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Aug. 15, 2017 - The Dan Bongino Show
39:47
Ep. 525 The Truth About Charlottesville

In this episode: Why are liberals, and media figures, lying about terrorism statistics during such a sensitive time? https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/08/14/cbs-news-host-norah-odonnell-pushes-fake-right-wing-terrorism-stats/amp/   Yes, "hate speech" is free speech. The far-Left really needs a civics lesson.   Why isn't the NFL trying to save its brand? Allowing anti-Americanism is going to destroy the NFL. http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000829388/article/raiders-rb-marshawn-lynch-sits-during-national-anthem   Hollywood's business model is also collapsing. Maybe it has something to do with its hostility towards conservatism?  http://www.showbiz411.com/2017/08/14/report-movie-box-office-on-track-for-lowest-in-25-years-as-spielberg-lucas-blockbuster-implosion-omen-prevails SPONSOR LINKS: www.BrickhouseNutrition.com/Dan www.PrepareWithDan.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Time Text
Aiming to stop free speech so the speaker can no longer speak is exclusively a far-left phenomena.
I'm talking to moderates in the Democratic Party who are actually interested in what's going on, not blind lemmings walking off a cliff into an abyss of stupidity.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
The rich did it.
Yeah, the rich did it.
They lent money to people who bought homes and the people never paid the money back.
Oh, wow.
That sounds like a great business plan.
On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm doing well, nice and hot.
It's good to have you down here as always.
Thank you for everyone who has been tuning in.
Yesterday's show did well, so I appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
You know, talking yesterday about Charlottesville and everything going on and the attacks on Trump and what I think sadly is that just disingenuous media not looking to promote some form of collective national healing but just instigate more partisan strife because that's what, you know, liberal media, they become.
They become partisan actors for the left and it's really sad as we discussed that yesterday and I have a couple examples today again of media people Trying Joe not to lead to a better outcome and, you know, find out what happened down there and they're just trying to fan the flames.
I mean, that's all they want to do.
And the story I have today is really going to, if it doesn't really upset you, then you're not paying attention.
All right.
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All right.
So yesterday, Nora O'Donnell, who works for one of the morning shows on the network, and I've met her before I did the CBS early show.
I think it's CBS one time, and I'm pretty sure I met her on the set.
And she was nice, but she tweeted out something yesterday that we had discussed on the show a while ago under different circumstances, but just annoyed the snot out of me.
Because again, it's an effort by people in the media.
To deceive you, folks, and one of the things I like to do here is clear up the fog, and I'm going to do that for you today.
So here's what she tweeted, and I'm quoting here.
She tweeted, between the end of 01, 2001, and December of 2016, there were nearly three times as many fatal attacks by right-wing extremists than Islamic extremists in the United States.
Uh now we discussed this statistic and this you know this this I mean you want to talk about a torturing of the numbers a long time ago and Joe just to be clear I'm not Clearing up the absurdity of the statement to somehow do a, you know, this whataboutism.
Right?
That's not what we're doing here.
We're not, oh, well, if it's right-wing extremism, it's great.
And if it's not, violence is violence is violence.
No Christian, no, no Jew, no believer in a higher power listening to this show supports violence.
Forget it.
It's not a partisan issue.
It's a human being issue.
So let's just get that out of the way.
The reason I'm debunking this is because, again, it's an effort by the mainstream media to lie to you.
To lie to you to make you believe that the threat from Islamic radicals pales in comparison to the threat from a bunch of white people in the country who are going to do you harm somehow.
Now, any threat of violence, I cannot be clear on this, any threat of violence should be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted.
I don't care where it originates from.
But lying to you, to manipulate statistics, to make you believe that the threat from Islamic radicals is to be diminished, while the threat from, you know, white-powered Nazis are... Listen, that is a legitimate threat, but it's so overwhelming.
It's done because... Man, I always... It's such a delicate subject.
It's done to make you believe in this critical theory stuff.
That again, the critical theory, which we had discussed in prior episodes, and I strongly encourage you to look up and do your own homework on, it has been indoctrinated into media people, Hollywood people, and academia for years.
And the idea is that the white patriarchal power structure, white males are responsible for all our problems in society.
Folks, please do not underestimate what I'm telling you.
It has imbued every level of academia, Hollywood, the far left.
Critical theory is at the heart of just about every problem with far left radical liberalism today.
This belief that white males are the source of the problems in society and the gist of it is that they have no place in a responsible conversation.
They should be drowned out and they should not be allowed to speak.
Uh, you know, it's behind the, you know, the whole white privilege movement and all this nonsense.
You know, I don't have pride in whiteness or blackness or anything else.
I have pride in people who are good people.
I think we should be judging people by their character, which is just...
Kind of common sense, I thought.
Yeah.
But this is imbued the media, and that's why they put statistics like this out.
So let's debunk this.
Patrick Poole has a piece up at PJ Media, which is terrific, and he shows you how nonsensical this statement is that, quote, right-wing extremists, which I'm not even sure what that means.
Right-wing means anything that's just not liberal to them.
Right-wing extremists are responsible for more attacks than Islamists.
Okay, this is nonsense.
Notice number one.
This is the key, folks.
Notice what she does, Norah O'Donnell.
She says, between the end of 2001 and December of 2016.
Notice the time period she starts.
She's saying these right-wing extremists have committed more attacks than Islamists, right?
Joe, what happened in September of 2001, specifically on September 11th?
Was there some major terrorist attack in the United States?
Yes, there was, David.
Yes there was, Joe!
Yes!
It was huge.
It was a big deal for those of us who lived through it and I mean did you miss that, Nora?
So let me get this straight.
The thousands of Americans involved, the thousands of Americans who died horrifically in the September 11th attacks, they're not to be counted in these statistics for The body count of Islamic fundamentalist attacks on the United States, that's kind of an odd day.
I mean, don't you think the most significant terrorist attack on American soil, if you leave that out, then yes, right-wing extremists are far, far more dangerous, and I'm using the air quotes on right-wing extremists, are far more dangerous than Islamists.
You know, this just goes to speak to the disingenuous nature of the media.
Now, to be fair to Ms.
O'Donnell, she says she's quoting a GAO study.
Well, she should have looked into it because not only is the time period picked deliberately to manipulate you, so again, if your liberal friends bring this up, which they will because it's making its way around Twitter and the internet, You say, well, that's an awfully strange time period to start, the end of 2001.
Did something happen in September of 2001?
Oh, the largest Islamist-inspired terror attack in U.S.
soil in American history?
Kind of relevant to the argument, folks, don't you think?
Little bit?
Little bit?
Yeah, I'd say so.
Oh, my gosh.
Okay, here's another little maneuver she does here to do the, hey, look, squirrel, to distract you.
It quotes the number of incidents, not the number of fatalities.
Now I'll get to how they describe an incident in a minute, which is even worse, but it describes the number of terror incidents, not the number of fatalities.
So even if, Joe, even if you allow them, these people using this debunked nonsensical statistic, even if you allow them to eliminate September 11th, where thousands of people perished, Still, even in their time period, the end of 2001 through December of 2016, jihadis still killed more people than quote right-wing extremists.
Now I'm using the quotes because I don't know what... Nazis are savages.
Neo-Nazis are savages.
People who profess this white power nonsense are savages.
They have no allegiance with right-leaning politics at all.
True.
We don't claim them?
They could claim us.
We don't claim them.
No credible conservative republican or libertarian claims these people.
They're on their own.
But they call them right-wing extremists to associate them with republican politics because they just want to get you to hate republicans.
It's not true in any way shape or form.
But even playing with their ideology and eliminating September 11th Islamic-inspired jihadis still killed more people.
They killed 95 people in that period, and the quote, far-right extremists, to use their sick ideology, killed 67 people.
But notice, Joe, they're not using fatalities, they're using incidents.
Now!
Now, now, now, now, now.
To further confuse you, so just to go back a second, they eliminate 9-11, kind of significant in the debate about terror.
They don't count the number of fatalities, they count the number of, quote, incidents.
Now, here's some of the things they counted as incidents of right-wing terror.
All right.
This one, Joe, I mean this is like really sick.
This is sick stuff.
Yeah.
They counted neo-Nazis in prison That killed pedophiles who were child abusers.
Now, listen, the sickness there is too hard to define because it's so... I mean, the circle of sickness between being a neo-Nazi in prison for some felony, I assume, and being a pedophile is beyond the scope of this show, how deep the sickness is.
But to define a neo-Nazi in prison or a skinhead, killing a pedophile in prison As a right-wing terror quote incident show.
That's crap.
Is bizarre.
It contributes nothing to a discussion about the understanding of terrorism in the United States today.
Am I crazy?
No, that's what I meant.
It's crap.
It contributes absolutely nothing.
While it may contribute to a discussion on prison violence, on neo-nazi ideology, and what possesses these people to do what they do, it contributes zero to a conversation about terrorist strategy and how to stop terrorism in the United States.
And including that is just I mean, it's such a clear effort by the left to distract you from what the conversation can and should be about.
And again, I'm not suggesting at all that we should not be having, especially after this weekend, a very long and serious conversation about what's going on.
with uh with this neo-nazi movement but to try to inflate numbers and then deflate numbers on the islamic radical side to make a political point not a strategic one is really embarrassing and nor o'donnell should have been embarrassed putting this out there but she's not i mean they're leftists and they just don't care that was a baloney statistic that's all it is And we've actually discussed some of this before on a prior show, and forgive me, I can't remember what show, but the statistic creeps up every time the left wants to, you know, profess the dangers of this growing right-wing terror movement, and it's all an effort to diminish conservative political ideology and Republicans.
Let me wrap this up, this Patrick Poole piece by PJ Media.
And again, I will be at the show notes up at bongino.com and conservativereview.com.
And if you'd like me to email you the show notes, just go to bongino.com and join my email list and I will email them to you every day.
But it's a really good piece.
It's short.
It's sweet.
It gets right to the point.
Poole did, you know, aggregated the data the correct way, by actual terror attacks.
And there are right-wing terror attacks.
I hate that term.
There are.
Nobody's suggesting in the piece, neither is Poole, that they don't happen.
He's just trying to, if we're going to talk about the scale, well let's get the scale correct.
So here's the number.
Over 25 years, when you aggregate the data correctly, 94% of U.S.
terrorism fatalities are caused by Islamic terrorists.
And again, folks, this isn't surprising to anyone who has common sense, okay?
We had the Orlando nightclub shooter, you know, one of the deadliest attacks on U.S.
soil.
We had 9-11.
These aren't things that people are going to forget.
And I'll wrap it up with this point, Joe.
I think the problem with this for the left is, again, they're telling people things that can't possibly be true because people have lived through them and they are not stupid.
You cannot tell the average middle-class voter, even if they are not hyper-partisan or hyper-political, But they pay basic attention to the voting cycle, they pay attention to what's going on.
You can't tell them that Islamic radicalism is a lesser problem than, quote, right-wing terror because they've had experience on a mass scale through the news cycle, through 9-11, the Orlando shooting incident.
They know what's going on.
You can only lie to them for so long.
And really, Norah O'Donnell should be ashamed putting this out there and should issue a correction about this because it's adding nothing to the argument.
Okay.
Moving on.
Folks, this is a conversation that has to be had.
There's a lot of confusion on the left about the First Amendment.
I mean an embarrassing level of confusion.
And I'm not here to give you a civics class because most of you don't need it, because most of you are crystal clear on what the First Amendment means, but paying attention to Twitter and social media traffic over the last few days, it is beyond puzzling how many liberals genuinely have no idea about what the First Amendment says.
I've noticed.
Right?
Isn't it amazing?
Yeah.
Now the reason I'm bringing this up is I did a hit on Fox last night with Tucker and we opened up the show and I was talking about free speech and the clip got picked up by a couple of these media outlets that do, you know, aggregate clips and hits from cable news.
And I said, free speech does not mean, you know, free speech gives other people the right to throw a bottle at you as you're speaking.
That's not what free speech is.
And people started to call me out on Twitter, liberals, all liberals by the way, not conservatives, and they said, well, free speech has consequences insinuating that if you get punched in the face or a bottle thrown at you for speaking that this was all legit.
And other people said, well, free speech, you're equating free speech with hate speech.
Um, I'm not equating folks.
Free speech is free speech, even if it is hate speech.
I mean, do you not understand now?
Because I want, for some of you who may be genuinely a little confused about this, and I mean that in the most non-condescending way possible, because it is not a, it's not an easy topic to discuss.
It's a little more nuanced than even I'm making it out to be.
A lot of people even listening to this are a little bit confused and they say, well, you know, you have free speech, but you can't scream fire in a movie theater.
Well, It's not exactly true.
There's actual Supreme Court precedent on this, folks.
Hate speech is protected.
I can't say that in any clearer terms.
One, hate speech is a far-left term because, I don't know if you notice this, Joe, but the left always gets to define what hate speech is.
Now, listen, there are obvious examples, right?
I mean, if I say, are you Scottish?
No.
What are you?
What's Armacost, English?
German, French.
German-French.
If I were to say, you know, uh, Dan Bongino hates German and French blends, especially Joe Armacost.
Well, using the term hate is an obvious form of hate speech.
It's not complicated.
I'm just speaking.
I use the term hate.
If you get up at a rally and say, you know, we hate fill in the blank, uh, people who are black, Hispanic, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, Christians, whatever it may be, that would be hate speech just by definition.
All right.
But folks make absolutely no mistake.
That is free speech.
That is totally protected.
I'm telling you there are liberals out there who don't understand this.
They say to you, oh no no, that you're equating free speech with hate speech.
It's the same thing.
One is not an all-encompassing category of the other.
In other words, when you say free speech, Joe, we're also talking about compliments, we're talking about political speech, we're talking about scientific speech.
But hate speech is a subset, however you may define that rather loosely defined term, is a subset of free speech.
You saying otherwise, you're just wrong!
And you, you know, attacking me on Twitter, oh, hate speech isn't defended by the Constitution.
It doesn't make you correct, it just makes you ignorant of what the constitutional ramifications of the free speech of the first amendment are.
Now, to get back to some, you know, some hard tangibles, takeaways from this, so you understand what's protected and what isn't.
Yes, not every form of speech is going to be protected under a free speech banner, but there's a three-pronged test, and I've went over this before, but it's important we remember this.
The Brandenburg versus Ohio decision.
There's a three-pronged test for this.
And here's how it reads.
It's speech that is, quote, directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
That's the kind of speech that would not be protected under free speech.
So again, directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action.
This is important.
And is likely to incite or produce such action.
So there's a three-pronged test.
The three-pronged test, you have to know this.
It is intent, the intent of the speech.
Is it intended to cause violence?
Is it likely to cause violence?
And is that likelihood imminent?
So one of the examples I give in another case...
The Hess case was a guy walked up to a cop and said something like, we're going to take the effing streets now or we're going to take them later.
And there was a legal action pursued later on and the guy got off because the action that he said, we're either going to take the streets now, we're going to take them later, was not Joe imminent.
So it didn't meet one of the prongs of the three prong test.
So again, liberals, if you're going to talk intelligently about this, then at least know what you're talking about.
You know, your line about hate speech not being protected is just simply not accurate.
You're just making it up.
Hate speech, whatever you define it as, as long as it doesn't promote violence, intend to promote violence, isn't likely to promote violence, and the violence isn't imminent, you're just, you're clueless on the topic.
I'm sorry.
All right, I just wanted to put that out there because I think it's important we all understand.
If we're not talking about the same thing, then it's hard to have a debate.
You know, you're talking about Oreos and I'm talking about graham crackers.
It's hard to debate the benefits and the downsides of eating Oreos every day.
All right, one more thing on this Charlottesville topic, because I got a couple other things I want to get to.
You know, the police response.
I went on last night again on Fox to talk about not just the free speech ramifications of what happened at the rally, but also the police response.
And we're seeing this growing trend, Joe, and you're intimately familiar with this in Baltimore.
of this stand down, give them space to destroy.
Remember Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor of Baltimore, when they had the Baltimore riots?
And in the Baltimore riots, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor at the time, said, well, we're going to give them space to destroy.
Now, there's been kind of a controversy brewing over the police response in Charlottesville, where there were allegations that they were given a de facto stand down order.
Now, to his defense, and I want to give you both sides, the police chief is saying unequivocally, and has denied this multiple times, that he's saying there was no stand-down order.
In other words, police were free to do their jobs.
But, if we're going to look at this with open eyes, Joe, a couple of points I want to make on this.
Number one, The proof is in the pudding, okay?
The police, and I'm not blaming the cops on the ground.
I know the cops know exactly what to do.
I want to be crystal clear.
If there's blame to be pinned on anyone, it's politicians and police management.
This is absolutely no indictment whatsoever of the cops on the ground.
They clearly know what to do, and I'm sure they were deeply disturbed by having to sit by and watch as a lot of this went down.
So first point here is, Joe, nothing happened.
On the police side.
So, you know, you can say all you want as the police chief and the politician in charge of Charlottesville, which is a liberal city, you can say all you want that the police weren't in fact given a stand down order, but I think it's crystal clear that the police stood down at least for a decent period of time while this violence brewed.
That's really not open for interpretation.
Anybody watching the video or listening to multiple accounts of what happened that day will understand that there was, in fact, some stand down, whether it was a direct order, an indirect order, or just a standing order to not do anything until permission to arrest was given.
That kind of rolls into my second point.
If you, Joe, if you're the mayor of the city and one of the allegations out there now is that the mayor said no arrests will be made until explicit permission is given to the police officers to do so.
That is a de facto stand down order, folks.
How is that if the word stand down were never used but someone was told do not allow any arrests until I say so?
That's a stand down order.
That bothers me.
This is the word games they played with Benghazi.
But we didn't tell anybody to stand down.
Yeah, but you didn't tell anybody to do anything either.
That is a de facto stand down order, folks.
The cops knew exactly what to do.
This is really disturbing stuff.
You know, we've seen this over and over again in these liberal cities.
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, David Dinkins in Crown Heights.
We saw it in Ferguson.
This is a real problem.
And I'm going to, because I don't want to just suggest problems without solutions.
I want to suggest a solution to this.
And I want to be very clear, I have hard libertarian tendencies on this, for obvious reasons.
I am a free speech absolutist on this.
But ladies and gentlemen, again, as I said last night on the show, free speech does not mean free speech to throw a punch or launch a bottle at someone's face as they're speaking.
That is not free speech.
That is a criminal act.
You have forfeited your right to be a political activist at a rally where you engage in violence from someone else.
You're taking away someone else's right to free speech.
That's not free speech.
I'm sorry.
That there's no sane interpretation of free speech.
Does that count?
Now, What's the solution instead of just talking about the problems?
The solution here is the Rudy Giuliani approach.
Regardless of your feelings of the former New York City mayor, I remember being a police officer under the mayorship of Rudy Giuliani in New York.
And I called it the Rudy Giuliani theorem last night, but, you know, it was actually a lot of people within the police department, but the way they did crowd control in New York was the only way to do it.
You will, Joe, absolutely protect the right to protest.
100%.
Right.
But the minute someone from behind that line throws a bottle or punches someone in the face, they go to jail.
The next guy who throws a bottle, he goes to jail too.
The next guy that breaks a window, he goes to jail too.
You don't give anybody a pass.
They would have teams of people.
The teams of people would go in the crowd.
They would remove the criminals because you're not an activist anymore.
You're now a criminal.
And everyone else gets to go on peacefully and protest.
If the entire crowd starts engaging in criminal behavior, they're dispersed and arrests are made.
This is the best advice I can give to police officials, if you're even interested.
If you're not, do your own thing.
It's your city.
It's sad that, you know, I think the police chief in Charlottesville is going to wind up resigning over this, but it's making your city and you all look foolish.
This is a very simple policy of policing.
You use overwhelming force at the scene to ensure the right to protest.
Now you may say, you just said overwhelming force.
Gosh, that doesn't sound libertarian.
To ensure people's right to protest, Joe.
You have two sides that are at each other's throats.
Give one side of the street to one group, one side of the street to the other.
Police line, say whatever you want, right?
Your sign, scream and yell, do whatever you want to do.
But again, the minute someone launches a bottle or breaks a window, those teams go into the crowd, pull that person out, you get arrested.
That's it.
Because now you've impacted somebody else's right to speak.
And I'm sorry, even if that speech is hateful, and the left is defining it as hate speech, and they're saying all kinds of nasty things, they have the right to say it.
Free speech protects the right of people to say dumb stuff.
If you don't believe that, you just don't believe in free speech.
There's no easy way for me to explain this to you.
Free speech does not protect your version of free speech, and it's not free.
Because what if your version and my version don't agree?
You get to shut me down.
Remember the heckler's veto, folks.
This has always been the goal of the left.
The goal of the left has always been, and Antifa's using this strategy, sadly, they're using it efficiently.
And I say sadly because this is just embarrassing what's happening in the country now.
These Antifa, which stands for anti-fascist, but really means anti-first amendment, these are the people showing up at the Trump rallies, Joe, beating people up all the time.
Antifa is doing this because they want to engage the heckler's veto.
The heckler's veto is go to a rally, cause a bunch of violence, beat people up, hit them with broomsticks, throw bottles at them, throw urine on them, which happened to Katie Couric and her crew, by the way.
Do that, cause a bunch of violence, create a media stir later about violence at the rally, even though, say, the rally was a pro-Trump rally and the Antifa people caused the violence, then say, hey, we need to shut this stuff down in the future, these Trump rallies, because look, there's violence at the rally.
Even though the people calling for it to be shut down We're the ones who caused the violence at the rally.
It's called the heckler's veto.
This is not a new stunt.
It's an old stunt.
This is what they want.
Because liberals are at their heart.
A lot of liberals are totalitarians.
They believe in a soft and in some cases a hard tyranny.
The heckler's veto is one of the tricks they pull.
All right.
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All right, last story of the day, and this is kind of a personal story.
The Colin Kaepernick thing last year in the NFL, and for those of you who missed it, Colin Kaepernick was a quarterback for the 49ers.
Most of you probably already know the story, but he decided it would be a good idea to kneel during the National Anthem before the game to disrespect their flag, disrespect their country.
And, you know, the left keeps disingenuously framing this as a free speech thing.
I get tweets about this all the time saying, why are you going after Kaepernick for kneeling during the National Anthem?
He's free to do it.
I didn't say he wasn't!
Joe did we ever say that?
Never.
We never said that.
Never.
Never.
You have absolutely Colin Kaepernick is free to kneel for the national anthem and NFL teams are now free not to sign him which is not happening.
He is not being signed.
He has no job and now there are a whole bunch of activists out there whining that Kaepernick should be should be hired.
Why would he be hired?
Why would you want this guy on your team?
Why?
He has alienated the 70 plus percent, whatever, of Americans who are ferociously loyal to our military and our flag regardless of the political ideology and don't want to see someone on the sidelines disrespecting it.
Now, the NFL is a brand.
You want to protect that brand, you should say stuff like that is not above board, and if it happens, you're going to be fined and suspended.
It's got free speech.
He's free to do whatever he wants.
And the NFL is free to protect its brand, too.
Now, it's a little painful for me because I really, really, really love football.
And I entirely tuned out the NFL last year.
Folks, it... I'm not gonna smoke you up here.
It sucked.
And my wife can vouch for me on this one.
I'm not faking the funk on it at all.
I legitimately tuned out the NFL entirely last year.
I saw maybe a combined five minutes of games, and you may say, well, how'd you even see that?
Because while flicking through channels, one time I accidentally was looking for 60 minutes, and I clicked on CBS, and there was still a game on.
That happened a couple times.
I saw about five minutes.
I missed the Super Bowl, which, in the post-Super Bowl show, Joe, remember I was devastated?
I was!
It was a great Super Bowl.
Everybody was talking about it, and I saw none of it.
But, you know what?
Folks, principles matter to me, and I'm not, you know, I'm not being silly about this.
They matter.
And I know they matter to a lot of you too, and I was not going to patronize a product that was going to crap all over my country.
I'm sorry.
You don't want to take a stand and protect your brand, then I don't want to take a stand for you.
So, that all ends.
Kaepernick, it looks like he's going to be out of a job.
And you know, if an NFL team wants to hire him, Joe, that's fine.
That's their thing.
They were thinking about hiring him here in Baltimore.
Baltimore, I know.
I saw that.
The reaction was atrocious.
Oh yeah, were you getting callers at the radio station about that?
Hell yeah, I'll never watch again.
I'm going to stop following the Ravens as much as I love them.
And you know, I was one of those guys.
I'm not going to waste my time on that.
No, I wouldn't either.
Nope.
The Ravens, you know, even though the Baltimore Ravens are in Maryland, the blue state, trust me, that crowd has some very hard pro-American, pro-military values.
You're damn right.
They're not going to sit idle on the sidelines while some joker kneels and disrespects our national anthem.
So, you know, I finally said, all right, well, great.
I can tune into the NFL this year.
I do.
I really enjoy football.
And what happens?
I like the Raiders.
I like the Ravens.
I like the Jets.
But I've been a Raiders fan for a lot of my adult life.
Yeah.
My teenage life, too.
And they sign Marshawn Lynch, who is a running back, who decides he's going to sit on the sidelines and eat a banana.
I am not kidding.
You can see just Google Marshawn Lynch sitting on sidelines eating a banana during the national anthem.
I'm devastated.
I'm really legitimately devastated by this.
I was finally getting into it the Raiders are going to be good this year.
Their quarterback is back from an injury.
They had a great team last year.
They would have went a lot further if the QB didn't get hurt, if Carr didn't go down.
Folks, this is going to devastate their brand again.
And if anyone, we have a really healthy listening audience thanks to you.
I'm not patting myself on the back.
It's not a humblebrag.
But I'm imploring you, if anyone is an NFL executive, knows someone who's an NFL executive, or deals with these NFL executives, please, I'm begging you, this is deeply impacting your brand.
I know you know this because I know you've seen the data and they even acknowledged recently, I saw an ESPN.com article where they started to acknowledge how the Kaepernick protest was really damaging their brand, but I think it's even worse than you know.
The people I know that I talk to in my neighborhood, we live in a really middle class part of Florida, working class area, they just, they're done with it.
They don't want to see it, they don't want to be insulted.
Right.
I'm asking you to please do the right thing.
You know, you don't want to stand for the national anthem?
Stay in the locker room.
You don't need to disrespect it.
You don't!
You know what I'm saying, Joe?
You want to do your protest?
Fine.
Stay in the locker room.
No one needs to see you crapping all over the flag and our memories and people who fought for that.
Nobody needs to see that.
And I could not have been more disappointed in Jack Del Rio, the coach, saying, oh, it's not a big deal, he's been doing this for years.
That doesn't make it right, folks.
Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is not just to harp on the NFL.
But I believe in capitalism and free markets.
You're destroying your brand, folks.
You're killing it in the NFL.
You are absolutely killing it.
You're going to lose a customer like me and Joe.
We're your target audience.
We're consumers.
We're in that 25 to 54 bracket, roughly.
Yeah, you are, right?
You're not older than 54, are you?
Yeah, I am.
Are you?
I always, I screw this up all the time.
Well, we're close.
I'm definitely at a 25 to 54, although I still 154, right?
But we're spenders.
I mean, I don't mean that, but we spend money.
We are your target audience.
You're going to lose us for life.
Because once I'm done for two or three years with the NFL, it's over.
It's kind of like I stopped watching baseball a long time ago just because it was too long.
I can't get back into it now because I don't know any of the players anymore.
You're going to lose us forever.
Now, it's already happening.
At the NFL, your cautionary tale should be this.
Story on drudge today.
So on this, I'll tie it up.
Hollywood's being devastated, Joe.
They're being crushed.
There's a story on drudge today.
I'll put in the show notes.
Yeah, it's from like showbiz411, but I'll put the link in the show notes.
You can read it yourself.
Hollywood ticket sales have been trending down for many years now, but ticket sales this year are catastrophically bad.
They're collapsing.
It's the lowest they've seen in 25 years.
Now, folks, why do you think this is happening?
Now, they'll blame it on all kinds of things.
You know, movies are just bad.
Too many tentpole productions where they try to do these big blowout movies like Fast and Furious and they make 55 sequels.
Folks, I'm not, you know, I'm not so sure about that.
I've stopped, I'm not going to the movies completely, but I will not see movies with actors and actresses in it who crap all over the United States.
And I know for a fact, I'm not the only one.
Jennifer Lawrence, remember when she came out against Christians in Kentucky?
I wanted to see that movie, Passengers.
Now I wait for it to come out on HBO, which is part of my community package.
I get it for free.
I will not pay.
I will not red box it.
I will not, you know, Buy it on demand?
Nothing!
I won't see anything with that Captain America actor who's a big anti-Trump guy.
Folks, you think I'm the only one?
So again, I'm imploring anyone in the Hollywood industry, if you're serious about your business model, I would just ask you this.
Just shut the hell up!
Just shut up!
Produce movies!
I'm not telling you you can't have political opinions.
Do what you want!
But the bottom line is, when I go to my doctor, I think I'm gonna need knee surgery, when I go back to my doctor around here, I don't go in there and ask him for his political opinions.
The value added you provide to society as a Hollywood actor is to entertain.
I don't mean that as an insult.
I mean, sometimes I have, but I really don't mean it now.
It's a skill.
I can't act.
I can't.
I'd be terrible at it.
They asked me to act once at a Secret Service thing for students.
It was the worst thing ever.
I was like, I can't do this.
I'm sorry.
It's a skill.
I can't sing.
Gosh, you don't want to hear me sing.
You know, my daughter's really, really good.
But I can't sing.
It's a skill.
The value added you provide to society is to provide entertainment.
People love to be entertained.
You put smiles on people's faces, and I applaud you for doing that.
And I will see movies with actors who either keep their mouth shut or, you know, generally just say things that are pro-America.
I'll go see movies for pro-American actors that aren't even good movies.
I'll see patriotic American movies.
I'll buy a lot of stuff, like I bought that movie Risen, you know, just because I want to support the cause.
But I'm just asking you, if you have a sense of your business model and your future economically, to just either shut up or keep your political views in political conversations private.
It's not a First Amendment thing.
You're absolutely free to do it.
But I'm absolutely free to not spend my money once you alienate me with your political views.
I have zero problem whatsoever with you being a leftist.
Zero.
And Joe, I don't think you do either.
I don't think anyone in the audience does.
You want to be a hardcore liberal?
That's fine.
I respect your political opinions.
I'll go see your movies.
That's fine.
But what I'm not going to do is spend a dime on you in the NFL or anywhere else if you're going to tell me or my country that the country's crap and we're crap too because we're conservatives.
I'm not going to do it.
And I don't know why you think that's a sane, rational business model.
You'll be out of a job in 10 years.
This industry, as it slowly but surely folds in on itself, you'll be out of a job and you'll be saying, what happened?
I'm telling you today.
August.
2017, what's happening to your business model?
Wake up.
It's not worth burning your entire careers over.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Please go to bongino.com, subscribe to my email list.
I'll get you those show notes today.
And thanks again for really being the most unbelievable audience ever.
Someone sent me a really nice email yesterday and included something about Producer Joe, who does tremendous work and came all the way down here to Florida to be with me in the studio.
And we all really appreciate it.
It meant a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you much.
All right, folks.
Yeah, man.
I'll talk to you all tomorrow.
And woman.
I'll see you all tomorrow.
Take care.
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