In this episode - Was Trump right the entire time about the "wiretaps," and does the media owe Mark Levin a huge apology? http://fb.me/8Zlcspi9K Liberals are losing their minds over an op-ed piece promoting hard work and family values. https://www.wsj.com/articles/higher-eds-latest-taboo-is-bourgeois-norms-1505774818 The Secret Service is collapsing because of inept politicians and poor management, if we don't fix it soon someone is going to get hurt, or worse. https://shar.es/1VrXhD You should be very concerned about this Fed policy and its impact on your wallet. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-18/wall-street-s-bond-gurus-have-it-all-wrong-as-qe-unwind-looms Why are illegal immigrants shouting down Democrats? This is a really bad strategy. http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/09/19/nancy-pelosi-confronted-dreamers-over-daca-deal-trump-dan-bongino-reacts Sponsor Links: www.BrickhouseNutrition.com/Dan www.PreparewithDan.com
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We have to call it what it is and we have to stop being delicate about it.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
We're not like the leftists.
The conservatives don't need safe spaces.
They don't need lollipops and coloring books and teddy bears.
I'm good, okay?
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 fine on this National Talk Like a Pirate's Day there, Daddy.
Oh my gosh.
I could see that people wanting to jump off the top of their roof if National Talk Like a Pirate Day really took off and gained momentum, you know?
I know.
I really, after about five minutes of that, I'd be like, oh.
No more.
I promise.
Yeah.
National Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Who thought of that one?
I don't know.
Man.
I don't even know where to start because there's so much material today, so I had a number of the stuff, a number of my stories, so we get to it.
But before we start, yesterday I promised you that I would get this clip of Ben Shapiro absolutely annihilating a, you know, goofy liberal at the speech at Berkeley.
And just to recap a bit from yesterday, The liberal asked a question that destroyed liberalism in the course of the liberal asking the question and the liberal wasn't smart enough to even figure it out.
He basically was attacking Ben Shapiro for not having a PhD in sociology or psychology and commenting on social issues of the day.
In other words, so his premise is Shapiro's not smart enough to have an opinion on social issues.
Although the liberal doesn't realize of course if you listen to yesterday's show that the entire premise of his question Destroys liberalism altogether.
Ben Shapiro is a Harvard-trained lawyer, by the way.
He's not smart enough to have opinions on political issues, but liberals can run the entire government.
Healthcare, businesses, banking, everything.
It's just a joke.
So here's the cut.
Listen, the guy opens up.
The sound's a little tough to get, but thanks to all the listeners who emailed me with this clip.
I really appreciate it.
I think Tyler sent it over to me, so I appreciate that.
that.
So what is your formal education background?
All right, play the cut.
Because I guess a lot of people don't know what your undergraduate degree was in.
So I was at UCLA in political science and then Harvard Law School.
Okay.
So you don't have, you wouldn't consider yourself a law student?
I mean, I don't consider sociology a particularly expert field, but go ahead.
I think I'm able to read a sociological study.
There are lots of fields of study.
(laughing)
So I know a lot less about welding than I do about sociology.
[LAUGHTER]
What I'm getting at is that you're not considered an expert in sociology, psychology, gender
studies, lesbian dance theory, many of these things that you've brought up tonight.
I know a lot more about all those others than lesbian dance theory.
If you want to take issue with the argument, I would urge you not to use the argument from authority, which is somebody has a PhD by their name, they know what they're talking about.
That's a dumb argument.
Okay.
Remember the tyranny of experts?
I've discussed this before in the past.
Oh yeah.
Folks, never ever buy into the tyranny of so-called experts.
In other words, what Shapiro said is absolutely correct and hat tip to him for saying it.
Because someone has a PhD behind their name does not give them the right to declare that facts are therefore not facts and data because you have a PhD.
And the example I give all the time that some of you are tired of, some of you not, is the Bill Clinton surplus.
I can't tell you how many PhD economists who are liberal will tell you that Bill Clinton ran a surplus when he was the President of the United States, a government surplus he presided over, when in fact no such surplus exists because the national debt rose every single year of the Bill Clinton presidency.
This is just the left.
The guy, the liberal, asking this dopey question.
Again, I don't mean to recap yesterday's show again, but this is important.
The question was critical.
The question exposes the left for what it is.
You have no right to an opinion unless you have a PhD and yet the guy's entire opinion is that people who are elected into government office without said PhD should be running every single aspect of your life including the local congressman who may have been whatever.
He may have been a business executive in pharmaceuticals who's now presiding over banking policy.
Right.
He has no PhD in either, by the way.
So liberalism, it's just full of dopes, but don't let that get in the way.
Hey, another thing, cleaning up.
I had to send this to Joe.
Joe, right?
I never send you stuff on issues on email because I don't want to bother you, but I sent you one yesterday.
Trump walking into the UN now, by the way.
Folks, I don't know what else to say about the social security show, okay?
A guy emailed me yesterday, a guy named John.
I guess he didn't listen to the show, or if he did, he's just angry.
Listen, I get a lot of glowing email, I get a couple of not-so-glowing emails, but what I don't appreciate at all is people sending me emails about things I didn't say and then asking me to defend them in an email.
It's, what do you want me to stop taking my social security and die?
All right, dude.
I'm done.
I'm done with that.
I'm done.
I've gotten about a hundred emails on the social security.
Listen to the show!
John, open your ears or please discontinue.
I don't care.
I don't need the money from this show.
I don't need, I do the show because I enjoy it.
I enjoy, uh, you know, putting out good ideas and hopefully you, I'm not going to listen to stupid email.
Okay.
That's not what I said.
I sent this to Joe I go dude if I get one more of these emails I'm telling you and I fired right back at him go dude you didn't listen to the show I'm not answering this.
Some people will hear what they want to hear Dan that's that was my reply to you.
That is exactly in capital letters you said that I am that is not what I said about the social security show.
I said and I was clear as day there's no money in the program I did not say if you're 55 and older you should stop taking your social security and die.
I said the exact opposite as a matter of fact.
That the program's bankrupt by no fault of your own.
You did pay money in.
You're not young enough at this point to start your entire working career over again.
And we should prioritize getting those funds to you.
Did you not hear that?
Or are you intentionally deaf?
My god, I cannot, I mean, I really, sorry, I shouldn't use that.
I know.
I hate what I do.
Gosh, I can't believe you, again, please do not send me emails if you don't listen to the show.
I'm sorry.
Don't.
You're wasting the real listener's time.
It's really offensive.
Like, and you want me to respond to you about something I didn't say.
I really was annoyed about that.
And one other thing, it's Donny Glover, not Danny.
Thank you.
Even Joe was wrong on this one.
I was wrong on that one.
Danny Glover is an actor.
I know that.
He was in Lethal Weapon.
I think he was in Operation Dumbo Drop or something.
That is not the actor I was talking about in yesterday's show.
There is another actor, a younger guy.
He's a director.
His name is Donny Glover, not Danny.
They're different people.
So I appreciate it.
Thank you to Walter, who's a really good dude, emails me a lot.
And even Joe tried to correct me.
He goes, dude, I think it was Danny Glover.
It's not.
It's Donnie Glover.
That was the guy who gave the dopey speech at the Academy Awards about Trump oppressing black people.
Donnie.
It's not Danny.
I mess up a lot, folks.
Believe me on culture stuff, but not this one.
Okay.
All right.
Digging into the show because there's so much to talk about today.
So Levin was right.
I'll be in for Mark Levin tomorrow.
Mark Levin deserves a big apology from all of the hacks at CNN's Brian Stelter, who's just become a disgrace to media.
Remember when Levin went back and said, hey listen, I'm basing the wiretapping stories about Trump being wiretapped on the New York Times own reporting, and everybody attacked Levin as, oh Mark Levin, right-wing conspiracy theorist.
They threw him in with them.
All these conspiracy theorist people, they said, this guy's not credible, he's looking for ratings, they all attacked him, and it turns out...
Well, by the way, Mark was using the New York Times own reporting about wiretaps.
That Mark Levin was right.
Breaking last night, Paul Manafort, who was the campaign manager and one of the campaign executives for the Donald Trump presidential campaign, turns out CNN, of all people, broke a story last night that Manafort was, in fact, wiretapped.
And where did Manafort live, Joe?
Trump Tower during the time in question.
So not only was Donald Trump, it appears at this point, because unlike CNN, I'm going to hold out because they're using sources and even though it's CNN reporting on a story that would hurt CNN, I give them credit for doing that, reluctantly, but I do, I'm still not willing to accept the story at face value until we get something confirmed here.
Because I'm not going to make the mistake they make of unnamed sources.
But if these unnamed sources are correct, Donald Trump's tweet about being wiretapped at Trump Tower was true.
Now, don't expect the media people, or most of the media hacks, to go back like the New York Times and admit they were wrong the whole time, but I do expect Brian Stelter and all the people who attacked Joe Scarborough and Morning Joe as well, who attacked Mark Levin.
I do expect you to have some decency, some common decency, and to go and apologize to Levin for saying he was a conspiracy theorist, for promoting, not even promoting, for just documenting what the New York Times in fact reported themselves, that the Trump campaign was wiretapped.
Now, there's two takeaways from this that are really important.
Before I even get to that, there's two takeaways that expose the Obama police state at this point.
You may say, wow, you just threw that one out there.
That's a lot of, really?
You just threw it in there so casually?
Yeah, I did.
Because it's obvious to any reasonable person right now that the Obama administration, at a minimum in its last year, I would debate longer than that, but at a minimum in its last year while the presidential campaign was going on, used police state tactics.
We now have Susan Rice as National Security Advisor admitting to unmasking without any good reason, at least no good reason anybody's heard yet, And definitely not a national security reason.
We now have his national security advisor admitting to spying on Trump campaign officials.
That's already been admitted!
Now liberals, turn the show off now!
Because this is where we do facts.
And I know as some Zippo tweeted me back last night, some liberal writer, as well, you know, that's one way to look at it.
No, that the Obama administration is a police state and corrupt.
There's no other way!
That's the only way to look at it.
There is no other way.
Susan Rice already admitted to it, and if this story to unmasking Trump, in other words spying on Trump campaign members, If this story turns out to be true and CNN's reporting is accurate, there is no other way.
These are police state tactics.
What do police states do?
They spy on their political opponents.
What did the Obama administration do?
It spied on its political opponents.
None of that's open for interpretation anymore.
The degree of it is.
If there was unmasking and wiretapping as well, Which are kind of like the same thing under different premises here.
One FISA, one criminal in the Manafort case.
This is police state tactics.
There's no other way to look at this.
Now, a couple of takeaways from this.
Again, number one is that allegedly There was a criminal wiretap.
Folks, as a former law enforcement guy, it's important for me to make the distinction here.
A wiretap would be listening in on a call without the permission of at least one party.
New York State, where Trump Tower is located, is a one-party consent state.
It's critical you understand the legal terminology here.
One-party consent state means that it's not technically a wiretap if I give permission for the call to be recorded and Joe doesn't.
So let's say Joe is being investigated for conspiracy to inflate the Renegade Republican download numbers.
I don't know.
Be ridiculous.
And we're about to get arrested, Joe and I, and the FBI pinches me and says, you inflated your download numbers on a Renegade Republican.
You're going to jail.
But we know Armacost is the technical genius behind the Renegade Republican, the executive producer.
So here's what we're going to do.
We're going to put a recording device on that phone, and we're going to give Joe a call, and you're going to record it.
Now, who's the one party who gave consent to record?
You did.
Me!
Now, Florida, where I live now, is a two-party consent state, meaning both of us have to give permission for the call or else you need a warrant, right?
A wiretap in New York, therefore, which is a one-party consent state, Joe, would mean, by default, that neither Joe nor I gave consent!
Right.
Because it's a one-party consent state.
If you got no consent, that means someone's listening in, a third party being the government.
So, there was a criminal case built apparently against Manafort, or trying to be built against Manafort, that they used a criminal case warrant to get the wiretap.
That went away, the case, because according to CNN's reporting, I can't believe I'm saying this, really.
According to CNN's reporting, there was a lack of evidence.
Lack of evidence meaning there was lack of evidence of a crime folks that again in some circles we would call that a clue that there's no there there but the government Led by the Obama administration, apparently hell-bent on recording the conversations without the consent of either party, of Trump administration officials, good enough wasn't good enough, that there was no evidence of criminality.
So what did they do?
They went for a FISA warrant, Joe, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant, which does not require probable cause of a crime, it just requires some evidence that you were in fact interacting with a foreign power in an effort to harm the United States.
Here's the kicker though!
Now tell me how this isn't police state tactics.
You went for a criminal warrant.
You get the criminal warrant.
You listen in on the conversations.
Cases drop, no evidence.
You then, good enough isn't good enough.
You go back for a FISA warrant, you claim that there's evidence of a foreign power trying to influence Manafort, so you go to these surveillance courts instead.
What did they base it on?
Allegedly, again according to CNN reporting?
They based what we're hearing on the dossier.
The fake Trump dossier about how he likes all these perverted sexual things.
That's a family show.
But we don't need to cover that because the dossier is garbage.
It was made up.
It's all fabricated.
It's been discredited by every credible person on the planet.
Think about what I just told you, Joe.
And again, liberals listening, including Russ, the Twitter knucklehead who decided to tweet back to me this night that this is evidence of Trump corruption.
Think about what I just said.
This is what he said.
Not Obama.
You went after Trump's people on a criminal case.
You had nothing.
Having nothing wasn't good enough.
You went back to a foreign intelligence court with no probable cause.
Apparently you couldn't get probable cause for anything at this point, so you went back and alleged that there were allegations of foreign interference in that.
To get those allegations of foreign interference in front of a FISA court judge, you used a dossier that is categorically untrue.
You then listened on conversations between Manafort and Possibly Donald Trump as well, the presidential nominee.
Folks, this is the biggest political scandal of our lifetimes.
Now, do what you did to Levin, to me, I don't care.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, call me crazy.
I'm telling you, if you're on the wrong side of this, you are supporting absolutely the downfall of the Constitutional Republic and the implementation of police state tactics in the last truly free country on Earth.
Shame, shame, shame on you.
Shame.
You disgust me if you support this.
Don't like Trump?
Fine.
Don't vote for Trump?
Fine.
Don't like Republicans?
Hate Republicans.
I don't care.
Supporting this makes you an absolutely morally corrupt, ethically bankrupt, illegal criminal and a despicable despot who absolutely supports the use of violence and the monopoly of government force to destroy the lives of people who don't align with the political ideology.
That's all you are.
You're nothing more.
Don't pat yourself on the back.
Don't think you're on the right side of history.
You're a disgusting person.
I would never, ever, ever, regardless of the timeline, regardless of the politics of people involved, based on my experience in the government and my fear of what goes on on the inside, Ever support the use of police state tactics like this, the spying on of political people and the wiretapping of political people for clearly nothing other than a political agenda.
I don't care what the party's involved in.
You should be ashamed of yourself if you support this.
All right, I got a lot of stories to cover today.
So today's show brought to you by our buddies at BrickHouse Nutrition.
Man, thankfully got to load up on foundation yesterday.
Had a great performance in the gym, although my left knee is sore.
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Okay, this story has me fired up too.
I addressed this a couple weeks ago and it's resurfaced again due to an op-ed, a wonderful op-ed written in the Wall Street Journal today by Heather McDonald who does some terrific work on criminal justice and she's just a really fantastic writer.
And she has an op in the Wall Street Journal today about a piece by a UPenn professor, University of Pennsylvania, who wrote a piece, Joe, talking about... Now, let me quote this to be exact.
There's been a big uproar by the left.
They're on fire about this piece.
I'm going to read you the controversial ideas she wrote.
Her name is Amy Wack.
She's a UPenn professor who wrote about these highly controversial ideas and liberals are losing their collective... about it, okay?
Here's a quote from Heather MacDonald's piece in the journal today.
To the list of forbidden ideas on American college campuses, add bourgeois norms, such as hard work.
Whoa!
Self-discipline!
Oh my god!
Marriage and respect for authority!
Wait, hard work, self-discipline, marriage, and respect for authority?
Liberals are losing their mind!
Okay, go on.
Last month, two law professors published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for a revival of the cultural script that prevailed in the 1950s and still does among affluent Americans.
Here's a quote from the Philly Inquirer piece.
Joe, this is highly, highly controversial material.
Liberals, I'm not kidding Joe, they're drawing up petitions to get this woman out of the classroom.
The professor who wrote this, the dean of the university she writes in, is claiming this is contemporaneous with white supremacy, therefore alleging a connection.
Here's the cultural script she thinks we should all be talking about and not the other alternative to it.
She says, very controversial, get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake.
Oh my!
What is she trying to do?
That's crazy!
That's insane!
This is nuts, Joe.
This is absolutely crazy.
She says... Wait, get a load of this one.
Get the education you need for gainful employment.
Work hard and avoid idleness.
Avoid...
Dude!
Dude!
I can't listen to this, Dan.
There was a comedy skit years ago about the thousand ways to use the word dude.
Did you ever see this one?
I think I have.
It's funny, it's like you're watching a horror movie and there's a guy around a corner in a Friday the 13th hockey mask with a machete and you're in the house alone and you're ready to peek around a corner and you're like, dude?
Because you're afraid he's going to be there?
And then there's like the quizzical dude, like someone says something to you and you're like, dude!
Like that was the greatest comedy skit ever.
This is one of those, dude, really?
This is controversial?
Let me get this straight.
Get married, work hard, avoid idleness.
Okay, wait, there's more, more controversial.
This goes to the intellectual vacuum that has become the pathetic, disturbing, now due to Antifa, violent far left.
She says, eschew substance abuse and violence.
So we should be recommending what?
That people take on substance abuse and crime?
She says, eschew substance abuse and violence.
She says, the weakening of these traditional norms has contributed to today's low rates of workforce participation, lagging educational levels, widespread opioid abuse, the professors argued.
Folks, liberals are losing their mind.
There is a petition on one of these college campuses now again to get her banned from teaching.
Wow.
The deans of the school said that this is contemporaneous with white supremacy.
All right.
I gotta, I gotta like, I really, I can't deal with, with Paula again today.
She gets upset when I do too many angry liberal shows.
She does.
She's like, gotta break it up.
Um, There's a reason here, folks.
There's a why here.
Now, for those of you who think that there may be some credibility to this, I want you to understand that radical far leftists understand that what the author is saying is true.
They're not stupid.
Don't for a second, I'm begging you as a listener of my show, do not for a second buy into the fact that the, or any assertions that these liberals are dumb.
These people are not dumb.
They are very bright.
They understand exactly what they're doing, and they understand that the promotion of hard work, of marriage, of stable families, of avoiding drug abuse, they understand that all this stuff will lead to a successful society.
But what does it also lead to, Joe?
Let me ask you this.
What do people who are poor, who may not have jobs, people who may not have a high level of education, people who are, some who are dependent on drugs, What is their ultimate backstop?
I mean, if you're a Democrat, what... They depend on the state.
The state!
Yes, I should, you know, I should never, you always come through for me in a clutch, but I gotta tell you, I got a little nervous because I was afraid I wasn't setting that up right.
Now you got it.
Yes!
The state!
Of course the state!
Folks, the liberals promote, excuse me, victimology and victim culture.
In other words, oh, we get hard work.
It's people don't work.
If you don't work hard, it's not your fault.
No, it is your fault!
No, it is your fault.
I'm really sorry, just like the social security show that drives people crazy.
I'm sorry, I'm not here to BS you if you're a liberal or even if you're a, you know, a democrat leaning left.
Not working hard is your fault.
There is nobody that can make you work hard but you.
Making people work hard is servitude.
You have to work hard.
That is your fault.
And the minute liberals start promoting these values, there's nobody to blame.
Substance abuse, that's not your fault.
It's the promotion of the pharmaceutical industry.
You know what?
Substance abuse, I'm sorry.
I have this in my family.
Yes.
Is there a biochemical component to it?
Yes.
Is there some physiological component to it?
Yes.
But don't, I'm not going to fall into this.
It's a disease.
It is a choice.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
It is a choice.
Cancer is a disease.
Putting a pill in your mouth or smoking a joint or snorting cocaine or mainlining heroin is a choice.
It is a volitional act.
The fact that you are predisposed to do it because of some biochemical or biological propensity for addiction in your family, I don't deny that.
I don't deny that your situation, Joe, is more difficult than others.
I don't.
Because some other people just aren't prone to addiction.
No matter how many times you put a couple lines of cocaine in front of them, they're not going to do it.
There's a biochemical signal in your head that pushes you in a way it doesn't push other people.
I don't doubt that, and I don't mean to discredit your fight, and I'm not judging you.
Don't mistake this.
I'm living through this right now in my family, so I don't need any lectures.
But don't tell me for a second this isn't a choice.
It is a choice.
You know, folks, my wife's gonna kill me, but it's all right.
It's important and you matter to me.
I've got a lot of fights in my life.
I've had a ton of them.
I really, there were areas I've been very weak in my life.
And I, to this day, it pains me.
I mean, it does.
I say to you all the time, you know, I'm a sinner because I mean that.
I may use that term very deliberately.
I'm constantly trying to correct my back.
When I pray, I pray very deliberately.
I say the Our Father because those are the words Jesus gave us, and those words mean something.
But a lot of my prayers are extemporaneous, but they're spoken from the heart, and I pray constantly, Father, make me a better man tomorrow than I was today.
Please move me back to that righteous path.
Because the temptation for envy, greed, lust, rage, anger, it's always there.
I'm not in a position here to morally lecture any of you.
But there are things I, there are temptations out there all the time, and folks, it is hard.
It is really hard to avoid a lot of this nonsense in your life.
But things have to matter to you, and you have to make conscious choices.
You have to make real choices to do the right thing.
And an excuse can't be, well, oh, you know what?
Oh, it's just a guy thing, or a family thing, or a drug thing, or a history of drugs.
That's not an excuse.
Liberals want to push that excuse on you because they want to blame it on other people as an avenue to move the state and state control back into your life.
That is why they're going wild over this.
That is why they're losing their mind over a woman highlighting the fact that if you stay married...
If you have children and you're faithful to your wife, you're faithful to your kids, you get your kids an education, you go in school and you work hard, the minute you start to propose those values on a mass scale and suggest to people the obvious, Joe, the obvious, that this is the path forward, this is the path to a collective better future, to steal the last own term, The idea that the state can help you do that or that you've been a victim of some dangerous Republican and conservative movement and the liberal democratic state is going to help you goes away!
Folks, this is a big, big piece.
I will put the piece in the show notes.
Forgive me if it's a subscriber only.
I can't help that at the Journal.
I'm not, I don't think it is.
It'll be in the show notes at Bongino.com today.
It is a really, really good piece by Heather MacDonald.
And it sums up to you why I am so passionate against this fight about, excuse me, for this fight against liberal ideology.
Because as I've said to you repeatedly, it's not that this victimology doesn't help people.
It doesn't.
But folks, surprisingly, that's not the pernicious part of it I'm worried about.
It's that victimology and liberal ideology actively harms you.
It actively hurts people by promoting the idea that there's no individual control over their life.
That they are the victim of outside circumstances.
That outside circumstances, those circumstances can only be changed by elected leaders, you know, liberal visionaries, using air quotes, and politicians.
When you put all of that aside and you say to yourself, I'm not working hard.
I haven't taken my marriage seriously.
I haven't focused on my kids.
I decided to take drugs.
I haven't worked hard in school.
I screwed this up.
That is the first step towards saying, I can fix this.
I can fix this.
Not Nancy Pelosi.
Not Donald Trump.
Not Bernie Sanders.
Not George W. Bush.
I can fix this.
It's the only way forward folks.
It's an important piece.
Liberals are losing their minds over this for a reason.
Don't ever forget what I told you on this one.
I'm telling you this is really important stuff.
All right.
Today's show brought to you by our buddies at My Patriot Supply.
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You know, obviously since the hurricanes, folks, this is really sad.
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And outside of financially, we don't know what we can do.
I mean, the people in Puerto Rico just went through the outskirts of Irma.
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Folks, this is Puerto Rico.
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The supermarkets are, look at, if you think I'm making this up, go to Drudge today, are rationing food now.
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All right.
I got so many stories.
If not, I'm going to have to carry them over to tomorrow's show.
By the way...
I'm not gonna mention it again.
And again, my apologies to people who don't like me doing any promotion for my book and my show.
I actually understand.
I get emails from really supportive listeners going, screw those guys, it's your show, promote whatever you want.
No, I understand.
I do, I really do, Joe.
I don't like nonstop commercials for products either, but I did put a lot of work into the book.
It means a lot to me.
It's called Protecting the President, and it is the inside story, folks, of the collapse of the Secret Service, and I wrote it for a reason.
Because protecting the President of the United States is a bipartisan issue.
And if you want to, you know, if you're in law enforcement and you've been a victim of, you know, misguided diversity politics, oh, we got to put that person on the protection detail because they're a Hispanic, uh, whatever.
I mean, if it's any category, that's what happens in the Secret Service often.
And you get unqualified people protecting the President because of diversity initiatives.
Now, I talk about these things in the book, and you know what?
Are they PC?
No, but they're correct, and someone needs to expose these problems before someone gets hurt.
I go into the fall of the Secret Service from the inside perspective.
Please pick it up today.
It's available today.
It's out in bookstores.
It's also on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.
It's called Protecting the President.
That's the last I'm going to mention it, but I do appreciate you're a great audience.
You moved my book from It's like $10,000 on Amazon to like $3,000 the day I mentioned it, which is pretty good, considering I have 8 million books for sale there.
So thanks so much, folks.
I appreciate you picking it up.
All right, so I get mixed feedback on the economics stories, folks, but this one's really important, all right?
I love economics and I'm passionate about it, but the Fed has finally decided how to unwind its balance sheet.
Now, without getting too wonky about this, this is a topic I bring up often.
During the height of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve decided it would be a good idea.
The Federal Reserve prints money.
It's called Federal Reserve notes.
Look on the front of your dollars or your 20s or your 5s, whatever.
They have a monopoly power over printing money.
So someone at the Fed thought it would be a good idea to print money, I kid you not, and go out and buy government bonds.
So you have this quasi-government agency, which it is, I don't care what anybody tells you, the Federal Reserve.
It has a monopoly printing power of money.
Printing money and going out and giving the government the money to buy bonds.
So the government gives it a bond.
So they have about four trillion dollars in bonds.
They have, to give you exact numbers, they have 1.7 trillion, 2.4 trillion in U.S.
treasuries they bought with printed money and 1.7 trillion in mortgages.
Folks, this is a big deal.
It's a big deal because they're holding on to these mortgage bonds now, and these treasury bonds, and they're having a hard time figuring out what to do with it.
So they released a statement recently that says, OK, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to work up to releasing about $50 billion in these bonds a month.
Now, there's a really good example I read today in a journal piece about what this means, and I've kind of explained this before using bagels, but the whole market is better.
Here's why we're having a real problem right now.
So the government could print money.
So the government did print money through the Fed to buy its own assets.
Imagine if this happened in your neighborhood, right?
And what they wanted to do is they wanted to prop up the prices of bonds.
Just leave it at that.
The why, we'll leave for another show.
Okay.
Because we don't have a lot of time.
But the government, the federal government, wanted to prop up the prices of bonds because the prices of bonds are inversely related to interest rates.
So by propping up the prices, they would keep interest rates low, which would make it easy for people to get loans.
Make sense?
Yep.
Because they move in the opposite.
Right.
I know you know what inverse means, but you get my point.
So imagine this if they did this in the real estate market.
Because with the bond market, people get confused because prices and interest rates move in the opposite direction, screws people up, financial assets, it gets complicated.
But imagine this in simpler terms.
Let's say the government wanted to prop up the price of your house.
Okay.
And 50% of the houses in your neighborhood were for sale.
Joe, if 50% of the houses in your neighborhood were for sale and no one was buying, those prices are going to take a pretty huge tumble pretty darn fast.
Because all of a sudden it's going to be like, all right, it's been on the market for six months.
All right, I want 200.
I want 190.
I want 180.
I want 160.
I want 150.
The government said, well, we got to fix this.
Instead of letting the price signal readjust, which it should have, they said we have to fix this price interest rate problem right now.
So we have to buttress the bond market.
So we're going to come in and we're going to buy up those houses to stabilize the housing market.
Oh, hey, great idea, right?
Sounds wonderful.
Liberals love this thing.
So did some misguided dopey Republicans who have no idea what they're talking about.
They were like, this is great.
The government came in, Joe, bought up all the houses, and now it's holding the houses.
Nobody lives there.
But it bought them.
It bought them at the asking price.
So say the 50% of the house, they all wanted $200,000.
So now your neighborhood, this is, everything's fine and dandy.
Prices have stabilized.
What's the problem, Joe?
Who owns the house?
Yeah, not you.
Not the government.
What the hell are they going to do with the houses?
That's been, I've been bringing this up on the show forever.
They have all these bonds, just like they have the houses.
What are they going to do with the bonds?
The same thing they're going to do with the houses.
They got to get rid of them.
So now what happens when they get rid of the houses, Joe?
They gotta start selling the houses again.
Now all of a sudden, just when prices stabilize, oh, why are all these houses for sale on my block?
Because nobody owned them.
The government owned them.
So now the government is unleashing this torrent of bonds.
They're saying they're going to do 50 billion a month, which granted, I understand here.
Compared to the four trillion they own now between mortgage bonds and treasury bonds, it's not a lot.
But the problem here, Joe, is this thing is going to screw up and distort the market because no one's ever done this before.
Understood.
Nobody knows what's going to happen.
Folks, there's no historical precedent for this.
This was a really bad idea that can only get worse.
Here's what's going to happen here, right?
Number one, these low interest rates, the problem with it, because remember, prices, by trying to stabilize the price, you lower the interest rate by trying to bump the price up.
Prices of bonds, again, they move in the opposite direction for a lot of reasons.
As prices go up, interest rates go down.
As interest rates go up, prices go down.
So by the government trying to keep the price of houses up, or the price of bonds in this case, they kept interest rates low.
Now what happened with that?
The stock market went up.
Well, why did the stock market go up?
Because people couldn't invest in bonds because the interest rates were low, Joe!
And the prices were high!
The interest rates were low because the government drove them down because it kept the price up.
So nobody, so you couldn't, there was no yield!
So what did people do?
They said, well, I'm not going to invest in that crappy interest rate.
I'm going to go throw my money in the stock market.
Why am I telling you this, folks?
Listen, this is not an investment show, okay?
I don't do investment advice.
You know, I'm happy to share with you my investments.
But I bought a little bit of gold.
I got a little bit in equities.
I got a little bit in specific stocks and a lot in index funds and a lot in cash right now, because I am very worried that the minute this taper starts to happen and they start to let those houses, or in this case, bonds, Joe, get back on the market and prices start to fall again and interest rates go up, what are people going to do?
They're going to say, well, I can get a higher interest rate and more security by getting out of the stock market and going buying a bond or a house instead.
Be careful.
Not telling you what to do with your money.
Just be careful.
Secondly, this has been absolutely crushing savers out there, because in their efforts to keep the prices up of bonds, again, interest rates go down and prices go up.
Well, when interest rates go down, savers, Joe, mostly older folks who are living off fixed incomes, haven't been making a dime.
They've been getting crushed.
So this may actually benefit the middle class and savers by interest rates going up, but it has a really, really heavy potential to hurt the housing market and the stock market.
Just be careful.
But I'll put that piece, it's an interesting Bloomberg piece I'll put in the show notes today, how people have this all wrong, economists, about this.
And you can take a look at it, it's a pretty good piece.
All right.
Let's see.
What else?
Oh, hey, one last thing here.
I got a couple of stories I want to get to tomorrow.
One on two liberal policies that are just, again, not helping but blowing up in people's faces.
One about trying to get people low-income housing that's actually benefiting rich home builders and not people with low-income housing.
No surprise there.
And another one about tree-thinning efforts.
where they're trying to thin out the trees to prevent forest fires and liberals are actually causing more forest fires but no worries libs keep it up but i'm not gonna have enough time today to hammer those but i wanted to finish up with one maybe this maybe southern one too but This DACA thing.
So these DACA recipients yesterday, did you see this, Joe?
Nancy Pelosi, Liberal Democrat, is giving a speech and these DACA recipients interrupt the speech and start screaming and yelling.
I did a head-on Fox about it this morning.
I just want to say quickly to these guys, what kind of stupid strategy is this?
You're in the country illegally.
That's not in question.
Are there tough cases here?
Of course.
Are they human beings?
Yes, they should be treated as such.
But you're here illegally in violation of the law.
You have actually broken the law by being in the United States, and now not only are you making demands upon the U.S.
taxpayer, and demands on legal status, when you didn't do it the right way, but now your only friend and ally, the Democrats, well I shouldn't say only, you got hack Republicans who don't stand for the rule of law either, but your only ally who's being loud and boisterous about it in this case, Nancy Pelosi, and you attack her, what kind of dumb strategy, I said on Fox this morning, You know, if four-dimensional chess is the sign of strategic brilliance, one-dimensional checkers isn't, this is possibly the dumbest strategy I've ever heard in my life.
Let's scream down Nancy Pelosi at a political rally.
Good move.
Like, I mean, what?
Really, the damage you've done to your cause is incalculable.
And one more Lester I thought was interesting from Axios today.
This guy's an old political guy who started this website.
They have an email list.
And on their email list today, they say, listen, there's a problem developing around Trump.
And I found this interesting because I've heard this on a few conservative listservs I email lists I'm on.
They said, Joe, who surrounds Trump right now is more important than who surrounded people and presidents in the past.
Now, I'm not saying this.
They're saying this.
They're saying, listen, he's not... I think everybody gets this.
He's not ideological, Trump.
He's a dealmaker.
He's not ideological.
He's not a diehard ideological conservative.
He was a democrat at one point.
But he's not ideological.
There's not really strong ideological underpinnings.
He's a dealmaker who wants to get things done.
So the premise of it is who he surrounds himself with is more important than it was in past presidents because the last person basically to leave the room can influence him in a direction that other presidents wouldn't have gone.
And the fear among some conservatives out there is that the last person leaving the room are saying things to him that are not conservative.
You know, don't give tax cuts to the rich, we have to get these DACA kids taken care of.
So they were saying that the departure of Bannon and a lot of these, you know, Mike Flynn early on, a lot of these people who would have been associated with conservative, well maybe populism too in some respects, that them being God has left the establishment in charge.
They bring up one other point on that.
They say that, and you see it because the only time you see Trump tweeting things that do not align with what the establishment wants him to right now is after hours.
When he's not basically in the White House, he's in the residence.
And the media manager over there, Dan Scavino, who is not an establishment guy, is basically controlling the Twitter account.
So the point he's trying to make is that the White House may be getting taken over by swamp rats, and after hours, the media account is a reflection of Scavino's more non-anti-establishment leanings.
And I just found that really interesting, how Axios pointed that out.
And folks, the departure ban may have been a really bad thing for us.
We need some I don't agree with Steve on everything, especially the trade approach, but I think having an anti-establishment voice in the White House would have been important.
And frankly, folks, there really aren't many left anymore.
