In this episode: Media ghouls never miss an opportunity to politicize a tragedy. http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/08/msm-climate-change-ghouls-feasting-on-harvey/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29 Here's how much more in taxes your family is paying and we're still in massive debt. https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/bls-average-family-tax-bill-increased-411-4-years The economy is growing again, thanks to strong investment numbers. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/30/us-revised-second-quarter-gdp.html The National Flood Insurance Program doesn't work, here's why. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/reforming-national-flood-insurance-program-toward-private-flood#full What the heck is going on at the FBI? http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-fbi-fights-public-release-of-trump-dossier-info/article/2633048 Dem congressman Adam Schiff humiliates himself, again. https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2017/08/30/rosie-odonnell-anne-rice-are-big-supporters-of-rep-schiffs-proposal-for-trump-secret-service-detail/
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Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
Where did that go?
The Dan Bongino Show.
It's time we take off the gloves, okay?
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
Right now, we have a party that supports American values, and then there is a party that represents everything America isn't.
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?
I'm doing okay, Dan.
Good to be here.
Yeah, some traffic problems there.
I get that at a morning show.
Hey, one quick note on yesterday's show.
Thank you to Shannon for the great email, who apparently is terrified of blood tests, just like I am.
So I'm not alone in the world.
I had said yesterday I had to get a blood test.
I see it right there, a little hole in my arm.
And she was terrified, too.
She's like, I thought I was the only one.
Well, so did I. So we're both together on that, Shannon.
So thank you for the email.
Hey, a lot to talk about today.
I did an appearance last night on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox, which I really enjoyed, and the appearance was about looting during Hurricane Harvey.
Sadly, although we've seen the best of America in many cases, Joe, I mean, you know, the media wants us to believe we're all at each other's throats, of course, because the media are liberals, and liberals thrive off division, and that's what they do.
You know, the media loves identity politics.
You know, you go to your corner, you go to your corner, one, two, three, fight!
That's what they do.
I mean, that's what the media does because they're liberals and they don't have anything else.
But the videos coming out of Texas have been heartwarming in the overwhelming majority of cases.
People out there helping.
I mean, does anyone say, hey, let me see your voter registration card.
Are you a Democrat?
Libertarian?
What do you got there for us?
Obviously, none of that's happening.
Well, you know, the media can't have that.
They can't.
They have to gin up controversy.
They have to fabricate an anti-Trump narrative.
They have to make you believe America is a land of wretched people.
We're evil, wretched capitalists and we're taking everything from everyone else and we all need to be punished.
So last night, unfortunately, there is a story coming out of Texas that's been bothering a lot of people, me included.
There's been some isolated incidents but enough incidents to report of looting.
And I went on yesterday and talked about how this is culture rot, I mean, amongst a lot of folks who decide to do this.
I mean, how, I think I used the term, what kind of certifiable savage man-beast, I'm pretty sure that was the term, do you have to be to steal from people undergoing an epic human tragedy of seriously biblical proportions at this point?
Flooding like we've never seen in the United States, Joe.
What kind of an animal do you have to be to engage in that?
The media doesn't want that narrative, Joe!
God forbid we call out evildoers.
Now, what's the genesis of this?
There was a network news reporter, a guy named Tom Yamas, who was out there reporting on the flood and he saw looting and he tweeted out something the effect of and he said on the air that they were going to notify the law enforcement about the looting.
Okay?
Like a totally, completely, non-controversial, amongst normal people here, a non-controversial statement.
You have to see this guy's Twitter feed.
All of the upper crust limousine liberals attacking this guy.
What are you, a rat?
What are you, ratting people out?
It's so ridiculous.
So I went on last night to talk about it.
Justin Barragona from Mediaite came after us this morning like, these guys did a segment on looting on Tucker's show last night.
All right, well what do you guys want to talk about?
Let's pick some of the narratives from the last couple days, Joe.
We have a couple doozies.
We had, of course, the epic scandal of Melania Trump's shoes as she left the White House, right?
She was wearing high heels on the White House grounds.
Not in the hurricane zone where she had sneakers on, but she entered into Marine One on the White House grounds with high heels on.
That was a huge scale.
Of course, how did that fit the media narrative?
They wanted to paint the Trumps as out-of-touch elitists.
Remember, it's not about the facts to the hacks in the media, Joe.
It has nothing to do with facts.
It has everything to do with the narrative.
The narrative matters most.
The narrative there is, let's paint the Trumps as out of touch.
Despite the fact that she clearly went on the Hilo NA Air Force One with a change of clothes for the hurricane zone.
But don't let that get in the way of your silly story.
Remember what I told you about gaslighting, folks?
It's important.
I can't say this enough.
The media loves to gaslight.
Forget the media and facts.
They're not related.
The modern media and facts and data have nothing to do with one another.
They are into gaslighting.
Gaslighting is when you tell a story.
A false story.
In this case, a false narrative.
That, oh, Melania Trump's a total elitist.
She had high heels on coming off the White House grounds.
You repeat it over and over, and you isolate people from the truth.
It's a way to get people to believe in an alternate reality that doesn't exist.
They're doing the same thing with the climate change narrative.
Well, we'll play an ensemble for you tomorrow, Joe.
We grabbed off Graby, but Joe and I have.
But of the media, obsessed with another narrative.
So narrative number one, Melania Trump's an elitist.
Trump's are out of touch.
Narrative number two is the hurricane is all the fault of climate change, despite the fact that we haven't had a major storm or hurricane make landfall in the United States of this caliber for 12 years.
Don't let that get in the way, again, of your gas-lit false narrative.
Your false narrative of climate change did it.
But it only did it now.
It hasn't been doing it for 12 years.
It just started right now.
So once you change the narrative, like we did last night in the Tucker show, just temporarily to bring attention to a pressing matter, Joe, looting, which is a very serious thing, you have people looting cash registers, looting stores, the media went nuts and this guy Barragona made a point about that.
I have a legal insurrection piece today as well about this, how the media is obsessed with the climate change narrative despite no evidence whatsoever that they can relate the two.
They're obsessed with it.
I mean, it's really scary how they will never get away from their gaslighting.
That's all they do.
I'll put it in the show notes.
Always available at Bongino.com.
And if you subscribe to my email list, I will send you the notes every day.
I'll send you the notes and some articles of interest that I go and dig out.
Thanks, everyone.
Join us on Facebook Live today, too.
I really appreciate it.
All right, I have another story I want to get to because it's important.
This one has just kind of gone berserk.
Of course, yesterday, as I'd mentioned on yesterday's show, Trump went out to Missouri and gave a speech on tax cuts and liberals are losing their minds.
They're losing their minds.
They're going to go back to the standard old gimmies that they've done for years, that this is going to be all for the rich and tax cuts don't work and they have no evidence.
Let me tell you why I wanted to discuss this today.
And, you know, it's really got me a little bit fired up.
So I go on Facebook once in a while and I have a page, I don't know what you call them, like a fan page, I guess, where you can just like it.
It's not like friend and I friend you.
Anybody can like it and anybody can go on and comment.
I don't have a personal page, but my wife does.
So once in a while, since we share kind of the same account, I'll go on and I'll look at her Facebook and I have old friends on there and last night I was looking and I saw one of my old friends from Maryland that quoted me on tax cuts and I made a very simple point that no liberal has ever been able to challenge me on and still can't and they're really not interested because they run from the question.
I said to believe that tax cuts Joe don't work requires you fundamentally to believe that the government can spend your money better than you can.
That's just I mean it's just a simple statement it's almost tautological.
If your insistence as a liberal is on this premise that tax cuts don't work, then why would a tax cut not work?
Because you're giving people back more of their own money.
Well, because logically, if you're into that kind of stuff, which most liberals sadly aren't, then you have to believe that by taking their money, you could do something better with it.
I mean, Joe, is anything I'm saying unreasonable?
No, no.
If your premise as a liberal is that tax cuts don't work, the next question should be why?
Well, we're giving people back more of their money.
Well, if your premise is they don't work, it's because you think you can do something better with it as a government official.
It's an absurd premise.
It's ridiculous.
It's refuted by psychology.
It's refuted by common sense.
It's refuted by incentive-based economics.
It's refuted by evidence, facts, and data.
It makes absolutely no sense that you think another person could spend the money you earn better than you could spend it on yourself.
It's an outrageous premise.
They go nuts.
They go crazy.
The libs can't have any, so they have to lie and they have to gaslight.
Don't ever forget the gaslighting.
The narrative for years in the liberal media has always been tax cuts don't work and they will always benefit the rich.
It's not true.
It's inaccurate.
There are mounds of data proving otherwise.
Stephen Moore has done Yeoman's work.
Stephen Moore used to be at Heritage.
He may be back at Heritage now.
He used to write for the Washington Times.
But Stephen Moore has done epic work showing that large-scale income tax cuts, under those scenarios, the rich, the wealthy, actually pay more, not only in gross sums, But as a percentage of the total tax loan.
Liberals, don't let that get in the way of your narrative though.
Again, I know you're committed to the lie.
Your life is a lie.
Everything you believe in is a lie.
So don't let this disrupt your entire worldview.
So, a friend of mine reposted that tweet I wrote about how it would require other people to believe that other people can spend your money better than you can.
And some knucklehead, bonehead dude replies, you know, what does Dan Bongino know about economics?
Well, listen, I'm not going to get into academic bona fides because it's just stupid.
You know, whatever.
If you don't know what I've studied in economics and where I've been to school, it's fine.
I don't really care.
I gotta spend it because he never provides any evidence that what I said is false.
And this is what liberals do all the time.
They come back at you with an ad hominem attack or an attack based on cherry-picked data.
And there's a couple things that I wanted to point out about this.
Just, I mean, common sense stuff.
What is the incentive?
If your very premise is that the government can effectively spend your money better than you can because tax cuts quote don't work.
Liberals are basing this on the premise that people are flawed and will make flawed economic decisions for themselves.
Joe, that's a pretty simple idea, right?
So put yourself in a liberal's shoes for a minute.
Their idea is that the government, bureaucrats and elected officials, that these people will make better decisions than regular average middle-class Americans because average middle-class Americans don't have the economic knowledge and don't have the substance to make economic decisions for themselves.
Yes.
But if your whole premise is based on the fact that people are flawed, then why would other people in the government who never actually own the money not be more flawed and make even worse decisions with that money?
Do you see how this logically doesn't follow?
What do you know about economics?
Exactly, what do I know?
I mean, it's only been my entire life, but it doesn't matter.
I mean, you know, because then you get into this, well, I have this degree.
And it's just, it sounds dumb because, you know, we could argue all day about who has academic bona fides and who doesn't.
But academic bona fides do not permit you to say stupid things and get away with it, okay?
You can't explain to me why another human being has an incentive to spend your money better than you can.
Friedman summed this up best.
I've said this over and over and over again, Milton Friedman.
If you can explain to me how government, which takes other people's money and spends it on other people, has any incentive to control cost or quality, and I shouldn't say any, has an incentive greater than an individual to control cost and quality, who spends their own money on themselves, I'm open to hear it.
But you can't because it doesn't make sense.
When you earn your own money, the cost of the product you're buying matters.
So does the quality.
You're buying a product for yourself.
When other people spend other people's money and other people taxing and spending in the government, they're taking other people's money and they're buying other people's stuff.
The cost or quality never matter.
You can never ever reconcile that.
Ever.
There is no logical leap you can make when you're talking about tax cuts and growing government and tax hikes.
There's no logical leap as a liberal you can make to make that make sense.
There is never going to be an incentive for a third party to spend your money better than you.
They can't fix that.
Now, due to the Constitution and due to some... There are always going to be some pitfalls in a free market.
You know, it would be impossible to have a mercenary military army.
The incentives would be all wrong.
So we agree to things like a court system financed by the government and a military financed by the government, but we understand as conservatives and libertarians the entire time that that doesn't mean the spending on these items is efficient at all.
I'm not suggesting to you that because we have a military funded by taxpayer dollars and a court system, that the spending's done well and that the cost and quality problem goes away.
It doesn't.
We're just insisting that the cost and quality problems are overridden by a desire to keep the military and court system out of private hands because the incentives are all wrong.
What are you going to do?
You're going to pay people on the number of convictions, on the number of countries we go to war with?
The incentives are wrong.
But that doesn't make the cost and quality problem go away.
So again, explain to me, a liberal, anyone, email me, daniel.bongino.com, email me, I read them all.
If you're a liberal and you can explain, don't cuss me out in an email, you can, I just delete them, but if you have a reasonable explanation as to how a government official can overcome the cost and quality problem, another person taking your money to spend it on another person rather than you spending it on yourself, I'm open to hearing how tax cuts don't work.
Other than that, you've never overcome the major ideological leap and you hide under the cover of faux intellectualism.
I have a degree in economics and I'm telling you tax cuts are horrible.
Okay, do you care to expound on that using logic?
I don't need logic.
I have a sheepskin diploma.
Okay, thank you.
Have a nice day.
This is what they do.
Now, I saw a story on Drudge today, which I will put in the show notes.
Make sure you go there and check it out because it's an interesting one.
CNS News, now the tax load in the United States for the average American family unit, Joe, is now larger than you pay for food and clothing combined.
Now, food and clothing, I mean, not like those are actual necessities or anything, being obviously facetious here, but CNS reports, just again to show you how ridiculous liberals are on the tax issue and how wrong they are.
Reagan cut taxes, tax revenue went up.
JFK cut taxes.
Tax revenue went up.
Bill Clinton cut the capital gains tax rate.
Tax revenue went up.
All because of a growing economy.
George W. Bush cut taxes.
The income tax rate.
Tax revenue went up.
These are only complicated facts for libs, but here's an interesting data point from the CNS piece.
Between 2013 and 2016, the average tax bill for Americans, Joe, has risen 41.3%.
So, Again, based on the liberal premise that, quote, tax cuts don't work, the tax load for average American working families has gone up by over 40 percent.
You would think, Joe, at that point that the economy, if you believe that, oh, tax, you know, tax hikes, if you believe tax cuts don't work, that means you believe higher taxes are better.
That's just a logical continuance of what you're saying.
So if taxes are so wonderful, how come as the tax load's gone up, we're struggling in one of the worst recoveries from a recession in American history?
Again, don't let logic get in the way of your stupid arguments.
Now, we spend more on taxes, the average American working unit, family unit, than they do on food and clothing.
The average American there spends $10,489 federal, state, and local taxes.
Food and clothing, only $9,000.
$89 federal state and local taxes food and clothing only $9,000, but Joe amazingly
We're still 20 trillion dollars in debt Do you understand how all of your arguments collapse when
you get out of your intellectual foe into your fake?
Intellectual bubble and you look at things and you finally see the forest for the trees
Your premise that tax cuts don't work and won't lead to economic growth is nonsense.
Obama hiked taxes, the tax load's gone up dramatically since 2013, and we are still struggling from one of the worst recoveries from a recession in modern American history.
That's a fact.
Whether you choose to believe it or not, to me, is absolutely unequivocally irrelevant.
Your fake sheepskin diploma or your pseudo-intellectualism does not reconcile the false logic you're using.
Tax hikes?
Bad recovery.
Now, your other argument, oh, we need these tax hikes, we gotta pay down our debt, who's gonna pay for the debt?
We've hiked taxes 40% on American family units.
Up $10,000, more than food and clothing combined.
Only $9,000 for food and clothing.
And you know what, Joe?
The debt and the deficit has gone up every single year.
We owe $20 trillion.
Literally nothing you're telling the American people about taxes is true.
You're just making it up.
You're making the entire thing up.
Oh man, it's upsetting.
This guy last night, I try to stay off Facebook, the personal page, for that reason, because I'll be honest with you folks, there are a lot of haters out there.
They're not particularly knowledgeable about the subject matter.
They get overtaken by emotion.
I'm an emotional guy, there's no doubt about that.
But they don't want to argue on the facts and data.
And when you say things to them that are factually correct, when you say things such as, You know, Ronald Reagan cut taxes from 70% to 28% on the high end of the income scale, and tax revenue jumped, the rich paid more, and the economy grew at 6%, 5%, and 4%.
They go, well, you're just a jerk.
And you're like, are you going to refute anything I said, or are you going to jump to, like, silly kindergarten-based attacks?
Listen, I'm emotional, too, about it.
I get it.
I get comments about it all the time.
But unlike, you know, liberals, I'm emotional based on a data set I know is authentic.
Whether you challenge it or not, it really speaks to your own stupidity.
There's nothing to do with me.
No, that didn't happen.
Oh, okay.
It didn't happen.
All right.
Go to the U.S.
government's own data sets.
What do you think?
They're lying to you too?
I mean, it's just sick stuff.
All right.
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All right.
Another story I wanted to address here.
There's been a controversy brewing about the National Flood Insurance Program.
Folks, this is a big deal because, again, it speaks to the You know, I know it's a sensitive time, and I get this.
I 100% get that it is, you know, sometimes, although I'm a passionate believer in economics, I'm with you 100% that there are times where conversations are appropriate, times when they aren't.
So I waited a few days to discuss this, but it's an important topic to talk about right now, because the flood insurance program is, one, widely misunderstood, and it's going bankrupt.
And sadly, it's in times of tragedy when we see it in front of our faces that we have to start looking and saying, well, how can we prevent this in the future?
Well, what's going on right now?
What's the controversy brewing with the National Flood Insurance Program?
This is a program administered by the federal government.
I was making some points about insurance the other day, and I was talking about the general point that I was trying to make was that in the end, when you don't appropriately price risk, which the National Flood Insurance Program Doesn't.
Ultimately, taxpayers wind up paying the bill.
Now, here are some problems which are going on with the program now, Joe.
Here's some data points, and this is from a Cato research piece that was sent to me by our friend Jim, who emails the show a lot.
Really good piece.
I think it's an old, it may be an older piece, I may be wrong, but I could have sworn I read this piece before, but it's a really good one nonetheless.
Here are some points.
The flood insurance program is administered by the federal government.
Here are the problems with it.
Folks, 15 to 20% of the policyholders right now receiving, this is a quote from the piece, are receiving an explicit subsidy, saving them 60 to 65% on their premiums.
Meaning what?
This is important, folks.
If you live in a flood zone, you are not paying, you, the actual homeowner, are not paying for the actual risk that you're insuring against.
Now, that money doesn't disappear.
In other words, somebody's paying.
If you live in a home, we'll use simple numbers here, it's not how actuarially this works, but let's just say your home is, in 10 years, 50% likely to flood and cause a certain amount of monetary damages.
If you're not paying the premium to cover those damages, and you're only paying 40% of that premium, and the home in fact floods like the risk chart said it might, The money doesn't go anywhere, Joe.
The money can't be fabricated by the money fairy.
The home has to be rebuilt.
You had the insurance, and somebody is paying the bill.
And who is that person right now?
It's the American taxpayer.
Now, before... Guys, I want to be clear on this, too.
I cover topics on the show that don't help me personally at all.
I live in Florida, okay?
I have flood insurance.
I am telling you in a full disclosure moment, I am probably one of these people benefiting from these low premiums.
And to be candid, I don't pay more.
I don't pay more because I don't even know what the risk is.
I mean, it's not that I'm trying to get over on the taxpayer.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
I don't know what the premium should be.
I'm not an insurance adjuster.
I have no idea.
I am benefiting.
I'm telling you that to put that out there right now.
100% disclosure on this.
I don't want to benefit from it.
I don't want you, in wherever you are, Wisconsin, in California, I don't want you to pay for my house!
Now, what's going on in Houston right now is just, like, biblical.
I mean, I don't even think the risk adjusters had any idea, based on historical evidence, that this was gonna happen.
This is one of those, like, once-in-a-lifetime, sadly tragic moments that I don't even think the best insurance companies could have planned for.
But the National Flood Insurance Program, you can't charge people less for a house to insure the house than it would cost to replace the house or replace the products in the house because somebody's eventually going to have to pay!
Those insurance obligations are going to have to be met, and who's paying now is you.
Now, here's another thing the National Flood Insurance Program does.
So first, they undercharge people for premiums and risk, which is a big problem.
Ultimately, we're paying.
Secondly, Their full risk policies, Joe, what they call full risk policies don't include loading charges.
Now, loading charges, now I'm not an insurance adjuster, I'm just reading what's in the piece here and putting the information out to you because I think it's important you know it.
A loading charge is similar to a charge that allows these insurance companies to build up a capital buffer in the event of a catastrophic incident such as this in Houston where a lot of the risk models will fail.
So a loading charge would be like an extra fee so they can build out kind of a bank vault of money to pay out claims in the event of a major disaster.
Well, these full risk policies that the National Flood Insurance Program does, it doesn't charge people these loading charges, which other insurance companies would.
So again, the money doesn't go anywhere and the payouts don't go anywhere.
The payouts are just simply made by the taxpayers.
Here's one more thing.
A damning kind of indictment of how the federal government does not have the incentives of private industry to do things the right way.
The federal government managing this program does kind of an aggregate risk model, Joe, where they don't take in what they call property-level nuances.
You're like, what the heck does all that mean?
Well, I'll give you a quick example.
By aggregating the risk of a neighborhood rather than going down to the property level, which insurance companies do in the free market, Joe, because the data makes a big difference, what happens?
You wind up having people underpaying in some cases and overpaying in others.
Now, I was thinking of an example, because examples always matter, and I remember when I lived in Severna Park, Maryland.
Great neighborhood.
I lived in Stewart's Landing, and I lived on one corner, and my neighbor lived on, obviously, on the other corner, on the other side of the street.
But when you had heavy rains, her basement would flood a lot.
Ours never did, even though we were right off the Severn River.
We were right there.
I mean, Old Man Creek off the Severn River, but we were right there.
Now, why is that?
Well, because my house was on an elevation.
It was at, like, the top, the peak of the hill, and hers was at the bottom.
Now, if you're aggregating risk, Joe, I'm paying a higher premium, and she's paying a lower premium, because she's going to make a claim eventually, and I'm not.
Now, private insurance companies have figured that out a long time ago.
The federal government, of course, because it doesn't have a cost or quality incentive ever, Can't figure that out.
So some people are unfairly being charged more while others are being charged less because they don't do, quote, property level nuances.
Again, why do private companies do it, Joe?
Because they have an incentive to charge people the right price!
Free market companies do that.
They don't want to lose a customer.
They don't want to lose my neighbor or me who's overpaying and then undercharge the neighbor and then have to pay out massive amounts later.
All faults of the federal government because they can't match the cost and quality problem I discussed talking about taxes in the beginning.
I like to interrelate these points in my show to make it all make sense to you.
There's no incentive for the federal government to provide cost or quality.
Now what has this all led to?
Because I did say to you, Joe, correctly so, the money doesn't go anywhere.
The money's not fabricated by the money fairy.
If they're undercharging people, and these people have insurance policies, someone's paying, and that person's you.
The National Flood Insurance Program currently owes the United States Treasury $25 billion.
$25 billion.
You can expect that to likely double, if not triple, after what's going on in Houston.
Now, folks, I get it.
Listen, again, what happened in Houston is a biblical-level tragedy we haven't seen.
The models have been thrown out the window.
But I'm just recommending going forward, because I have flood insurance and I'm not in a formal flood zone.
I don't have to buy it, in other words.
But gosh, insure your homes.
You know, this stuff matters.
Insure your homes.
Get out there if you think it's even a remote possibility.
And please, lobby your lawmakers.
Talk to your law... That's a bad word, actually.
We don't mean formally lobby.
But talk to your lawmakers and get them to fix this program.
We need to turn it over to free market forces.
Because we're all paying!
Let's stop acting like we're not paying.
Oh, the federal government.
And I'm benefiting.
If my insurance premium goes up because of it, you know what?
That's fine.
I don't want you to pay.
I got an email from a guy yesterday in Romania.
We have a listener in Romania, Joe.
Big shout out to our Romanian friend if you're on Facebook.
It was a great email.
He's like, maybe you're only one.
I don't know.
I haven't checked the analytics lately.
Probably not, but we'll check.
But, you know, I don't want my Romanian friend when he comes to the United States paying tax dollars to pay for my house.
It's not fair.
Markets matter, freedom matters, and so does economic sensibility in the future.
We go bankrupt, we're not going to be able to help the people in Houston.
This program's just not working.
Alright, today's show also brought to you by our friends at Patriot Supply.
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Alright, a couple more stories I saw.
This one's hysterical, and we want to talk about a story in our Wheelhouse show.
You know Adam Schiff, that congressman from California?
I really can't stand this guy.
He is the guy who was pushing the fake Trump-Russia fairytale X-Files story.
Well, he just introduced the bill, and again, the bill speaks to just blatant liberal hypocrisy everywhere.
The common sense never slams them in the face like it hits you and I in the face, right?
Adam Schiff is introducing this bill to prohibit the Secret Service, where I used to work, from making payments!
To any Trump entity, like for rent or anything else like that, you know what?
Alright.
I get it.
I mean, I'm a small government guy.
You know, I understand if the motivation was pure why he'd be doing this.
But it's not.
His motivation isn't pure.
Because what does he conveniently leave out?
Or I haven't seen it in a bill yet.
If you can prove me wrong, let me know.
Vice President Joe Biden.
Joe was collecting $2,200 a month in rental fees from the Secret Service for renting his cottage on his Wilmington, Delaware property.
Oh!
Oh!
Oh, little problem there, Daddy-O!
What about that one?
You know, because it's not principled to this guy.
He just wants to go after Trump.
Now, you can't pay Trump.
Now, let me tell you, by the way, why this is totally ridiculous and not feasible.
The taxpayer pays for protection of the President of the United States and the Vice President.
Folks, I get it.
I'm a small government guy.
I totally understand.
And if his motivations were pure for doing this, I would say, okay, let's entertain it.
They're not.
Adam Schiff's a clown.
He's a con man.
He lied to you about the Trump-Russia thing.
He keeps lying to you.
He's just not a good guy.
He's just doing this to try and raise money or make a sick political point.
Because he doesn't include Joe Biden or any Democrat in this.
It's just Trump he's going after.
Folks, it's not feasible.
It's not.
Because you have business interests then getting in the way of what all Americans can agree, regardless of your party, Joe.
Most sensible ones.
The President of the United States needs to be protected and safe and secure to do the job of being the President.
What would happen if we did that?
Well, I can assure you, maybe with Trump, maybe with someone else, what would wind up happening is if these Trump entities, and some of the smaller entities to stay solvent or whatever, might say, okay, well, can you guys move out of that place and move into this place instead?
And then can you go out here and go out there?
I mean, you can't have those kinds of interests.
Now, I'm not suggesting an open-ended checkbook or ridiculous payments should be made to protect these who would profiteer.
And I'm not suggesting either that Trump's doing that.
I don't think he's doing that at all.
But to kick the Secret Service off the Biden property, because let's say the Bidens needed that money or needed that revenue or whatever it may be, to kick the Secret Service off that property out of its pure economic interest, I think it's just ridiculous.
Okay, folks?
I mean, that's my opinion.
Call me out on it.
Challenge me on it.
That's fine.
But they're only going after Trump.
That's it.
They're only going after Trump.
I've made this point before when Obama was in office, too.
When they get out of office, I agree.
We should curtail expenses.
No doubt about it.
But when these guys are the president or vice president of the United States or women in the future, it's a dangerous world.
I've seen the threat stream.
I worked in the Secret Service for 12 years.
Making a decision based on, well, we're paying this guy $2,000 in rent a month.
Really?
Do we really want to go there?
You really want to put the President of the United States and his family in danger, whether it's Trump or otherwise, because you want to make a political point?
I mean, Schiff's just a clown.
That's just clownery in the worst kind of way.
All right.
This is one last story today, which I'm really... Gosh, I'm having a tough time with this one.
Let me just say before we get to it that I have always had a really deep and profound respect for the FBI.
I applied to the FBI before the Secret Service and it's a multi-stage process.
It's like stage one, stage two, stage three.
And I think I got to stage one and the Secret Service called and I just never went forward with it after that because I took the job as a Secret Service agent.
But I've worked with the FBI a lot, and these guys are just, and women over there, really terrific.
I mean, they're really smart.
They've got their heads on straight.
But I gotta tell you, something's going on with the management over there that, candidly, Joe, I can't figure out.
So there's two stories I saw about the FBI that really should disturb you, folks.
Here's the first story, and I think I hinted at this.
I may have on yesterday's show.
I'm not sure.
You binge listeners will catch me on this one.
We have people binge listen, right?
So you heard it 15 minutes ago, whatever.
They're not releasing or not pursuing anymore this interest in the Hillary Clinton email scandal, this fiasco, because they said in a release that there's a lack of public interest.
So I'm pretty sure I brought this up, but really?
I mean, if I'm looking for an independent arbiter of justice as an investigative arm of the U.S.
government, what the FBI is and is supposed to be, Then who's the manager making the call?
What are we doing?
We licking our finger and taking polling data now, seeing which direction the wind is blowing before we pursue criminal cases?
Folks, that's not justice.
That's not justice being blind either.
That's justice acting as a paid pollster for the Democrat Party.
There's no public interest.
There's a public interest in public officials potentially committing federal crimes, which Mrs. Clinton and her team may have in fact done.
That's the public interest.
But that story, that was a couple days ago.
The story I saw today is just even worse.
Byron York has an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner.
It's a must-read.
Again, I'll put it in the show notes.
Available at Bongino.com.
Subscribe to my email list.
I'll email it to you.
Tom Fitton, who does incredible work over at Judicial Watch.
I know you guys have had him on the morning show there, Joe, at CBM.
Yeah.
They are putting in a Freedom of Information Act request and asking the FBI to disclose their relationship between a guy named Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS.
Why the heck does any of that matter to you?
Why should you care?
Well, Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele are the two entities that produced the infamous Trump dossier, the fake news document, the ridiculous piece of garbage, totally unverified, quote, salacious unverified, you know, according to some of these people out there who publish this crap, about Trump and some...
Sexual activities, he engages in, you know, it's a family show.
It's all garbage.
Bottom line, it was all a lie.
The dossier was made up, and it was made up to hurt Trump.
It's fake.
It's beyond fake news.
It's fake, fake news.
So, the problem with this is the company that produced it, or paid to produce it, Fusion GPS, used this guy Christopher Steele to do it.
There are some allegations out there that the FBI was working with Steele and Fusion GPS to get this document, get the information from this document.
Folks, these are very credible and serious allegations to be made.
I wouldn't bring them up on the show.
You can read York's piece.
It's a little more descriptive.
But having been a federal agent, once we start getting into this kind of stuff, you all should be shaking in your boots on this.
I mean liberals, conservatives, anyone.
Are we really doing this now?
We're paying investigative law enforcement agencies in arms of the federal government with the power to take your life and take your freedom.
They're paying political operative outfits to go seek salacious fake information on a presidential candidate?
Ladies and gentlemen, this is like, you know, this is like third world stuff.
Now, why is it a story?
It's a story because Fitton's Freedom of Information Act request on the FBI's dealings with Steele and Fusion GPS, they're not providing it!
They're saying, Joe, well, providing any information at all would confirm the existence of an investigation into this Trump-Russia thing.
Wait, what?
They've already done that!
They've already done that.
Jim Comey was up on Capitol Hill and already confirmed the investigation.
He already confirmed the existence.
Of the counterintelligence.
Remember that, Joe?
It was, what, two months ago or so?
We covered it.
It was on the show.
We were taping as it was going on.
He already confirmed it.
So your excuse that, oh, we can't provide our information of our dealings with these people because it would disclose an investigation.
What?
An investigation has already been disclosed?
That makes literally no sense at all.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's something going on here.
And this is not meant to disparage the incredible men and women of the FBI.
I'm telling you, I work with them.
They are stellar.
And that's an understatement.
But there is someone in the management, either at DOJ or the FBI, that has something very serious to hide here.
And you deserve, as the American people who are funding this operation, to find out what the hell is going on.
To have this arm, investigative arm, of our government financing a potential political hit job?
Incredible.
Hey, by the way, for those on Facebook Live, I ask you who Joe is.
Joe is a producer.
You can listen on my podcast if you want to hear Joe's commentary.
I put the links to iHeart and the iTunes on my... I'll put it in the comments section when I'm done, but if you want to hear Joe's commentary, you can do that.
I'll put the links up.
I get that on the Facebook Live a lot.
Who's Joe?
We're working on a way to get Joe's commentary to the Facebook Live too, but I just want to get that out there.
All right.
Well, that's the show for today, folks.
I really appreciate it.
Again, if you want my newsletter, go to bongino.com, hit subscribe to my email list.
I'll send you the link to the podcast, and you can listen at conservativereview.com, and I'll send you the show notes every day.
And thank you to everyone who reviewed my show at iTunes.
We're well over 400 reviews now.
I read all of them yesterday.
Not all 400.
I only had to read about 50, because I'd read up to 350.
And thank you for some of the unbelievably kind words.
