Ep. 567 Trump’s Lasting Legacy Will be the Collapse of Sacred Cows
In this episode - Trump has destroyed any credibility the liberal media, and Hollywood had left. Here’s how he did it. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hollywood-media-nfl-government-america-sends-its-sacred-cows-to-the-slaughterhouse/article/2637192 Did a sports journalist really compare being an NFL athlete to being a slave? http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/10/10/espns-wilbon-compares-jerry-jones-slave-owner-requiring-players-stand-national-anthem/ Hollywood lectures us based strictly on the “illusion of knowledge.” The Weinstein scandal has exposed them for the frauds they are. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hollywood-is-brave-so-long-as-the-targets-are-easy/article/2637230 I’m posting these easy-to-read tax tables, again, because liberal liars continue to insist that tax rate cuts “cost the government money.” http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-and-outlay-summary Liberal College administrators are panicking because they’re losing the free speech “narrative.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-free-speech-wars-1507763446
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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.
Welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
What are you going to do?
Donny Brasco, my son's a junkie.
What are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
I'm telling you, man, what a great movie.
I am not a Hollywood guy, obviously, anymore.
And man, I can't stand half of these actors, but that lefty character in that movie cracks me up.
Hey, by the way, I get a ton of questions about my stem cell procedure I had done.
Where they take the stem cells, cover it a little bit in rough cuts, they take the stem cells from you, from your back, from your back fat, which thankfully I have enough left to use.
And they get these stem cells out and they put them in your joints, because I have really severe osteoarthritis.
So I'm going back today for a consultation on another stem cell injection in my right shoulder now.
It was my left shoulder that's falling apart.
Now my right shoulder's falling apart too, because I'm falling apart.
Great!
But I'll let you know, folks, how it goes.
Because I'll tell you, I had great results on my left side.
But just one quick thing on this.
I had a surgery, too.
I had bone spurs removed.
And I can't be absolutely sure it was the stem cells.
Just to be fair, you know, because we are Republicans and believe in science.
Was it the surgery or was it the stem cells?
I'm not sure.
It seemed to work pretty well on my elbow.
But I'll let you know.
I know a lot of you are interested in it.
I will give you the results.
I have to go today up to Vero Beach for a consultation.
So let's get right into it.
You know, I like to do themes in the show and tie stories together, and today's show was easy because the first story I looked at gave me a theme for the subsequent stories we're going to talk about today on the show, and the theme of today's show is going to be this leftist, far-left effort always at the narrative.
Framing.
Framing.
They use this all the time.
Liberals are in love with this idea of framing and reframing.
In other words, taking a story that could be easily told by just laying out the facts, Joe, And distorting the facts and reframing it to advance your narrative.
Let me just give you a simple example rather than talking in highfalutin terms here.
The tax thing.
I'm gonna get into this in a little bit too.
The tax argument.
Because now this is a big thing.
The Trump tax cuts.
He gave the speech yesterday on it.
Rather than the liberals just giving the facts, which is what you would think journalists would do.
You know, shame on us, Joe, the facts.
Gosh, that's not gonna happen.
Saying, well, here's what happened with the tax cuts.
George W. Bush instituted this income tax cut.
Here's what happened to federal tax revenue.
That's an easy story to tell.
I've covered it on the show.
Anybody can go into it and look at it online.
When George W. Bush cut taxes, did tax revenue go up or go down?
It went up.
That's not difficult to see.
Instead of just telling that story, the media has a narrative to tell.
And the narrative is not the truth.
Now, the media and the left, they're all one big, you know, amorphous blob of far-left liberalism.
When the media is dictating that narrative, that narrative always works to advance their agenda.
So they don't want tax cuts because they want to control your money.
That's what the liberal agenda is.
Big, big, big-ass state power.
They want state power.
State power needs to control the flow of funds.
They need taxes to do that.
That's why they want your money.
So their narrative always has to be that tax cuts are bad, and tax cuts are bad because we'll reframe and say, oh, it's making the rich richer, making the poor poor, whatever it may be.
But there were so many examples of this in today's news, and Joe sent me a cut this morning of leftist attempts to reframe, and just to be clear what we're talking about, to take a set of facts, Joe, and to tell a different story about that facts that advances a far-left agenda, instead of just dictating the facts as they are.
In other words, taxes, we're going to get into this NFL thing in a second, how people are trying to reframe this.
What's the story?
The story is very simple.
Here are the facts.
And Joe, if you dispute any of this, stop me.
I mean it.
These are athletes that are paid a lot of money, correct?
Yeah.
In many cases, but not all, multi-millions of dollars.
Yeah.
I don't know what the NFL minimum is, but I'm sure it's upwards of, salary-wise, $300,000 maybe?
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
A lowball, let's say it's $100,000.
Either way, it's a healthy salary.
Right?
Yeah.
Pretty fair?
And I would say a lot of them come from a poor background.
I got through that.
Got through that.
So those are just facts.
I'm just giving you the salary numbers based on what that salary out relates to.
So the average salary of an American.
So these are people who are being paid a lot more than American dollars.
That's a fact.
They're also kneeling while the National Anthem is playing.
Also a fact that that is widely considered to be a sign of disrespect.
You don't kneel for the National Anthem.
Our cultural norms dictate that you put your hand over your heart and you stand.
Now, not standing is a sign of disrespect because it violates the norm.
Again, those are just the facts.
That's not the story they want to tell right now, because they're losing the argument, just like they don't want to tell the story about taxes and the facts on taxes.
Taxes were cut, revenue goes up.
That's not the story they want to tell, so they have to reframe.
Now, I thought about these examples, and I want to get into it a little bit, because I was reading a story this morning in the Wall Street Journal about The effort on college campuses now to kind of stymie what's going on in the Justice Department.
Now, Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, gave a speech, it was at Georgetown, I believe, a couple weeks ago, talking about free speech on college campuses.
How, and most of you know this if you listen to my show, that free speech is in jeopardy on college campuses.
What they're doing is they're allowing the heckler's veto on college campuses, and the heckler's veto is Leftists, far leftists show up when conservative speakers show up to college campuses.
They cause violence, they cause a disturbance.
That disturbance costs the college money in future security costs when a conservative shows up again.
The college then uses the excuse of security costs for conservative speakers to defend against violent liberals As an excuse to not allow the conservative to speak on campus.
Therefore, the term heckler's veto is clear.
Now you see what it means.
The heckler, the far left, the violent far left in this case and many cases on these college campuses, the violent far left or the hecklers, they get to veto free speech.
Now, just like the NFL kneeling, take a knee, controversy has blown up in the NFL's face, I mean catastrophically for them.
Fan base, advertising dollars, this has been an absolute PR disaster for the NFL.
What's happening on college campuses, this sanctioning of conservative speakers, this de facto banning of conservative speakers in many cases, Joe, this is blowing up in their face as well.
So just like the NFL and the far left that needs to protect their leftist agenda needs to reframe that, college campuses are trying now to reframe this as not a debate about free speech but a debate about something else.
Now in case you think again I'm making any of this up and like oh man what were you struggling for material?
No actually one two three four five Six, seven stories, but this is important you understand this because I love to explain the why.
The tactics of the left are always clear, and you'll see common themes if you know what to look for.
Reading a story in the journal today, and here's a quote.
Now, Jeff Sessions' speech that he gave was about defending free speech on college campuses.
Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General in the Trump administration.
I know most of you know that, but you know, sometimes I get emails and say, you gotta lay out the story first, all right?
Quote, some say Mr. Sessions' speech concerns are legitimate.
There's much talk, though, about reframing the free speech narrative as in this from Williams College president Adam Falk.
Listen to this.
They're talking about reframing the free speech narrative here because it doesn't work for the left, Joe.
This is a quote from this Williams College president, Adam Falk.
This framing of the problem is free speech.
I don't think that's the issue.
It's the quality of the campus discourse.
Once you make this about free speech, you've actually given up the narrative from the very beginning.
Oh!
Oh, Adam Falk gives it up right away.
And he gives it up in a quote.
Which is just beautiful, I mean gorgeous, just a wonderful thing.
He just throws a bone to conservatives right there by admitting that, although Joe, factually, again I know this is tough for the facts and data and stuff, I know this is challenging, but factually this is about free speech.
Yeah.
We're not talking because conservatives are not if it was not about free speech and it was about the quote quality of the speech then conservatives would be saying you know well we you know we're just trying to get our guys on campus but we don't want leftists on campus either.
Conservative the conservative argument here to be crystal clear is that We welcome liberal speakers and we welcome conservative speakers.
We're just asking to be treated fairly.
Therefore, the argument is not about the quality because conservatives think liberal free speech is of crap quality.
It is a stinking pile of monkey dung walking onto a college campus and lecturing kids about income inequality, high taxes, and socialism.
The quality of that speech is zero.
But no serious conservative or libertarian is arguing that those people should be kept off a college campus.
Does that make sense, Joseph?
Yeah, I'm right with you so far.
You're right, Ben.
Those are just the facts.
You're right.
I'm telling you, for that guy, you just have to once in a while say, dude, you're absolutely wrong.
Are you really wrong?
No, but I'm just saying it to keep that Twitter guy happy.
Those are just the facts.
Conservatives are not making this about quality.
Now, that doesn't work for the left, because the left does not support free speech anymore.
The left is against free speech.
They are looking to quell conservative thought because their argument is that, well, liberal speakers can speak, but conservative speakers, we have to be concerned about the security cost.
This is nonsense.
I mean, they've allowed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on the college campuses.
Talk about a kooky state-powered leftist.
Yes, leftist.
But the security costs don't matter there.
This on the left is a matter of free speech and just to be clear they need to reframe this because this argument is blowing up in their faces.
You now have the Attorney General looking into this, you have public opinion on free speech amongst rational people, not with the snowflakes, but amongst rational people this is moving against them.
The college campuses are losing this, and there's a constant obsession amongst the left when they're losing an argument to reframe it away from the facts and into the narrative.
The narrative.
The narrative.
It's all about the narrative.
The narrative here?
Free speech.
No good.
Guys, we can't keep talking about free speech, although this is what this is actually about.
We have to keep talking about Joe.
The quality of campus discourse.
Now, fascinatingly, who determines the quality of the campus discourse?
Oh, the campus, which is run by leftists.
They love that subjectivity, don't they, Dan?
Oh, it's, it's, yes, yes.
Matter of fact, I was thinking about that this morning.
I was, um, I was listening to Tucker last night, and he had Charlie Kirk on.
What was I doing out last night?
I was coming back from something, I don't even remember.
Oh, I teach a class, and I was coming back last night from the class, and I had Tucker on.
And he had Charlie Kirk, and Tucker brought up an interesting question, and I thought Charlie gave a good answer, but it wasn't the answer I would have given.
And he was asking basically about objectivity versus subjectivity, and I'm glad you brought that up.
The conservatives and libertarians are obsessed with the idea of liberty through objectivity, folks.
In other words, there are objective values out there, the goodness of God, the goodness of a moral and ethical compass.
You know, limited government for the power of discretionary individuals.
You know, the benefits of quality behavior throughout the course of your life, even if you fall off that track.
The left hates that.
The left is in love with subjective behavior.
In other words, other human beings in government determining what your values are.
Subjective, not objective values.
And I'm glad you brought that up because that applies here too.
The left is going to be the ones to subjectively analyze the quality of the speech.
Now, how they think this works for them, I'm not sure.
This is going to blow up in their face and this is not going to end well.
But this guy...
From Williams College, Adam Falk.
I want to thank you, Adam.
We have a large enough listener base, I'm sure somebody knows you.
I want to extend a personal thank you for exposing liberal hypocrisy in one failed quote.
Now, conveniently, I read that story first today and I thought, gosh, it's right.
Like this framing, reframing, taking a set of facts again and gaslighting people, repeating lies over and over and over again, repeating them confidently and isolating people from the truth.
That's what gaslighting is.
To get them to believe that a false narrative, not based on the facts, is in fact correct.
Taxes reduce revenue.
Uh, but they don't.
Yeah, but shh, shut up, they do.
Let's pretend, let's just not let anybody, let's not expose anybody to the real world and hope they don't look it up themselves.
Let's say this college campus thing isn't about free speech, but it is about free speech.
Conservatives are just making the argument that they should be free to speak like anyone else.
No, no, no, no.
Let's make it about the quality of the discourse.
Well, who gets to determine the quality?
Oh, we do.
Oh, that's fair.
That sounds legit.
Sounds right to me, Joe.
Yeah.
Remember trading places?
What is that line in Trading Places where the two big guys and Eddie Murphy's in the jail and they're like, the guy says something like, we don't need no turkeys on Thanksgiving.
And the other guy goes, yeah.
This is it.
This is one of those moments.
Yeah.
That's all the left does.
They're the guy in Trading Places, the other guy in the jail cell.
Yeah.
He has nothing to add to the conversation, but to affirm what the other stupid leftists say.
That's all this is.
Yeah.
I'm glad you brought that up.
By the way, Trading Places, Hollywood had already lost its mind, but it wasn't as crazy as it is now.
It's still a funny movie, and that scene in the jail is classic.
We don't need no turkeys around Thanksgiving.
Someone send me that YouTube.
I know you guys are great with that.
I love my audience.
You guys are the best.
All right, another framing thing.
So Joe pulled this this morning.
This is Michael Wilbon.
He's from ESPN, right, or something like that?
ESPN.
Yeah, he's a sports guy.
I used to watch it.
I don't watch ESPN anymore, which is sad because 30 for 30 is a great series and I just, I can't.
I actually took them off my favorites so I wouldn't even be tempted to turn it on because I'm just sick of it, tired of it, tired of the... ESPN's become like CNN for sports, you know?
It's a joke.
It's like fake sports news mixed with really bad, ignorant politics.
So Wilbon, who is a leftist, you know, but most sports writers are, Add some commentary about the recent edict by Roger Goodell, the NFL, the head of the NFL there, that the players should stand.
Now, Goodell's already blown it.
I'm done with the NFL.
I strongly recommend you be done with them too, which, you know, you're all adults, you make your own decisions, but the NFL has crapped on us one too many times.
I'm finished.
You know, fool me once, you know how the expression goes, right?
But Goodell has now come out because he's realizing now that they're going to get slammed in the pocketbook in the NFL based on just pure polling data, facts and data that I gave on a show last week.
This is blowing up in their faces.
Their core audience is abandoning them and they're starting to suffer.
So Goodell said, I think it's a good idea we all stand for the anthem.
Now Michael Wilbon, his response to this, and I'll play this cut in a second, is so unbelievably out of line and so outrageous on its face.
But I want you to pay very attention to his efforts to reframe this away from the facts.
And that's how I started the show.
These are, in many cases, million dollar athletes, paid a lot of money to play a game you and I,
many of us would play for free, because we love it so much.
Matter of fact, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which is about as hard on your body,
I pay to do it.
No one pays me.
But these people are paid millions of dollars to play a game.
And I want you to hear what he compares it to in order to reframe it.
Play that cut.
The word that comes to my mind, I don't care who doesn't like me using it, is plantation.
No!
The players are here to serve me and they will do what I want no matter how much I pay them.
They are not equal to me.
That's what this says.
To me and mine.
Wait.
Wait, what?
Come again?
I don't know.
Joe, I have no idea.
I know why he did it, but why he chose such an outrageous comparison completely discredits Michael Wilbon forever from polite conversation.
Did he just compare playing in the NFL to Human bondage and slavery?
Did I hear that right?
Yeah, you heard that right.
Joe sent me a couple cuts this morning and the first two I wasn't crazy about because they were about Hillary.
I always appreciate Joe.
By the way, Chris Stierwald's on Fox right now sweating his butt off.
Did he just get out of the gym?
Man, it looks like he jumped in a pool.
But Joe sent me a couple of Hillary quotes.
I get tired.
Here at Hillary talking like, Charlie Brown's teacher.
You know, income inequality, Trump snags, Trump Russia, whatever.
But then he sent me this Wilbon thing and I had to listen to it twice because I had heard it, but I didn't really hear it.
And the second time I'm like, wow, did he just compare playing in the NFL?
A lifestyle that, Joe, I don't have a public survey on this, but can you and I both agree that if we had, if we had the physical capabilities to do it, that being a professional athlete is probably a career, I don't know, 70, 80, 90% of people, if they had the choice, would take it?
Yeah, it's a dream career.
Now, let's just, I mean, let's be reasonable here and let's analyze what he said.
Now, if you had taken the very same survey and asked same people, the exact same group, would you choose to be put into human bondage and slavery?
I would say the number would be zero.
Maybe less than zero, if possible.
Now, for this guy to You know, and they have this thing called the Godwin Rule.
I don't know if you've ever heard of the Godwin Rule, but the gist of the Godwin Rule is that the first person to bring up a Nazi analogy loses the debate.
And the rule is pretty fair.
I mean, it's called the rule, but you get it.
The rule portion of it is obviously meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but the Godwin Rule means if you have nothing else, people will typically rely on Nazi analogies.
And obviously, the reason you should ever do that It should be obvious, at least it might be not to liberals, is because this was a very unique portion of human history, the mass extermination on a scale that we had never seen of Jews.
You just don't bring it up casually, Joe.
You don't bring it up like when you're talking about taxes, like, oh Nazis!
You're like, well, now the left does this all the time, but it's grotesquely irresponsible and, in my opinion, immoral to do that.
Joe, The slavery and the unique stain on human existence of slavery, not just in the United States, but around the world, is a uniquely horrendous phenomenon.
Bringing it up in conjunction with the NFL protests and suggesting that the owner, you know, maybe I wasn't clear on this, Wilbon is actually suggesting that the owners have their players on a plantation like slave owners.
Folks, do you see now how, I think this is, people are going to tune this, I really believe they're going to tune this guy out, but do you see how this is an effort by a noted leftist sports guy, because most of them are, sports writer, sports journalist, whatever you call them, to now reframe the debate Away from where it was.
The facts of the debate are clear.
It was started by a guy who protested the American flag, Colin Kaepernick.
He said he was protesting the country.
Those are his words, not mine.
He wore a pair of socks depicting cops as pigs.
He wore a t-shirt celebrating a communist killer.
You see how those facts, that narrative, whatever you want to call it, doesn't marry up with the leftist agenda they need to make you hate America?
The left always needs you to hate America because they want you to believe we're an imperial empire.
discredit liberty and conservatism and economic freedom because they need those things discredited to advance the statist agenda.
The only way to discredit them despite the obvious prosperity of the United States is get you to always focus on the evils of the United States.
This was designed, this leftist protest of which the NFL like a bunch of suckers fell into it, was designed by people on the radical left who got into Colin Kaepernick's head to discredit the United States and suckers in the NFL fell for it.
And now that they are losing the debate badly, grotesquely, what's going on?
They are now trying to reframe it and they're getting desperate.
They're trying to reframe it as this is an inequity, a power-inequity relationship, and a power-inequity relationship on the scale of slavery, hoping, Joe, that they can somehow reclaim this.
It's all, it's lost.
Guys, you lost.
So, just to recap for a bit, so we had the reframing on the free speech initiative on college campuses.
It's not about free speech, but the quality of discourse.
The NFL, this isn't about anti-American protests, even though Kaepernick said these were anti-American protests.
No, no, now it's about power inequities because inequality, Joe, bothers everyone.
Now, where he screwed up, Wilbon, just to be clear on this, is comparing this to slavery.
You're completely discredited.
You made a mockery of yourself by saying that.
Do you think any reasonable person would compare slavery to playing in the NFL?
You've got to be kidding me.
Alright, I got more of these.
We're not done.
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All right.
Now, this one's a doozy, Joe.
You know I love these reframing things.
So this morning, again, I wake up early.
I've been working out in the morning.
I feel great about it.
And I pull up Drudge.
I usually get the journal first and then Drudge second, but I managed to pick up Drudge first this morning and there's a piece in the LA Times about the Trump tax cuts.
Again, this is a big argument going on right now and the left is grossly unhappy with the direction the argument is taking because, as I'm going to get to in a moment, Trump has dismantled the media as the mouthpiece of what the framed narrative is going to be.
Let me be clear on that.
Pre-Trump, most Republicans, the overwhelming majority of Republicans, were deathly afraid of the media.
If the media had a narrative, these are tax cuts for the rich, you know, repeal Obamacare, you're gonna kill grandma, they just accepted the narrative and they would work largely behind the scenes to try to pass the legislation, but they'd be afraid to challenge the narrative publicly.
I mean, you've even seen people say it, like, oh, these are tax—we can't get the re—you know, get—why doesn't someone just come out and say, yeah, yeah, they may be tax cuts for the wealthy, too, and that's a really good thing for the economy, because actually, the Reagan tax cuts, the wealthy, after the tax cuts, paid actually more in tax cuts.
Why—you know, why does no one say that?
Because they're afraid, because they're cowards, they don't have any guts.
And some of them just don't know, because some of them aren't—sadly, aren't very bright.
So the left is trying the old, you know, narrative again.
The old narrative, of course, Joe, is that this is going to drive up the debt and deficits, which is comical because the liberals have zero, zero credibility on debt and deficits.
Now, to be clear, because I'm always fair on the show, Republicans, most of them, have almost no credibility left either on debt and deficits.
Listen to yesterday's show and you'll find out why when I give you the numbers.
So I am not saying, oh, the Republicans, they have the high horse.
They don't.
They've been clownish on debt and deficits.
But Democrats have zero credibility, shouldn't even open their mouths on debt and deficits.
But now they're going, oh, these tax cuts are going to drive up the debt and deficits because they know in a focus group that that's, Joe, the narrative.
So they have to reframe it.
Now, the problem again with the reframing, just like it was with Will Bond, comparing million dollar athletes to slaves on a plantation, which is factually absurd, Just like the college campus debate, which is factually about free speech, because we're arguing for free speech for everyone.
They're trying to make it about quality discourse.
The left is trying to make this about debt and deficits and tax cuts for the rich, even though that's not the case.
That's not what happens.
Now, here's the piece in the LA Times.
Let me read you a quote and show you.
And for those of you who are regular listeners to the show, right away, you're going to see where I'm going with this.
So let's play ball here, all right?
So here's a quote.
They argue that tax cuts, they're talking about the left here, they argue that tax cuts, even if deficit financed, will spur, excuse me, let me take that back.
This is the LA Times talking about the Republicans arguing about tax cuts.
Forgive me, folks, for doing that.
They argue that tax cuts, even if deficit-financed, will spur economic growth and provide new revenue.
Here's where it gets good.
But many economists question that theory, saying it hasn't worked that way in the past.
Okay!
Now, Joe, this is the LA Times.
This is a journalism outfit, right?
Yeah.
This is not a blog.
This is not an opinion piece.
This is a journalistic endeavor, a journalism outlet that is supposed to be reporting The facts.
Now you would think, Joe, you would think, shame on us by the way for thinking this, but you would think that an outlet that specialized in journalism would be able to figure that out pretty simply.
But many economists question that theory, that tax cuts would provide new revenue, saying it hasn't worked that way in the past.
How hard is that to look up?
No, Joe, I'm being sarcastic, and of course I am, but I'm really making a legitimate point to you, the ombudsman.
How hard is this to look up?
Joe, let me ask you a question.
You have the internet, correct?
It's not a trick.
If you went to the internet, Do you think you could Google federal tax revenue by year and get an answer in five minutes?
Yeah, I think so.
I would debate two minutes.
As a matter of fact, I would make the case one minute because you already have it in the show notes that I gave to you a couple weeks ago where I actually have that tax center or whatever it is, tax foundation, the tables in a spreadsheet and a screenshot of it where you can see right there.
How hard is this for the media to do?
Folks, This is puzzling to me how people read this and take it as fact when the media is obviously reframing.
They're just not telling you the facts.
Just go look.
You will find out there is no major income tax cut in modern American history that has led to a decrease in tax revenue long term or frankly even in the extended short term.
I know that sounds like I said that wrong, but an extended short term meeting over multiple years.
And when I say long term, I mean 10 year windows or more.
It just hasn't happened!
This isn't hard!
To our liberal listeners, I'm begging you, I'm imploring you, and to our conservative listeners listening, I'm just asking you to go do the homework on, I'll tell you what, I will put the link again for the 50,000th time.
Up at Bongino.com in today's show notes, and I will email you the link today.
Please subscribe to my email list.
I appreciate it.
It helps me a lot to get the information out to you.
I will send you these articles.
But I will send you the link to a... You cannot screw this up.
It is so easy to read.
The Federal Tax Tables.
And I'm begging you, respond to my email.
And show me where after a tax cut, whether it was 1986, whether it was 1993, whether it was Calvin Coolidge, whether it was 1964 under John F. Kennedy, show me where, Joe, quote, it hasn't worked that way in the past.
Tax cuts haven't led to increased revenue.
I'm not suggesting a causal link.
I'm not suggesting tax revenue wouldn't have gone up more.
If you had tax hikes.
I'm not suggesting any of that.
I'm just suggesting that you're an idiot by saying that tax cuts have led to decreases in revenue.
That's all I'm saying.
You cannot, you are saying something that is absolutely 100% factually incorrect that Joe, who self-admittedly is not an economist, has no training in finance at all, could find on the internet, I'm telling you in under two minutes.
Matter of fact, now that he knows about Bongino.com, he could find that link in probably a minute by going to the show.
Tax tables.
Okay.
Tax cut 1986.
Did tax revenue go up?
Yes.
Okay.
So the LA Times, let me do your work for you.
It hasn't worked that way in the past.
Go to the tax tables and find out!
Just go!
Is this hard?
Do you really need, like, deep throat for this?
Do you need, like, an inside government source to go to publicly available treasury data?
Folks, listen.
I have some graduate training in finance.
I have an NBN.
I'll talk about it all, because I hate people who tout their academic credentials.
It makes me sick, to be honest with you.
you really does. I really can't stand it.
I applaud people who I value education.
Obviously, I went back twice to graduate school.
I think it's a great thing.
But touting your academic credentials To bolster BS arguments makes me sick, and the left does that all the time.
I don't need an NBA to tell you that 909 billion is greater than 505 billion.
We don't even need Jays Abacus for that!
No, we don't.
People love that, by the way.
I got an email yesterday from a guy.
He thinks it's even funnier that that new listener that time thought we were talking about a guy named Jay Zabikus.
Mr. Zabikus.
Yeah, Jay Zabikus.
Dan, they're always quoting this Jay Zabikus dude, man.
No, it's Jay's Abacus.
But yeah, I don't need... That's the thing, like some leftist economists like Paul Krugman, who'll tout his PhD and his academic... And they do that.
I hear Howard Stern talking about this all the time.
He hates this vocal fry thing.
Do you know what vocal fry is, Joe?
The Kardashians do it.
They do this thing when they go, yeah.
It's like a pretentious way of talking.
Like, I went to the park.
Yeah, I've heard it.
I didn't know that's what that was called.
It's called vocal fry.
Yeah, Stern talks about it.
It drives him crazy.
It's the worst.
It's like the Kardashians talk like that.
It's a really pretentious way of speaking.
That's Krugman.
I've got a PhD in economics.
Okay, you got a PhD in economics.
Even worse, you have an advanced degree in economics you wasted, what, $100,000 on?
And you don't know that $909 billion in tax revenue is greater than $505 billion?
Seriously, what is it?
You don't know how to go to the internet?
You can't read numbers?
Do we need to send Paul Krugman Jay's abacus?
I mean, Jay, find Paul Krugman and send him another abacus.
I mean, it's embarrassing!
That's why I hate the people who tout their academic credentials as a way to butcher simple arguments.
You don't need a PhD in economics.
This is a reframing.
One other thing here on this piece.
So, towards the end of the piece.
This one's hysterical.
Because these are obviously leftists speaking.
They're quoting a guy, Mark Mazur, from the Tax Policy Center, which, by the way, remember that name.
The Tax Policy Center is a joke.
It is a left-leaning outlet.
Whenever a liberal quotes it, just, folks, put up the timeout sign, throw the red flag, and say, no, no, we're talking about credible sources, not the Tax Policy Center.
This place is a joke.
I did a show on it last week.
They scored the tax plan, the Tax Policy Center, without even knowing what the tax plan was.
That makes them a joke.
They're a farce.
But nonetheless, the media loves to quote the Tax Policy Center because they have a veneer of legitimacy despite the fact that they're a bunch of partisan hacks.
So Mark Mazur, director of the Tax Policy Center, said he was, quote, Joe, incredibly skeptical of the White House's $4,000 estimate.
The $4,000 estimate is the expected pay raise people will get roughly after this tax cut.
Now, this guy from the Tax Policy Center, he's incredibly skeptical.
Skeptical.
It's even annoying when you do it, right?
The vocal fry.
Explaining that there are many reasons why wages have not kept up with the growth of corporate profits.
Wait, this is the sentence.
You pick up the hypocrisy right away.
This guy's a leftist, by the way.
He cited less powerful labor unions and competition from lower wage workers abroad.
Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
T.O., red flag under the hood.
We're going for a review here.
I thought you guys were open borders advocates.
So let me get this straight.
On one hand, you fight Trump on anything that has to do with immigration security and any change to the legal immigration policies.
And I don't know Mark Mazur's immigration politics, to be clear.
I'm just trying to suggest the Tax Policy Center is a left-leaning outfit, no question about it, that is now making the case that Trump is making it up that his tax cuts will give you a raise, which by the way, he's not making it up.
He's basing it on a lot of historical evidence.
Based on prior tax cuts, by the way.
You know, evidence what the left doesn't do.
He's now making a case that's not true because we're allowing a lot of cheap labor into the country.
Wait, what?
Guys, do you have a narrative that ever makes sense?
That damn narrative, Dan.
It always gets in the way.
Ten minutes ago, liberals were arguing for open borders.
We don't want, we want DACA to dreamers.
We want everybody in the country, a points-based system.
Boy, you can't have that.
I mean, assigning points based on people's economic value to the United States, that's insane.
Let's let everybody come into the country.
I mean, did someone tell Mark from the Tax Policy Center?
Like, hey Mark, you got the narrative wrong.
Like, Mark, you said something that directly contradicts leftist policy.
These people are totally, completely inconsistent every single time.
It's unreal.
Oh, man.
All right.
I got a couple more doozies here.
If I can't get to one of these stories, I want to cover it tomorrow because it's a fascinating piece on international debt.
I know that's it.
You're like, oh my gosh, that sounds like a sleeper.
No, I promise it's not.
It's really interesting what's going to happen right now.
The fascination with government debt and low interest rates has got us in a really precarious situation right now with interest rates.
All right.
Today's show also brought to you by CRTV, where I work.
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All right, so there was another fascinating article I'll put in the show notes today in the Washington Examiner about, and I tweeted it out, and I guess the best way to sum it up and give you a 30,000-foot view is the one big benefit thus far of the Trump presidency, and this guy's opinion, Joe, and I happen to agree, by the way, that's why I'm talking about it, has been the outright, utter, abject failure of the government and Trump's willingness to expose it.
Now, let me just go through the litany of things that this guy writes about in the piece, that I, in my opinion, and he doesn't say this, I'm kind of adding to this, so that's the premise, that one of the benefits of the Trump presidency is he has exposed the failure of the government to get just about anything right.
I agree with this because the problem we would have had with a standard establishment Republican president, say like a George W. Bush type, right Joe?
Is their failure to challenge the media.
And the media narrative is always to defend the government even when the government blows it.
So they're afraid to call out government failure.
You know, oh we don't want to offend government poise.
You're not offending government poise.
The system is broken.
It's not the people in it.
The people in it are fine.
They go to work every day.
It's the system that's completely broken.
So he says, listen, this guy's exposed the failure of the North Korean deal.
And I made the point a while ago that it's the way he talks.
Gosh, I hope I'm not going to confuse you here.
It's the way Trump talks about this stuff.
That exposes the failure.
In contrast to the past where the failures were covered over or excused for, even by Republicans, because they always wanted some wiggle room to kind of moderate their conversation to try to get Democrat votes, Trump doesn't care.
He just doesn't care.
Trump says what he wants to say, when he wants to say it, because he's not in the pocket of any big donors or anything, Joe.
He just doesn't care.
Now, here's a couple of things.
The North Korea deal.
Total failure.
Trump talks about it all the time.
Failure.
It's a mess.
I mean he just comes out there and says this thing's crap.
It's garbage.
Diplomatic speak air quotes that would have never been used in the past.
The Iran deal.
Total failure.
It's a disaster.
And the American public is hearing this kind of language for the first time.
The clean power plant rule.
Guy makes the point, this was revoked yesterday, which was a gross overreach of EPA power, trying to regulate the energy infrastructure and energy grid within the states.
A gross overreach of power.
EPA comes out and says, listen, it's gone.
This clean power plant rule, we're not going to do it.
And the guy writes in a piece, and you know what?
The lights came on today.
Nobody's sitting there going, the Obama clean power plant environmental agenda fell apart.
The world's going to end!
It's not!
And sadly, establishment Republicans would probably have kept the rule or been like, well, it was a good thing, but Trump's just like, nah, it sucks.
We're going to get rid of it.
It's terrible.
Obamacare destroys it every single day on Twitter.
There's no, well, you know, there is some good and some bad and some other stuff.
You know, listen, even when I heard some initial stuff in the beginning of this, I even, I did some diplomatic talk about this because I thought to myself, gosh, if we can get free markets, it'd be great.
But this thing's crap and Trump doesn't care.
He dogs it out.
Tax cuts.
He doesn't use the diplomatic speak about the tax cuts.
He talks about massive tax cuts.
In the past, we'd be like, well, you know, we have a tax benefit to the middle class.
My point in this is he just doesn't care, folks.
Trump is different because he doesn't care.
He is not subject to the donor pressure.
And now, let me just give you, quickly, when I was running, when I was a candidate running for office, I know about this.
Every time I took a stand on an issue, right?
Yep.
You would always get someone who would email you and try to press you.
Like, I was a big supporter of the fair tax.
I still am.
I would always get emails from people who were, some were donors, some were influential Republicans, and they'd say, Dan, you gotta be really careful, you're gonna offend this person, and maybe the real estate lobby, they're not gonna like it, and this person's gonna lose that deduction.
Folks, there is nothing, trust me on this one, I was there three times, there is nothing you can take a stand on That will not have a constituent group on the other side of it.
I'm serious.
You go out there and you want to make a law against puppy abuse.
Someone will have something to say about it.
I'm serious.
I'm not making it up.
Someone will say, well, you know, I'm a libertarian.
We don't need new laws.
All right, fair.
I'm just saying.
Trump just doesn't care.
He doesn't feel the need to nuance the issue.
He exposes the failure of government.
The examiner piece is great.
It's like this guy has shown Americans, moderate Americans, Democrat, working class Democrats in Pennsylvania, the government's a total failure.
And then I'm going to put another piece up and say that the secondary benefit of the Trump presidency has also been a dismantling of the three musketeers of doom.
The media, academia, and Hollywood.
Trump's relentless attacks on the media, which they deserve it and they brought it on themselves.
And by the way, I support a free media.
I don't support any restrictions on them, but I also support the president's right to attack them when they're jerks, which they are most of the time.
Trump has destroyed Their ability, media, the media, academia, and now Hollywood, well not so, academia may be okay.
Two of the three is in the Meat Loaf song.
Two out of three ain't bad.
Ain't bad.
Hollywood with the Weinstein scandal and these Hollywood actors constant attacks on Trump because they cannot control themselves.
Their attacks on Trump in conjunction with the media's lying about the Trump-Russia thing and all this other stuff.
The Trump presidency has not only dismantled the power of the state, Or the veneer of power in the state as exposing them as failures.
The Trump presidency has also dismantled the veneer of what I called here in the thing the illusion of knowledge in this piece.
The illusion of knowledge, the illusion that successful powerful people in Hollywood and journalists have some kind of special knowledge you don't.
It's collapsing.
Look at the polling.
The Trump presidency will finally, in my opinion, just to sum this up, will finally have turned the corner, to bring it back to the beginning of the show, on the media and Hollywood's ability to reframe issues away from the facts and into the chosen leftist narrative.
Because their ability to do that was based on the illusion of knowledge.
And that illusion of knowledge has been dismantled by Trump and his team that has exposed these people as frauds.
And just a bunch of, in many cases, sexual harassers, moral vacuums, and just outright liars as journalists.
The illusion of knowledge is gone.
Their power to reframe the narrative is going with it.
And love him or hate him, that is going to be, I think, Trump's lasting legacy for the Republican Party, is taking back the culture wars.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I appreciate all the reviews for the show on iTunes.
We're closing in on 700 soon, and thanks to everyone who subscribes to my email list at Bongino.com.
I appreciate it.
I'll see you.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
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