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Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
Alright, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Hey, how you doin'?
I did not expect that.
Joseph, of course, always has some curveball for me on his open, which I get a lot of positive e-mails about.
Where'd you get that from?
I don't know.
That's another one that I just picked up somewhere on somewhere on the internet.
Totally sounds like me before I lost my Queens accent.
Although some of you think I still have one.
Hey, I have so much content today, both related to what's going on, you know, government shutdowns, something happened in Wisconsin, Sanders, the CBO.
I'm going to try to get to a lot of it, but I also have some unbelievably more explosive developments proving us right on the biggest scandal in modern American history.
All right, getting right to it.
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All right, before I get to this, I wanted to cover this yesterday desperately, and there's just so much breaking news, I couldn't get to it.
So, just quickly here.
We have had a tremendous, Joe.
I'm going to pull you up on full screen here so I can look at that Elvis-looking mane of yours.
There you go.
Look at that guy.
We have had a tremendous run-up in the stock market, and I've cautioned a lot of our listeners, Joe, as you've heard me say repeatedly, be careful measuring any president on stock market growth.
And I don't say that because Obama, when he was the President of the United States, had a decent stock market.
Obama's poor economic record speaks for itself.
You get what I'm saying?
I'm not trying to diminish it further by going, oh well forget the stock market even though it's running up over Trump because it happened under Obama too.
I promise you I'm not doing that.
I'm cautious about stock market jumps and what happened in the stock market because I think a lot of what happened under Obama And to some degree, a little bit of what's happening now is an effective loose money policy.
In other words, the Federal Reserve, in essence, printing a lot of money, and that money, Joe, what we call chasing yield.
Chasing a return, yield being a return.
You know, you don't want a 2% return, you want an 8% return.
If you can get 8, you want 10.
If you want 10, you can get 20%, right?
So when you print a lot of money, which is what the Federal Reserve did during the Obama regime, what winds up happening is you wind up chasing yield and you wind up chasing stock market returns.
So there's a There's a growing concern, and I promise you I'm going to get to some blowing, you know, just blow your mind information on that.
It's just crazy on this Russia case.
But I want to get this out because it's critical.
There's a lot of people emailing me saying, hey, listen, is this Trump bump in the stock market right now?
Is this legitimate or is there going to be a massive correction?
Now, my humble opinion is I don't think there's going to be a massive correction like we saw in the Bush recession.
But I do want to give you two alternate perspectives on what's going on right now, and then I'll sum it up with my opinion at the end.
So this is quick.
I did a lot of homework on this yesterday, and I really was itching to get this out.
But again, there's so much info, it's just hard for me to cram this into an hour.
I don't want to waste your time.
So let's go with perspective number one, Joe.
Perspective number one is No, we are not.
There is not going to be a correction.
Dow 26,000 is just the beginning, and we could be at Dow 40,000 in four years, right?
So I summed this up under the headline.
Joe, you can see my pages of notes.
Look at that.
Oh yeah.
You like that?
Joe's like, I can't even read that.
There's so much writing.
That's cool.
I summed it up as theory number one, are we in a new growth normal?
Meaning the days of the stagnant Obama economy and 2% growth are over and we're in a new growth normal of 4-5% and yeah, Joe's like celebrating there.
And yeah, we're just in the beginning of what is an era of explosive economic growth.
Now, a great line from the Wall Street Journal, their op-ed column.
I took a quote out of it.
It's subscription only, so I'm not going to put the piece in the show notes.
But I will read to you what I think is very important.
And this kind of buttresses the, let's call him the optimist, Joe, the economic optimist.
Like, buy it now!
This $26,000 may be cheap.
This is a really good point.
Here's a quote from the piece.
It says, at a corporate tax rate of 35%, Joe, a dollar of earnings turns into 65 cents after Washington takes its cut, okay?
That's why I'm confused. At a corporate tax rate of 35% Joe, a dollar of earnings
turns into 65 cents after Washington takes its cut, okay?
So at the old corporate tax rate, before the Trump tax cuts, of 35%, a dollar of earnings,
and not everybody pays 35%, but for the purposes of this, let's play ball, at that
dollar turns into 65 cents, DC takes its cut, okay?
Okay.
At the new post-Trump tax cuts, 21% corporate tax rate, Joe, the same dollar becomes $0.79, not $0.65.
Ah, that's better.
I was like, yeah, shaking his head.
Sounds good to me.
I didn't take a genius in economics to figure this out or finance.
And they end the quote by saying, that's an earnings growth of 21.5% with the stroke of Mr. Trump's pen.
Now, I want to just frame that up for you for a moment to buttress the argument for this guy and then I'm going to dismantle it in a second because this is what we do that liberals don't.
Liberals fall in love with an idea and sell the idea and ignore countervailing evidence.
I'm going to make both cases for you and then give you my opinion and then get to some other stuff because it's a booming news day.
This is why I'm an optimist about the economy.
Joe, if you worked in a business Forget about every business in the United States that, according to the numbers I just gave you, just with the stroke of a pen got a 21.5% bump in their earnings, right?
If you worked in one business that came back with that, you would be like, damn, this is a good economy.
Now, Joe has 7,000 jobs.
He works his butt off.
Hopefully, we've got some news coming.
Breaking that up soon.
Yeah.
You know, not breaking any news on the show yet, but Joe and I have some stuff going on here.
Yeah.
But Joe has all these jobs.
Let's say where Joe works now, the company sees a 21.5% growth in his earnings.
That's a BFD, as Joe Biden said.
That's a big deal.
Now every company in the United States is seeing a 21.5% bump in earnings with the stroke of a pen.
Yeah, that's a pretty darn good case to say, hey, um, I think it's time to buy into the US economy.
Now, I get it.
I know because I have a lot of really smart people.
I love my audience.
I get it.
I'm not patting myself on the back.
I went to business school.
I majored in finance.
I get it that that's an overly rosy and optimistic 21.5% earnings growth rate for everyone, and I'll explain why in a second.
But just play ball for a second.
I'm trying to make both cases.
I'll get to the counter evidence in a second.
All right.
And secondly, I want to make the point here that what Democrats will tell you here is, no, no, those are corporate earnings and those are just going to make the fat cats richer, which again, I've explained to you a thousand times.
If you don't understand how cash flows in an economy, you make stupid statements like that.
When a corporation, a business, makes money, it can do three things.
It can consume it, invest it, or spend it.
That's it.
Consume, invest, spend.
CIS.
Consume, invest, spend.
It can consume it on itself.
In other words, it can consume the money and rebuild its factories, it can rebuild its product lines, it can pay its employees more, whatever it chooses to do.
It can take the money and invest it in another business.
It can merge, it can acquire, it can buy stock in another business.
These are the only three options, folks, okay?
Or it can spend it on dividends and shareholders, or it can do a combination of the three.
The money doesn't disappear.
The bottom line is, if you're a liberal and you don't understand basic cash flows, basic finance, and basic econ 101, you go, the corporate fair cuts are gonna get richer.
Really?
So Apple, let me get this straight, Apple yesterday announces they're bringing billions of dollars back into the United States.
And Joe, according to liberals, the CEO, what is it, Tim Cook of Apple?
He's taken all of it.
He's taken the cash and he's going out and he's buying what, folks?
What is he buying?
$30 billion homes?
I mean, do you understand how dumb you have to be in economics to believe this?
Of course the cash flows into the economy.
And it flows to middle class, upper class, and people who are lower income.
It doesn't get stuck in fat cat's pockets.
That's just silly.
On the optimistic front that, hey, 21% growth, buy in now, just one piece of evidence that it's not going to be 21% across the entire economies.
One, not every company limits their business to the continental United States, Joe.
So if you get a tax cut in the United States, but 80% of your business is overseas, It may not help you as much unless you're repatriating.
You get what I'm saying?
Number one.
And number two, some businesses just stink and a corporate tax cut's just not going to help them because their business stinks.
I mean, to end the story, you're just making a pet rock or whatever and nobody cares.
Okay?
So just be a little cautious on the optimistic front.
Now, the naysayer side.
The naysayer side, which is, hey, stocks are way, way overvalued, get out now!
This is like the black hole people, you know?
These are the people who have predicted ten of the last two recessions, you know?
These are really dark minds.
They're saying get out now, and here's some of the evidence they have for this.
The P.E.
ratios, Joe.
These are important.
They're not as important as people make them out to be, but P.E.
ratios for stocks.
P.E.
stands for price-to-earnings ratio.
In other words, what's the price of the stock compared to the earnings of the company?
A P.E.
ratio is important, Joe, because when you buy a stock, you're not buying the stock.
No one's going to sell you a stock if it's a growing company at what the company's worth today.
I mean, think about it, Joe.
I have Bongino Inc.
as my company, right?
If I know this year my company, I'm not giving you real, I'm just making it up for the sake, say my company makes a million this year, but I know next year we have in contracts, Joe, that are anticipated to bring in 10 million.
Mm-hmm.
Would I sell you a stock or a portion of my company that values the company at a million knowing it's gonna make 10 million next year?
Probably not.
Probably not, because, and Joe, you're not a finance guy, correct?
No, I'm not, Dan.
But that was rather easy for you to figure out, right?
That was easy for me.
Okay.
Of course it was easy-peasy because I'm not gonna give you a company at a price worth a million that's gonna be worth 10 million next year.
So the P-E ratio, the price of the company compared to the earnings of the company, is a multiple basically of what people believe the company is going to be worth in the future.
The P-E ratio for an entire economy is what they believe the United States economy will be worth based on stock market metrics over the course of corporate earnings, right?
Okay.
So P-E ratios now are basically 70% higher than the historical average.
Meaning, meaning this, people are really optimistic about the earnings of companies in the future, that they're paying prices, Joe, way elevated compared to what they've paid for stocks in the past.
You get what I'm saying?
Oh, man, that's huge.
70%, you're darn right.
It's not like 1% or 2%, 70%.
So the naysayers will say, well, I don't know.
Now, keep in mind, Just because they're 70% higher doesn't mean we haven't reached scenario number one, the optimist scenario, that we're in a new normal.
This may be a new normal where maybe in the future companies are growing at 100% and 200%.
I get it.
I mean, that's unrealistic.
But you see what I point to?
Historical averages aren't always the best way to measure future success, obviously.
Sometimes the historical average of growth in the United States, you compare it through the 1900s, through the 1950s and the 50s and the 60s, and then you compare the Carter years, and all of a sudden you see how these things can get skewed, so you have to be careful about doing that.
Now, the naysayers also, one more point they bring up on this, we are in a catastrophic amount of debt.
This is not disputable.
We have 20 trillion dollars in government debt, but folks, critically, The Federal Reserve, our central bank, their balance sheet has ballooned from $900 billion to $4.4 trillion.
And as I've said to you before, Joe, they are in a lose-lose-lose scenario right now.
The Federal Reserve, in essence, printed money to go out and buy mortgage-backed securities and treasuries in an effort to suppress interest rates.
All you need to know is this.
The Federal Reserve wanted to keep interest rates down because they thought it would incentivize borrowing and would push people into stocks.
Let me explain this to you, and Joe, as the audience ombudsman, stop me, because this is important.
Yeah, that sounded kind of dingy.
Okay, yeah.
Point number one.
The Federal Reserve, by buying up these assets, mortgage-backed securities, and by buying up treasuries, artificially suppressed interest rates and kept them low.
When interest rates are low, Joe, it's easier for people to borrow to expand their businesses.
I mean... Loans are cheap.
Loans are cheap!
Very good.
Exactly.
Everybody get that?
It's easier to borrow to support your business at 3% interest than it is at 10%.
So the Federal Reserve bought up a lot of this stuff to drive down interest rates.
Number two.
By driving down interest rates, Joe, they drove them down throughout the entire economy.
The effect of that was a lot of bond investments, corporate bonds and other bonds that are indexed to forms of treasuries and other things like that, their interest rates went down too, which makes the corporate bond not that attractive.
Think about it, Joe.
You're an investor.
You want to invest in corporate bonds.
I'll ask you a simple question, Joe.
Do you want a bond that pays you 8% or a bond that pays you 3%?
I want one that pays me 8%.
8%?
We don't even need Jay's Abacus for that, right?
You want a bond that pays you 8%?
So the de facto and de jure side effect of pushing down interest rates was the Federal Reserve wanted to push people, Joe, away from bonds, which are safer, right?
Bonds pay you no matter what, unless the company goes to fall.
Stocks don't.
Stocks go up, they go down.
The Federal Reserve said, well, if we push the interest rates down, we'll make bonds less attractive.
Right, Joe?
Because the interest rates will go down and it'll push people into stocks.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
Makes sense.
Now, you see how I opened this up?
Be very careful about saying, oh, Obama pushed up the value of the stock market.
No, he didn't.
The Federal Reserve did by pushing people out of bonds that were indexed to Interest rates that were low and pushing them into stocks.
This is not mysterious.
Just look at the quantitative easing charts for the Federal Reserve, how much money they printed.
And then look at the stock market.
You could overlap them, Joe.
One goes like this.
I'm doing this little diagram for Joe.
And one goes like this.
They're like right on top of each other.
So be very careful about the stock market.
We measure this stuff by growth rates, and Obama had historically low growth rates compared to any president in modern American history.
He's the first president ever to never reach 3% annualized GDP growth.
I debated Austin Goolsbee on Hannity last night, and I said that, and he had no comeback.
Obama never hit 3% growth.
That's how we measure- Joe, this is gonna stun you.
You know how we measure economic growth?
By measuring economic growth.
That's how we do it.
And he never hit 3%.
End of story.
So, bottom line is, now that the Federal Reserve is holding on to $4.4 trillion in these bonds and stuff they bought up, Joe, to keep interest rates down, they don't know what the hell to do with it.
What do you do?
Now, if they bought, follow me here, because this may get a little complicated.
If they bought these bonds, Joe, To keep interest rates low.
When they sell these bonds, the opposite is going to happen.
And interest rates are going to go up.
As interest rates go up, it's going to further devalue the Federal Reserve's holdings now.
Because as interest rates go up, the prices of these things go down.
It's a little complicated, but that is a tautological statement.
Trust me on this one.
As yields go up, Prices of bonds go down because no one wants a 3% bond if interest rates are going up.
They'll be like, well, I'll just wait.
I'll get 4 or 5%.
I get a better return, right?
We've talked about this a number of times.
Yeah, thousands.
Our regular listeners have heard this so many times they're ready to vomit because they know this thing.
That's good.
But it is important you understand that.
Yields go up, prices go down.
So the problem is, as the Federal Reserve sells what they have, what they have is worth even less.
Right.
So now, remember, the Federal Reserve is what?
The U.S.
central bank.
It's ultimately going to be backed by the taxpayer.
It's an independent central bank.
It's not independent.
Cut the crap.
No one actually believes that.
So they're in a pickle, Joe.
What do you do?
You hold $4.4 trillion in assets trying to keep interest rates low?
Or you release $4.4 trillion in assets and tank the value of what you have now and have the U.S.
taxpayers backstop basically what you got by printing more money and destroying the value of their money.
So that's the pessimistic point of view.
First point of view, we're in a new growth normal.
It's an explosive technology era.
Second point of view, no way.
PE ratios are way too high.
Stock market's going up because the Fed's printing money to buy stuff.
The Fed's going to stop printing money.
When it stops printing money, interest rates are going to go up.
Businesses are going to have a hard time getting loans because interest rates went up.
And Joe, when interest rates go up, Remember what I told you before?
It makes bonds more attractive because interest rates went up.
And what are people going to do?
They're going to say, I don't need this stock market risk.
I'm going to pile back into bonds.
And what happens?
The stock market, it's going to tank.
Or so they say.
So they say.
Wrap this up with my opinion.
I don't believe, I know I've been a stock naysayer for a while and I, listen, I am not your financial advisor.
Let me be crystal clear on this.
I can only tell you what I am.
I've hedged my bets.
I have some money in gold, I have some money in index funds, I have some individual stocks I like.
I take a little bit of a nuanced opinion.
I think we very well might be in scenario number one.
And I know it's convenient politically to say that because I like Trump.
Oh, you know, you're just saying that because Obama's not in office anymore.
No, folks, I'm not.
I think we were in the same growth scenario under Obama, and Obama was basically pushing the beach ball under the water.
The beach ball was gonna come out of the water.
All you need to do is get rid of Obama who was holding it down.
Why do I say that?
Folks, a note of optimism for you.
Now that Trump has got taxes lower, he's got regulations out of the way, and the beach ball's popping out of the water.
Think about what's going on right now.
We have explosive growth in medical technology, gene sequencing, cancer targeting we've never seen before.
We have explosive growth in things like material science, 3D printing, information sharing, technology transfer, international transfer in services, and YouTube videos for the Khan Academy.
Explosive levels of information transfer which are seeding new ideas every day, producing new products every day.
We've never seen this level of information transfer in U.S.
history and is ultimately going to be the seeding of new ideas that is going to be the creation of new products, that is going to be the creation of new growth, that is going to be the creation of an untold level of U.S.
prosperity I think we haven't seen ever in our lifetimes.
Bottom line, I think we're going to see a little bit of the two more towards the first.
We are in a new growth era.
It's going to be damaged a little bit by really, pardon my language, piss poor monetary and financial and fiscal decisions by the U.S.
government.
But I don't think, Joe, that even Obama and terrible U.S.
bureaucrats and politicos are strong enough to destroy the level of prosperity coming ahead.
Makes sense?
Did I sum that up okay?
Yeah.
You like that story?
Yep, I liked it.
I understood it.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Before I get to this other stuff, shutdown politics again.
Ah, gosh, I'm tired of this.
I'm tired of the shutdown politics.
I read a piece today like, the Republicans in the shutdown.
Everybody's in danger on the Republican side if they shut down the government.
Folks, let me walk you through what's happening, please, quickly, because people are really losing their minds.
If we don't get a budget passed by 12.01 on Saturday morning, the government will... Air quotes here, Joe.
Watch my air quotes.
I know you're like... You like that?
Shutdown.
There is no such thing as a government shutdown, okay?
The government doesn't shut down.
The military doesn't go home.
The Secret Service doesn't stop working.
People show up for work during a shutdown, folks, okay?
TSA will be at the airports.
There will not be a shutdown.
Let's not be overly dramatic.
The Democrats love that.
And I find it ironic, Joe, that the Democrats' whole reason for being... I'm talking about the Democrats on Capitol Hill again.
I'm not impugning the integrity of Democrat voters in America.
Oh, the liberals, you're on your own.
It's interesting, Joe, that the Democrats' entire premise for being is that government is an absolute necessity of your life.
Now, we know that's a joke.
We as conservatives, government is actually an impediment to most of the things you do in your life.
But their entire premise for being is that American citizens only live in their prosperous, lovely, wonderful country, which it is because of government, right?
It's fascinating because the Democrats are now pushing for a shutdown to defend illegal aliens, not even American citizens in the country.
Wait, wait, I thought...
I thought this was... I thought the government was a necessity!
So it's only a necessity when you need to make a political point, but to save lives you'll shut down the government on a whim.
By the way, I just noticed that clock in the background of your shot.
That's really helpful.
I'm always hunting around for a clock to see what's going on.
Is it really?
Yeah, yeah.
Check that out.
Pretty cool.
I'm always, like, hunting around for it.
All the technology Joe and I have for the show, I can never find a clock in my room.
I have to hunt around on the computer.
So, just quickly, let's walk through what's happening here, the mechanics, to show you again how your liberal friends are lying to you.
All spending budgets begin in the House, okay?
Spending bills initiate in the House, all of them.
Right.
The GOP House, right now, looks like they have the votes to pass a budget.
They have the votes to pass a budget.
I'm just pulling up a picture here.
I want to make sure I get this right because this will show you how silly this is.
Okay, I got it right here.
The bill stinks!
Let me be crystal clear on this.
The bill initiating out of the GOP house, the spending bill, Joe, that would keep the government open so we know what we're talking about, looks like the GOP has the votes.
I'm acknowledging to you as a conservative libertarian here.
The bill stinks.
It spends a grotesque amount of money.
I don't think it's fiscally responsible.
But it basically caves to every single Democrat demand outside of DACA.
Amnesty, in other words, for illegals.
Which, by the way, Joseph, is not even up until March 5th.
There is no DACA deadline coming up.
We addressed this on the show the other day.
The Democrats are just lying to you.
So let's walk through this here.
The Democrats are blaming the Republicans for an impending shutdown, which isn't a shutdown.
And by the way, they're shutting down the government.
They're telling us it's essential for our everyday lives.
But the GOP already has the votes to pass a spending bill to keep the government open, conceding almost every Democrat point on what is a crap bill and a Democrat show saying, nah, no good.
We're going to filibuster this thing in the Senate.
Wait, wait, wait.
Come again?
You've lectured us every day about the power of this benevolent force in our lives, the government.
We pass a bill ceding almost all of your ridiculous demands.
I've just told you how we have an exploding debt that's caving our economy and potentially hurting what is an explosive recovery.
And you still want to shut down the government on Friday night, Saturday morning.
Now... What?
You're damn right, Spidey!
Rush.
I always like Rush.
The people from Riolinda.
You got the Riolinda thing.
It's like an inside Rush joke.
We have so many inside jokes that you'll get them.
Just hang in with us.
It'll all make sense over time.
Here's a quote from the Wall Street Journal today, right?
So the Democrats were threatening to shut down the government first if they didn't get this CHIP spending.
Child Health Insurance Program.
It's basically a government-sponsored health care program for kids.
It's losing money like everything else.
It's poorly designed.
But the Democrats showed just so we're clear on their point, right?
We don't get CHIP spending, it's over!
So what if the Republicans do what they always do?
They cave, of course.
So it says in the Wall Street Journal, please, Democrats have spent weeks attacking Republicans for not reauthorizing CHIP, implying, Joe, that children will be denied care.
You have Bernie.
Oh, no.
Cue up Bernie.
Oh.
Thousands of Americans would die.
Play it again.
Thousands of Americans would die.
One more time.
Thousands of Americans would die.
So, if the Republicans don't pass CHIP spending, Child Health Insurance Program, thousands of Americans will die, right?
This is just the Democrats' talking point all the time, okay?
Which was nonsense.
Of course the Republicans do what they always do, they cave immediately.
Here's a quote by Sherrod Brown, a liberal hack senator from Ohio, talking about Chip, Joe.
This is a program that was created in a bipartisan way, that has always been bipartisan, Shed Brown of Ohio in December.
It's ready to go.
And if Republican leaders put it on the floor today, it would pass.
There is no excuse for this delay that is hurting families.
He was still tweeting.
This is from the Wall Street Journal piece.
He was still tweeting, Brown, about the urgency of passing CHIP on Tuesday.
But now the Republicans are offering to reauthorize CHIP in return for almost nothing.
This isn't a piece.
I'm not making this up.
In return for nothing, the Brown Democrats still don't want the budget to pass.
And you're telling me again that this is the Republicans' fault, that they are somehow shutting down the government.
My gosh, you have to be an imbecile to believe this, okay?
Folks, you're being scammed.
Ask your liberal friends this simple question on the government shutdown.
Very simple.
I want you to say to them, who's filibustering the budget?
Oh, the Democrats.
So explain to me again, come again please, how the Republicans are shutting down the government.
Trump has already said Joe, he'll sign it.
The Republicans have passed it.
And the dopes in the media will still tell you the Republicans are shutting down the government.
GOP passes bill.
Granted, stupid bill.
But doesn't matter.
We're talking about the message, not the content now.
The message is Republicans shut the government down.
Please explain to me how that happened.
GOP House passes bill.
Trump says he'll sign it.
Democrats filibuster spending bill, although they get everything they want in return for Zippo, because that's how Republicans argue stuff.
They give everything up because their diversion of dialogue is seeding every Democrat demand.
Trump says he'll sign it.
Democrats filibuster, and the media will tell you, of course, the Republicans shut down the government and people believe it.
Now, one last point on this, Joe.
The traditional thinking in DC, and I know this well having run for office and having been an activist for a long time, the traditional thinking has always been, and you know this from your time in Political Talk Radio in the morning show, is the Republicans will always be blamed for a government shutdown.
Everybody knows that.
It's so commonplace that the Republican Party just takes it as for granted.
Folks, I'm not sure that's true anymore.
Because something changed.
Something changed in November of 2016.
And what changed is the Donald Trump tsunami came ashore and basically wiped the rules of old-school partisan politics and media relations out the window.
I am not sure the Democrats are going to be able to maintain a government shutdown for days upon days, potentially weeks, with the Trump Twitter account out there tweeting every day, ready to sign!
I'm ready to sign, Dems!
Why are you filibustering?
Remember, the media, as we saw yesterday with the Fake News Awards, which I haven't even got to yet, He's the President of the United States, whether you love him or hate him, and we know a lot of people in the media hate this guy.
The media has to cover, Joe, what Trump is doing.
If they don't, eyeballs tune out.
If eyeballs tune out, they lose money and they go off the air.
They have to cover it.
He played four-dimensional chess yesterday with the media by releasing on GOP.com the Fake News Awards and getting the media to cover their own mistakes.
It was a beautiful thing, the Fake News Awards.
Beautiful.
The same new social media messaging environment is going to apply to a shutdown.
The media will be forced, Joe, to cover a Democrat filibuster of a past GOP budget, and there will be simply no way to frame it and to lie to the American people and manipulate them into believing that it's the Republicans doing it.
There's no way.
The rules are entirely different now, folks.
Wake up!
I'm telling you to our liberal friends, wake up!
It's coming.
All right.
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All right.
Explosive, more explosive revelations in this case.
What did I tell you at the beginning of the month?
When we started covering this, Joe, I said to folks that the OIG report, basically the Government's Internal Affairs Office of Inspector General, report on what happened with the Clinton investigations being conducted by Michael Horowitz is going to be devastating.
I said in the beginning of the month, information was going to start to come out that was going to blow the lid off, not just the Clinton scam, the email scandal, the investigation into the Clintons, the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
I said also information was going to come out because it's all connected, folks.
Remember, if you've been listening to the show, information was also going to come out about the spying scandal and what I believe to be, if you're listening to my shows over the last five days, The biggest scandal in U.S.
history, bar none.
That is, remember what we're trying to prove in the show, the Obama spying scandal on Trump.
Now, I got an email from a guy, and I always appreciate the email.
It was some negative feedback, though.
He said to me on the email, and I answered back right away, because, frankly, I was a little bit offended by it, but that's okay.
Please keep sending your stuff.
I read it.
He said, listen, Dan, you sound like a liberal.
You keep telling the audience we're trying to prove that Obama spied on Trump.
In other words, you sound like you've already come to that conclusion.
And you're just, you're doing what liberals do.
They have a pre-existing narrative, Joe, in other words, government, good, right?
And then they just, they ignore all the bad evidence.
Folks, please understand, when I responded back to the emailer immediately, that is not what happened here.
I can prove it to you.
I had been saying to Joe for months, I thought the biggest part of this scandal was that the fake dossier was used to secure a warrant to spy on the Trump team.
Yep, yep.
What changed my mind, I'm not trying to prove anything to me, I'm trying to show you what changed my mind and how evidence changed how I felt about it.
Now I've told you that is not the scandal.
The scandal was the dossier used to cover for an already ongoing spying operation.
And what changed my mind was mounds and mounds of evidence and sources that reached out to me with devastating information.
So it's not that I came to the conclusion, Joe, Obama spied on Trump and then went and looked for evidence.
I was given evidence that led me to the conclusion that Obama, you got it all wrong, that Obama spied on Trump.
I'm just trying to give and read out to you my logic chain, how I ended up there too, so it'll make sense to you.
Now, the explosive news that came out yesterday, and you're going to see a lot of this, What have we been talking about the entire time, Joe?
We have been talking about this information superhighway between the FBI that is now spying on Trump during the Obama administration, the superhighway between them and what are clearly political operators.
Do you understand how disturbing this is?
And I've said to you, Joe, I've given you all the connections between people, Millian, Agalarov, Downer, people that approach, have interactions with the Trump team, and then have interactions with Fusion GPS, or the FBI, or the FBI, or Fusion GPS through each other.
And I've said to you, these people may be innocent adults in this too.
But you can't ignore the fact that people are contacting the Trump campaign and then going back to the FBI, American Intel, or Fusion GPS.
Why are they doing that?
Because it's an entrapment operation.
It's a sting-up.
That's why.
But we haven't exactly had the golden oorah moment that kind of proves my point.
And ironically, ironically, who gives us an explosive development yesterday?
That basically proves the point I've been making the whole time?
Again?
Well, not proves it, but provides pretty substantial evidence beyond, I think, at this point, any reasonable suspicion, Joe?
The Washington Post!
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
The Washington Post, of all places!
That one's hysterical!
Remember, ground ourselves again.
I'm trying to show you I'm confident Obama spied on Trump illicitly with no predicate crime.
I'm trying to show you he did it using the FBI, the NSA, and information from the British.
All previously reported, folks.
If you've listened to the shows, the links are all in my show notes.
Please, please, please go to Bongino.com, read all the show notes for the past week.
And that he did all this while the same information was flowing to the Clinton campaign from their hired contractor, Fusion GPS.
That information superhighway matters because if I can't show you law enforcement and intelligence information was flowing to political operatives at Fusion GPS, it's not in dispute, they were hired by the Clinton campaign, my whole case falls apart.
I, Ignatius, David Ignatius, sorry, I just knocked over a bottle if you heard that sound.
I have so many supplements on my, you see that, Joe?
They're all over the place.
I have so many supplements, I can't even get out of my own way.
But seriously, I take like 10,000 pills.
It's all good, folks, don't worry.
I promise you, I'm not high on drugs.
No bad stuff.
But no, no, I mean, resveratrol, this is phosphatidic acid on my desk, creatine foundation, whatever.
David Ignatius puts out a piece in the Washington Post, Joe, So damning that I'm astonished he put out the piece as an attempt to defend the FBI's reputation against Trump.
Now keep in mind, again, we're not knocking the men and women of the FBI.
Do not misinterpret my words.
We're talking about a select group of managers here that screwed this up and were unquestionably involved in this operation against Trump.
That's not in doubt.
But Ignatius, Joe, just to be clear here because I don't want to confuse anybody.
The overall premise of Ignatius's piece at the Washington Post is that Trump's attacking the FBI, but look, they did this all right.
Look what they did right.
And here's a quote from Ignatius's piece, which if you've been listening to my show is going to ring your bell.
Quote.
The FBI got serious talking about the Trump investigation, Joe.
The FBI got serious only after it obtained its own independent information.
Really?
I tweeted back to David.
What was that?
Because the FBI, Joe, is on the record admitting that the only thing it verified in the Trump case was the fact that Carter Page traveled to Moscow.
Well, I traveled to Moscow in 2000.
Does that mean a counterintelligence spying investigation is going to go on on Dan Bongino?
Are they listening to my podcast now?
The NSA, what we used to call no such agency, are they listening right?
I traveled to Moscow, so let me get this straight.
Ignatius, I'm gonna read from his, I'm not done by the way, and you may say, well that quote, it's important, that quote starts everything off.
Right.
I got more.
But the entire premise of his defense of the FBI spying operation on Trump, which I'm telling you happened, okay?
Is that, oh, no, don't worry.
It all started because they had their own independent information.
What?
Your independent information is that a guy who doesn't even know Trump, who claims to be part of his campaign team, and at best was a fifth-level backbencher, took a trip to Moscow?
That's some crack investigative.
You guys are amazing.
Nice work, fellas.
Good job.
And Ignatius parrots the talking point.
The FBI had its own.
David, what exactly is that independent information?
We don't know, but they said it's there.
It's there.
Joe, it's there, buddy.
I'll tell you what.
I'm going to start investigating Joe for felonious smokery on the open seas because some independent source told me Joe went out on a canoe once on the Severn River behind his house in Arnold.
This is the best we've got?
You started a spying operation on a major party presidential candidate running against your buddy in the State Department, if you're Obama, because a guy took a trip to Moscow?
And Ignatius Joe shamelessly puts this into peace as if this is a viable defense!
I tweeted out yesterday like, is this serious?
I mean, Joe, seriously.
I'm not messing around with you.
My humble opinion is, because I don't know David Ignatius at all.
He may be a nice guy.
I have no idea who this guy is.
I mean, I've heard of him, but I don't know him personally is what I'm saying.
My only guess here is he really doesn't understand the intricacies of the case.
And through his ignorance of the details, because he doesn't remember what I said, hashtag remember the names.
Yep.
He doesn't remember the names or the sequence of events because I've also told you, remember the order, the order matters.
Houses burglarized, cops show up, no problem.
Cops show up, your house is burglarized, big problem.
Ignatius doesn't understand the names and he doesn't understand the order.
So he thinks by putting this in his piece, and I'm just quoting him, folks.
Oh, they had his own independent information.
What about a trip to Moscow?
That all of a sudden, oh, it's all good now.
It's all good.
Now, some more.
This is important.
He's talking about... So you know what?
I'm going to quote him.
Sorry, folks.
I get really excited about this story.
It means so much to me because it's so critical.
I had one negative email on it.
They're like, all right, I want you to get back to the economics and news of the day.
I know I am, but folks, do you understand we are living through the biggest scandal in American history and it's about to blow?
I can't tell you how I know that, but I know it.
Trust me.
Trust me on this.
This is about to blow and you are being read in in live time.
Forget Watergate, that was crap compared to this.
So just to reset here, I'm going to read to you again from Ignatius' piece, and please pay attention because this is important.
Steele, Christopher Steele, the British MI6 agent, former MI6 agent, who is working for Fusion GPS, Who is being paid by the Clinton campaign is a political operative.
He is not a law enforcement entity.
Why am I telling you this?
Because folks, Christopher Steele is working for the Clinton campaign, and I've said to you, the information superhighway between the Obama team and the Clinton campaign is critical.
He's the President of the United States, not the President of the Democrat Party.
He should not be feeding law enforcement intel to Fusion GPS or vice versa.
Does it make sense, Joe?
Keep this in your head as I'm reading this.
Ignatius doesn't seem to understand this, that Steele is a political operator.
Now the quote from Ignatius's piece in the Washington Post, where he thinks he's defending the administration and the FBI.
Steele's information didn't get much high-level attention at first.
It steals dossier type information, Jon.
But bells began ringing in July after Australian intelligence told the FBI about an unusual conversation two months earlier between Australia's London High Commissioner and George Papadopoulos.
They're talking about Downer and Papadopoulos, a Trump foreign policy advisor.
As the New York Times reported last month, Papadopoulos had told the Australian official that Russia had damaging political information about Clinton.
The Australians decided to share this intelligence with the FBI after hacked Democratic emails were published in July.
But keep in mind, everybody knew Clinton had a private server.
None of this was mysterious.
This is where it gets interesting, folks.
So I'm setting it up for a second.
Steele is a political operative.
Ignatius acknowledges in his piece he's already giving information to the FBI.
He says at first they weren't that interested.
Now it gets better.
After this supposed Papadopoulos downer meeting in London, which if you've been listening to the shows of the past few days is very mysterious.
London just keeps creeping up here.
Says now the FBI was very interested.
Based on the Australian account, knowledgeable sources say, the bureau requested another meeting with Steele to dig deeper.
That encounter took place around October 1st in Rome with Steele's old FBI contact.
Folks, do you understand what I just told you?
Ignatius in his piece is acknowledging that a political operative hired by the Clinton campaign to dig up information we now know was provided by the Russians, which I'm going to get to in a second, in their effort to sow chaos in the United States, that he's working with the FBI to then spy on the Trump team.
He acknowledges this in his piece and he...
He's using it as a defense?
Do you understand?
Like, I read this yesterday, and by the way, the book is almost done.
The book is going to blow your mind.
Those people ask me for a timeline, executive summary.
Oh, it's coming.
Oh, and is it ever coming?
Matt Palumbo and I are working feverishly on this book.
I sent this link to Palumbo yesterday, my co-author, and said, wait, what?
The Washington Post thinks this is a defense.
They're actually blowing the case wide open.
They're admitting, Joe, in the piece, that their own sources, that Mike- Michael Steele.
I'm thinking Marilyn.
Christopher Steele, a political operative working for the Clintons, is now feeding information to a law enforcement entity in the United States, which then uses the information from Steele to spy on Trump.
And Ignatius thinks nothing's wrong with this.
This is comical.
A couple other points on this.
I know we're running out of time.
Joe!
This is too much.
Remember, we're trying to prove Obama spied on Trump and did it through the FBI and we're trying to find out if there was an information connection between Obama, President of the United States, and the Democrat Party in an effort to destroy Trump.
He's not the President of the Democrat Party.
He is a Democrat who is President of the United States.
Big difference.
Remember back to the FISA Intelligence Surveillance Court document that I cited, I don't know, a few days ago.
So much information out there, but this is important here.
You know what?
I'll put it in the show notes again today.
You can read the document yourself.
It's 99 pages long, but all you need to do is focus on page 20 and page 83.
We're in the Pfizer Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is overseeing this operation to spy on Trump.
That's where they took it, to the Pfizer court, right, Joe?
They admit in this internal review that there's a real problem with spying, Joe, because the spying's happening, they're collecting information on Americans, and it's being shared with, quote, private contractors and third parties.
Now that's in the document!
I'm not making any of this up!
The question I keep hammering you with, stay tuned, is who the hell are those third parties that are getting private emails and phone conversations recorded in conjunction with U.S.
intelligence spying efforts and others?
Who else is getting this information?
How's Steele exactly so read in on what's going on here, right, with the Bureau?
Or, even better, how's the Bureau so read in on what Steele's doing?
Steele used to work for MI6.
The British have already, in CNN and The Guardian reporting, have already been reported on as giving information to U.S.
intelligence entities about Trump.
You may be saying, I'm not getting it.
You will.
There is an exchange of information that is a violation of our basic civil liberties going on here.
Powerful U.S.
intelligence and law enforcement entities are working with political figures, not law enforcement figures, to attack Donald Trump and are using third parties to do it.
Don't ever forget that.
Now, two quick points here.
Walking back out to the 30,000 feet.
So remember, Ignatius' piece, to sum that up, the takeaway I want you to get from that is a Washington Post reporter in his efforts to defend corruption, I think, at the highest levels of the FBI actually indicts them by acknowledging that a political operative is working with the FBI against Trump.
By the way, I never link to Washington Post pieces because it's crap.
Read that piece.
Go to Bongino.com.
Go, go, go.
By the way, a lot of people ask me how they can listen to the show.
You can listen at Bongino.com.
You don't have to download anything.
It's on iHeart, Spotify, iTunes.
That's great.
Download those if it's convenient.
But Bongino.com, you can play it right there.
Joe told me that yesterday.
We're getting a ton apparently of new listens there.
My wife checked into the website.
She's like, damn, he's right.
We are getting a lot of new listens.
But read the show notes today.
Read the Washington Post piece and read it, keeping in mind the entire time, there is no evidence to start this investigation.
And number two, is this guy actually admitting that Steele and the FBI are working together?
What?
Okay, two more quick points on this, because I had another... Adam Credo at the Washington Free Beacon, who is just blowing the lid off of Iranian corruption, U.S.
government corruption, and dealings with the Iranians.
This guy does amazing work.
I will put another article by him in the show notes today.
I'll take a note on that so I don't forget, because it's such an important piece.
It relates to this story.
A lot of you have asked me, I don't get it.
Why were they spying on the Trump team?
They knew they were going to lose.
And I've said to you, because the Obama-Iran deal drove everything.
Listen to yesterday's show where I explained, because someone is, well, okay, well, why did Obama want an Iran deal so bad?
He wanted an Iran deal because of an unholy alliance between far left liberalism and radical Islam.
Listen to yesterday's show.
It's not a conspiracy theory.
It happened.
We gave the terrorist mullahs cash!
This deal happened!
We allowed them a pathway to nuclear weapons!
This is not a conspiracy theory!
It actually happened!
The Obama administration's desire to castrate Israel, the only independent democracy in the region that supports the United States, drove the Iran deal.
To get the Iran deal, they needed the Russians.
To get the Russians, they had to sell them the uranium.
And Blink and Blink, as the Russians bought up the world's uranium, They had a blink.
That's how Uranium One is tied to the Iran deal.
They needed Russian, tacit Russian support on the Iran deal.
They agreed to sell them Uranium and looked the other way as the Russians cornered the market on international Uranium.
What did they do?
They looked the other way on the Uranium One deal.
Corruptly.
That's why it's tied to the Iran deal.
Now, what does this have to do with the Credo story at the Washington Free Beacon?
Read the story.
It's incredible.
Apparently there's another secret deal with the Iranians, Joe, that was just uncovered.
Again, this is reporting that's out there.
Credo does not do garbage work.
He does excellent stuff.
Apparently there was a little side deal the Obama administration cut they didn't notify Congress about, about pulling sanctions from basically an Iranian broadcasting network.
Bottom line, all you need to know is with the recent protests, They're starting to figure out now that the Obama administration, which had the ability in the past to sanction an Iranian broadcasting network that was basically stopping internet traffic and stopping broadcasting against the regime, the Obama administration pulled sanctions on them.
So now the Trump team is like, hey, now that there's a protest going on and the Iranians are stopping internet traffic in some respects and slowing down protest messaging, we should sanction him.
And the State Department's going, um, wait guys, there's a secret deal.
We already stopped the sanctions on him and Obama.
And everybody's like, wait, what?
Come again?
This broke yesterday.
Folks, this is not a conspiracy theory.
This actually happened.
Again, the Iran deal.
The Obama administration loved the Iranians.
Destroy capitalism, destroy liberty, destroy Israel in the process, and cut all kinds of deals to make it happen, including appeasing Russians, which all needs to be covered up if, in the event, Hillary loses.
Hence, the effort to dirty up Trump.
Read the piece about another secret Iran deal.
One more point.
I'm going to put another Another piece in there.
I think it's from the LA Times, but it was sent to me by my co-author.
It's a good one.
It's a little older.
But I want you to keep in mind, for those of you who are wondering, too, bigger question.
Well, why would the Russians, Joe, sow chaos on both sides?
Well, that doesn't make any sense.
Like, in other words, why would the Russians go to Trump to attack Hillary and then go to Hillary to attack Trump?
Which is what they did.
The Russians provided false information on the dossier.
We know this, Joe.
That was not... Joe, was the dossier positive for Trump?
No!
It was all nasty lies.
Trump did a golden shower on a... whatever.
Some of you, fairly enough, have asked, well, why would the Russians do that?
Why would they go after Trump, try to set Trump up, at the same time as they're attacking Trump through malicious information in a fake dossier?
Read this editorial piece.
This is not by a conservative guy, by the way.
It's from the LA Times.
And it is a good, short, brief, but strong history of the Russians' history of doing this all over the world.
The Russians are chaos makers.
They've done this in Ukraine, where you see disinformation of both sides, Joe.
You create, what, chaos in a vacuum, and what do you do?
You come in and answer all the questions, as I said to you a week ago.
The Russians always play the vague, folks.
As Joe said, which he's absolutely right, they donate to both political sides, and it ain't money, because chaos is their weapon of choice.
Obviously they want the U.S.
electoral system and financial system to collapse because they see global hegemony.
Same thing in Ukraine.
They've done it before.
Read the piece about the Russians' history of playing the VIG on both sides and it'll make sense why the Russians were more than willing players to play like a fiddle Christopher Steele and these corrupt managers at the high end of the FBI that wolfed up fake Russian intel on Donald Trump.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
Please go to bongino.com and read the articles today.
They are really, really good.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
