Ep. 568 Is This the Biggest Political Blunder in Modern Times?
In this episode - Why are the Democrats arguing for bailouts and fewer healthcare choices? http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-to-end-obamacare-insurer-subsidies-putting-pressure-on-congress-to-act/article/2637381 The bipartisan “Bump Stock” bill is a scam. Please read about the troubling details. http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/13/new-bipartisan-bump-stock-bill-would-actually-ban-all-semi-automatic-weapons/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=92a95a12c2-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-92a95a12c2-83971621 There is a real and growing danger from this type of attack which could wipe out 90 percent of the US population. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/congress-warned-north-korean-emp-attack-would-kill-90-of-all-americans/article/2637349 Despite claims of “climate change” risk investors are pouring into Houston. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-12/investors-head-to-houston-to-buy-from-panicked-homeowners Is this Trump’s biggest accomplishment thus far? https://www.wsj.com/articles/scalias-all-the-way-down-1507847435 Sponsor links: www.PrepareWithDan.com www.CRTV.com Promo Code “Bongino”
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They've been tweeting to me, Bongino's a nut, Bongino's a blanker, blanker.
The Dan Bongino Show.
Everywhere big government gets bigger, corruption grows bigger, and these liberals just keep going on and on and on about how great big government is, and they can't prove to you any examples of how wonderful big government is almost anywhere.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
Young kids, you are too stupid to figure out your health insurance needs, so we're gonna hammer your cabooses to death until you figure out that the government knows what's best and you're an idiot.
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?
I'm fine.
Happy Friday.
Yeah, man.
Friday the 13th.
What a news day.
Man, I've got so many notes here, I'm afraid that I'm going to miss something.
So right to the point.
Hey, first an explanation, because I was on Tucker last night on Fox and I went on to talk about the Las Vegas attack again.
And I got a lot of feedback on that first one.
Remember I said the thing about the, I was not precise in my description of the body armor, and I cleared that up.
It was totally my fault.
I told NRA TV yesterday during my regular one o'clock hit there, I said, it is my job to be absolutely precise with you.
There's no excuses for speaking in generalizations at all.
But I went on last night, and I always get a lot of feedback, always, every time I speak about this Las Vegas attack.
And a lot of it is from people who say, You know, did you see this?
And it's a YouTube video and there was, you know, a shooter on the fourth floor and there was a second shooter and... Folks, I get it.
I'm not...
As I said on Tucker last night, I don't blame people for wanting answers at all but I feel like I owe you an explanation because I think some of you think I'm dismissive and one thing I'm definitely not of my listeners ever is dismissive and I'm absolutely not in any way intending this to be condescending but I think I owe you an explanation as to why because someone said to me the genesis of this or a little background is someone said to me yesterday I know you don't like conspiracy theories but And I feel like I owe you an explanation as to why that is.
Why I, it's not that I don't like them.
I just, I'm an evidence-based guy.
And until I see evidence that I find convincing, I'm an independent thinker, just like you.
I choose not to put it out on my show.
And let me just give you a quick explanation why.
So you understand where I'm coming from.
I feel like I owe it to you and maybe it'll make sense.
It is not me in any way being dismissive because people get insulted.
I'm serious, Joe.
Like I get emails like, I can't believe you don't believe this theory.
And I'm like, well, Here's number one.
I worked in the Obama White House.
Many of you know that as a Secret Service agent.
I was one of his lead advance agents.
And I remember dealing with staffers on lead advances who loved, loved when people brought up the Obama birth certificate controversy.
They loved it!
The Obama staffers!
Now folks, I'm not a student of war.
But I am pretty convinced that when your political ideological opponents, just like in say wartime, are doing something you want them to do...
Your opponent's probably doing the wrong thing for them.
I'm just saying, folks, they absolutely loved it.
And I used to ask people who would tell me about it.
I get it.
I totally understand that people have questions about everything.
Question everything you want.
I'm just telling you that, again, when insiders in the Obama White House, I watched, I saw this up close and personal.
Are saying to you, and this is one example of why I have a real problem with, I think, a lot of these things.
Here's my, you want to hear a conspiracy theory, Joe?
Here's my conspiracy theory.
And I don't mean that in a negative way.
I think Democrats set us up a lot with this stuff to make us look like idiots.
I heard it, I was there, I'm telling you.
Joe, you get where I'm going with this?
Is this making sense?
Yeah.
This is a bait and switch.
Not all of it.
I mean, listen, I would have, you know, someone, I had some information.
I, when I said that tweet, Obamagate was going to blow wide open.
Yeah.
I did heard some things and it turned out it wasn't a conspiracy theory.
The Obama administration really did unmask Trump administration officials.
That's real.
It's not a theory that actually happened, but there were some things like the Obama birth certificate thing where I'm telling you behind the scenes, I can't tell you anything with a hundred percent certainty.
All I know is Descartes.
I think therefore I am.
That's the only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty, okay?
But I can tell you this, with near certainty, that I was there listening to these people and there's nothing they liked more than when Republicans brought up the birth certificate.
And again, as a rule of strategy, when your opponent's doing something you want them to do, you're probably not doing something right.
Secondly, working for the government and having had one of the highest clearance levels you can have, a top secret sensitive compartmentalized information clearance level, when I was on the presidential protection division protecting the president and access to some very privy conversations.
Folks, I'm telling you in my experience, The government, not the people within the government, I'm talking about the collective IQ here.
The collective IQ of a government of fallible people and sinners, which we all are.
They're not smart enough to do the things you're giving them credit for doing!
I'm just telling you!
They are not smart enough to pull these things off!
I don't know why, as conservatives and some libertarians, we argue on one end that the government's too dumb to manage healthcare, but on the other end, We propagate a theory that they were somehow able to blow up the World Trade Center.
Folks, does that make any sense?
I'm sorry.
I just... I was there, okay?
I worked in 7 World Trade Center.
It just doesn't make sense.
I know you're going to send me emails.
I get it.
Listen, I respect you as people.
I understand you're naturally inquisitive.
And I'm not trying to be condescending at all.
I'm just giving you my explanation of why I believe what I believe.
I understand why you believe what you believe.
And I really debated even talking about this because people, they go, I mean, really, the only reason I brought up is because after the Tucker hit on Las Vegas, I probably got 50 or 60 emails from one person who swears I'm covering up for the CIA, that it was like a CIA hit.
And I'm like, guys, you realize I work out of a home office in Palm City, Florida, right?
Joe, you've been here, correct?
Yeah.
You think I have CIA operatives visiting my home planting stories on my podcast?
Guys, come on, is that even realistic?
You know, there's a principle I strongly encourage you all, if you would allow me, to live your lives by.
It's a very simple one.
You know, Occam's razor, right?
Some people say, you know, keep it simple, stupid, right?
That Occam's razor?
It's a little more complicated than that.
The more, I guess, you know, pseudo-sophisticated version of people who want to sound really intelligent, unnecessarily by the way, because keep it simple stupid really sums it up, but Occam's Razor would say something like, given all possible explanations for a scenario except the one that's the most parsimonious or requires the least amount of explanations, right?
That's a great way to live your life.
It's an accepted one.
I'm not talking about accept it blind to any future evidence.
I'm just saying like always accept the explanation at barring any other evidence that requires the least amount of additional explanations.
You want to know why I don't believe the World Trade Center was taken down as an inside job?
Because I worked there!
And the evidence you, I have, I saw with my own eyes absolutely no evidence at all that someone was hauling explosives into 7 World Trade Center on the OEM floor, we were on the 9th and 10th floor, to blow up the building!
None!
I was there all hours.
We had a vehicle security facility down there.
We worked there all hours.
We were there at two and three in the morning.
We had a duty desk at midnight.
Not one person in the 12 years I was in the Secret Service ever reported to the desk that they ever, well it wouldn't be 12 because you know the buildings went down in 2001.
I got on in 1999, but you get my point.
I know it's true.
No one ever reported anything unusual ever.
It's just, for me to believe a conspiracy theory requires me to assume a lot and requires me to explain away things that make no sense.
Like, well, why did no one report it?
Why?
It just doesn't make sense.
Gosh, I went on way too long about this.
This is why I didn't want to talk about this.
But, you know, I'm just, my apologies, folks.
I don't want to waste your time, but I did get a voluminous amount of email, and I feel like if you're nice enough to tune into my podcast, I should be fair enough to give you an explanation.
Yeah, as far as you're going on like that, you know, what are you going to do?
What are you gonna do?
Your son's a junkie.
What are you gonna do?
My son's... I don't have a son.
If you gotta listen to the show, you'll get the jokes.
Just like Jay Zabikus.
Someone actually posted on my Facebook yesterday, who is this infamous Jay Zabikus making a joke?
Yeah, of course.
But again, folks, inside joke.
If you're a regular listener, you'll get it.
If not, you'll figure it out over time.
I promise you.
All right, so yesterday Trump thankfully put out an EO, an executive order, kind of bending Obamacare a little bit in the direction of free markets.
I got a lot of questions about this too on email.
One guy sent me one in and said, wait, wait, wait, my, you know, liberal friends at work are saying you didn't like Obamacare's executive orders and now they're okay with Trump.
Folks, I always hate this.
Just to be clear on this, it's not that we did, it's not what about I, it's not about what I like or dislike.
My beef with the Obamacare executive order was about specific executive orders that were not executive orders.
They were legislating from the executive branch of government, which is not constitutional.
We have a legislative branch of government.
It's called the Congress.
Most of you know that.
The executive branch is there to enforce the laws.
It is not there to make the laws.
What Obama did with the DACA, the DACA program, Deferred Amnesty for Childhood Arrivals, the basically amnesty program for kids who were brought into the country illegally, which was...
A penumbra from the Obama administration.
Why people and good conservatives had a problem with this was not because it was an executive order.
There's nothing illegal or unconstitutional about executive orders.
What it did was it rewrote the law based on a A really tortured definition of prosecutorial discretion.
It basically said, you know, it's the equivalent of the example I was using, it was the equivalent of the DACA executive order, and why we get a beef with it, of a highway cop who shows up to work in the NYPD, Highway 2, full shout out to those Highway 2 guys, and says, listen, I'm not writing any more tickets ever for anybody with a Hispanic last name who was brought here illegally.
You can't do that.
Now, they're not prosecutors or cops, but you get my point?
A cop has discretion in individual cases.
A cop on the highway, most of you know this, is under no obligation to write you a ticket.
None.
But he can't go to work and say, I am not going to write tickets for anyone who is, has the last name Brown or Jones or Ramirez or whatever it may be.
You can't do that.
That is not what the discretion was meant to entail.
Prosecutors and the executive can't do that either.
What Obama did is he didn't say, hey, we're going to look at individual cases of children who were brought here illegally.
What he said is we're going to let everybody go.
That's not prosecutorial discretion.
That's rewriting the law.
That's my beef with the EO.
Now, is this Trump executive order on Obamacare going to be challenged in court?
Sure.
Are there things they may have issues with?
Yes.
And I'm going to get into this in a second.
One specifically, though, is subjecting some plans to the Obamacare law, however bad it may be written, and it is, and not subjecting other plans, they may have an issue.
I mean, for me to ignore that because Obamacare sucks would make me just as bad as the liberals.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
Yeah!
I mean, at some point, we're going to have to legislatively change Obamacare.
We can't just say, well, you know, listen, Obamacare sucks, but I'm a believer in the Constitutional Republic.
It was passed in a tortured manner.
It's one of the worst health care laws, if not the worst in American history.
But we can't profess a fidelity to the Constitutional Republic and then throw the Republic out the window when it's our turn.
Because then we just lead the Democrats to do more of it.
Now, a couple of things about this.
Number one, I find it kind of almost amusing that the Democrats, due to this executive order, and the breaking news today, by the way, because I want to cover two Obamacare topics.
The executive order, what it does, and secondly, the stopping of the CSR payments.
These CSR payments were bailout payments.
Trump put out a tweet this morning and HHS put out a tweet.
Jeff Sessions did a hit this morning.
The Attorney General said we're stopping.
These are the bailout payments.
That's what these are.
I'll put a really good article from the Washington Examiner in the show notes at Bongino.com.
If you subscribe to my email list at Bongino.com, I will send you the show notes right to your mailbox.
But let's get to the... So again, two things I want to cover is stopping the bailout payments to health insurers.
And secondly, the executive order expanding healthcare associations.
What it means for you and the atrocious position the Democrats are in right now.
Folks, they are.
They don't know what to do.
Their heads are spinning.
You can tell by the way Chuck Schumer reacted.
Okay, number one.
What did the executive order do?
It basically expanded the ability of small businesses to form health associations across state lines.
So, I guess the best way to say that is Joe works for a radio company, the radio company can get into the, if they have enough employees, they can get into the bigger insurance markets, they can get group rates, but they'll be subjected to Obamacare rules and regulations because of that.
What the Trump executive order does is it allows some of those regulations about what those plans have to buy, Joe.
That's making them super expensive, but Joe doesn't need maternity care.
Right?
Am I crazy?
Yeah, that's for sure.
Joe does not... Dude.
(laughing)
Dude.
What are you gonna do?
I don't know.
What are you gonna do?
What are you gonna do?
(laughing)
Joe doesn't need maternity care.
The regulations that force Joe's company to purchase maternity care for Joseph Armacost, who has zero need for it, inflate the prices of Joe's healthcare.
What this executive order is going to do is it's going to allow a bunch of smaller companies, maybe three, four, five employees, a bunch of them to get together.
And get access to some of the similar rates that the bigger companies can get through group plans.
Because what's the benefit of group plans, Joe?
I never want to use my wife's company as an example, but let's say I had another wife, just because I don't want to get their company aggravated.
I had another wife and she worked for IBM, right?
And that other wife in this fictitious life works for IBM and IBM gets group rates, meaning if I join with IBM and I have, let's say, a diabetes condition, the group rates will not charge me a different amount than it would charge another healthy employee for IBM.
Now, you may say, well, how does that work?
Well, it works because IBM has so many employees that the contract is still profitable, Joe, for the health insurer because they get whatever, four or five thousand employees.
And of course, then there are going to be some people who are sick.
But you get what I'm saying?
How it's worth it for them?
Because there's going to be a ton of healthy people they're going to pay.
Now, small insurers don't really have that benefit, so now with this executive order, I'm trying to make this really simple, it's obviously a little more complicated, but this is the essence of it.
It's going to allow smaller employers, three, four, five employees, let's say they're all sick, that's not a really profitable contract, it's going to allow them to band together, spread the risk amongst a bigger health association of say, 10 and 20 companies with two or three employees each, Joe, and all of a sudden get access to lower group rates where the risk is pooled, not just in your small business.
But amongst, say, 10 or 20 small businesses joining together in the association.
Make sense?
Sure.
Yeah.
So it's pretty simple stuff.
It's a great idea.
I think it's a fantastic idea.
I applaud Rand Paul also for pushing for this for a long time.
Is it a panacea?
Is it going to fix the markets overnight?
No.
And there's a very simple reason.
There's going to be massive lawsuits by the left to stop this stuff.
Now, part number two of this.
This morning, it was announced that they're going to stop these CSR payments.
These CSR payments are this.
They're basically cost-sharing payments.
That's what it stands for, cost-sharing.
And what they do is they were payments from insurance companies to other insurance companies, from winning insurance companies that were supposed to win under Obamacare profit-wise, of course.
It's not an Olympic sport.
Who are going to share some of that with companies that we're losing as a way to get these companies past the initial stages of Obamacare.
Well, what happened with this?
Well, sadly, I'm not laughing.
I mean, it's just, it goes to show you the futility of the Democrats, how dopey this party's become.
There were almost no winners in this.
So everybody lost money.
So what happened?
Obama and the Democrats in Congress when Obama's in office authorized payments basically from the US taxpayer because there was no money to pay off the losers.
So they took it in essence from the taxpayer.
The money was never paid back.
What happened after that?
The Republicans sued.
Went to court on it, and they won the case.
Because why, Joe?
The president cannot appropriate money like that.
The appropriation has to come from the legislative branch, the Congress.
And it didn't!
That was never in the bill that they could do that.
So they lost in court.
These cost-sharing payments continued, though, because Obamacare is so bad, folks, that if the taxpayer payments were not there, you following where I'm going with this, Joe?
These companies don't have other companies to rely on to bail them out.
They only have the taxpayer because Obamacare sucks so bad.
So now, let's rewind the tape.
Go back to the beginning.
Here's the awkward position the Democrats are now in.
They're trying to claim now, oh, this is sabotage.
Trump is sabotaging Obamacare.
No, Obamacare sabotages itself.
They're in the awkward position now of now arguing for two things.
On the association front, with the executive order allowing small companies to form associations, the Democrats are now arguing for fewer choices.
Folks, don't let your liberal friends do one of these dipsy-do-flipperoo on you routines.
Don't let them do the shell game in New York City.
Find a bean under the shell.
There's no bean.
You're going to lose that all the time.
It's a scam.
They are arguing now that no, no, there should be no associations and no choice of associations for small business.
You all should be forced into the massive voluminous black hole of suck known as the Obamacare, known as Obamacare exchanges.
Folks, that's it.
That is not hyperbolic.
That is not me exaggerating for effect.
That is exactly what the Democrats are arguing.
And you should be making that case to your liberal friends who are fighting the Trump executive order.
You should be saying them, so basically you're arguing for me to have fewer choices.
No, no, what we're saying is this is going to undercut the exchanges.
How is it going to undercut the Obamacare exchanges?
Because what's it going to do?
It's going to, it's going to, it's going to, this is what the Democrats are actually saying, Joe.
I'm not kidding.
I'll put the articles in the show notes.
Look at them yourself.
It's going to undercut the exchanges.
Well, how's it going to do that?
It's going to offer low-cost alternatives.
And what's going to happen?
This is me arguing with myself as a fictitious Democrat.
And what's going to happen with lower-cost alternatives?
Well, people are going to take them.
What are you going to do?
This is where we need Johnny Depp and Al Pacino on the couch and Donnie Bresco.
What are you going to do?
People are going to leave the exchanges.
What are you going to do?
Folks, do you understand the argument they're making?
That people don't want crappy Obamacare exchange insurance.
They would rather low cost alternatives like small business association backed insurance.
That once that's offered through the Trump EO, people will leave the crappy Obamacare and the Democrats will say, no, no, no, no, you need to stay.
You need to stay.
You definitely need to stay.
For those of you listening to yesterday's show, you pretentious vocal fried buffoons, the democrats I mean, do you need to stay?
That's your argument?
That's the best you can do?
There's no other argument to be made!
If these programs were such a terrible option, these health association programs where small businesses can get together and offer low-cost alternatives, if they are so bad, what are you worried about?
Seriously, what are you worried about?
If they stink so bad and nobody wants them, why do you care?
The answer is because Democrats hate choice.
And in case I missed the EO angle, the executive order angle, folks, the reason I believe this one is going to withstand the rigor of review on this, unlike the DACA executive order Obama did, because I don't think I was clear on that, so let me just rewind that too.
Is because most of Obamacare was written with the stipulation that the HHS secretary, Health and Human Services, at the discretion of appears endless amounts of times.
Well, remember, that was at the discretion of the Obama HHS secretary at the time, Kathleen Sebelius, but now under, there's an acting, but it was Tom Price, but now an acting Trump administration official.
They're going to have a tough time with this, the Democrats beating this up in court.
The law written for immigration that I challenged Obama's CEO on DACA, Joe, just to be clear, was not written at the discretion of, you know, enforce this law at your own discretion.
It didn't say that.
That's why I think the Dems are going to have serious problems in court.
And for those of you who asked that question about, well, how are Trump's CEOs different?
Fair enough.
Good question.
I appreciate it.
Now, the Dems now, so they're going to argue for fewer choices, which is ironic, but here's the second thing where the Democrats are really on their heels, Joe.
They're now forced into the position of defending these cost-sharing payments.
Forced into the position of defending health insurance company bailouts by the taxpayer.
That is... Yeah.
Oh, man, this is when we need a video podcast.
Yeah.
I'm like struggling in my chair here to be like, what?
For 50 years you've been beating up health insurance companies, talking about how they are torturing the American people with their awfully devised health insurance plans, pricing us out of our own health care.
Now you want us to pay them with tax dollars, our money, to bail them out?
This isn't mildly ironic to you?
Folks, I'm telling you right now, The only people who are buying this tremendous line of horse crap, I'm serious, this is going to sound rough, I'm sorry, but are really dopey people with limited IQs.
I'm sorry, if you are a leftist who is buying this, you have done no homework at all.
In other words, buying the idea that not bailing out insurance companies with taxpayer dollars is sabotage, you seriously have done no homework on this issue at all.
And I strongly encourage you to stay off of television.
You are only going to humiliate yourself and the country and your party.
It's embarrassing!
You don't know what you're talking about!
Alright, terrific.
I gotta be honest, I've had a lot of fun with these first two segments.
I know I'm gonna get a lot of email on both of them too, but probably the first one more.
But just to sum that up, the Democrats are now the party of insurance company bailouts and limited choices in healthcare.
That's it!
There's no other way to explain it.
Folks, huge news yesterday.
I hope you caught it.
We got some major, major league PR from this over at CRTV where I'm proud to work.
I put a post up on my Facebook page about it.
Yesterday we introduced a new show, Phil Robertson.
Really proud to say that.
Phil from formerly of Duck Dynasty.
You know, we'd been working on this for a long time.
I'd heard about it a while ago.
It was kind of biting my tongue because I wanted to say it.
I have a tough time not sharing secrets with my audience.
I knew about it a while ago and it's really, it was just blown up our network and we're really excited.
Now, I have a promo code if you're interested in signing up for me.
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Sign up for CRTV, you'll get Phil Robertson's show, Steve Crowder's show, Mark Levin's show, Michelle Malkin's show, Steve Dason's show, you'll get the Capitol Hill brief, the White House brief, the network is blowing up.
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I love what we're doing here.
Now, this is tough for me because I get a financial incentive to give you my promo code, which is my last name, Bongino, which will give you $10 off.
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Not that my promo code is wrong, it still works, but right now at least there's another promo code, which is not going to benefit me, it'll benefit someone else, and I always appreciate people who sign up using Bongino, you'll get $10 off with that.
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We really appreciate all the support we've gotten.
Okay, I saw a story today that I've addressed on the show repeatedly and I think is of great concern to you.
It kind of plays into one of the live reads I do, but that's not why I'm doing it today.
Washington Examiner is a piece, again I'll put it in the show notes, about a congressional hearing About the threat, the growing threat, and folks, the very serious and potentially existential threat for many of a North Korean nuclear detonation in the atmosphere.
I know this kind of stuff sounds, you know, we started the show about conspiracy theories.
This is not one.
I cannot be clearer on this.
This is a very real, credible, real-world threat that the potential for it happening, albeit very low, thankfully, is not zero.
And as we talked about on my show, we addressed the Black Swan scenario in gun control and I addressed on Levin.
Any scenario that result, even if it's low probability, but is super high risk, meaning death, meaning the risk is like you no longer exist, is worth you thinking about and preparing for.
Now, that's why I like my Patriot Supply as a sponsor.
I have to read for them later, but that's why I'm into preparedness, folks.
The North Korean threat.
It's a Paul Bedard article at Washington Examiner.
There's Paul Bedard's Washington Secrets, which I really like.
I promoted that a couple times.
He does great work.
I'll put the piece in the show notes.
Please read it.
Here's the gist of it.
If the North Koreans managed to pull this off, basically a detonation in the atmosphere of a nuclear weapon, it would generate an electromagnetic pulse which would fry our electric grid.
Now you may say, well, what's the problem?
You know, we have blackouts and we get the power back to homes in a week or two.
Folks, no, no, no, no.
This is not that threat.
This would blow out the transformers.
It would overload all the electric lines.
We don't have the capacity right now to reconstruct our entire electric grid, ironically, without electric!
We would have to rebuild the transformers.
The entire infrastructure would have to be rebuilt.
The problem with that is, as this, this is a congressional hearing, folks.
This isn't like some joke, some crazy blog site.
This is the real deal.
The guy at the congressional hearing said that if this were to happen, there is a potential
that within a year, 90% of the population of the United States could be wiped out.
That's not a joke.
Again, it's not something we should all sit up at night and be worried about.
I'm not suggesting that.
I'm just telling you that be prepared.
Ask your legislators, your congressional representatives, and candidly speaking, your local representatives too, if they've thought about this.
There are ways to do this to harden up the grid.
I believe, what do they call them, Faraday cages or things like that, where you can put them around transformers.
Folks, this is a very serious threat.
Now, you may ask yourself, oh gosh, why haven't we done anything?
Well, one of the experts on the issue I spoke to in the past said that there's this big beef going on between basically power companies and the government about whose responsibility it is because it's going to be a billion dollars.
Folks, I get it.
It's all understandable.
I'm not blind to the business effects.
But again, this is an existential threat.
Someone better figure it out.
You know what I'm saying?
Like right away.
Alright, let me move on, but 90% of the population, I mean, Joe, even if he's off by 50-60%, you're still talking about tens of millions of people potentially starving to death because there's no electricity, no way to get food.
It's a very serious threat.
I can't emphasize enough the importance of our officials doing that.
All right, on that note, although, believe me, it was unintentional.
I just like the story.
Please be prepared.
I appreciate everyone who supports our friends at My Patriot Supply.
Someone asked me in an email, do they have gluten-free food?
I thought, wow, that's interesting.
Like, if you were in a survival mode, you can't eat gluten.
It's a pretty reasonable request.
I sent that on to Patriot Supply.
I'll let you know the answer when I get it.
But their food is amazing.
It lasts for 25 years.
My humble opinion, it's the best survival food out there.
I say this all the time, it's better to have the food and not need it than to need it and not have it.
Folks, for $99 they'll give you a one month supply of emergency food.
I have a couple boxes to feed me and my family and get me through at least a month.
They have a lot of other emergency stuff there, too, on their website, but if you go to preparewithdan.com, that's preparewithdan.com, this is our offer, they'll give you a $99 box, one month supply of emergency food that lasts 25 years.
The best day of your life is you crack it open in 24 and a half years or so, you eat it and you go buy some more, okay?
But let's hope, let's hope that happens, because if it doesn't, or something like this atmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon, God forbid, were to happen, you'd be in really bad shape.
Go prepare.
It's a nice insurance policy for your food supply.
I encourage you to pick up a few boxes.
I did.
I don't speak with forked tongue.
I didn't ask them for a hookup.
I didn't ask them for a favor.
I only got a box in the beginning to take a picture for Instagram.
The rest I bought.
I bought my own stuff.
I have the records to prove it.
Go to preparewithdan.com.
Do what I did.
Pick up a couple boxes while you're at it.
Preparewithdan.com.
Okay.
Jesus, so much.
I hate to leave you for the weekend.
Let me just get to this one because this is a great story.
You know, Harry Reid, former Senator Harry Reid, his 2013 decision To nuke the filibuster, the judicial filibuster for federal appointees.
For those of you who don't know what that was, in 2013, Democratic Senator Harry Reid, when the Democrats controlled the Senate under Obama, decided that they were going to throw out a Senate rule that required basically 60 senators to vote for any nominee of the federal courts.
Make sense, Joe?
Reid threw it out for everything but the Supreme Court.
The Republicans subsequently wiped that clean, too.
But he said, no more filibuster.
We're going to go majority now.
And basically 51 votes is enough to confirm a nominee to the federal courts.
You may say, well, what's the problem?
Folks, this will go down, I am telling you, in history as one of the biggest political blunders in American political strategy.
Why is that?
An article in the Wall Street Journal today, it's a pretty good one, by Kim Strassel.
It's a very good article.
She does some good work over there.
And she tries to make two points.
The first is, you know, there's a lot of Trump bashing going on and, you know, people don't like his tweets and stuff.
And she's not a big Trump defender or anything, but she says one of the things that's being overlooked repeatedly, and we've talked about it here, Is this guy, the Trump administration, is doing amazing A++ work on transforming the federal judiciary back to actual judges and not legislators on the bench.
Now, she makes a couple points I wanted to talk about here.
And you may say, well, how does that relate to the strategic blunder by Harry Reid?
Because it should be obvious the Republicans have 52 votes.
Well, you know what?
50.
Susan Collins really isn't a Republican.
Frankly, either is McCain.
But they have a tiebreaker with the Vice President.
They have enough votes right now because the Democrats wiped clean the filibuster rule, Joe, to get all these judges appointed.
So this is the biggest political blunder of all time.
And let me just add to that.
You may say, well, I mean, is it?
Because when the Democrats take control, and you'd be right, the same rules apply to them, they only need 50 votes in the Senate.
But you're assuming something here.
You're assuming the Democrats are ever going to take control again.
Folks, the Democrats, do you understand that they have been wiped out outside of the coasts and basically Illinois?
Even in Maryland and Massachusetts, you have a Republican governor.
You have three bases of power for Democrats right now.
You have California, New York, and Illinois.
Really, we could actually micro that even further.
You have Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago.
That's it!
So I'm going to dispute the premise at all that you're ever going to get power back in at least maybe in the next, I could be wrong, but in the next few election cycles.
By that time, Joe, the federal judiciary has already been replaced with a bunch of 40 and 50 year olds who newsflash are going to be in office for probably 40 years.
Or excuse me, on the bench, I should say.
Got to speak clearly.
On the bench.
You get what I'm saying?
Now, Strassel's like, hey, You may not like Trump, whatever man, but this is a real accomplishment.
Now here are some of the numbers.
He's already got 60 nominations for the federal bench out there and there are 160 more openings.
That 60 right now are more than Obama had in the entire first year.
We're not even done with the first year yet.
Now he's been doing a spectacular job, folks, because the circuits, as she points out in the piece, the circuit courts, You have circuit appellate in the Supreme Court.
The lowest level federal courts, the circuit courts, Joe, where 99% of where federal legal disputes are settled.
99%!
Trump is transforming it back to an actual judicial branch and not a bunch of legislators in black robes advancing the liberal agenda.
And how's he doing it?
Because for all the knocks about, and listen, I had some beefs with some of the policies too in the primary with Trump.
For all the knocks about how he's not a conservative, Like I said, I don't care how he talks, I care what he does.
His administration's been working with the Federalist Society, folks, which is a die-hard textualist organization that believes in the text of the law should matter, which is what judges should be reading, and they are appointing A-plus people to the bench.
Folks, I'm telling you, this decision is going to go down by Harry Reid as a colossal apocalyptic blunder for the Democrats because you are going to see when Trump, after this four years, hopefully eight, if he transforms the judiciary and has these people, these conservatives on the bench for 40, 50 years, all the stuff they've managed to change through the courts on the social front, on the immigration front, that's all going to go out the window.
They are in a world of trouble.
A world of trouble.
Just wanted to bring that up.
It's a really good piece in the journal today.
All right, where do we go next?
I teased something yesterday I don't want to leave behind, but this is important.
Okay, another one.
This reminds me of Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon.
Okay, okay, okay.
Remember that in Lethal Weapon?
Okay, okay, yeah.
Because I got, really, there's so much juicy stuff out there, and I know I'm not going to have you tomorrow, so I don't want to miss it.
Interesting article, I think it was in Bloomberg.
It'll be in the show notes.
You can check it out yourself, but I'll just cover it quick.
You know, I always find fascinating liberal hypocrisy and how liberals rarely put their money where their mouth is.
You know, I bring up all the time how when you ask them how much they voluntarily give in higher taxes, it's the number zero.
Matter of fact, they hire accountants to avoid paying higher taxes, but they want you to pay more.
Well, I'm always interested in that because where people put their money is typically not where they put, you know, money where your mouth is.
You've heard that line.
And something's going on right now in Houston that should make you think twice about the whole liberal narrative about climate change.
Well, what is it?
There's an article in Bloomberg about investors right now piling into where Hurricane Harvey happened, Joe, piling into real estate over there and making people basically lowball offers on their homes.
I'm not suggesting that that's morally or ethically great or not great or whatever it may be, folks.
I'm simply suggesting to you that there are people out there, investors with real money, who are trying to buy homes that are ravaged by those floods.
Now you may say, well, what's your point?
Folks, what's my point?
You think these people are all conservatives?
The amount of money flowing in there is not from conservative think tanks.
It's from the market.
There are tons of liberals and democrats who probably have a lot of money in real estate funds and REITs and other things that are pouring money into Harvey.
But Joe, these are the very same people telling us, climate change, it's going to destroy Houston and Florida.
Really?
It's going to destroy Houston and Florida?
How come money's piling into these areas right now?
It doesn't make sense.
And I only bring it up because in the Bloomberg piece, the author hits on that, but doesn't sense the irony.
Read the piece.
You'll see what I mean.
They're like, wow, you know, the effects of climate change in the future could be dramatic.
I mean, the next sentence should have been, but it's not so dramatic that it keeps people from buying up property in the very same areas they say are going to be destroyed by climate change.
Does that make any sense?
It doesn't, and it just again speaks to this liberal hypocrisy.
You need to pay higher taxes.
Well, do you?
No, I don't, but I want you to.
Climate change is going to destroy Hurricane Harvey.
Well, why are you making lowball offers than the homeowners to buy their homes?
Because I think I can make some money?
I mean, what's your answer to that?
You're just making it up, all this stuff.
It just upsets me.
All right, moving on.
This bump stock bill.
Folks, I got an article up from the Federalist, from Sean Davis.
If you're ever going to read an article I put up at Bongino.com, read this one.
It's short, it's sweet, it's to the point.
This quote bump stock bill has almost nothing to do with bump stocks.
There's a bill out there by a Republican, he should be ashamed of himself, Carlos Cabello out there.
I don't know, listen, I don't know this guy personally, but he had the responsibility to read this bill before he put it out.
That's his job.
You have one job as a legislator.
That's to legislate and write bills that will help your constituents.
This is a bill, the bump stock bill, that supposedly bans bump stocks, that conveniently hardly even mentions a bump stock.
You know what, let me read this to you to be absolutely clear and precise on this, okay?
Hold on one second.
Okay, here's what the bill says.
It shall be unlawful for any person- pay attention folks to the details here, this is critical- shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture, possess, or transfer any part or combination of parts that is designed to increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle?
Wait, what?
Where's the bump stock in there?
Yeah.
Any part or combination of parts designed to increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle?
Davis makes a terrific, terrific point in this piece.
He goes, nowhere in the bill does it describe the base, the base point they're going to judge the rate of fire increase from.
So he makes the point, which is not a conspiracy theory, that it doesn't say, like, increase the rate of fire from, you know, 20 rounds per whatever, per second.
It says nothing about it.
So he makes the point that that could ban any semi-automatic rifle because if the rate of fire you're using as your baseline is zero, any semi-automatic rifle that increases the rate of fire from zero to one could be banned.
You may say, oh, that's stupid.
Are you sure about that?
You want to take that chance?
What are we talking about?
Are we talking about lightening the trigger load now?
So let me get this straight.
You own a, I have a Smith & Wesson M&P 15.
You bring it to the gun deal, you go, hey, I don't like this trigger pull, can you lighten it up a little bit?
Are you a federal felon now?
Folks, I got news for you.
You may be.
Read the piece.
This is why never, ever trust the Democrats and rhinos like Corbello.
Never with firearm legislation.
Ever.
There is always, Joe, always a Trojan horse in there.
Read the, just read the bill folks.
It's linked in the piece.
You think I'm making any of this up?
Any piece of equipment, it increases the rate of fire.
What does that, what does that mean?
What, what are you talking about?
Are you talking about, is it, you know, a forward pistol grip?
Because if I hold it and I press it for my shoulder, my finger, I can get better mechanics on my finger?
That case could be made in court against you.
Never trust these guys, ever.
Joe, we had one job.
One job, that's it.
You only had one job to write legislation.
This is what you put out there?
Never, never let a crisis go to waste, right?
The Democrats and weak Republicans do it all the time.
All right, last story, because I teased it yesterday.
I'm not going to beat it to death, but it was just an interesting kind of, it's a little wonky story, but about what's going on right now with the debt.
But I find it interesting.
You may not.
We're in a little bit of a pickle right now with interest rates.
The Federal Reserve has suppressed interest rates for a very long time.
Now, there's a lot of arguments about what the natural rate of interest would be.
Is there just not a lot of demand for money?
I don't want to get into a lot of that today.
I'm just telling you interest rates are low right now.
So that's the premise of where we're going with this because I don't have a lot of time to get into the other stuff.
Interest rates are very low.
There's a kind of a battle going on right now between what they would call like doves and hawks.
And there's a piece in the journal that covers this yesterday, which is fascinating.
But do we raise the interest rates?
Do we lower the interest rates?
And in essence, folks, raising our interest rates nationally through the Federal Reserve or trying to do that, because there's no way to directly really do it.
You have to do it through secondary means.
There's an argument right now, do we need to do that?
And the reason they're talking about that is, is the economy getting hot enough under the Trump administration, and at the tail end of the Obama administration, is the economy growing enough that we have to make sure we don't over-inflate the money supply, Joe, and get a bubble burst, you know, like we had in housing.
So they want to raise interest rates.
So pretty simple stuff.
But, the conundrum we're in is, we've had interest rates so low for so long, and here's a number for you.
The Bank of International Settlements reports that borrowing outside of the United States, there's $10.7 trillion in borrowing in the first quarter alone outside of the United States.
Because low interest rates make borrowing easier, right?
Sure.
You want to loan, Joe, for your coffee cup factory, whatever it may be, you want a low interest rate loan.
So borrowing is increased.
But here's the problem, folks, and here's kind of the pickle we're in.
A third of that money is owed by borrowers in emerging markets.
Who cares?
What the hell does that mean?
Well, emerging markets, their currencies can fluctuate a lot because they're not as stable as places like Japan or China.
But you know, emerging markets have hot and cold economies, you have hot and cold governments at times.
The problem with this is if you borrow it at a low interest rate, eventually you had to convert those dollars you borrowed into the local currency.
So let's say the currency is whatever it may be.
We used to call them chits.
So you convert it into your local currency, which is chits.
And when you converted your, CH by the way, when you converted your dollar into a chit and interest rates was low, it was one dollar for one chit.
But now the interest rates in the United States go up, which dries up a bit of the money supply, making the money more valuable, right?
I mean you dry up the supply of anything, it makes it more valuable.
Everybody wants bagels, you get a few bagels, everybody starts bidding on the price of the bagel, the bagel goes up.
Money's no different.
So if we raise interest rates and start to dry up the supply of money, the value of that money goes up.
But folks, the value of that money goes up for people who took loans in it as well.
So now these emerging markets that borrowed U.S.
dollars but have to pay it back in chits because it was, you know, you had to convert it to spend it locally, are now going to be screwed because you thought you owed a dollar per chit and now you need five or six chits to pay back one dollar.
Now you're in a pickle.
This happened in Mexico.
It happened with some of the East Asian countries.
Folks, this could be a really big problem.
I only say that because I think we do have to raise interest rates to get ahead of it.
I think I'm a big believer in sound money.
But the journal author brings up an interesting point that this may bring on some kind of a global recession if we don't handle this carefully because all these other countries may go bankrupt trying to pay us back in basically stronger dollars.
Make sense?
Sounds pretty chitty to me.
I knew, I, dude.
You knew that was coming, didn't you?
I knew I'd kind of set myself up.
I should have called them scoots.
Sometimes we call them scoots.
You did.
But Chits, CH, it's a family-friendly show.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Please go check us out at CRTV.
You're going to love that new show by Phil Robertson.
