Ep. 534 More Far-Left Violence, Where's the Media?
In this episode: The far-Left doesn't believe that conservatives have bad ideas, they believe conservatives are bad people. https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-left-cant-let-go-of-racism-1503868512 Why are liberal journalists covering for ANTIFA on social media? http://trib.al/mki5bh0 Media coverage of ANTIFA attacks on innocent people. http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Masked-anarchists-violently-rout-right-wing-12041287.php Dear GOP, where are the tax cuts? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-28/trump-s-pivot-to-taxes-is-fraught-with-pitfalls-everywhere Is the Republican Party dying? http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/08/27/exclusive-brent-bozell-the-slow-death-of-the-republican-party/ SPONSOR LINKS: www.CRTV.com Promo Code "Bongino"
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All the Sanders supporters love throwing bombs at me and I throw them right back.
I'm not here to pull any punches, right?
The Dan Bongino Show.
This is the great irony of conservatism.
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Get ready to hear the truth about America.
Are you suggesting you're that stupid that other people can run your lives better than you can, even though the cost and quality of what they buy, quote, for you doesn't even matter to them?
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?
All right, good to be here, man.
Yeah, all right.
A lot to cover, man.
We missed so much happened over the weekend.
These are those times I really wish we had a weekend show to get some helpful information out there and be able to assist our audience in any way possible.
Obviously, the enormous...
I mean, what's going on in Texas is like biblical level flooding.
This is just an incredibly tragic story.
A couple of things I wanted to hit on this to not, you know, redo a lot of the news coverage you're getting.
I've gotten a lot of emails about the subject of charitable giving.
Folks, I'm not in the habit of, my wife and I have of course donated as I know many of you will as well.
I think it's a great idea to do it, but I'm just not in the habit of recommending specific charities and I don't like to tell people the ones I give because what winds up happening is it winds up skewing money in either direction.
But there are a number of absolutely wonderful charities out there doing God's work.
All you have to do is Google it, you'll find a ton of them.
And I encourage you all to go out there, donate.
I know you don't need me to say that, but this is a time.
Our fellow Americans need us.
And just one quick note on this too, you know, I saw something this week and it made me think of how powerful and great this country is despite all the people trying to divide us, Joe.
I was watching Fox this weekend, I'm sitting there, and There's this video and there's this, it happened to be an older black man and he gets a rope, no a hispanic guy and he gets a rope and he's grabbing this rope and he goes out into the floodwaters to save this older black guy and an older white gentleman on the pole and you know I thought to myself like,
You know, this is the left.
Like, the left has us categorized into these ridiculous racial categories.
None of that crap matters to real Americans.
That doesn't mean anything.
We're Americans.
Like, we don't look at each other like that.
And I put on my Facebook, thank God to everybody out there who sees the world the right way.
These are human beings.
These are Americans.
We're not going to get caught up in any of this nonsense.
And when we're all down and out, we all need help, we don't worry about what the melanin content of anybody's skin is.
That's a nonsense, stupid narrative.
So I was, you know, I was proud.
I thought, gosh, This is a great country, and when everybody's in the down and out and they need help, we're the ones that step up.
So thank you to that.
Again, charitable giving is really important right now, and I've been getting a lot of requests, especially from media folks, about, you know, the President traveling over there.
Now, having been obviously a Secret Service agent for 12 years, as many of you already know, these storm stops, the President traveling always creates a little bit of controversy because Some people say, well, does it drain resources?
And folks, here's my take on this, having been involved with these.
Everything drains resources, okay?
There are people in Texas right now who are going through a near apocalyptic level flooding event.
They're talking about 50 inches of rain, Joe.
An unprecedented level of rain in American history.
The President of the United States is a symbol, and symbols matter.
He's not just a man, okay?
He's a symbol of the power of the United States government to help its citizens.
Having the President of the United States show up and look you in the eye and telling you, you know, it's going to matter.
You make a difference and we're not going to forget about this.
You know, that stuff matters, okay?
And, you know, a couple of folks emailed me and said, well, you know, maybe he should stay out of the way.
You know, maybe he shouldn't.
You know, sometimes the President of the United States, sometimes it's not a real strain on resources, folks.
The way these things work, from the inside perspective, and when I was in the Secret Services, we used to call them storm stops.
You announce the location at the last minute.
Well, why would you do that?
Because if there's a potential assassin and you didn't know where you were going, Joe, well, he doesn't know either!
Right.
Or she!
God forbid.
He don't know either.
So what we would call regularly an off-the-record movement, in other words, we don't publicize, it becomes a storm stop type thing.
It's a real problem getting vehicles in there.
You know, you say, well, why can't you helicopter him?
Little known secret.
Well, not really a secret.
I mean, I wouldn't give up Secret Service security secrets, you can tell, but we don't go anywhere without vehicles, ever, under any circumstances.
Because God forbid something happens, you have to have a vehicle and a hard car.
It's like a traveling armored room next to the President.
You gotta get vehicles in there, you need a place to store the weapons, you need food, you need water.
This is all really tough stuff, but the focus always has to be about the suffering of the people on the ground.
That's what really matters.
So that's kind of the inside baseball on what we would call in the Secret Service storm stops.
They're really, really tough to do.
Most of the agents who do them are trained lead advance agents who've done three, four, five lead advances, probably hundreds of lower level advances, side advances, motorcade advances.
It's a really tough trip to do, but I absolutely believe the President of the United States, he's going tomorrow, so it doesn't matter what I say or don't say, but you know what?
Is it a strain on resources?
Mild.
The Secret Service brings a lot of their own stuff on trips like this, but you have to show up.
Symbolism matters.
You know, we're not animals.
We're human beings.
They need support.
They need to be looked in the eye by the commander-in-chief of some people and say, this matters.
We're going to be here for you when these floodwaters recede.
Makes a difference.
Okay.
Gosh, so much happened over the weekend.
Outside of that tragic story, I don't even know where to start, but I'm going to hammer on one piece quickly because it ties into a story I saw last night.
Shelby Steele has a pretty amazing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, which I'll put in the show notes, which are always available at Bongino.com.
You can also listen to the podcast there if you choose.
The show notes can also be sent to your email box.
If you subscribe to my email list, I'll send them right to you.
But the op-ed is really terrific because it talks about the left's growing fascination with finding racism and identity politics everywhere.
Shelby Steele's been writing about this forever and there's two quotes in this.
I wanted to tie to a story I saw last night that just speaks to the generation of American politics into basically animal savage-like warfare.
I kid you not, like hooded masks, clubs, I mean this is the kind of stuff savages do, right?
So he writes in the piece talking about the left's obsession with finding racism everywhere in America.
He says the left has seized proprietorship over innocence itself.
It took on the power to grant or deny moral legitimacy across society.
Folks, this is a point I've brought up often on this show, and I really need you to take with you, embrace it, and own it.
Because you'll understand the far-left, radical, liberal portion of the Democrat Party when you get this.
Whereas conservatives argue at Liberals Show about ideas, High taxes, low taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, what are the rates, investment policy, Keynesian economics versus the Laffer curve, single-payer health care versus patient-run, doctor-directed health care, school choice, charter schools, homeschooling.
These are policies.
These are arguable, researchable, identifiable, policy prescriptions that conservatives stand for and are willing to debate the pros and the cons.
Now, listen, not all of these, if any policy was universally good, we would all support it.
Everything has a downside.
The question is on the margin, Joe, is it good or bad?
Now, the margin matters to conservatives because we're rational beings.
What I mean by that is we don't argue in the winter.
Again, an example I've used often, but it makes sense.
We don't argue in the winter, do we put on the heat or not?
We argue the degree.
So what I'm saying is, we're not arguing good or bad, which is like heat or no heat.
We're not arguing that.
And no reasonable person should.
Liberals do this.
What we're arguing is, is it better or worse doing this?
Not good or bad.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
Yeah.
So conservatives acknowledge that, you know, when we do, when we implement, when we fight for policies like charter schools and homeschooling, there is going to be some downside somewhere.
But are the upsides to that greater on the margin than the downsides?
Liberals don't do that.
So while conservatives, just to sum up where I'm going with this, conservatives argue policies on the margin are better or worse.
Liberals don't do that.
Liberals argue people are good or bad, and this Shelby Steele quote sums it up perfectly.
That they have seized and they have a monopoly almost over who is good and who is bad and who is morally legitimate.
So if you disagree with them, Joe, the far left, not all Democrats, but the far left, if you disagree with them, you are a morally illegitimate, ethically compromised human being.
Now, what does that mean?
What are the consequences of that?
The consequences of this are severe.
The consequences mean that anything you're fighting is an inherently bad person that needs to be stopped, sometimes through any means necessary.
Now he has another quote in here too that I want to get to before I get to the story I saw last night why I'm bringing this up.
He's talking about the liberals here again.
He says, but to be innocent there must be an evil from which to be free.
What a great quote.
In other words, the liberals are framing themselves, Joe, as non-morally and ethically stained people.
Right.
But in order to frame yourself that way, Armacost, you have to have morally stained and ethically challenged people.
Need a bad guy.
Right?
You need a bad guy.
Exactly, Joe.
You need a bad guy.
Everybody needs a bad guy.
This is why, Shelby writes, that liberals are always searching for evidence of epidemic racism in our society, not isolated incidents of stupidity.
It was a really amazing quote.
Now, what does this have to do with anything?
Well, last night there was another Berkeley episode of pretty widespread violence, despite the media reporting on this.
Berkeley, the far-left California university known by many on the right as Berserkly, which has become sadly synonymous with far-left wing violence and speech suppression.
There was another beatdown, a couple of beatdowns.
They're all on my Twitter feed, at The Bongino.
If you want to go look, you can see the videos.
Unfortunately, I can't put them on the show notes because a lot of people don't have Twitter.
But the videos, if you do have Twitter, are there.
They're on my Twitter feed.
You can see them.
People in hoods, people in masks, people in ski masks, using weapons, beating up Trump supporters again.
Now, the far left is reluctant to call these people out.
Keep in mind, folks, Conservatives have absolutely no problem whatsoever calling out thugs, racists, white supremacists, Nazis, because these people are not with us.
These people are savages.
We have nothing to do with these people.
They are not with us.
They are animals.
They segregate people by the melanin component of their skin and they hate them.
They are not with us.
These people are not with us at all.
We have zero problem calling these animals out as I just did.
The left, Joe.
Not all, but many people on the left cannot call out these Antifa people despite unbelievable videos of them pummeling, committing criminal acts on people, beating the snot out of people.
They can't do it!
Now, you need evidence of this?
I tweeted out a piece I'll put in the show notes today as well.
Let me take a note on that that Twitchy thinks I don't want to forget.
Twitchy has a good piece up today of a guy.
What's his name?
I wrote it down.
Oh, Shane Bauer from Mother Jones, which is a far left outfit.
Making his best effort on Twitter, despite Joe, Mother Joe is a far left out, but he tweets a video of these Antifa guys beating the snot out of someone.
And he further subsequently tweets that, oh, this is not epidemic of what's going on.
This is, you know, kind of intimating that this was a largely peaceful rally.
You can read the twitchy piece yourself and you're like, wait, what?
Why do these people feel the need to do this?
Because going back to Shelby's piece, they have to fabricate an enemy.
They have to fabricate an enemy because they want to posture themselves as the innocent ones, the arbiters of the moral good.
Everybody not on their side is morally compromised, and if you're morally and ethically compromised, violence isn't really violent.
Violence is just a means to stop further violence.
And all of a sudden people are like, oh, okay, well, I guess that kind of makes sense.
You see how once you create that slippery slope of speech equals violence, and therefore if we engage in violence, we can, you know, we're doing the right thing.
You see how the way this goes, Joe?
Oh, yes.
We've seen it before.
We've seen it before.
We'll see it again.
It enables violence against anyone.
This is the danger of creating speech codes on college campuses and using this common line you hear amongst liberal professors and other people that you hear often.
That, oh, speech equating speech with violence.
Because once you do that, you justify far-left violence against that speech.
You say, well, we're just counteracting violence.
No, you're not.
You're counteracting the expulsion of carbon dioxide from the lungs in the form of speech.
Nobody's being violent against you.
You're the one creating the violence.
But they need to morally and ethically justify their sick behavior, folks.
That's the way this works.
This is really, really dangerous stuff.
And it all goes back, again, To the critical theory component of far-left indoctrination, which we've talked about repeatedly through this, you know, iron triangle to borrow a term.
Gosh, I forgot the author's name for a minute.
One of the best books.
I have it somewhere over there.
Such a great book.
But The Iron Triangle, he calls it something different, but I think he refers to congressional committees, activist groups, and the media.
I think it's media, Hollywood, and academia.
This Iron Triangle feels the relentless need to defend them, and they've all been indoctrinated into critical theory, and critical theory says this.
That there is a white patriarchal power structure, in other words a bunch of old white men in the country that are just evil, they use all the tools at their disposal to suppress everyone else, including Joe, science and reason, and therefore anything they say, whether it's data or facts, is corrupted, therefore they should be silenced and they can be beaten up and it's all ethically okay.
This is the essence of critical theory.
Look it up!
I've gone over it on the show so I'm not going to repeat the whole theory again today.
I've done shows on it, good large swaths of them.
But go look it up!
And it basically justifies any action whatsoever against anyone who doesn't believe in far-left ideology.
Folks, it's really sick.
We're going down a really, really dangerous path right now.
And yes, as someone just put on my Facebook here, folks, hate is hate, violence is violence.
And until you understand that that is a non-crossable red line, you're on the wrong side of history.
Not us.
Alright, a lot of other stories I want to get to so I'm going to move on quick here.
Hey, big news this week and there's some scuttlebutt out there of the DOJ in conjunction with the Trump administration rolling back a 2015 Barack Obama administration order on the blocking of military equipment for use by local police.
Now, this is surplus equipment coming back from overseas the military doesn't have any use for that's reconditioned for use by local police.
This has been a very controversial program.
It's called the 1033 program, Joe.
And I understand.
Now, I want to talk about this because the rollback is already has people, and in some cases very legitimately, Concerned about the militarization of police.
Now, let me just set this up quickly.
I fully understand both... Well, nobody fully understands anything.
I understand both sides of this issue.
That sounded unbelievably arrogant and unnecessary.
I understand both sides of the issue.
Having been a law enforcement officer at the local with the MIPD and the federal level with the Secret Service and then on the other side being a full-fledged conservatarian with very strong libertarian ideas and believing also in law enforcement oversight because law enforcement is the branch of the government that has a monopoly on force.
Which reminds me that Antifa doesn't believe that, by the way.
Antifa does not believe that government has a monopoly on force.
Which, once you don't believe that, we are in a whole world of trouble, Joe.
Think about where that goes.
Who else?
The mob?
Who else has a monopoly on force, right?
But the police department obviously has a monopoly on force.
They can kill you.
They can bring force to stop force.
They can do that.
Now, legally, outside of limited situations, there are no private mercenaries in the United States that can do that.
Folks, this has caused a lot of consternation amongst my libertarian friends and a lot of liberals who are very worried about this.
I want to be clear on my position, and you are absolutely free to disagree.
One thing I adore about the audience out there is you always email me if you disagree, and I read all of it.
A lot of you have sent me some really great stuff and made me say, hmm, that's a pretty good idea.
Daniel at Bongino.com, email me whenever you want about this.
Folks, I agree with this policy.
The rollback, that is.
So, you know, think about this.
Let me talk about two specific components to isolate this down to you.
Two things I think you need to take away from one of the uses of the equipment.
You may say to yourself legitimately, if we're going to argue outside of the emotions here and we're going to argue reasonably, Well, why would a private, excuse me, a law enforcement entity, local or state, why would they need military type equipment?
Okay, well, what's the equipment?
Well, what we're talking about here to be very clear are large caliber weapons and armored vehicles.
There's other stuff as well, ammunition, but let's focus on those two.
What are the uses?
Why would a local police department need that?
Folks, We are in a new era of soft target terror.
I'm sorry we're here, I wish we weren't, but there are Al-Qaeda terrorists and other terror-affiliated groups who have committed themselves to the idea that if they get themselves on small arms, whether it be either grenades, Kalashnikov rifles, ARs, whatever it may be, that they can use them to cause mass casualties.
Well, what's the problem with those types of weapons?
Well, for those of you who are familiar with high-caliber weapons, They're not, you know, they're not military weapons either.
They can be sport rifles as well, but the left uses those terms to throw people off.
But those are very difficult ammunition rounds to defeat with standard body armor.
Frankly, impossible unless you have some kind of a special trauma plate, and even at that point you have no luck.
It's gonna go right through a car door.
It'll tear up cinder block like it's nothing, especially a Kalashnikov type rifle, right?
Right.
God forbid there was a terror attack in downtown Manhattan and we had 10 to 20 people like they did already, folks, what happened in Mumbai, India.
Okay, this isn't, I wrote about it in my second book.
This has already happened, this kind of stuff.
It's happened repeatedly.
We saw San Bernardino.
What are you suggesting the cops do?
Respond in regular, you know, we call them, you know, RMPs, radio motor patrol cars, like a standard car.
We used to have Caprice Classics back then.
Those rifles will eat that car up.
Those cops are dead.
Their body armor's not going to do anything.
So on the uses front, this stuff is absolutely necessary.
Now, I'm going to, relax, for those libertarian friends of mine who are going to go crazy, give me a minute here on this.
I'm going to get to the downside of it too and how to prevent some potential abuses because I'm not going to argue that they're not there.
But secondly, large caliber weapons.
Why would you need those?
Well, why do you need large caliber weapons as a police officer?
Because folks, On the opposing side of this, these terrorists have learned to use body armor as well.
Just again, you look at some of the other attacks out there we've seen in the United States and overseas.
They have leveraged the use of body armor for their own attacks.
I've got news for you.
The body armor, handgun rounds, and shotgun rounds, although they'll cause massive trauma, may not get through that body armor.
There's no such thing as a bulletproof vest.
There's a bullet resistant vest.
These large caliber weapons will.
You need to fight fire with fire or you're not going to be able to take these people down.
And I only ask you this if you are adamantly against this.
God forbid it was you, your spouse, or a family member caught up in a terror attack like this.
Granted, these are very small probability events.
But they're not zero probability events.
Uh-oh, Joe, I know you're getting... Nassim Taleb always talks about The Black Swan.
There you go.
I love that book.
He actually did a great Econ Talk podcast.
Again, he's really terrific.
He talks about these low probability events, but what are the consequences of those low probability events?
If the consequence is death and destruction, we need to, and systemic death and destruction on a mass scale, like we've seen all over the world in some of these cases, we need to adequately prepare for this stuff.
Folks, the costs are minuscule.
This stuff is already produced.
What do you want to do, burn it?
So, large caliber weapons and armored vehicles.
Now, on the... Here's the second part of this.
So, the first is uses.
I would argue to you strongly that there are uses for these that are necessary.
To curtail abuses of this equipment and to prevent the militarization of police, which is very important.
We do not live in a police state, we never should.
My biggest fear, frankly, is the United States government, not anything else, right?
And the growth of it, for economics and other reasons as well.
Power of government can be frightening.
There has to be very strict rules of engagement on this equipment.
And this is a point brought up by the Israelis often, and they're absolutely right.
It's not the equipment, it's the rules of engagement for the equipment.
Now you may say, what the hell does that mean?
Well folks, think about it, right?
The rules of engagement matter.
We have nuclear weapons all over the world.
We have a weapon right now in the possession of very few members of the United States government.
The commander-in-chief tomorrow, now I'm not talking about the kooky liberals who think Trump's nuts, I'm talking about reasonable people.
The commander-in-chief tomorrow could basically annihilate the entire world with our nuclear stockpile.
But Joe, let's be honest, even among the nutty liberals, and there are sadly a lot of them, does anybody really go to bed at night, anyone, even amongst the far left of the far left, in an absolute panic that there's going to be a nuclear detonation tomorrow?
I mean, seriously, does anybody think that?
Probably not.
Reasonable people, I can tell you, absolutely not.
Why?
Why?
The equipment's there just like armored vehicles and large caliber weapons would be in the hands of local police officers.
Why?
Why don't you panic that they're going to run that armored vehicle through your front door tomorrow and large caliber weapons and start taking people down?
Because the rules of engagement matter.
The Israelis have argued this for years.
It's not about the equipment.
It's about Effective governing and effective rules of engagement on that equipment.
So my humble opinion, yes the equipment is necessary.
The equipment should be subjected to strict rules of engagement though.
Not for use in a standard crowd control scenario that is not going to be violent or anything like that.
Because I do agree, it does lead to the appearance of a police state and these are important things.
But in counter-terrorist scenarios, mass violence, the loss of civil control, Well, I mean, I understand what you want people to do.
You want the whole town to burn down?
Folks, our officers out there on the front line, our police officers, need protection.
And we need a means to overcome the maximum level of force that our enemy can bring to us.
This is important stuff.
So those are my two takeaways from this.
Yes, they are useful.
But they're only useful under certain conditions controlled by very strict rules of engagement.
It's the rules of engagement that matters, not the equipment in the end.
Folks, I got news for you, man.
38 revolvers from the 1970s.
Remember those, Joe, when all the cops had revolvers?
Those old Sam Brown belts, and they'd be swinging from the belt?
But to you, personally, in a one-on-one, it's just as deadly as a nuclear device.
Both will kill you.
But we understand that there are very strict use-of-force policies.
Those use-of-force policies can translate to equipment as well.
Okay, a couple other stories.
I have to make a big correction, by the way.
I'm just changing topics with a little lighter story.
Man, do I gotta eat crow?
Well, we're wrong.
We correct ourselves, right, Joe?
And he's like, what are you talking about?
I didn't discuss this with Armacost before the show.
And he's like, what is he talking about?
Man, did I gotta eat a big... Even though I called it, you're like, all right, get to the point.
Oh, I know where you're going.
I said Mayweather by TKO.
The Mayweather-McGregor fight was Saturday night.
My wife and I got it.
It was a great, great, great fight.
For those of you who missed it, it was a mixed martial arts fighter against a traditional boxer under boxing rules.
I said McGregor.
I love McGregor.
I really love mixed martial arts.
For those of you who know, I really enjoy fighting.
I said he was going to get smoked.
I said by TKO in the second round.
It was actually a TKO in the 10th round.
But, hey, Big Mea Culpa, for those of you who emailed me and said, McGregor's tougher in the boxing than you're giving him credit for, you're right.
And I called it wrong.
I said the distance was going to throw off McGregor because, Joe, boxing is different.
When you're a standard boxer, you've got to get in punching range.
Kicks and takedowns don't matter.
You don't have to worry about takedowns in a boxing match.
And I said that was going to screw up McGregor because he wasn't used to fighting in that in-close, hands-only rating show.
And what happened?
It screwed up Mayweather!
Mayweather was the one who couldn't figure out all the angles McGregor was taking.
McGregor was coming out of nowhere with punches and Mayweather was all screwed up.
So you guys were right, I was wrong, I'm never too proud to say that.
Okay, another story I saw getting back to policy, because this is important.
Hey, big brouhaha up in D.C.
right now over the potential tax cut package.
Folks, we need this.
Brett Bozell had a really amazing op-ed piece.
It's up at Drudge now.
Let me put that down, too.
Bozell.
I'll throw that in the show notes as well.
About the coming death of the Republican Party, folks, and I could not agree more.
We're in a world of trouble right now, okay?
Republicans ran, took our money, we knocked on doors for a long time under an immutable promise that they were going to repeal Obamacare.
Joe, can you think of a Republican Anywhere, even in Maryland, that didn't run on this.
I mean, even at the state level, where they had no power to do this, they were running on repealing Obamacare.
Of course it didn't happen.
Everybody.
Everybody ran on this, okay?
Now the tax argument's coming up.
To be clear about what I'm talking about, I'm talking about tax cuts.
Now you may say, which ones?
Well, here's the answer.
And I'll put a Bloomberg piece up at the show notes about this, too.
Nobody knows!
What are we talking about?
Are we talking about corporate tax cuts?
Are we talking about capital gains tax cuts?
Are we talking about income tax cuts?
Nobody knows.
And here's the problem up on the hill.
Is, of course, Republicans aren't unified.
They're more concerned with attacking Trump than they are with standing on any kind of principles right now.
God only knows why.
I don't know how they think this is going to benefit them electorally.
But here's the machinations going on behind the scenes that you need to be concerned about.
If they don't find a way through the scoring of these tax cut bill, whatever that bill may be, income tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, capital gains tax cuts show, if they don't find a way to make offsets, in other words, spending cuts, to make it, quote, deficit neutral, it's a scam, we know it's a scam, I get it, but those tax cuts would then have to expire outside of a 10-year window.
Now, folks, I would make the case to you, Congress is really concerned about this, Just do it.
If it expires in 10 years, just get it done.
Just go get it done at this point, ladies and gentlemen.
I mean, I would rather have a significant tax cut rolling that money back into the economy over 10 years and have the Democrats fight to hike taxes in a decade than to have nothing.
I get it.
I understand that this is a big concern.
We want these to be permanent.
Permanence is always better for businesses.
Permanence is always better for the private citizen, for planning purposes.
I get it.
But if you're going to put the Democrats on the spot in 10 years and make them support what is a de facto tax hike because a tax cut would have expired, then let them do it.
Joe, the money has to make its way back into the economy.
You understand there really is no other way right now to get this done.
Folks, we're in a lot of trouble, okay?
We're in a lot of trouble, economically speaking.
I'm not a stock market predictor here, but I've been worried for a long time about the evaluations of companies and the evaluations of the stock market.
I've said repeatedly, the Trump economic agenda, I think at this point, is a relatively solid one.
Excuse me, relatively good footing.
The problem I see now is if you get even a minor correction in the stock market, a two, three thousand point drop, we are going to have a political backlash like you haven't seen in a long time and Democrats and Republicans who are looking for any reason to jump ship are going to do so.
We can't have that.
We've got to get proactively out there now.
If it requires a 10-year window, just do it.
Once the money filters back in the economy, folks, this is going to make a real difference.
Think about what happens.
This is a critical point.
Both companies and people, you can do a couple of different things with your money.
You can consume it, you can invest it, or you can spend it.
Alright?
Once the tax cut filters its way back into the economy, think about a business.
What do they do with it?
If you had a corporate tax cut tomorrow, the bottom line is this, I mean, pun intended, money automatically shows up in the company's account that wasn't there before.
What are they going to do with it?
That's the only question you should be asking.
They can consume it, meaning they can take that money, spend it on, they can consume it on internal stuff, whatever it may be, Joe, investment, new product lines.
They can invest it somewhere else.
They could take the money and say, you know what?
Um, we don't really have, you know, Joe's making whatever new computers.
So Joe's computers isn't really working out right now.
We're having, it's a slow business season.
So I don't really have any pending investments.
So we're going to take our money.
We're going to invest in Bob's computers in a joint project, right?
So you can consume it, spend it internally.
You can invest it, or you can spend it.
You can spend it on dividends.
You could give it back to your shareholders.
You could spend it on your employees, which arguably could be the same thing as consumption of the money itself.
But either way, the money filters its way into the economy.
It's not burned.
This is an automatic bump up in consumption, investment, or spending.
Folks, the same thing happens with consumers when they get an income tax cut.
They can consume the money, they can go to the local Publix, they can go to the Walmart, they can go to the, whatever it may be, whatever local store, Dick's Sporting Goods, they can go buy a, they can go get a couple more haircuts.
This money filters its way through the economy.
They can also invest it.
They can invest it through stocks.
They can invest it through bonds and companies where, let's say Joe, you think, all right, I don't need consumption right now.
I don't need, you know, that, I saw the Gen 5 Glocks just came out.
I don't really need that right now.
I don't really need to buy, you know, more food, my food supply side, whatever it may be.
So I'm going to invest it somewhere else where I can get a return.
You could consumer invest it yourself, but the money filters its way out into the economy.
This is important.
This is what leads to economic growth and productivity enhancements.
This is absolutely a necessity right now.
And what's bothering me about this whole thing is we're sitting there, we're fidgeting around up in Congress, and nobody seems to know what to do.
They're afraid of the backlash.
They're afraid of loopholes.
The only loophole on the agenda, Joe, right now that they're looking at getting, the only tax they're looking at getting rid of is the state and local.
Exemption.
Which I think is a good thing because it makes state and local entities, it makes it easier to attack.
So what do I mean by that?
The one exemption there's pretty wide unanimity on is you don't have to pay taxes on money you've already paid to state and local entities.
So if you're in Maryland, the state Joe lives in, where people are taxed out the gills, that tax amount you paid to the state of Maryland or Anne Arundel County, whatever it may be, you can write that off on your tax bill to the federal government.
Well, all that does is make it cheaper for people to live in really, you know, deep blue states.
So I'm not for higher taxes, but I'm not for skewing the tax code either.
So that's the one thing that there's been pretty much unanimity on to get rid of that.
And of course, liberals are howling, even though this is a benefit that only really impacts Joe Rich liberals and blue states.
You know, you thought the liberals were in it for the little guy.
You know, of course, you're full of it.
They're not in it for the little guy.
They're in it for the, you know, their donors.
That's what they're really in it for.
So that's the only thing.
But folks, please, if anybody's listening, anyone knows a member of Congress, if you're a member of Congress, if you're a staffer, get it done.
If it requires 10 years, it's not ideal, but don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
If we get a downturn, you are going to be punished in these midterm elections.
I absolutely guarantee it.
Okay, one more story to get through.
It's a pretty interesting one.
But before we get to that, hey, have you signed up for CRTV yet?
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I got a really nice email about CRTV this week, and I appreciate it.
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Hey, here's one last story I saw, which is kind of off topic a little bit, but I really enjoy these when I see them because it applies to so many of us.
Did you see the story about coffee drinkers?
No.
This is our drudge today.
I'll wrap it up with this because I am a prolific coffee drinker.
My wife's Colombian.
She loves coffee.
Colombia is like the coffee capital of the universe.
Regular coffee drinkers had a two-third lower mortality rate.
than people who don't drink coffee.
And they think it's because of all the chemicals in coffee, polyphenols and antioxidants in coffee.
I just thought to myself, gosh, is this not a relief for people like me who guzzled down gallons of coffee every single day?
I mean, I really, really like it.
So now I feel a lot better about it.
But there was an alternate story about people who eat a lot of salt being prone to more heart attacks.
I was like, damn, because I wolfed down that adobo like it's going out of style and it's got a lot of salt in it.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for all the reviews at iTunes.
I appreciate it.
We're up to almost 390 reviews.
If you want to go there and view the podcast, it means a lot to me.
And subscribe to my email list at bongino.com.
I'll see you all tomorrow.
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