Obamacare is a scam. This article describes how they play with the numbers to deceive you.
Another excellent explanation of the phony “Clinton surplus.”
What percentage of the tax load do the top 20% pay? The number may surprise you.
The dreadful Washington Post is in a panic as the credibility of the Mueller probe collapses.
Debunking myths about the investigation into Bill Clinton.
A classic, must-watch Thomas Sowell clip.
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Get ready to hear the truth about America with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Hey, ready to go, man.
Yeah, man, me too.
Hey, again, Merry Christmas to all of you.
Hope you had a great Christmas yesterday.
I certainly did.
Got my wife a nice Burberry bag and she got me the king Of all man gifts, in my humble opinion, you may disagree.
You may think it's a bit nerdy.
I don't.
But the first appearance of the Punisher in Spider-Man 129, you gotta love the Punisher.
What guy does not love the Punisher?
How can you not love a character known as the Punisher?
How can you not?
I'm just asking.
So it may surprise you that I'm into that kind of thing.
But when I was a kid, I was really into comic books.
I, of course, like every other kid, I sold probably about $500,000 worth of them for the cost of a turkey sandwich at Tommy's Deli in the corner in Glendale.
But my wife has been working very hard to accumulate back At least the valuable one.
She was Daredevil number one.
And yeah, the Punisher in Spider-Man 129.
Which, note, in that movie Coyote Ugly, if you've ever seen it, that is the comic book that the kid sells to get his girlfriend on stage and then she buys it back for him later.
So, pretty cool Dan Bongino story, but I hope you all did well.
Yeah, it's cool.
I took a picture, I put it on my Instagram if you want to see the cover.
All right, let's get into it, because yesterday was Christmas cuts and we haven't got into our standard political discussion, so no more time to waste.
There is a stellar, spectacular, fantastic article at the Wall Street Journal today.
I am not sure if it's subscription only.
I don't think it is, because I've seen it in a couple other places.
Either way, it's in the show notes today.
I will give you the information in it, so no worries if you can only read the first few paragraphs.
But it is spectacular, and it is about Obama And again, I know this constantly comes up, this constant theme, but the article just thoroughly eviscerates, again, additional talking points put out by Democrats that are in fact not true, are lies, are manipulative, deceptive, and are just designed to make you believe that somehow this thing has just an ounce of success left in it, when it doesn't.
Two talking points I've heard repeatedly on the news channels, the cable news channels, from talking heads, repeatedly, that these people know isn't true.
To defend this disaster, Joe, one of them is about how successful it's been with regards to improving overall health, and that we'll get to in a second.
But the second one is more pernicious, because it requires an intentional manipulation of data for you to believe it's true.
One of them you've heard, Joe, and you've heard this before on the show, is them saying, well, it's controlled overall health care spending because the arc, the spending arc, has gone down since Obamacare was implemented.
No!
No, no, no.
I've repeatedly debunked this nonsense, but I must say, James Freeman in the Journal does a much better job, I have to throw myself under the bus here a minute, does a much better job of making this elegant and simple and showing you why that's true.
So just to repeat, the talking point by the left is...
Overall healthcare spending has declined ever since Obamacare passed and therefore it's been an unbelievable success.
Now most of you know that's not true just by getting your bills in the mail, right Joe?
You're like, uh, what?
Come again?
My healthcare bills have gone through the roof since Obamacare passed.
Here's the scam.
There's nothing more I love than exposing scams.
Okay.
Here's how they'll start, Joe.
They'll say overall health care spending was 5.7% a year from 2003 to 2010.
This is the liberals talking, okay?
So 5.7% a year from 2003 to 2010.
But since Obamacare, it's been 4.3% from 2010 to 2016.
Oh!
All right!
All right.
We lose!
Liberals win, Joe!
Okay, so 5.7% a year from 2003 to 2010.
But, since Obamacare, it's been 4.3% from 2010 to 2016.
Oh, alright!
Alright.
We lose!
Liberals win, Joe!
Who knew?
Who knew that they had controlled healthcare spending to such a degree?
There's always a scam!
Here it is!
Hat tip, James Freeman.
Folks, this doesn't take into account inflation.
Now, how would that lead to that?
How would that enable you to torture the statistics?
Well, if inflation in those years, monetary inflation, was higher from 2003 to 2010, The nominal costs of healthcare are going to appear higher based not on the cost of healthcare, Joe, but just based on the inflation, the inflation of the currency.
You see, I mean, do you see the point I'm making here?
So, when you actually adjust the numbers for inflation and you use real dollars, not nominal dollars, right?
Let me give you just a quick example of a difference.
If I were to say to you, using only nominal dollars, Man, housing is so much more expensive now, Joe.
When my father bought his house in Selden, uh, you know, whatever, 30 years ago, that house was only, you know, $30,000.
Man, that house is $400,000.
What?
My gosh!
What an investment!
No, folks, that's the nominal amount.
When you adjust it for inflation, yeah, the price of the house went up, but it did not go up to that degree.
You get what I'm saying?
If you were to price that in dollars, the way dollars were priced when they bought the house, the value of the house would probably be $100,000, not $400,000.
Right.
You get the difference?
Yes.
Pretty simple, right?
Mm-hmm.
That's not what the Democrats did in this scam, where they said, look, we cut your cost.
When you adjust for actual inflation, which was higher from 2003 to 2010, Joe.
No shocker here at all.
By the way, you have that Couples Retreat Yes guy?
Cue him up.
I love that guy.
Get him ready.
All right, but when you factor in inflation, the 2003 to 2010 numbers, healthcare costs went up 2.6%.
When you factor in inflation after Obamacare, they went up 2.7%.
Now, Joe, I'm gonna ask you a simple question.
All right, Dan.
Which number is greater?
2.7?
Or 2.6?
2.7, Dan.
2.7 wins again.
Play Couples Retreat.
Yes, guy.
Yes!
Yoga instructor from Couples Retreat.
Love that guy.
I forget who sent that over.
Is it Ron P?
Yeah, he's a good man.
We love that.
I love that guy.
Yes!
Folks, they didn't factor in inflation.
By the way, they did this intentionally.
So again, it's a scam trying to get you to believe that something that's not in fact true, that Obamacare's control costs, is a myth.
It's nonsense.
Now, making this even worse.
So we control for inflation the way they do with every other economic statistic and financial statistic out there.
Making it even worse, Joe, is they didn't factor in population growth either.
So, population growth from 2003 to 2010 pre-Obamacare was higher than it is now.
What does that have to do with it?
Well, if the number of people spending money is growing at a faster rate prior to Obamacare on healthcare than it is afterwards, and you don't adjust for that, you're going to get a skewed statistic based just on the number of people spending money on healthcare, not the cost of the healthcare itself.
Make sense?
It's like saying, well, population growth, the number of jackets, 2003 to 2010, was through the roof, number of jacket sales, and it slowed down after 2010.
Well, did it?
Or is it just the number of people who moved into the country and the population growth of the number of people who required jackets?
Well, when you control for population growth, Joe, here we go again, and you make it spending per person, which is the right way to do it on healthcare?
2003 to 2010, it was 1.7%.
2010 to 2016, it was 1.9%.
Yes!
1.9 is greater than 1.7.
1.9, 1.7, 1.9, 1.7.
It was 1.7 percent. 2010 to 2016, it was 1.9 percent.
Yes!
1.9 is greater than 1.7. 1.9, 1.7, 1.9, 1.7.
Folks, I hate to beat you over the head with this stuff, but I read it this weekend and I actually emailed myself
the article from the journal because I'm like, "You can't trust, you cannot trust anything they tell
you."
Liberals will say anything, will torture any statistic to get you to believe your eyes are lying to you.
Here's one more thing that's troubling and on a very serious note.
My wife brought this up this morning.
She was watching a really horrible video about the opioid epidemic in Ohio and she's like, you know, Dan, she doesn't call me Dan, but she's, you know, she says, this is really, you got to watch this.
This is so deeply disturbing.
I said, man, I'm really glad you brought that up because I was going to address this this morning.
A very serious, not to be Debbie Downer the day after Christmas, but folks, this is the first time.
In the post-Obamacare era?
This is the first time since 1962 and 63, Joe, that life expectancy in the United States has declined two years in a row.
That's really serious, folks.
I mean, these are lives that are being snuffed out.
Now, I want to be fair here.
I'm not, and neither does the article.
This is in that Freeman piece, too.
Pin this entirely on Obamacare.
I think it has a lot to do with it, don't get me wrong.
But it's not entirely Obamacare.
There's a good chunk of it.
You may say, well, why would you even say that?
Well, folks, the data bear it out.
One of the factors factoring into the decreased life expectancy.
I mean, that's a staggering number.
I mean, to decrease two years in a row in a society where medical technology is exploding by the day and people are dying earlier?
There's something wrong here, folks.
One of the reasons Is the increasing use of drugs, opioid drugs, and people getting addicted to them.
Folks, please, I get it.
I understand the overwhelming majority of people use these drugs responsibly.
I want to be crystal clear on this.
I am not suggesting some massive government invention into the pharmaceutical market.
I am not suggesting that at all.
Please, so don't email me saying, why are you attacking, you know, I need these for my, I totally understand.
I'm just giving you the numbers about people who are not behaving responsibly.
Some dying.
The human cost of this at Obamacare has been dramatic, folks.
This is a staggering number.
Overdose deaths per capita from drug use have risen twice as much on average between 2013 and 2015 in states that expanded Medicaid.
Now, why would that be?
Well folks, maybe because in Medicaid, Medicaid patients are more than twice as likely to be prescribed these opiate drugs as normal, as states that, excuse me, patients that have private health care.
So Medicaid patients twice as likely to be prescribed opiates.
Some of those opiates are being resold on the streets.
Folks, is this causal?
Can you prove it's causal?
No.
Are the correlations worth noting?
Absolutely.
Combine that with the high deductibles Obamacare has put up, you know, laid upon us.
And folks, I'm bringing this up because this is going to be the next argument again.
Believe me, the Obamacare getting rid of Obamacare debate has only just begun.
After their first failure, I think the Republican caucus is reinvigorated after the tax success.
You are going to see this again.
You're going to see this Obamacare debate again.
The high deductibles, it's forced upon us.
People aren't going to the doctor, Joe, because they don't have, you know, their first say $5,000 to $10,000 in medical coverage isn't covered from the deductible.
They don't have the out-of-pocket money.
Combine that with the fact that Medicaid patients, Obamacare expanded Medicaid dramatically.
In those expansion states, these people are being given drugs.
Some of them can't manage twice as much as people who are on private insurance.
And it all makes sense, folks, what's going on.
Why life expectancy, especially in these states, has gone down.
So just to be clear on this.
Obamacare has done nothing to control costs.
Costs have gone up when you adjust for population growth and you adjust for inflation.
Secondly, not only have costs gone up, life expectancy has gone down.
This is the absolute epitome of a failed program.
Everything it told you it was going to do, it actually did the opposite.
That is stunning.
We're going to cut costs.
We're going to increase quality.
Quality's gone down, people are dying, and costs have gone through the roof.
All right.
Again, I don't mean to beat you over the head with Obamacare, but it's a really, really good piece, and it just goes to show you how far the depths of depravity these people will go to lie to you, to get you to believe that something's happening that's not really happening.
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All right.
Here's a story I threw in last, but I'm going to talk about now quick because I'm really fired up about it and very upset.
There's another article in the Wall Street Journal today about... This goes to show the depravity of the Democrats up on the Hill and the far left wing of the Democrat Party, how sick these people are.
They really are sometimes.
Not talking about all Democrats, I mean the far left wing.
There's a program out there, Joe, for our vets, right?
Now, Joe, you'd agree with me, I know, because I know your respect for our cops, our firemen, our first responders, and our military folks.
Wouldn't you agree that the one issue that pretty much shares bipartisan support, not up on the hill, So much.
But out there in the general population, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, whatever it may be, is support for our veterans, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Not complicated.
I mean, 99.9% of Democrats and Republicans say, listen, we got to take care of our veterans.
They've made a sacrifice that, you know, most of us haven't.
And that's important.
Well, there's a program out there that was instituted under the Obama administration called the Choice Program.
And what it enables veterans to do who need health care is to escape the bureaucracy of the VA and subject to certain rules, they can seek health care outside of the VA network.
The VA is a series of hospitals, the Veterans Administration where vets can go for care.
Of course, many of you remember the scandal, the waiting list scandal.
Even though people were dying on the waiting list, the vets, waiting list for these hospitals.
And these hospitals, I firmly believe, are not doing their jobs.
I'm not knocking the personnel there.
I'm just saying they're not getting the job done.
It is a third-party payer system managed by the government.
It is single-payer health care at its worst.
I'm sure the people there are very good.
I'm sure the people there genuinely care about the vets.
But the system designed, they designed for veterans health care, is not conducive to supporting vets.
It's conducive to supporting the bureaucracy.
It is not a free market run institution.
When it's not free market run, the consumer is not your primary interest.
The government is, because that's where you get your funding.
Now, the scandal that happened at the VA was real.
Even Obama had to make a change, who, believe me, has no interest in going after single payer at all.
So he allowed some veterans to go seek health care outside of that network subjected to certain rules, Joe.
Well, surprising absolutely no one listening to this program who understands the basic economics of supply and demand.
Well, what happened, Joe?
The popularity of the program soared.
Sure.
And patient visits according to the Wall Street Journal increased more than 30% in the first quarter of 2017.
Now what's the problem?
The answer is there is no problem.
They gave veterans an option to seek health care from an institution either closer to their home or a doctor they thought was better that was outside of the VA network and shocker Joe they took it!
In big numbers.
So what do you think the Democrat response to this has been?
Not all of them, but a good portion of them up on the hill?
They want to shut this baby down and cap that funding.
Of course they do!
Because God forbid veterans who served our country get to actually choose the doctor they go to like most of us out here in the real world.
They have to be subjected to a labyrinthine bureaucratic VA nightmare every single time and allowing them to pick their own doctor or hospital God forbid we got to shut that down.
Now this goes to show you a constant theme of this podcast from day one.
I've hammered down your throats and it relates to this Obamacare story I covered first too.
The Democrats will lie, scheme, steal, manipulate, do whatever they have to do, deceive you, whatever they have to do, torture the statistics because what matters to them is not so much Primarily.
It's not so much the money.
It is the control.
Some people get confused.
They think I oversimplify this, and I don't.
The entire ethos of the far left, post-JFK.
Pre-JFK, the Democratic Party really did care about the private sector.
Not as much as the Republicans did, but they did.
Post-JFK, the far left tilt of the Democratic Party is tilted towards socialism.
The one key component of socialism, the defining feature of socialism, is the government Control of the means of production.
The amount of stuff that those entities, those socialist governments produce is secondary to controlling them.
In other words, whether you produce enough food for the population or not in a socialist government is secondary to you controlling the food supply.
Does that make sense, Joe?
Yeah.
Because there's power in control.
So people say, well, wouldn't they be concerned about feeding their people?
No!
No, they're not!
They're concerned about controlling the food supply.
This is what socialism is.
It's the government control of the means of production.
The means of producing food, water, engineering equipment, bridges, tunnels, cars, whatever it may be.
Control is everything.
The power of no.
Yes, the power of no.
As Chuck Eckers told me once, the former Howard County executive.
It's a great line he told me.
He said that government always grows because there's no power in telling people yes.
There's only power in telling people no.
No, you can't have food.
No, you can't have this.
That's where the power is.
This is the essence of the new modern democratic party.
How does this relate to the Obamacare story?
The Obamacare story I told you first about how they're lying about the statistics to get you to believe this thing has been efficient is they'll sacrifice their morals.
They'll sacrifice the truth so that they can expand their power over the network.
And they do it by what Kevin Williamson calls the new socialism.
By taxing you to Obamacare taxes and regulating what you can buy.
So therefore they already control the system.
They tell you what health care you can buy and they tax it.
They will lie to preserve that under any circumstances.
They will also stop our own veterans, an area, as I let off saying, a sphere of our societal fabric that enjoys universal bipartisan support amongst the population, but even the Democrats in the Congress know, they know that our veterans want another option and they want to cap the program to make sure you, if you serve, that you have to go to a hospital, a VA hospital you don't want to go to.
They will stop you from doing that.
Why?
Because they control it now, Joe.
They control the VA, they control the hiring, they control the appointments, they control the doctors, they control everything.
Folks, This is a serious question.
You think I'm making this up?
Now, if you're a conservative, you probably agree.
But if you're a liberal listening, very seriously, do you think I'm making any of this up?
Give me one logical reason.
Logical reason why veterans who are some of the brightest among us, patriotic, serving Americans with a good, I mean, a sacrificial spirit about them, The best of us.
Give me one good reason why a popular program where Democrats who are smarter, I mean, excuse me, where veterans can make their own decisions, who want to leave the VA system, give me one reason why you would tell them they can't.
Well, just give me one!
What do you know about their health care that they don't know themselves?
You can't!
It is about control.
It has always been about control.
I read this story this morning and I was furious.
Furious!
I mean, whatever.
Unbelievable, man.
It really is.
I mean, the stuff these guys get away with is just incredible.
And nobody ever calls them on it.
It's just frustrating.
Speaking of which, by the way, hat tip to one of our regular listeners, Ben S., who I had mentioned the clip.
You have that clip ready, Joe?
Yeah, man.
I had, Joe was kind enough to cut it for us this morning, I had mentioned a clip this past week about, I think it was a Friday or Thursday show, a clip involving Thomas Sowell and a Pennsylvania bureaucrat from years ago.
And I mentioned it as an example of how Democrats will constantly manipulate the argument, lie and torture statistics, and when they get called out, they really have nothing to say.
And Ben sent the clip over from YouTube, this Thomas Sowell clip.
Let me just set this up for you quick.
It's about a minute, just so you use those are pretty long cuts for, and Joe knows that, but I didn't want to cut it in half like we would typically do.
Because it's not live radio and you can listen through it, but it's about a minute cut.
And just to start it off, it opens up with this woman, this liberal bureaucrat from Pennsylvania.
This is from years ago, by the way.
I think it was, gosh, the 70s.
It was a really long time ago.
But it's a wonderful piece, and listen to how the woman tries to torture and logically torture her way through an argument.
Her argument is they're debating the benefits of welfare, standard welfare, you know, cutting people checks for not working.
I mean, essentially, it's what it is.
You call it a safety net, but that's what the program does.
You know, when you work, you lose a lot of the benefits.
So she's trying to defend welfare and make some absurd points.
And then Thomas Sowell interjects afterwards and just chops her down.
Play the cut.
You have a whole group of people who are the single female head of a household.
And yes, cut off welfare tomorrow.
What will they do?
What will be their immediate response?
At what price to their small children and to their middle-aged children?
Yes, they'll get a job.
In fact, the statistics show that women, in fact, are the most successful through the employment program.
But what has to supplement that, typically, is the provision of some kind of daycare arrangement.
Either the individual woman has to earn enough money to be able to pay privately for her daycare, or in fact she is, quote, subsidized through this insidious, uh, corrupting program, set of programs run by the federal government, which in fact makes her employable and a taxpayer.
Uh, it's a, it's an interesting, uh, notion of trying to get people in a productive mode.
It's incredible the way you start the story in the middle, as if there's a predestined amount of poverty, a predestined amount of unemployment, and that the welfare system is not itself in any way responsible for that.
There is a predestined 20% of the bottom half of the population.
I have never, well that's always been true.
There's going to be 20% at the bottom.
It's also true that 20% of the bottom population doesn't have to be living on the government and ruled by the government.
Yes!
Yes!
Gosh, now you know why I love Thomas Sowell so much.
Bingo!
Yes!
Now you know!
Think about what she says there, how she tortures the numbers, and she makes almost a convincing case in the beginning.
She's like, wow, all these women, how would they get back to work if they don't have daycare, they don't have money?
He says, well, why are you starting in the story in the middle?
One, why are they poor now?
Oh, they're poor because maybe some of the welfare programs liberals have vociferously backed for years, Joe, are providing an economic incentive to some, granted of course not all, but to some single-parent households of either side to say, hey, well, listen, I don't need to marry or I don't need to keep a job because, look, I'm being paid by the government to not have one.
It's a fascinating argument.
She starts in the middle of the story, never starts in the beginning about how we got to the poverty chapter.
She's like, well, women are poor.
How would they get back to work if they didn't have these government benefits and a daycare?
Yeah, but how did they get poor?
That's chapter one through six.
Beautiful point.
She, by the way, but she completely ignores.
Okay.
Yeah, I know.
Secondly, she does.
She just glosses right over it.
Secondly, Thomas Sowell brings up a great point when you, this is again, how the left tortures data, just like the Obamacare story.
She says.
Well, there's always going to be a bottom 20%.
Now you hear that and you're like, yes, that's right.
There's always going to be poor people.
Always, always going to be a bottom 20%.
Thomas Sowell, by the way, Milton Friedman's on the panel too, which makes it such a great, great debate.
And I'm going to put the link to this debate, by the way, the entire debate in the show notes at Bongino.com today.
So if you join my email list at Bongino.com, I'll email it to you.
Please join my email list.
It really helps us a lot, get our message out there and get these great articles out there and this piece today.
Watch the whole thing.
But Joe, think about what you just said.
There's a bottom 20%, which makes you believe, Joe, that, what, 2 out of 10 people, you know, that 2 out of every 10 people are really poor and need help.
But Sol brings up another, really, I don't even want to say a great point, just a common sense point that this liberal seems to forget.
Of course there's going to be a bottom 20%.
How mathematically does that work out otherwise?
Joe, I don't know if you see where I'm going with this, but let me make this real simple.
If you have 10 people in a room, In a rich country, super rich, the top guy, number 1, makes $10 million a year.
Number 2 makes $9 million.
Number 3 makes $8 million.
Number 4, you go down the list, $5 million, you know, whatever it is, and you get the 5, 6, 7.
Number 8 makes $500,000.
Number 9 makes $200,000.
And number 10 makes $150,000 a year.
Is there a bottom 20% in that room?
No. 9 makes $200,000 and No. 10 makes $150,000 a year.
Is there a bottom 20% in that room?
Yeah, there sure is.
There sure is!
But the guy at the bottom makes $150,000 a year!
Listen to the clip again.
Rewind the podcast and listen to it again.
He makes an elegant point about how Democrats torture statistics.
When they say the bottom 20%, they're assuming, assuming because they start the story in the middle, that the people at the bottom are in fact poor when Sowell says, no, that's just a mathematical tautology.
Of course there's going to be a bottom 20%.
But the bottom 20% don't have to be poor!
Now you see the point he was trying to make by saying, when he says to the woman, you're assuming there's a predestined amount of poverty.
Just because there's a bottom 20% of earners doesn't mean they have to be poor!
Yeah, and to be honest, that got by me.
It did.
I know, it probably gets by a lot of people, not just you.
The point he's trying to make is, and if you watch, he goes into it in more detail, we just don't have the time on the show.
But that's the mathematical point he's trying to make.
What she's telling you is a tautological statement.
Tautological meaning it's truthful on its face.
There's going to be a bottom 20%.
It reminds me of a statement, I forget who said it, but Megan McCain and George Will one time, where they're debating on a weekend show, and Megan McCain says to George Will, like, well, the youth are the future of the Republican Party.
George Will looks at her and is like, that's a tautological stuff.
Of course, I mean, I'm not knocking Megan McCain.
I mean, I get what she was saying.
But the statement in itself, when divorced from the emotion, It's like saying the youth are young.
Yeah.
You see, Joe?
Like saying there's always going to be a bottom 20% adds nothing to the argument at all.
Zero.
The woman who's a liberal is assuming that those bottom 20%, those bottom 2 out of 10, those bottom 200 out of 1,000, that they're poor.
But they don't have to be.
That's the point.
Joe, you could have 10 earners in a room The top earner makes $10,000,000 and the guy at the bottom makes $997,000.
You could if everybody in between was $100,000, $997,200.
You get what I'm saying?
They're assuming the bottom 20% of the board.
This is why, folks.
I included this today because I mentioned it last week and Ben was kind enough to send a clip over which he found on YouTube.
But with regards to my opening debate, On Obamacare and the point in the VA, how the Democrats rarely, if ever, the ones up on the hill, will tell you the truth on anything and be skeptical.
Be skeptical of the statistics they throw out there if they don't make sense.
If someone says to you, oh, the bottom 20% of earners, you're like, wow, they're so poor.
We do have to help the bottom 20%.
Well, why?
Why are they poor?
Oh, because you started the story in the middle of the book and assumed that the bottom 20% of earners were somehow making a dollar a year.
It doesn't have to be that way.
And I think, if I may for a moment, I don't do a lot of self-congratulatory nonsense, but I think one of the things that makes our podcast a little different is Joe and I do spend a lot of time on facts and data and debunking stuff.
And I get it, I understand why a lot of other, I'm not, there are a lot of very, very intelligent conservative hosts out there, believe me.
I know many of them personally.
I just think they, and Joe, you may agree with me, you've been in this business a long time.
I've heard a lot, yeah.
Wouldn't you say that I think they're under the misconception, they're living under the misconception that the conservative audience is going to be bored by facts and data?
I entirely disagree.
Joe, you've seen the feedback.
I've sent you the emails on the show.
One of the big things about our show, I think, that separates is we back the stuff up with the actual data from the journalism pieces and from the research out there.
And people are like, wow, Sky Bongino's right.
I mean, I have been lied to.
Like, it's hard to refute that.
When you adjust for population, you adjust for inflation, Obamacare spending's gone up.
Like, what do your liberal friends say about that?
Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man.
That's what they say.
Where else do you go with that?
I mean, once your arguments are thoroughly refuted, Where do you go with it?
It's either that, the dude, or it's like you're a racist.
That's typically their other, oh, well, you're definitely a racist, or you hate women or something, or, you know, Muslims, or you're Islamophobic, or phobia, is the phobia phobic phobia.
That's all they have.
It's really upsetting.
All right.
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Okay.
All right.
Great piece in the show notes today at Powerline Blog.
I saw on Ned Ryan's Twitter feed.
He's got a really good Twitter feed.
I always look at his stuff.
It's a piece by Paul Meringoff at Powerline Blog.
And folks, the Washington Post is freaking out.
They're freaking out.
Now, the Washington Post freaks out often with everything Trump's been doing, but they're losing their minds because they're watching the credibility of the Mueller probe collapse.
Now, we've done a lot of coverage on the Trump-Russia thing, but I just wanted to bring up one point here and I wanted to move on.
You know, the difference between... First, the Washington Post is doing what the liberals always do.
And when you hear this term thrown out, the one I'm about to give in a second, you should automatically disregard what the liberals are saying, because they don't use it because they mean it.
They use it to take away the credibility of credible, credible attacks.
They will always call something a conspiracy theory when they're worried.
They did it with Benghazi.
Conspiracy.
The show.
Did you know there was a conspiracy theory?
Four people didn't die in Benghazi.
It didn't happen.
Apparently Benghazi.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Incredible how that happened.
How we just fabricated the whole story.
Oh, the conspiracy theories.
They'll call them conspiracy theories for Benghazi, the IRS conspiracy theory, even though the IRS just admitted and paid out massive lawsuits that it happened.
Whenever the left says conspiracy theory, just ignore it.
It's how they try to... I mean, remember Brian Stelter, who was trying to insinuate that Mark Levin was a conspiracy theorist when Mark Levin was just quoting mainstream newspapers?
It's just ridiculous.
Conspiracy theory is a term used by the left to entirely shred the credibility of the other side when, in fact, it's their credibility under attack and they're worried.
They're now using that to describe the Republican information that's being put out there about the Mueller probe, the Bob Mueller probe, the Trump-Russia special counsel, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about.
Now, Joe, nothing out there right now in the public, keep in mind, how it's a conspiracy theory despite the fact that no one's disputing the authenticity of the information is frankly, candidly amazing to me.
So, no one's disputing the fact that the number two in the investigation, Peter Strzok, texted his paramours, love interest, about a so-called insurance plan against the Trump election.
No one's disputing his anti-Trump bias.
No one's disputing he was intimately involved in the investigation.
No one's disputing the fact that he emailed, that he was involved in the Clinton email investigation.
No one's disputing the fact that he interviewed Mike Flynn.
No one's disputing the fact that Andy Weissman, one of the lawyers in the case, Emailed Sally Yates, the Deputy Attorney General, congratulating her for defying Trump on the immigration order.
No one's disputing that.
No one's disputing the partisan leaning of the special counsel investigation with the majority of them being Democrat, in fact, donors.
No one's disputing any of this, but the Washington Post wants to call it a conspiracy theory.
Now, folks, This is an organized attack, again, by the far-left hacks in the media, notably the Washington Compost, the garbage pile known as the Compost, which is astonishingly a paper whose slogan is, Democracy Dies in the Darkness, as they are the ones turning the lights out.
That is fascinating.
The difference between this and Benghazi and the IRS, as I have said repeatedly, and you should constantly tell your liberal Looney Tunes friends that are supporting this witch hunt investigation into the president, is Benghazi and the IRS scandals actually happened.
Four people died in Benghazi.
Four people were not helped.
There was no action plan, and I'm telling you as a former Secret Service agent, despite the fact that there was an incredibly biased ARB that put out a nonsensical report, Accountability Review Board, about this, we still don't have answers, and I can prove it to you.
Prove to me why no help was sent, where President Obama was the night it happened, and why there was no additional security laid out before.
You can't.
So we don't have the answer, so you acknowledge that.
Okay, thanks.
So that actually happened, right?
The IRS scandal.
If that was a conspiracy theory, the IRS scandal, then tell me why the IRS just paid out millions, millions by the way, and acknowledged that they in fact did this, targeted groups.
Why did that happen?
Because they were just making it up and the government's eager to give people money that the government doesn't have?
What you can never prove.
So we know Benghazi and the IRS actually happened.
You can never prove the collusion actually happened with the Russians because you provided absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
And all you keep saying is, oh, it's coming.
Oh, it's coming.
And in this Powerline blog piece, which is in the show notes today, please read it.
It's good.
It's short and sweet.
He makes a great point that the quickest way, Joe, to destroy your credibility in an investigation against the President of the United States, or anyone else for that matter, is to keep asking the public for patience, but never producing a scintilla of evidence that what you're asking for patience for is actually going to happen.
You know, it's pretty tough if I were investigating Joe for Martian collusion with the Martians, like there was an invasion coming up, to keep asking you for patience and never produce this ounce of evidence that one, Martians exist, and secondly, Joe's colluding with them.
It's a good piece, folks.
And I bring it up because this is going to be the new attack now.
As I told you months ago, first it was Russian collusion.
Then they moved on to obstruction of justice.
Now they're having a hard time with obstruction of justice, too, because no one can prove that Trump actually obstructed justice, including Jim Comey and the FBI No.
2 themselves that acknowledge there were no impediments to their investigation at all.
It's pretty hard, Joe, to prove obstruction of justice when justice is ongoing.
And nobody stopped it.
Obstruction means stopping or trying to get in the way or impede.
The investigation is ongoing.
The FBI has already acknowledged nobody obstructed justice.
Now, so again, collusion.
They moved on to obstruction of justice when that wasn't going to happen.
That's not going to happen either.
Now they're going to move on to attacking the Republicans for attacking the special counsel, which is notably biased, and they're going to call this all big conspiracy theories on the right wing.
Ignore it, folks.
Ignore it.
It is another Washington Post scam to kill democracy by imposing darkness upon you.
That's what they do.
All right, this is another great one out of the Wall Street Journal today.
You know, to all the charitable organizations out there that are fighting this tax bill, I have to tell you, if you work for one of these places, and not all of them, but there are a good number of them, a lot of charities, Joe, are really upset about the tax bill.
I gotta tell you, I'm very disappointed.
My wife and I give a good amount to charity.
We give a good amount of time as well.
I mean, we're not patting ourselves on the back.
We can always give more, and we should, and we're going to try, and we're going to do the best we can.
There's a lot of things we want to do this year, as a matter of fact, especially when things change in the next couple weeks for us, which is good for you all, by the way.
We'll let you know soon.
But I'm really disappointed in charitable organizations out there, Joe.
You would think by their attacks that charitable deductions... So just to be clear, pre-tax bill, you were free to deduct a good swath of the money you gave to charity from your tax bill.
From your income is a better way to say it.
It was tax deductible.
You're also free to do that now.
So Joe, you're probably like, okay, I'm confused.
If you were free to deduct charitable contributions before the tax bill, and you're free in the exact same way to do it now, why are charities losing their minds over this tax bill?
Joe, this is unbelievable.
They're upset because the standard deduction in the tax bill doubled for a married couple from $12,000 to $24,000.
Let me explain this to you in a minute.
And the unbelievably disingenuous attacks by charities.
So, if you were a married couple before, If you itemize, meaning you've listed expenses, right, in your tax bill, and let's say you had a business and you invested in cameras and you wrote off mileage and office space, if you had more than $12,000 in deductions, you would itemize, because the standard deduction, Joe, in other words, the deduction anybody, anywhere, anytime could take if they were married, almost,
I don't want to be overly dramatic, but the majority of people could take $12,000 in deductions no matter what.
You understand?
Yep.
Doesn't matter.
Joey, Bobby, Tony, Maria, it doesn't make a difference.
If you didn't have, say, $12,000 in business expenses, mileage, office space, that you could deduct, it made no sense.
Because why?
Because you were already getting $12,000 in deductions.
It made no sense.
By doubling the standard deduction for married couples, which is going to benefit the overwhelming majority of people out there, to $24,000, it now doesn't make it economically and financially sensible, Joe, for you to itemize your expenses if you don't have up to, what, $24,000?
Because you're getting that deduction anyway.
Some of those deductions were charity.
So some of these charitable organizations, astonishingly, are upset.
Their point is basically this, Joe.
They're hoping you pay higher taxes through a lowered standard deduction so they can be your escape hatch.
In other words, doubling the standard deduction, now some people aren't going to donate to charity because in the past, that charitable deduction, the money they gave to charity, they could have deducted, and now most of them aren't going to itemize because they fall under the $24,000 standard deduction.
So we may lose some money.
So let me get this straight.
Your point again is that you're hoping we all pay higher taxes.
That what?
They go back to a lower standard deduction so most of us get worked over by the tax code.
So that the only way we can get out of paying said higher taxes is by giving money to you.
Now listen folks, I'm all about charity.
But this is the dumbest stance I have ever heard in my entire life.
Do you see where they're going with this, Joe?
That you're going to save money automatically now that in the past you only would have saved by donating to them.
Now what's amazing, and a great point they make in the Wall Street Journal piece, is how economically stupid this is.
One of the record decades for charitable donations, Joe, over the last four or five, was the 1980s.
Who was in office in the 1980s?
Ronald Reagan.
They said the exact same thing about the Reagan tax cuts.
All right, you're going to cut taxes, therefore people won't need us anymore to get out of paying taxes.
Wrong.
What happened?
The economy exploded.
People made boatloads of money in the 80s.
And what did they do?
They gave good chunks of money, historic chunks of money, to do charities.
Folks, come on.
I mean, seriously, if you work for one of these charities, is this really where you want to go?
Is this really where you want to go?
I demand you pay higher taxes so that we can be your only escape lane off the highway?
Off the high-tax highway?
Come on.
Give me a break.
That's really silly.
I read this piece in a journal today.
I was really upset.
All these statements by these charitable organizations.
Oh, this is Armageddon.
This is devastating.
Look at what's going to happen.
The incentive to give to us, the incentive, the incentive to give to you is to help people.
If you're donating to charity only to get out of taxes, you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons.
I don't know, I was very upset about that.
All right, Tamara, I've got a couple great stories for you as well.
One about the Trump red tape.
He has done just an incredible job eliminating red tape.
I mean, wait till I give you the numbers.
Historic amounts of red tape and government regulations wiped out.
And secondly, I will be on Levin tonight, filling in for Mark.
If you want to tune in, go to MarkLevinShow.com.
Be taking some calls if you want to call in as well.
