In this episode: Liberal efforts to tear the country apart, piece by piece, are intensifying. Their new enemy is Confederate statues but they'll move on to another to show their political power. A far-Left website completely obliterates the Russian "hacking" narrative? http://www.salon.com/2017/08/15/what-if-the-dnc-russian-hack-was-really-a-leak-after-all-a-new-report-raises-questions-media-and-democrats-would-rather-ignore/ Why aren't you getting a raise despite the economic recovery? This report provides some answers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wage-paradox-explained-1502838674 SPONSOR LINKS: www.BrickhouseNutrition.com/Dan www.PrepareWithDan.com
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I have an obligation to come on the air with data and material and research.
I can't just say, trade stinks!
Thanks for tuning in to Dan Bongino Show.
Let's jump right in because we have no time for nonsense.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
When I was a young man, I don't remember it being sexy to want to allow a nanny state to control my life.
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 man, I'm glad to be here, you better believe it.
Yeah, Joe went on a long trip home last night, but he's a trooper, so thanks for getting it done today.
I really appreciate it, Joe.
You're a good man.
You put a lot of work into this show, so I appreciate it.
Hey, folks, this is...
We're in a rough time right now, you know, this is the time for messing around and, you know, kind of joking around about politics is over.
I mean, the glory days of the Reagan years and frankly, some of the Clinton years, where the economy was moving along to the IT boom, you know, the peace, love and happiness stuff appears to be over.
And I don't mean to sound apocalyptic or, you know, do catastrophic politics or hyperbolic or scare anyone, but this is getting really ridiculous.
You know, I put a piece up on my Facebook, for those of you watching on Facebook Live beforehand.
I put a piece up of ISIS terrorists ripping down statues in, was it Mosul?
And then left-wing Looney Tunes tearing down statues in Durham, North Carolina.
Lovely.
Yeah, Joe, this is just, we're in an era of utter insanity, you know.
I was following an email thread yesterday amongst a bunch of folks I respect, and they said, listen, it feels like 68 all over again, 1968.
Now, I wasn't alive.
I know Joe was.
I was born in 1974.
But, you know, reading about the era and some past work on the topic for another subject completely, you know, you have to remember the Republicans came out of that actually doing pretty well because people like law and order.
Now, a couple of things I want to discuss today.
The press conference yesterday with Trump.
What are liberals doing right now?
You know, all the conversation about statues and Charlottesville and everything that's going on, I think the larger umbrella conversation that's missing right now is the why.
And one of the things I pride myself on the show is the why.
Why are they doing what they're doing?
Why?
Liberals don't care about statues.
And there was a guest on Tucker last night.
His name was John, I think it was Davidson.
He writes for The Federalist.
He was fantastic.
And he summed this up nicely.
And I'm not meaning to take away from his.
He was absolutely correct.
But this is a topic you and I, Joe, and as I've discussed before, and I've discussed as well on Mark Levin filling in nationally.
Why do liberals do this?
Folks, this is not about Confederate statues, okay?
Please get that out of your head that this is about a few statues anyway.
If it wasn't about statues, it would be about something else.
This is about the far-left concerted effort to distract you from the greatness of America, to make you to believe that the country you live in, which has an obvious amount of prosperity and wealth, is an absolute failure and needs an upheaval and a change in its economic and political system.
This is what this has always been about.
You may say, oh my gosh, that was kind of a, you know, that's really jumping out to something larger than it really is right now.
No, it's not!
Folks, this love affair the left has with identity politics, with America is racist, with America's past is a stain on its history now and its future going forward, is an effort to distract you from the wonders of the country you live in now.
No reasonable person, let me, I'll ask you this question to prove my point.
Joe, if you were a space, if you were a Martian from space and you visited Earth and you had a degree of intellect and could engage in logic and reason and we didn't know you were here, right?
So you're up in some invisible hovercraft above the atmosphere and you're watching in detail everything that's going on and you're getting a snapshot of every country on Earth.
Where do you want to live?
After scrutinizing, I want to live in the United States of America.
You're darn right you want to live in the United States.
You know, remember that old Third Rock from the Sun episode where they choose what they want to be?
They were aliens, of course, and they choose that they want to be Italians because the guy had heard somewhere that Italians were the best-looking guys.
Well, if you were Third Rock from the Sun and you wanted to choose where to live, you'd want to live in America.
Now, That's a problem for far leftists, ideologues who want to destroy capitalism because they crave control.
And the guest on Tucker last night beautifully summed this up by saying this is about raw political power.
This has nothing to do with confederate monuments, folks.
This is about the left organizing to fabricate an enemy because enemies don't present themselves easily in the United States.
Does that make sense?
I'm sorry if I'm not getting the point.
When you live in a wealthy, relatively middle-class country compared to the rest of the world, Joe, and we're not living in the Jim Crow era anymore, which had a real enemy, Joe, in the slave-holding era, which had a real enemy.
These are authentic stains on humankind.
Unquestionably.
There's no reasonable person would dispute that.
No reasonable space alien would dispute that.
They would say, wait, let me get this straight.
People who have an elevated level of melanin in their skin, who have a darker skin color, have to go to drink from separate water fountains and sit in separate places in a restaurant?
Wow, that doesn't sound right!
Or, let me get this straight, people are forced into labor by others and they're beaten and whipped, there's nothing they can do about it?
Those were real enemies.
Enemies to morals, enemies to ethics, enemies to religion, enemies to spirituality, enemies to humankind.
Now, the United States, Lost hundreds of thousands of men, wiping that clean, thankfully getting rid of slavery, and now we are in a different era.
Real enemies don't present themselves easily.
Joe, whatever you happen to be in the United States, the chances of you prospering here relative to the rest of the world are great.
The left can't have that.
The left needs anger at the system.
They need rage against the machine, to use the name of the famous band.
They need rage against the machine to persist, because the rage doesn't present itself automatically.
What are you raging against?
Even the poorest Americans in the poorest places live better than people in third world countries.
That's not to say living in poverty is a good thing.
That's not to say we shouldn't focus collectively as a society with increasing prosperity to everyone.
That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying here is developing rage against that machine is really hard.
So you have to fabricate new enemies.
The enemy today, Joe, is Confederate statues.
The enemy yesterday was Kentucky court clerks.
The enemy the day before was Christian bakers.
The enemy the day before that was bathrooms that had a sign that said man or woman.
Do you understand how they will fabricate an enemy each and every day to recreate new rage against that machine because they need something?
They don't have it.
They don't have what they think they have.
The spirit of rebellion against the most prosperous, liberty-loving country on the face of the earth is not readily transparent to the independent observers.
So liberals have to create it.
They have to fabricate new enemies.
And in order to fabricate new enemies and exercise that raw political power for control over the system they want to destroy, they have to create new enemies.
Folks, this is never going to end.
The why matters here.
This is a distraction mechanism.
It's happened before.
It's happened repeatedly, Joe.
It is a distraction mechanism to distract you from the fact that you live in the greatest country on earth due to one thing.
Our respect for individual liberty and a limited government.
Someone just posted on my Facebook and they're right, Peyton said, you can't disagree with anyone anymore without being called a racist.
Of course not!
Because they have to fabricate an enemy because they don't have an actual argument, ladies and gentlemen.
You want to talk about economic liberty, the failures of Obamacare, how the country's scarred but how America has a history like anyone else and we should respect its history and learn about its history and learn about its failures?
You can't say that!
You're a racist!
They have to fabricate an enemy and the enemy is you!
Now why am I bringing this up in relation to yesterday's press conference?
Because folks, Trump won't let you be distracted.
Because Trump... I have to be really careful I get this right.
I'm not trying to be careful to be PC, I'm trying to be careful to get this right.
Because folks, please, I'm begging you to take this away from this show today.
The reason the establishment class, Republicans and Democrats, I make no distinction because there isn't one, the reason the establishment class in conjunction with the far-left radicals who hate this country, the reason they hate Trump so much is precisely because, and I'm going to quote, Trump doesn't stay on message.
On message is political Orwellian newspeak for focus group tested nonsense.
That is not the truth.
Trump is not... Folks, love him or hate him, he's not capable of it.
Joe, can we just be candid?
He is not capable of sticking to a focus group tested talking point.
He's not!
And what that does is, instead of allowing the distraction to continue, and the distraction now is confederate statues, Joe, they gotta go.
Because the country's being destroyed by confederate statues.
Yesterday it was transgender bathrooms, the day before it was a Kentucky court clerk is destroying the country.
They will fabricate a new enemy every day to distract you from the wonders of the country you live in.
Trump does not play along.
He doesn't play the game.
What happened yesterday during the press conference, which should absolutely nail this for you.
He turned it around on the left-leaning media, because that's all they are, they're liberal hacks.
He turned it around on the liberal hack show and started asking them questions that they had no answer!
What did he say, Joe?
He said during the press conference, These Antifa guys that showed up with clubs as well and started attacking people, do they have any blame in this?
And the media's like, uh, uh, what?
What do we say to this?
You can't say no!
But the media was shocked because the media always absolves the left of blame because the left is fighting the fight, they're raging against the machine.
The evil, capitalist, liberty-loving United States.
They didn't know what to do!
Now, Trump was probably told by political advisors in the establishment class, and by the way, none of those focus group talking points ever resonate with middle America, right?
But he would, Joe, I guarantee you he was told by his establishment class advisors.
Sure.
What do you think they told him?
Here's what they said.
Yeah.
They said, you need to go out there and say, there aren't two sides, there's only one side.
No, there is two sides!
There are two sides.
There were people who showed up to be violent, some who professed to be neo-Nazis, and some who professed to be far-left radicals.
And there were the non-violent folks.
There are sides to this.
And he's absolutely right to say that those are the sides that matter.
If you went there to commit violence on another human being, you're a criminal savage.
End of story.
I don't care if you're holding up a Nazi flag or an ISIS flag.
And you should be condemned and prosecuted.
Joe, that was not the talking point.
Right, right, right!
And middle America said, yeah!
That makes sense to me.
Violent people, bad.
This isn't complicated for America to understand.
Violence, Joe.
Do we have to do the Tim the Toolman-Taylor thing again?
Violence, bad.
Peaceful protest, okay.
You're not sanctioning what anybody says.
You're just saying peaceful protest, America.
Beating people up, not America.
This is only complicated for the media, which is dying to put out the focus group Destin Talking Point on their behalf, Joseph, that this was all a bunch of conservative right-wing lunatics destroying America.
He's not playing the game!
He's not playing the game!
He is not going to do it!
He's gonna say what he wants to say, and he just doesn't care what you think!
So what does he do?
He brings, instead of the distraction, Joe, the shiny red ball, Confederate statues, conservative right-wing nuts are attacking people everywhere, look how dangerous they are, he brings you right back to it by asking a question.
You can avoid a statement, Joe, you can never avoid a question.
You can't avoid a question.
You can avoid a statement.
People cannot avoid a question because a question intuitively cues your gray matter to want to respond.
So when he comes out in a press conference and asks the question, wait, are these left-leaning groups that attack people with clubs, do they bear any responsibility?
All of a sudden the media panics because they know the general public's probably thinking the same thing.
Folks, he said something else.
That was not the focus group tested talking point.
He asked another question.
He said, OK, if we're going to start ripping down Confederate statues, what's next?
What about Washington?
What about George Washington?
What about Jefferson?
What about the founding fathers that owned slaves?
Joe, these were clearly imperfect human beings, as we all are.
Certainly.
Every single one of us, from Ronald Reagan to JFK to George Washington to John Adams, every one of them had major league flaws.
But does that discount everything they did in the cause of humankind and liberty?
Everything?
Folks, I'm a sinner, man.
Oh gosh am I. Joe, you are too.
Yes.
But Joe and I are both believers.
And a belief in Jesus Christ requires you to understand that you are not perfection.
I thought this was obvious.
So we're gonna wipe clean the stain of American history?
The stain on American history, uh, known as slavery and Jim Crow?
We're gonna wipe it clean and what, never learn anything from it?
Never learn how we overcame it?
Joe, what happened?
We all just started singing kumbaya one day around a campfire?
Nothing ever happened bad, Joe.
There was never any problems with slavery, never any problems with civil disturbance, never any problems with Jim Crow.
Forget all of it.
Let's just jump right to the end of the book.
Let's go right to chapter 12, where we're all roasting freaking marshmallows, you dopes!
How freaking stupid are you?
No, I'm serious.
How dumb do you have to be?
You buffoons!
This country is at such a wonderful, beautiful place.
We have overcome so much.
And you want to just pretend we jump right to Chapter 12.
Let's wipe it all clean.
This is not in any way, shape, or form an effort to get rid of Confederate statues.
I cannot say that in strong enough terms.
Tucker's guest last night was damn right.
This is an effort by the far left to exert pure political power To rewrite history, to distract you from the fact that you live in the greatest country on earth precisely due to American liberty.
Uniquely American liberty and limited government and the rules of a constitutional republic.
They cannot have you understand what you see in front of you.
What you see in front of you has to be a mirage.
You see wealth.
You see prosperity.
You see flat screen TVs.
You see people driving nice cars.
You see people, you know, even people who don't have any money can come to this country and walk into an emergency room and get health care.
This doesn't happen in most places on earth.
It happens here.
They have to distract you.
They have to get you to believe this is all a mirage.
And that's the way they do it, by fabricating a new enemy every single day.
Folks, it will never end.
The slippery slope with the left is as slippery as it gets.
It's not a faux argument, it's very real.
Once you go down this road with the left, and this is why conservatives understand this.
I'm not gonna say educated in some pretentious, pompous way, but I mean people who are read in on the program, folks.
People who have seen behind the scenes what's going on.
Joe, and we talk about this all the time, Joe and I, and I talk about it in a lot of email circles, too.
Conservatives absolutely understand what's going on.
The red line in the sand, folks, the red line has to be drawn.
It has to stop.
Because when it doesn't stop, it just keeps going and going and going and going.
You have to fight.
If you don't fight, you're not fighting for the Confederacy.
You're not fighting for confederate statues.
You're not fighting for a man's sign on the on the men's bathroom.
Men's or like they have an outback what do they have a they have some special sign an outback which always confuses her blokes blokes yeah you're not fighting for a bloke sign in the outback.
You're fighting for political sanity.
You are fighting to maintain control of individual liberty, which means limiting the power of government while the left is doing the opposite.
They are fighting for the power of government to overtake every single sphere of your life.
You're not fighting for confederate statues.
Don't you understand?
All these establishment Republicans who go, Do we really want to get lost in men in the women's room, transgender bathroom stuff?
You're not getting lost.
It has nothing to do with transgender people in the men's room or women's room.
It doesn't have anything to do with that.
It has everything to do with the encroaching sphere of government on every single aspect of your life.
They will never stop.
They will never, ever, ever stop.
Folks, statues are just the latest iteration of far-left anger.
They are looking for someone to hate.
They will always rage against that machine.
Always.
Every time.
And trust me when I tell you, you're next.
Ask the Hollywood people who've said things that Hollywood doesn't agree with, even though they're leftists, who become targets.
Trust me, you're next.
All right.
Sorry it went on a little long there, folks, but it's important we talked about this today.
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All right, another blockbuster story.
Here's my, for all the Facebook folks, I'll show you my book.
The book is stacked today, you see?
There's a good eight, you see that?
There's a good eight to ten stories here I could get to, but this one is a blockbuster that, again, no one in the media is covering at all.
Now, this was sent to me by a listener, so thanks to the person who sent it over.
And this is really sad, because I do a lot of show prep for the show, and I saw this article nowhere.
Nowhere, Joe.
And it is a... I mean, a Defcon... This thing is like nuclear war for the left, okay?
Okay.
Salon.com has a piece out right now, which totally... Salon, folks, that is not even a left-leaning website.
That is a far left-leaning website that absolutely decimates practically the entire Russia hack narrative.
This is Salon.
If you don't know Salon, just go to- I hate to promote their website, but folks, fair is fair.
And this is an absolutely damning piece for the left.
Damning.
I have to give them credit for running this, because even they're wondering why the story hasn't gotten picked up.
Now, to sum up, Salon covers a report by former intelligence professionals, right?
These are high-level intelligence professionals who've done work like this before, and this is not a right-leaning group, Joe.
This is a group of people that were involved heavily in going after Bush for the faulty intelligence in the Iraq war.
So this is not a right-leaning group.
But their acronym is VIPS.
It stands for something like Intelligence Professionals or something like that.
But this group has been around, and these are people who've been inside the government at the highest levels.
They did an analysis of the alleged Russian hack.
Now, I hate this story, and I know you do too, but it's critical you understand this because it speaks again to the larger narrative, how a new liberal enemy, yesterday it was Russia, right?
Today, Joe, it's Confederate statues.
It speaks to how when the narrative falls apart, They just, no one ever corrects it, they just move along to a new enemy.
Remember, the Russian thing's falling apart so now it's Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, who've been dead a very long time in case you missed it.
So, the whole Trump-Russia collusion story was built around this fairy tale that obviously the Russians wanted Hillary to win.
I'm using obviously kind of in air quotes because that's what the Democrats want you to believe.
Excuse me, they wanted Trump to win.
I screwed that up.
They wanted Trump to win.
And that they wanted to hurt Hillary.
The whole Russian narrative is built around that.
Trump colluded to win the election because the Russians wanted Trump to win and they wanted to hurt Hillary.
Now, the bedrock of that entire narrative, Armacost, was this ridiculous nonsense that the Russians hacked into the DNC server And spread the information out to embarrass Hillary Clinton and John Podesta and all those other people, even though Podesta's email was hacked due to a phishing scam.
It had nothing to do with anything else.
But that was released and that's the bedrock of the whole thing.
So just to be clear on where we stand, Russians hacked the server, the DNC server, to hurt Hillary because they wanted Trump to win.
But let me ask you a question, Joe.
Yeah.
What if the Russians never hacked the server?
Now, remember, this is Salah, and I can't say this enough, a far-left website who says it's interesting because these intelligence professionals put out a report saying that it is physically impossible that the Russians, or Guccifer on behalf of the Russians, as he alleged, it's not possible that they hacked into the server.
Now, you doubt me?
Here's the data for you, because we love facts and data on the show, and I'm going to give you something in a minute, too, that's going to stir your interest a little bit.
I got a piece of information from a source a little while ago that I feel comfortable enough putting out there.
I'd love you guys to run it down, actually, if you can.
Joe, the alleged hack into the DNC servers was a download that took 87 seconds.
The 87-second download of the information downloaded 22.7 megabits per second?
Yeah.
Now, I am not, like my wife, an intelligence, excuse me, an IT professional there, so that doesn't mean a lot to me, but to these intelligence professionals who are experts in this and hacking and this kind of espionage, they said, folks, I got news for you, and here's a quote from the piece.
That's a download speed that, quote, far exceeds an internet capability, any internet capability, for a remote hack.
No less a hack from overseas, as Guccifer alleged, and the Democrats are alleging the Russians did.
In other words, folks, well, you may be asking now if you're listening, right?
Well, if it wasn't hacked, then how was the information downloaded?
It couldn't have been downloaded over the internet.
It had to be downloaded locally.
Meaning it was an inside job.
Folks, this entire Trump-Russia story is collapsing.
Even the left, even Salon is acknowledging it.
It is not technologically possible that the Russians hacked the DNC server.
It was an inside job.
The download speed was only possible if someone inserted a USB drive or some other storage mechanism and did it locally.
It was an inside job.
There was no Russian hacking.
The Russian hacking that relied on the Guccifer story that he did it on behalf of the Russians is a myth!
It's just not true!
Now, here's a quote from the Salon piece, and I'll put the Salon piece at the show notes, available as always at Bongino.com, and you subscribe to my email list if you choose.
I'll email the show notes to you every day in your inbox.
There's a big subscribe button there.
Quote from the Salon piece.
This quote is about the mainstream media now ignoring the collapsing Russia narrative and moving on now to it's all about Confederate statues and racist conservatives.
They said, maybe the logic goes that if mainstream journalists leave this untouched, that alone will be enough to discredit it.
True believers in the Russian hack narrative can point to Breitbart's coverage to dismiss this new information without consideration.
End the quote there for a second because it's important.
In the salon, I didn't want to read the whole piece because I don't want to waste your time, but earlier in the salon piece, remember, they're left-leaning.
I can't say this enough.
They say that the reason this is being dismissed by the media is because Breitbart's already picked this story up too.
And they're saying, you following me, Joe?
There's the mainstream media.
Oh, no, no.
That's just Breitbart.
We don't pay any attention to Breitbart.
Despite the fact, Joe, that the story is true.
Now, moving on.
Quote again.
The guy's saying, so the gist of it is, the left-leaning website Salon's saying, that's not good enough to say that because Breitbart covered it, it should go away.
So here's the quote again.
He says, that is not good enough.
Lawrence's article, which is the article about the hack, and the report behind it deserves some proper attention.
Folks, this is really disturbing stuff.
Now, I'm going to move on because I got a lot of other stuff to get to here.
But I got a call a little while ago, and I can't say who because the source asked me not to say who it was.
If I say he or she mistakenly, by the way, I may go back and forth because I don't want to even give up the gender of the person who called.
But I got a call a little while ago, and I'm very hesitant to put this stuff out on the air here if I can't back it up.
But the more I think about it, I think it's responsible enough for me to do it because I trust the source.
I know the source's access is legitimate.
And, you know, listen, I'm not a journalist.
And usually you should double source your information, especially if it points to someone specifically.
I would never intentionally defame someone without knowing.
I wouldn't defame someone at all, but I wouldn't put someone's name out there if I couldn't double source it.
But this doesn't involve a name.
It involves a very credible source, so I'm comfortable putting it out there.
This may not sound like a big deal, but when you think about what I'm about to tell you, I assure you it is.
Source called me and said he was contacted by someone.
Who had worked in the RNC's operation in DC, where they had some headquarters, and there was really strong evidence, I'm not going to go into some finer details, but there was really strong evidence that it was actually the RNC headquarters that attempted, that there was an attempted hack, and there was evidence of a, what he said, a hasty escape.
Not that anyone was chased out of the building, meaning someone tried to install some types of listening devices in that headquarters and there was strong evidence that they tried to get out there very quickly based on the evidence that was left behind.
I assure you folks, this was not some low-level guy who called me.
Now, that story's never made it into the mainstream media, but think about what I just told you.
If that's true, and based on the credibility of the source, I believe it is, and I don't think the RNC's put any of this out there, if that's true, this entire Russia narrative was not only a lie, It's actually an effort likely to distract you from the fact that they were trying to nail the RNC and get information from them.
The DNC thing was an inside job.
Folks, that's beyond disturbing.
But I'm telling you the source who contacted me on it is a very, very reliable guy who has contacts at the absolute highest level.
All right, you digest that and do with it what you want.
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All right.
I saw a story in the Wall Street Journal today, and I'll put it in the show notes.
It was interesting.
A little more of an economic angle.
But this one's critical because it discusses this paradox that's going on right now that economists are having a really difficult time explaining, Joe.
Do you remember a couple weeks ago we talked about how the economy's recovering right now?
It's not recovering in the vibrant, robust way we would all like.
We're still in the midst of the post-Obama Slowest recovery in post-World War II history.
But we are recovering.
The economy's growing, albeit at a very slow rate.
And I brought up last week or the week before, but it's been a constant theme throughout the show, that one of the big questions economists have out there right now is this wage paradox.
Why the heck aren't wages going up?
I remember that.
Remember we talked about this and nobody, there hasn't been a really good answer out there yet and I propose, I'm not patting myself on the back, actually I am for this, but I said to you in a prior show, again last week or the week before I don't remember, I said this is pretty easy to explain if you look at it from just a pure economic perspective and you get all the static out of the way.
I said, we have a reserve army of workers out there right now, folks.
Although the unemployment rate is low, the labor participation rate is low, too.
Meaning that the unemployment rate is just people actively looking for a job.
So if you're not looking for a job right now, but you can work, you're not counted.
So I gave the example of Joe Armacost.
I said, you know, Joe has a job at WCBM and here with Conservative Review.
If Joe went in and asked for a wage increase, a raise, you know, what we would call in normal everyday language, And Joe was the only person available to do the job.
Joe could probably walk into his bosses and say, Hey guys, um, I want a hundred K a year.
And they could come back.
And if Joe's the only option, they may have to say, all right, Joe, we'll tell you what we'll give you, say Joe made whatever 50.
I don't, I don't know Joe's salary.
I'm not disclosing it on air, but Joe made 50 and he wants double.
They may come back and say, we'll give you 80 Joe and them agree, right?
They don't, they don't have another option.
It's either pay Joe or you got no show.
Okay.
Right.
Now with this reserve army of people out there who are capable of working but not looking right now, who are not counted in the unemployment number, what I had proposed in a prior show was that the problem is as the wages go up and the wage demands go up, these people are coming out of You know, their own forced retirement, whatever it may be.
Yeah, and they're dusting off the work boots, and they're saying, you know what?
WCBM's offering $70,000 looking for an engineer?
Well, I wasn't going to do it for $50,000, but I'll do it for $70,000.
So this reserve army of people are coming out of the workforce and are keeping wages relatively suppressed.
Well, voila!
Here it comes!
The report!
So, report in the Wall Street Journal today.
Great op-ed that confirms exactly what I, and listen, I'm not, I'm not being a little, I'm not the only person who would, it's not like Dan Bongino, you know, Captain Economics, you know, any reasonable person could have figured that out.
And a lot of people had been talking about it, but it had never been Analyzed in a deep way like this study did.
So here's a quote from the piece explaining this wage paradox.
And just to be clear, we're talking about how the economy's growing but wages aren't.
It doesn't make sense.
The economy's growing, competition for labor should grow, and people should be making more money.
And it wasn't really happening.
And it said, here's a quote from the piece.
It says wage gross for these workers is now close to the pre-recession 2007 peak.
But there are many more workers who've been on the labor force sidelines who are moving to full-time employment, thus creating a drag on wages.
Exactly what I had told you before, folks.
Now, this is what's going to happen.
As people start creeping out, become eligible, you may even see the unemployment number go up.
Because more and more people who weren't counted in the unemployment numbers in the past because they weren't looking as wages start to creep up are now the ones looking for jobs.
Now there's two takeaways from this.
I want you to take away from this piece because it's critical.
Number one, the Obama entitlement state created this reserve army of the unemployed.
Make no mistake about it.
I'm not entirely blaming Barack Obama, but I am blaming him for a good swath of this.
They created extended unemployment outside of the 27-week window so you could get paid for not working.
They created all kinds of Obamacare subsidies for health care.
There were all kinds of tax code deductions that were created.
We have all kinds of tax payments made to people who aren't even paying into the tax system.
They made unemployment not comfortable.
But viable.
In other words, Joe, you could survive economically with being unemployed.
So your wages... Let me just explain it by example instead of getting convoluted.
I used to get my hair cut in a place in Maryland, and they used to have empty barber's chairs in there all the time.
And I remember saying to the lady, Sharon, I go, Sharon, you can't find barbers with all these people out there looking for work.
She goes, oh no, I can find barbers.
She said, but I come in, they come in to interview and I tell them what it pays and they say I get more on unemployment.
Folks, this is not complicated to understand.
It's only complicated for liberals.
The entitlement state creates a reserve army of the unemployed.
Now, how does this fit into takeaway number two?
Takeaway number two is it's going to take a while for wages to start increasing dramatically.
Increasing commensurate with economic growth.
Why?
Because Joe, what happened unfortunately during the creation of the Obama entitlement state and the really devastating recession is the first people that were let go from companies out there, let's say CBM where you work, right?
The first people that were let go were the least skilled.
So if Joe has been there forever, Joe knows that studio like no one else.
If they had, say, an apprentice they had hired at whatever, minimum wage or whatever it may be, and he was learning to trade, even though Joe costs more, during the recession they don't want him at the show to go off the air, so the least skilled people were the first ones to go, so the apprentice is gone.
So the problem, Joe, is now, five years later, if the apprentice hasn't been looking for work and has been living off the Obama entitlement state, those skills have atrophied a bit.
So what's happening?
What's happening now is as the apprentice makes his way back into the workforce, his skills have eroded and his demands for a salary erode, too.
I mean, his resume now doesn't demand, say, the $50,000 salary he would have been able to demand if he'd been working five years and had those skills.
Make sense?
Yeah.
So the problem is, and one of the reasons you're seeing wage growth stay low now too, is because the people coming back into the workforce were the first ones let go, and were the ones whose skills have atrophied a bit.
So you're going to see, on average, that's going to be taking down the average wage growth in the United States a little bit too.
So just be very cautious about these data points when you're going to hear the media attacking Trump.
And I'm not doing this to be like, you know, a conservative, you know, golden calf worshipper here.
I'm just trying to give you the honest truth that they're still recovering from the Obama entitlement state.
And when you see these figures come out, the Washington Post and the New York Times in the next few months and say, well, wage growth is still slow.
Yeah, it's still slow because people are still making their way back into the workforce.
Their skills have atrophied a bit and it's taking down the average.
That's what's happening right now.
I mean, it should be pretty clear stuff.
All right.
One last story I saw, which is really disturbing to me because this, uh, I don't like to get too into it, but it impacts me personally in my family.
It's a really sensitive kind of disturbing topic, but, uh, you know, the opioid, I don't want to call it an epidemic because it's, it's, listen, it's, it's a problem, but I think the language contributes to, uh, An argument that the government should somehow come in and fix this.
And I don't think there's a real government solution to this.
Maybe education programs on the dangers of dependency.
But folks, my opinion on this, as you deserve the truth from me, I'm not going to give you a focus group tested talking point, is if you're prone to addiction, that addiction is going to find an outlet.
You have to find Jesus Christ or find strength in you somehow.
Because you're going to find an outlet, whether it's gambling, whether it's opioids, whether it's heroin, cocaine, you're going to find an outlet if you have a personality prone to that.
I'm not sure the government has a solution to this.
The opioid problem right now, and when I'm talking about the problem, I'm talking about we are having, there are unbelievable, and folks, this has affected me intimately in my family.
And me as well.
And I know, yeah, I know, we've talked about it and it's devastating because you can't, you can't help, you can't help, there's no help you can give folks who are hopelessly addicted to these drugs.
They have to come out of it on their own.
I've tried everything, and it just doesn't work.
And it's destroyed me, you know, spiritually and physically in a number of ways, too, because the distress of dealing with it has been just overwhelming.
But folks, again, not only is there not a government solution to this, The government is actually creating some of the problem.
The Wall Street Journal has another devastating op-ed today that's going to blow your mind.
Here's a quote.
This is staggering, Joe.
The expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare.
And I'm not making a political argument.
I'm just making a facts-based argument for how the government is contributing to a problem.
The Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, where the federal government incentivized states to put people on Medicare who made more than 100% of the poverty line.
In other words, to give them taxpayer-funded, you know, quote, health insurance, even though it's terrible insurance.
One quarter of Medicaid patients have been prescribed opioids.
Now, here's a staggering number, though.
Overdose deaths, Joe, from opioids rose twice as fast in the 29 states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare.
Now, what's happening, folks, people above the poverty line now, who are not poor by statistical measures, but are relatively poor in income.
I don't think anyone would dispute that.
But they're now giving taxpayer-funded, basically, oxycodone, along with some healthcare benefits.
Here's what's happening.
A lot of folks are buying oxycodone pills.
They're saying, number in the piece, 240 oxy pills purchased on a Medicaid card, Joe, cost $1.
Okay.
With a copay.
And they're being resold on the street for $4,000.
You bet.
So what's happening is the government is unbelievably incentivizing an illegal drug trade in opioids as the government takes more taxpayer money to so-called fight the opioid epidemic.
Folks, the government is the problem here.
They are not the solution.
This is another example of things I cover on this show about liberals who want to believe that government's the solution to all of life's ailments when government is the ailment.
They are the problem.
They are the ones paying people in many cases to buy drugs cheaply to resell them on the street.
It's amazing.
And what, nobody's going to cover this?
Just a story I thought I'd throw in there because it's particularly devastating to me personally.
And if you want to get something done, get the government out of this healthcare system.
They're creating nothing but trouble.
Alright folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Hey, if you wouldn't mind...
I don't ask this often, but if you wouldn't mind going to iTunes and reviewing the podcast, I'd really appreciate it.
Those reviews really matter.
I read them all.
So just go to iTunes, the podcast app, and put in a review.
If you got a second, I don't mean to haunt you about it, but it really would mean a lot to me.
My audience is great.
Remember that survey we put out there, Joe?
Yeah.
I thought if we had 250 responses, it was considered like top notch by the company that asked us for the demographic data on the audience.
We got something like 20 times that.
So thank you to the audience.
You guys and ladies out there are truly amazing.
I owe you.
Hey, Dano.
Yes, sir.
Nice job today, buddy.
Oh, thank you, man.
Sorry about the yelling and screaming in the beginning, but sometimes it's an important event, and I feel good.
I feel a lot better today.
All right, guys.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, Joe.
I'll see you all tomorrow.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
