrote a piece in Ronald Reagan Airport a day after the election of Donald Trump when I was coming back from DC.
We did conservative review coverage, me and Michelle Malkin.
And I wrote a piece in the airport on my iPhone where I pointed exactly this point out.
One, about how liberals went from winning on issues to making sure they punish their enemies.
And the Kentucky court clerk case who wouldn't sign the marriage certificates was a perfect example.
They couldn't win.
Someone had to go to jail, Joe.
You're a baker?
No, no, you don't want to bake a cake?
All right, we're going to go somewhere else.
No, no, no.
You have to be put out of business.
We are going to bankrupt your caboose.
Yep.
Right?
That's the way it had to be done.
I wrote about that.
And then another thing I wrote about was the Colin Kaepernick thing, how you can really thank Colin Kaepernick for helping Donald Trump get elected.
You may say, come on, Dan, that's too much.
No, it's not too much.
And this survey points it out.
This survey is a clear indicator of people who voted Trump that national identity and pride in America matters.
You get a guy on one of the biggest platforms in the world, Joe, the NFL, right?
Can we all agree?
I mean, is there a bigger event on the planet than the Super Bowl?
So the NFL is a huge entity, multi-billion dollar enterprise that really impacts American culture.
Then you have a guy on the sidelines, who was once a celebrated player, saying, you know, America sucks and I'm gonna kneel to disrespect the national anthem.
I wrote in a piece, you can thank Colin Kaepernick for this.
Because the cultural revolt here, and the cultural revolt, importantly, against Democrats who were seemingly backing this up.
Like, yeah, America does suck, look at us.
And not all Democrats, I don't want to be unfair to them.
But a good swath of liberals, Joe, defended Kaepernick.
And remember, the Republican position on Kaepernick, by the way, Kaepernick can't get a job right now, which I find hilarious.
Nobody wants him.
And why would you want him?
Why would you want to hire a guy, right?
Why would you want to hire a guy who's almost guaranteed to alienate your fan base?
But the Republican position, the conservative position, and the Democrat position on Kaepernick was a clear one.
It was, hey, he has the absolute right to say what he's going to say.
I'll defend that.
I respect his right.
I don't respect him.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
That was the difference.
And that's what liberals consistently misconstrued.
Oh, what are you saying?
It doesn't have the right to do it?
Nobody is saying that, knuckleheads.
We're just saying this is a great country.
This is a multi-millionaire benefiting by the liberty and freedom we have in the United States, benefiting by playing in the NFL.
People would die for that job.
And all of a sudden he's disrespecting the United States that gave him this opportunity.
Of course he has a right to do it, he's just an idiot for doing it.
And the fact that liberals defended that and then misconstrued the Republican argument, I think contributed greatly to the alienation of the Democrat Party.
And this research data proves it.
So again, takeaway number one.
Social issues, not necessarily economic ones, killed the Democrats.
Electorally, again.
Because liberals are less handled, they're obsessed with violence.
Second, national identity matters.
When your party, the Democrats, become hijacked by a far-left wing, a far-left wing that says America sucks and that's basically your platform, you didn't build that, we're imperialist, we're the cause of all the problems in the world, you know, Barack Obama goes around the world apologizing for America.
Why are you surprised, if national identity matters then, that your anti-American posture alienates voters in Pennsylvania, rural voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio?
Why are you surprised?
Again, I'm not giving Democrats strategic advice on how to win.
I'm just saying to the Republicans thinking about co-opting this Democrat strategy, which Joe, many are.
There are many now saying, oh, we got to get away from the social issues.
We have to focus on the economic stuff.
I love economics.
If you listen to the show, that's not a mystery.
Even some Democrats.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Joe, you know, I mean, even sometimes Joe's like, all right, enough with the economics.
I love economics.
It's my passion.
But I'm not naive to the fact that at least electorally speaking, although we should always do the right thing on economics, that this survey data is crystal clear.
That it's not the economic issues that jettisoned Trump into the White House.
It's not it.
They're asking actual Trump voters and they're telling you that's not it.
It was clearly social issues, pride in America, and the fact that the Democrats have completely detached themselves from that.
Now, This is the, I wasn't going to spend a ton of time on this, but it's such a good report and it so, so indicates this disconnect between the Washington DC, you're not familiar with our line of work, Mitch McConnell crowd and the rest of America, that the third takeaway sums this thing up beautifully from this report at the Voter Study Group, voterstudygroup.org.
Again, I'll put the link in the show notes.
The donor class, Joe.
This is one of the takeaways.
The donor class, which I will also, they don't do this in the report, but I will take this leap of faith.
So to be fair, this is me adding to the report, but I'm willing to do that and put my credibility on the line for this.
The donor class, which is also the media class, which is also the academic class, I put them all in the same group.
The elitists, the academics, and the media, and the Hollywood crowd.
They just say the donor class.
So again, I'm adding the rest.
I don't want to misconstrue the guy's work, but I think you're right.
I know you agree with me, because we've talked about this, and having run for office, I don't say that lightly, and I don't say it without at least a good body of material and experience to back that up.
So the donor media class, the report points out, there's a total disconnect between them And actual Trump voters.
In other words, when they survey the donor class, the donor class cares more about economic issues where they're very conservative.
And Joe, when I say the donor class, notice.
I did not say the Republican donor class.
Yeah.
I said the donor class.
The Goldman Sachs Democrats, the New York Manhattan elitists, the donor class that breaches the, not the ideological divide because they have the same ideology, but the partisan divide.
The donor class does not necessarily subscribe to Republican or Democrat labels.
It says the donor class are more conservative on economic issues but are liberal on social issues.
Now do you see what's going on?
Why the Mitch McConnell saying, oh excessive expectations for Trump are to blame and you're not familiar with our line of work.
You know what Mitch, maybe you should get familiar with our line of work, you know?
Maybe you should get your ass down in a mine in Kentucky and mine some coal for a little while amigo, right?
Get your butt down there, put a hard hat on and a ventilator and go mine for a little while.
Maybe you'll get more familiar with our A lot of work, you clown.
I mean, seriously, unbelievable.
But this explains why McConnell talks the way he does.
The donor class influences McConnell.
They pay him for FaceTime.
Now, he won't admit that's what they do, but that's what the donor class does.
The donor academic Hollywood class influences people greatly.
Everybody wants to be around them.
They want to hobnob with them.
A lot of wannabe politicians were not successful business people.
So they admire Hollywood people and they admire successful business people, so they kiss their butts and they cozy up next to them because they want to be part of that.
They're like, oh look, I'm cozying up next to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook or Elon Musk at Tesla.
Wow, look at me, he's lavishing all this attention on me.
So these are the people who get FaceTime, who influence these people.
I wrote about this in my first book, Life Inside the Bubble, how it's a self-reflective bubble.
How you're in this bubble, but the bubble's not clear, Joe.
The bubble, it's reflective.
They only see on the inside.
They don't see what's going on on the outside.
So this explains why the donor class and the media still doesn't understand, and the Mitch McConnell class, because he's in there too, Joe, with the media and with Hollywood.
McConnell's in that group.
This explains why they still don't understand why Trump got elected.
Because when you poll them and you survey them, the social issues and national identity, they don't care, Joseph.
They don't care.
All they care about is what is going to happen economically.
It's going to make me richer.
And the politicians, all they care about is what is going to happen economically.
This is important.
That's going to make my donors richer.
Because the donors are the ones getting the face time with the politicians telling them Joe quotes here, air quotes, dreaded air quotes, what matters.
And what matters to them is getting richer!
So of course it seems like, gosh, how did Trump win?
Now listen, I don't agree with Trump economically on a couple of issues, on trade and things like that, but now do you see why people in D.C.
who don't understand, and I get it, believe me, I totally understand, I've had an awakening on trade in some respects, that there are localized communities that have been severely traumatized by trade.
But Joe, the donor class in DC doesn't get that because trades benefited them so they don't care.
They're like, what are these people griping about?
I'm good.
I got, I just cashed my second billion dollar check.
It's all gravy.
Nice.
It's all good.
Or as one of my secret service buddies used to say when he had nothing else to say, it's gone.
Nice, nice, nice, nice.
It's all nice.
Nice.
Everything's good.
They don't care.
They don't understand how rural parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio, devastated by trade.
And I'm not suggesting free trade is a bad thing.
I'm just saying we have to, we can't look at the issue as a black or white.
Free trade, good.
People against trade, all idiots.
That's what the DC crowd says.
That's why they don't understand, Joe.
The donor class gets richer.
They donate more money to politicians.
They get more FaceTime.
They tell politicians what matter.
They don't care about what actually, Joe, what actually matters to real people who actually vote.
You gotta read this if you really want to understand outside of nonsensical opinion pieces and a bunch of other stuff a data-based I say that meanwhile I wrote an opinion piece on why Trump run but the only reason I'm bringing it up because I feel like this data confirms what I said I'm not trying to pat myself on the back but This is an actual data-driven piece surveying actual Trump voters, which proves the point that there's a complete disconnect between what's happening in Washington, D.C.
and what's happening in the real world.
Because Washington, D.C.
is not the real world.
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All right.
I don't usually do this, but I'm going to do it today because it's important.
I read a lot of the reviews and emails on my show because I appreciate the listener feedback.
A lot of it's good, but I'd say we get about 15% critical, about 5% is really like, we hate you and I hope you die tomorrow.
Yeah, yeah, it's liberals.
But that also applies on iTunes where you can review my podcast and I appreciate all the listeners who go and do that.
If you haven't, I'd appreciate a review.
And be honest, I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to sell you anything, but I read them.
And I got a really interesting criticism yesterday, critical, I should say, review on iTunes that I wanted to address because I think it's farcical.
You know, some of them that are critical are, one guy said, well, I'd like it to be longer.
Okay, fair enough.
But this guy laced into me on iTunes And I thought, and the reason I don't like to do this is because if you start addressing every critical email, the show becomes a rehash of every other day's show, you know, and it gets annoying.
But this is important because the criticism he leveled at me, or she, I don't even know what it was, but let's just say he, the criticism leveled at me speaks to the problem with liberals.
How liberals live in a world of words, not reality.
Intentions, not results.
And I wanted to address it today because it's important.
Here was the gist of his criticism.
If you listen to yesterday's show, we debunked the statistic commonly used by advocates for government-sponsored legislation about paid family leave.
In other words, the government shouldn't force a policy that businesses have to pay for family leave.
And we debunked the statistic using a Cato report Then the statistic is that only 12% of workers have access to paid family leave.
And in the Cato piece, they make the point that that's strange because when you do actual surveys, Joe, asking again actual workers just like the voter study group asked actual Trump voters why they voted Trump.
When you ask actual employees if they have access to paid family leave, You would expect to get a number like 12% because that's the number the Bureau of Labor Statistics put out there.
Yeah.
But that's not what you get.
The number you get back is over 60% of employees say they have some access to paid family leave, which conflicts directly with the Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
So what's the rub?
So the rub is this, that employees in these companies have worked out arrangements Where they either accumulate sick time, or they take vacation time, or they take some kind of administrative leave, or whatever.
And they, Joe, the employees, obviously consider that paid family leave.
Joe, how do we know that?
Because that's how they answered the survey!
Joe, let me ask you a simple question.
Joe works at WCBM, for those of you new to the show.
Radio station up in Baltimore.
They need to start paying us for advertising.
Yes, they do.
But Joe does a good job there.
If I send you a survey and go, Joe, does WCBM pay you to take leave in the event of a family emergency?
And you respond, yes.
I'll be honest with you, Joe.
Does anybody really care what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says?
No, I care about what Joe says!
Like, if you think that that's paid family leave, it's paid family leave.
So the guy makes the point, he goes, Bongino doesn't know what he's talking about, he's an ignorant buffoon or whatever, and he pretends he knows what he's talking about.
I mean, the government statistical survey clearly said paid family leave, and if it's not called paid family leave, then it's not paid family leave.
Oh my god.
Oh, Joe, I read it.
I read a lot of negative stuff.
I've never addressed a negative iTunes review on the show before this one.
Because it's so dumb, it speaks to liberals.
Now, I had to take a few notes on this to make sure I was crystal clear on what I mean.
And I have like, here, you want to see this?
The Facebook Live people, you can see this.
I have actual arrows, like directing me to new areas to show you just how this speaks to how liberals think.
So his criticism of my criticism of the statistic is based on this.
It's not what a policy does, it's what we call it.
Right, Joe?
I see, yes.
Is that not correct?
Yeah, that's what he's saying, yeah.
Because when you ask people, working people who work for a living, who have arrangements with their employers, and you ask them if they get paid family leave, 60 plus percent say yes.
But the BLS data says 12 percent.
And his criticism of me is that, well, unless you actually call it paid family leave, it doesn't count.
So let me get this straight.
The fact that the employers are comfortable with the fact that they can take leave in a family emergency doesn't matter, Joe.
It matters more what you call it.
So I got an idea.
Let's pass a piece of legislation that makes sure that the government uses its monopoly on force to force businesses to add an extra category of leave called, Joe, this is important, it has to be called this, it has to be called paid family leave, even though that money has to come from somewhere.
So what's gonna happen, Joe?
Again, because liberals never ever engage in second-order thinking.
They have the soundbite, you understand, and nothing more.
So it's critical to them that a business be forced by government.
At the end of the monopolistic forced barrel of the government gun to give Joe Armacost something called paid family leave.
Now Joe, what do you think is going to happen to your salary or your actual leave when WCBM is forced to give you paid family leave even though you think you already have it?
What do you think is going to happen?
I'm going to be paying for that, babe.
You're damn right you're going to be paying for it.
It's not free.
So what's going to happen?
They're going to say, all right, Joe, we were giving you, you know, seven sick days a year.
Now we're going to give you three.
And by the way, your vacation, which was say three weeks was generous.
We're going to cut that down to two.
Now you're like, wait, I didn't ask for that.
I was fine with the relationship before.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Liberal, critical, you know, jerkwad on Dan Bongino's iTunes says that if you don't call it paid family leave, it's absolutely no good, despite the fact that Joe Armacost was perfectly content with his paid family leave before.
Joe, remember, none of that matters.
Right.
All that matters is that it's called that.
And again, this is the liberal's entire bumper sticker ideology.
It's not what a policy does, it's what we actually call it that matters.
Now why does what they call it matter?
Why does it matter so much to this clown on iTunes?
It matters, Joe, because labels invoke emotion.
I've said over and over on my show and filling in for Mark Levin and Hannity and elsewhere, liberalism is a bumper sticker.
And bumper stickers invoke emotion.
Why?
Because it's the Wheaties Box Theory.
If it doesn't fit on a Wheaties Box, you're probably saying too much, right?
If you're explaining the Laffer Curve to someone in a methadone clinic, as a friend of mine once said, you're probably not getting your message across.
Messages have to be short and punchy.
That's why the media relies on sound bites.
Short and punchy is a bumper sticker.
The liberals have mastered this.
The reason the liberals have mastered this, by the way, which is another premise sent to me by a very bright person in the conservative movement, is that people who are liberals are in the entertainment, art arena, I don't want to stereotype, but the overwhelming majority of artists are liberal.
Not all, but entertainers, actors, singers, artists.
Right, Joe?
Can we all agree?
Yeah, I would say so.
They're very creative people by nature.
The software industry, a lot of them are liberals.
They are very good at invoking emotion in their product.
Think about who conservatives are.
They're entrepreneurs, they're successful people, they're in resource mining, they're in commodities.
These are not fields that require a lot of marketing.
If you're selling oil in whatever it may be, You know, the Sunoco down the block.
There's really not a lot of marketing that goes into it.
A lot of it are fixed costs and the ability to manage business in a very methodical, arithmetic way.
So we don't focus as much on emotion as conservatives because we're worried about what works.
We're not worried about the selling of it.
Liberals are not worried about that.
Do you understand, Joe?
Liberals are the opposite.
Liberals are worried about selling it, but not what works.
You get it?
Conservatives.
We care about what works.
We're not so much worried about selling it.
Liberals.
Sell it.
Who cares if it works?
This guy's iTunes critique totally sums that up.
He doesn't give a crap that when you institute a policy mandating something is actually called paid family leave, whether people are taking leave for their families or not, he doesn't care that that's going to take money out of employees' pockets.
And actually disrupt arrangements that apparently 60% of people are content with.
He doesn't care about that.
He cares about what it costs.
I mean, excuse me.
He doesn't care about what it costs.
He cares about what it says and the label on it because the label makes him feel good about himself.
Right.
We made those evil corporations pay for family leave.
That, and that label makes them feel good.
Paid family leave.
Everybody's like, yeah, get them!
Paid family.
Everybody should be paid for family leave.
Everyone.
Well, who's paying?
Well, you're paying.
Oh, I don't want to pay.
What do you mean?
I got to pay.
It's coming out of my salary.
I thought the money fairy produced that.
Now, Along the lines of liberals with their sell it first, don't worry about the results, this doesn't just apply to things like paid family leave and this is why I want to talk about this today.
No.
Think about all of the liberal bumper sticker mottos they have that are totally sell it But forget about the results.
Tax the rich!
Tax the rich!
Get the rich!
Look at what's going on in New York right now, related to current events.
This story's gone nuclear.
So we talked about it a little bit the other day, but Mayor de Blasio, the communist mayor of New York, they're in a massive battle because liberal states are collapsing everywhere.
You got Baltimore.
Dan Henninger writes about this in the Wall Street Journal today.
He does a fantastic job of saying how liberals are whining right now about About being governed by Trump?
But Henninger makes the point that, really, liberals are whining about being governed by liberals!
Think about what's happening.
New York right now, in New York City, right?
Have you heard the expression, the summer of hell?
Well, if you listen to this show, you know what that means.
New York City commuters, the subway system in New York is collapsing.
People are melting in the subway.
It's like 7,000 degrees.
They've had construction delays.
It's a total mess.
It's literally called the summer of hell.
Google it.
Unlike Kenk, On the Kankster Curve from, again, another from last week.
Unlike Kank, you can actually Google this and you will get a hit.
Unlike his famous recirculation of money theory that he just made up, the Young Turks clown.
Google summer of hell.
Then you have Hartford, Connecticut, Henninger points out, governed by liberals.
It's going into bankruptcy.
You have Baltimore, where businesses are actually suing the city government over the riots that happened in Baltimore, or what the liberals would call civil disturbance.
We'll choose to call it riots, last summer.
He points out Chicago, 400 plus homicides.
The summer of hell in New York.
Like, you're worried about being governed by Trump?
Maybe you should be worried about being governed by liberals.
That's where the problem is.
We're not doing this to you.
There are no Republicans in any kind of majority in New York City.
Are you serious?
Are you people clowns?
Again, sell it first, ignore the results later.
So again, going back to tax the rich.
The reason I bought up the de Blasio thing.
So the New York City subway system is collapsing.
So de Blasio's proposing, unsurprising to any of us, Joe, a millionaire's tax.
Oh yeah.
That sounds great, right?
Joe, sell it.
Just like paid family leave.
Just say paid family leave.
Don't talk about who's going to pay for the family leave, which is you, by the way.
Don't mention any of that.
Also don't mention that 60% of people already feel like they have paid family leave.
Just say, everybody should be paid to take leave for their families.
Yeah!
Liberal thinking stops now.
All liberals disconnect from the podcast now because this is the thinking part of the show.
The same thing happens with the subway.
The subway's collapsing.
He doesn't mention the fact that Democrats have ruled New York almost in perpetuity, even throughout the Giuliani era, where the Democrats still had overwhelming majorities.
He doesn't mention any of that, that liberal governance has dominated city politics forever while the subway collapsed.
So what does he want to do?
He wants to institute a millionaire's tax.
Again, sell it first, results later.
Millionaire's tax.
Yes!
Joe, get them!
Off with their heads!
Evil, evil, evil.
Evil rich people, capitalists, they're the worst.
Of course we gotta go get them.
And here's a quote from de Blasio.
This guy is such a joker, it's pathetic.
He is so dopey.
He says, to billionaires tax for quote millionaires, which by the way affects people who make $500,000, not necessarily millionaires.
He says, it's $7 a day.
People who pay for expensive meals and parking aren't gonna miss $7 a day.
Bill, newsflash.
This policy doesn't work and it's not about if rich people are going to miss $7 a day or not.
It has nothing to do with it.
What matters is what that $7 a day would have done in the economy for every millionaire that would have paid it if it wasn't in the hands of government bureaucrats who wasted it destroying the New York City subway system.
It doesn't matter what the rich miss or not.
But Joe, When you're focused on selling, selling something and marketing it, and you disregard the results, you leave it right there.
You go, oh, and people see it.
People, you know, a lot of liberals agree with it.
They go, oh yeah, $7 a day.
Yeah, we can take $7 a day from them.
More.
Now, what were the results of that?
Now, Joe, I know you're familiar with this, being in Maryland still, and I, again, brought it up in a prior show.
I had a millionaire's tax in Maryland.
Liberal Governor Martin O'Malley, who ran for president at the time, when he was the governor, said, you know what, we're going to tax those evil Maryland millionaires, and we're expecting to raise $200 million.
What happened?
Cue the theme to Exodus, please.
That's right.
You're darn right.
Cue the theme to Exodus.
People left and they lost a hundred million dollars.
Now, liberals, don't let those results get in the way of your stupid bumper sticker.
Tax the rich.
Get a millionaire off with their heads.
Don't let that get in the way of the actual results.
Do you understand, liberals, how dumb you are?
You lost money.
Now, to the guy who tried to hit me on the iTunes criticism, I know none of this matters to you, the actual data, because you're a looney tune.
You're a total knucklehead.
The fact that you instituted a policy in Maryland, that you're now trying to replicate New York, that raises money.
By taxing people, but that actually loses hundreds of millions.
I know that's not going to change your mind because all you care about is the sell.
That's all you care about.
The results, the damage you do to people's lives, the economic damage you do is all irrelevant.
Now, another thing on this.
Let's see, I took a notice and I didn't want to lose it.
Who do you think, Joe, is leading the country right now in out-migration?
In other words, your exodus.
What part of the...
I'm giving away the answer.
Of course you know the answer to this already because I'm talking about de Blasio.
But let me just give you the answer instead of jerking around.
New York City is currently leading the country in an out-migration of people making $200,000 a year.
Again, liberals, don't let this get in the way of de Blasio's new millionaire tax to fund the subway system liberals broke.
Don't let any of that get in the way.
By the way, their labor costs are up 26% because government can't manage the MTA.
But again, just keep going.
People are leaving your city like Snake Plissken in Escape from New York in droves.
That's all they want to do is leave your city.
People who actually make money.
You are the number one spot for out-migration and none of this bothers them at all, Joe.
None of this is going to... You have to be brain-dead to be a liberal.
You know, I saw that study last week on Drudge.
It said people who sleep less than six hours a night, right?
Yeah.
That they have evidence of brain damage.
Are liberals sleeping?
Do you guys need an Ambien?
I mean, is any of this bothering you at all?
That nothing you say is true.
Every area you govern, practically everyone where you have monopolistic control, has massive problems and all you're worried about is conservatives and Trump and doubling down your stupid liberal policies.
Oh my gosh!
I got a couple more of these, but um... Hey, have you signed up for CRTV yet?
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All right.
Along the lines again of how it's not, you know, it's not what it does, the policy does, it's what it's called and the label, you know, the label we use for it.
Here's another one.
There's a story in the Wall Street Journal today about how Milton Friedman, one of my heroes, who is, you know, God rest his soul, but how there's an argument brewing in D.C.
again over the estate tax.
Now, the estate tax, Joe, is It's labeled that way for a reason.
Because again, liberals, it's not what it actually does, the estate tax, it's what it's called that matters.
Now, liberals love the estate tax, what you and I, Joe, would call, and most other Republicans would call, a death tax.
Now, why do liberals love to quote estate tax?
Because if they have a Thurston Howell image of it, right?
Where all these rich people are dying with all this money.
And that money, of course, the state should own that money.
Keep in mind, Joe, liberals never mention the fact that the money was taxed when it was earned as income.
The money was taxed as capital gains.
The money was taxed when it flowed through a business at the corporate tax level.
This is like a quadruple tax.
So then you die and you got to pay a tax upon your death as well.
This tax, again, if you're a liberal, you can stop now, because that all sounds great to you.
You're like, screw these rich people.
When they die, we should take their money.
They don't need to take it to the grave.
Well, they don't take it to the grave, you imbeciles.
They don't bury it with them.
What winds up happening with the estate tax, this is what it actually does, so liberals tune out now, is it hits a lot of people who are wealthy in terms of assets but not in terms of income.
So Joe, the tax can be up to 40% after exemption, so you die, you lose almost half your income, half your assets.
Now, here's what it actually does in real life.
People who farm tend to own a lot of their wealth, it tends to be collected in assets such as land.
If you have farmland, you don't necessarily have a bank account of a couple million dollars, but you may have assets worth a couple of million dollars, because, say five, ten million, because you own land that's appreciated over time.
You're not driving around in the ocean in a yacht, but you have assets and land.
You will lose that land because the tax bill when you die, and you may say, well, you're dead.
Yeah, but your kids aren't.
So your family may lose that farm because when you die, if you're the title owner on that farm, the tax bill for that farm is going to be about 40%.
Now, Joe, newsflash.
Yes?
The family doesn't have that cash to pay that tax bill because they own the land.
They don't have the cash.
Does that make sense?
It's like, I have a house that's worth, I don't know, $500,000?
$550,000 in a good market?
I have no idea.
The house, if I want to transfer it to my kids and I had to pay the taxes on the house, upon my death, my account at least, my quote, estate, because they want the Thurston Howell imagery, my kids don't have the cash!
They'd have to sell the house and liquidate the assets at a fire sale!
So folks, what winds up happening?
People who are farmers wind up having to fire sale their farms, which are then scooped up at bargain basement prices by who?
Big farm companies, the dreaded big ag industry, big agriculture, to use again the liberals labels matter, but not the real world, who come in and scoop up the local farmers land at a darn fire sale.
None of that matters.
The fact that upper middle class, but asset wealthy people who've worked hard their whole lives are being forced to liquidate their assets and sell them to big companies and evil big corporations.
None of that matters because you can call it Joe, the estate tax.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
And there's an interesting part of this piece in the journal, which I'll throw in the show notes too, where he says, we're in a real problem of productivity.
I discussed this on a prior show, how the only way the United States is going to get wealthier Is if we produce more stuff.
Joe, wealth, nobody disputes this, right?
Wealth is based on what we produce in services and what we produce in products.
We produce food, we produce drink, we produce, a doctor produces his time.
These products and services are what make us wealthy.
No one disputes that.
Productivity, or producing more stuff per person, or producing the same stuff per person at a lesser cost, productivity's traditionally grown in the United States post-World War II at a rate of 2.1%.
That was a pretty healthy rate of productivity.
Nobody, nobody gets wealthier if productivity doesn't grow.
Let me be crystal clear.
That is an economic truism.
If productivity doesn't grow, nobody gets wealthier.
At least on a real level.
You may nominally get wealthier, but not what your money actually buys.
Productivity struggled under the Obama years, mightily.
Matter of fact, the second quarter we had 1.2% productivity growth.
Why am I bringing any of this up?
Because if liberals really cared about the middle class and middle class wage growth, they would understand the economic truism that until we start producing more stuff, nobody is going to be paid more to produce that stuff.
Now, how do we produce more stuff?
By investment.
Why has investment been struggling?
And productivity struggling the same way, right?
Yeah.
It's been struggling because of things like the estate tax that taxes farmers upon their debts and force them to liquidate productive assets to other companies so their families can't keep the assets.
This is one of the reasons.
It's not the only reason.
There are a number of reasons out there.
You have Obamacare, regulatory costs that have gone up, taxes that have gone up, that have sucked money out of the economy.
But folks, people like de Blasio sucking $7 out of the economy a day for every single rich person in Manhattan.
When you suck money out of the economy, it's not invested in new product lines and new assembly lines and new ways to produce more stuff.
And if we don't produce more stuff, we are never ever going to be rich or richer than we are now.
It's just incredible how liberals, that's why this, that iTunes thing, I thought, yes, this guy just summed up the entire stupidity of liberalism in one stupid quote.
Hey, um, one more story here.
I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get to, but I'll have to roll into tomorrow's show.
You know Berkeley, Joe Berserkley, the far left university in California?
So Berkeley, you know, this is as far left as they get.
I just found this story to be a bit ironic, another thing I read in the journal today.
The chancellor of Berkeley, you know how they celebrate heckler's vetoes and liberals going crazy?
Remember they almost burned the campus down when Milo Yiannopoulos showed up?
I mean, literally almost burned the campus down.
There were fires and everything.
The Berkeley Chancellor, who celebrates these liberals and is a liberal... I don't know his politics, I shouldn't say that, but he's probably a liberal.
I'll venture... I think we're pretty safe in saying that.
They just had a $9,000 escape hatch door.
Installed in the back of his office to escape his own liberal students' protest.
I'm not making this up.
And get a load of this.
A $700,000 security fence installed around his property to keep away those liberals.
He loves them, by the way.
He celebrates when they protest.
Just don't protest in my place or I'll use the escape hatch and then I'll escape to my house which has a $700,000 security fence to keep you away from me.
Again, Speaking to the hypocrisy of liberals in Berkeley governing other liberals on the campus, and liberals in New York, Hartford, Baltimore, and everywhere else governing themselves, and then liberals talking about where they cause hell for each other, and then liberals critiquing the podcast, saying, we don't know what we're talking about, despite the fact that he's critiquing people's own arrangements with their own employers.
It's just absolutely incredible.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Please subscribe to my email list at bongino.com, and I'll email you those show notes today.
Thanks a lot.
Don't miss tomorrow's show.
I got a lot of great stuff.
It's all lined up.
You can see it all here.
I got like five more stories we need to go.
See you tomorrow.
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