Ep. 659 Are the Democrats Signaling Trouble Ahead?
Are the Democrats growing concerned that the Russia probe is going to blow up on them? In this episode I’ll address some of the warning signs. I also address the major problem with gun control initiatives and the government’s fascination with a cashless society.
This Democrat senator is giving off some serious warning signs about the Russia probe.
Why is this influential Russian and Putin ally leaving his role in these companies?
The Democrats are worried about the increasing popularity of the tax cuts.
Beware of a cashless society. Government loves this idea.
Spending is out of control, and these numbers are disturbing.
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Get ready to hear the truth about America with your host, Dan Bongino.
Hi, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Ready to go, brother.
Yeah, so I've been getting a lot of emails and feedback on the show.
I really appreciate it.
One of the questions I've been getting a lot, and I'm going to get through a couple things today, but I want to address this too, because even though I've covered it on a few shows, You know, a lot of folks are emailing me, Joe, and they're saying, hey, you know, all right, Dan, great.
You're explaining to us everything that's going on here with this this Spygate and, you know, the Clinton email fiasco and the Justice Department investigation.
But when's justice going to come?
They feel like there's a bifurcated justice system.
Sure they do.
Yeah.
Understandable.
Right.
One for us, the great unwashed and one for the political bow tie wearing, you know, snot nose slobs in D.C.
who get away with everything.
Yep.
Fair question.
I'll get to that a little bit today.
I also want to talk about...
An interesting story I haven't gotten to in a while.
You know, cash is leaving the economy in Sweden.
And I've warned you about this for a long time.
Like, this is big trouble.
Cashless society is NG.
No good.
And I explained this in a show a little while back, but I want to get into it just a little bit today as well, along with some other stuff we have news of the day.
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All right.
So before I get to the cash story and a little bit on the The growing debate over firearms in the country, which I, again, I believe is not being done by some on the left in good faith.
I want to get to this.
Here's why I think you should be patient, folks.
The IG report has not yet been released.
I can't say this enough.
The IG report, the inspector general, this guy Horowitz, and just to be clear on what he's doing, because I'm still getting a lot of emails on this, Horowitz is looking into the Hillary email investigation and the irony of this whole thing.
The irony of this whole thing, Joseph, is that the IG report into the Hillary email investigation that's disclosed all these irregularities, all of the anti-Trump texts by Stroke and Page, all of the FBI efforts at the management level, it appears, to rope Trump in, and all of the efforts to change text in reporting and change 302s and things like that to give Hillary a pass.
All of that was uncovered as a result of the IG investigation.
The 302s are actually in relation to the Trump campaign.
It hasn't been released yet.
I'm not going to ask you to be patient with the Attorney General's office and the DOJ forever.
Just wait till March, okay?
Let's cut a deal, because I love my audience today.
Can we make a deal?
We're going to handshake on this.
There you go, we're shaking hands.
Please, just let the IG report come out in March.
If nothing happens after that, because I believe the report's going to be damning, and I'll tell you why in a second.
If nothing happens after that, you are absolutely right, and we should demand that, at that point, Sessions step down.
But I'm just asking you to be patient.
I've got on somewhat decent authority that they know what's up here.
Now, a couple things on this, on the change 302s first.
I've been telling you forever that The interview with Mike Flynn is critical.
The interview at the White House with National Security Advisor Mike Flynn with the two FBI agents is critical because there's a significant amount of evidence now that the FBI agents in the room, I know one specifically, there were very credible allegations that he believed, according to Jim Comey's own words, the former FBI director, that Mike Flynn was telling the truth.
Remember?
Flynn Joe was charged with false statements to the FBI, which would make it awfully ironic if he was charged with false statements to the FBI, but the FBI agents that spoke to him thought he was telling the truth.
Now, folks, there may be a paper trail here.
The IG is on this thing.
The Inspector General.
This is like the internal affairs for the FBI and the Department of Justice.
If in paperwork documented from that meeting, Hey Joe, I'm giving you the wink and the nod.
You see that?
No, I really did give him the wink and the nod.
If there's paperwork generated from that meeting that indicates it all...
That Flynn either told the truth or they thought he was telling the truth, and the wording of that was changed, just like the wording in the Jim Comey public press hearing on Hillary Clinton that was changed to make her appear less culpable of a crime.
If wording was changed, there'll be a paper trail.
That, folks, is damning!
Because now you're talking about a very serious act that may borderline a criminal itself, especially the fact that some of this information may not have been exposed to Flynn.
I don't want to reiterate old shows, because I know I brought this up before, but it is worth repeating, and I certainly don't want to spend the rest of my life talking about the Trump-Russia thing either.
There's a lot of stuff to get to, but it's really important, folks.
It's really important you understand this.
People, there's, the difference between this and say other scandals that were, you know, were allowed to lie fallow, the IRS, Benghazi, that were legitimate scandals, the debacles in their own right, is this one has a very hard paper trail through court documents, through FBI investigative interviews, the 302s, which, by the way, I didn't even describe it, that is the paperwork they fill out after an interview, basically a synopsis of what happened in the interview with Flynn.
If this stuff was altered, or if this stuff was changed, or if FISA court documents were submitted about information that was not verified, there's a paper trail.
So that's number one.
But number two, something happened this weekend, and I'll put this in the show notes.
Please read this article.
As always, the show notes are available at Bongino.com.
If you join my email list, I will send it to you, of course, every day in your email box.
A fascinating piece at the hill.
There's a Democratic Senator, not a Republican Senator, a Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania, Casey.
The media hasn't really been focusing on this, Joe.
But Casey is now warning the special counsel, hey man, don't release that report prior to the 2018 midterm elections, the congressional elections coming up right around the corner this November.
Remember, I'm not talking down to the audience, but the House of Representatives, every member is elected every two years.
So we had an election in 2016 and 2018, a third of the Senate's up and the entire House.
You know what midterm elections are, but it's important we understand this.
The Republicans are starting to close in.
They're actually up on the generic ballot now.
Why would a Democrat Senator, Bob Casey, who unquestionably has some detailed knowledge about what's going on here, why would he not want the special counsel, Bob Mueller, to release his report prior to the election?
Ladies and gentlemen, do you think it's possible that what's going to wind up happening here is this IG report in March?
You're going to have a double whammy.
Follow me, Joe.
This is important.
Here's the potential double whammy.
And folks, we have been right on.
We have not missed a prediction yet in this thing.
If we do, I'll stand corrected.
But is it possible that in March the IG report comes out and is absolutely damning about a couple of things?
The fake prosecution of Mike Flynn.
So Mike Flynn comes out of this thing looking like a superstar in the end.
He may have made some bad decisions business wise, but the fact that he was prosecuted criminally for a crime even the FBI thought he didn't commit.
Would be devastating to the entire Trump witch hunt, right?
Because it's all the Democrats have.
There's been indictments, man.
There's been prosecutions.
But Flynn pled guilty.
Yeah, to a crime even the FBI didn't think he committed.
Maybe he pled guilty because they were threatening to bankrupt him.
And he was being overwhelmed by legal fees.
People plead guilty all the time.
Yeah.
To just get out of the legal morass.
Remember what I tell you over and over.
The best line I ever heard from Tom Fitton from Judicial Watch.
For the left, process is punishment.
The legal process, folks, in and of itself is the punishment, not the result.
Whether you're convicted to them or not is almost irrelevant.
Putting you through the legal process is the punishment.
So when you ask again, well, why would he plead guilty?
Maybe to escape the process, not the punishment in the end.
Took a bath.
Took a bath, like we say all the time.
That's what companies do when they're hurting.
You just take a bath.
He's like, let's just get this done with.
But don't you find it awfully suspicious how quiet Mike Flynn's been?
Why has Mike Flynn not come out and defended himself?
Maybe because Mike Flynn... Joe, the old wink and a nod again.
He knows that the FBI may have understood he did not lie or did no intention to deceive them?
So the double whammy, whammy number one, in March it comes out that one, Flynn may not have been guilty of all this, and number two, that Hillary Clinton and the Clinton campaign may have in fact been given a pass on potential criminal activity.
The IG report could be damning on that.
I'm going to get to that part in a second, but I just want to get to the second prong of this.
Because, again, this is in regards to the Democrat Senator's statement, hey, maybe we shouldn't release that special counsel report.
Maybe because the Dems are terrified, again, that number one, Hillary's going to look bad, the FBI investigation is going to fall apart, and number two, if the special counsel report, the final report comes out before the election, Joe, And what's in it is zippo evidence whatsoever of Russian, quote, collusion with the Trump team to alter the election.
Do you understand that Democrats for over two years will have run on this Russian collusion thing?
It will have entirely collapsed.
And the investigation after they praised Mueller for the entire year will have come away with ungats, with nothing.
Zilch.
Zero.
Guys, ladies, you listening in your car on the way to work, on the way home from work, why do you think a Democrat senator would say that?
You think the writing's on the wall?
Why would Rod Rosenstein come out last Friday's conference and say, oh, in this indictment there's no allegations that any Americans wittingly were involved in this?
Why would he say that if there was a bigger scandal coming later?
Now, fair enough to the liberals who are obsessed with this Russian collusion thing.
They say, well, he just said, in this indictment.
And you're right.
He did say that.
Listen, I don't know what Rosenstein knows.
I think we have a good body of information, Joe and I, based on some quality sourcing.
But I don't know everything.
I'm not pretending to.
And you may be right.
There may be an indictment later on for a Trump volunteer in Texas that told the Russians... I don't know.
Folks, I'm seriously just making that up out of thin air.
I'm just saying I don't know that.
But I know this.
That if the first indictment out of the chute involving Russians is that?
Facebook ads?
I don't know, folks.
I'm not really... I don't know how to say this.
I'm pretty convinced, given my experience with the federal government's prosecutorial and investigative system, that I humbly think that's the best they have.
So the double whammy is going to be the IG report that nails Hillary to the wall for getting a pass, nails the Bureau for going after Flynn for something even they believed he didn't do, and then a report gets released by Mueller saying, hey, basically, this is it.
This is what we got.
The Russians bought Facebook ads and nobody on the Trump team knew anything about it.
They have nothing else.
Folks, you can't fabricate evidence.
Now, on that first part of this, I have an interesting article I want you to look at at the show notes.
I'm not sure if it's from Bloomberg.
And listen, sometimes I get complaints, why are you putting articles up from Bloomberg?
Because some of them are interesting and I think you may, listen, I'm not a Bloomberg fan, obviously, but some of these are interesting and I think you need to know it and it's far better that you understand the context of what's going on and me hiding stuff from you because they're from, you know, people who, you know, what do you call it, like websites like that named after people who obviously are not with us ideologically.
But it's a pretty good piece.
Maybe from Reuters, I don't know, but just check it out.
But I do get these complaints, so I feel like I want to address them, because you matter to me.
Awfully coincidental again this weekend.
Oleg Deripaska, remember the names?
Oleg Deripaska has left his management role at two enormous companies he is assisting and managing and a part of in Russia.
Now why does that matter to you?
Why would that happen this weekend after the Russian indictments?
I said to you on yesterday's show that suspiciously absent from the indictment was any allegations of foreign contributions, formal allegations.
They're alleged in the actual write-up in the indictment, but nobody's actually charged with Russians donating money illegally to the campaign or services, which is fascinating.
I brought up the piece in Powerline Blog by Hindraker.
You remember yesterday's show, Joe, right?
Yeah.
Like it was yesterday, yeah.
Like it was yesterday.
See, you're a funny cat.
I'm not funny like you.
I'm not.
Really, you've got a good sense of humor.
You've got to meet Joe in person.
He's even better.
But you're smart, and I'm not smart like you.
You're not going to be at CPAC, right?
This year, by the way?
No.
I'll be at CPAC, so I'll see you there.
Actually, I'll be there tomorrow.
So I'll see you all head on CPAC.
But what's interesting is what was left out of the indictment by Mueller on Friday, the Russians, were any allegations of the Russians influencing campaigns through money.
The actual charge, I mean.
Why would they leave that charge out?
Now, again, not to redo yesterday's show, but I think it's because, and I think the writer of the piece is onto something, that the Russian money connection to the Clintons is deeper than we understand right now.
So follow me.
So I think if Mueller charges that against these guys, these Russians, then questions are going to be asked, folks.
About, well, why not the Clintons too?
That's suspicion number one, but suspicion number two about how this IG report could be ugly, folks, why would Deripaska step down now?
Deripaska, for those of you who need a refresher course on this, I know, it's like, in my book, coming out on this, by the way, with Matt Palumbo, we have charts and diagrams and timelines, so we're almost done.
I promise you, it's almost done, and you'll be able to follow along at home.
What's interesting about Deripaska Is Deripaska and his lobbyist, Sky Waldman, is the same guy who reached out to a Democrat senator, Mark Warner, and tried to arrange a meeting after all this scandal broke with Christopher Steele, the British spy who was producing information on Trump for the Clinton team.
Why is Deripaska, how is he connected with the exact same people?
Waldman that are connected to Steele.
Deripaska is an ally of Putin, a known ally of Putin.
What I'm trying to tell you folks is Steele's working for the Clintons to get information on Trump.
Steele obviously has a connection to a lobbyist who's working for Deripaska, who's an ally of Putin.
Is it possible, just possible, that the ties between the Clintons and Russian money are deeper than we know right now?
You know what's also interesting about Deripaska?
Companies he's been associated with, in deals, deals that would have benefited him, companies that would have benefited him, have made donations, extensive donations, to the Clinton campaign.
Another thing, this guy's an ally of Putin.
Remember, as Schweitzer, Peter Schweitzer writes in his great book, Clinton Cash, remember the Skolkovo project?
It was supposed to be the equivalent of the Russian Silicon Valley, folks.
The Skolkovo Project.
The United States and Hillary Clinton supported this initiative.
And Joe, conveniently, 17 of the 28 companies involved in the Russian Silicon Valley Project in Skolkovo were Clinton Foundation donors.
No!
Crazy how that happens!
Matter of fact, It's alleged that between six - I know Joe - Elizabeth, we
gotta get that.
We're going to.
Yeah.
Between six and twenty three million dollars was donated to the Clinton Foundation
from companies involved in the creation of this Russian Silicon Valley.
Remember, I'm trying to make the case to you that I believe this IG report is going to uncover
significant flows of Russian money into the Clinton Foundation.
Therefore, if Mueller charges the Russians with influence operations using money and with an actual charge, And it's involved with the Trump team who, he says in the indictment, had no idea any of this was going on.
Right.
What if the Clintons did know some of this was going on?
They're gonna be like, why are the Clintons not in jail too?
Folks, it makes perfect sense.
Now, why is Skolkovo deeply, deeply troubling?
Because the FBI, this is fascinating Joe, I can see you're interested.
I know Joe.
Joe gives me the head tilt when he wants to hear what's next.
I can see that.
He leans into the microphone as if leaning in is going to make the information come over faster.
Skolkovo, the Russian Silicon Valley project, supported by Hillary, in turn, the donors who gave her money were involved in it, or they gave the Clinton Foundation money, to be precise there.
The FBI themselves, Joe, determined that Skolkovo was a very dangerous project, that it was really an attempt by the Russians to get their hands on dual-use technology.
Now, here you go.
I'm going to read this to you.
This is from Gosh, where's this piece from?
I forgot.
I'm sorry.
It's in the show notes today, but you can read this.
As always, I only put interesting articles in the show notes, but this is from the piece.
Forgive me.
It may be from Reuters, but I forget.
It says the FBI in 2014 issued an extraordinary warning, that's a quote, to US tech companies against their involvement in the Skolkovo initiative.
The agency concluded, Joe, this is ridiculous, that we supported this.
The agency concluded that the true motives of the Russian partners, who were backed by President Vladimir Putin's government, Folks, seriously?
classified, sensitive, and emerging technology for the companies. The
foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation's
sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use
technologies with military and commercial application. Luisa Ziobrio,
the Assistant Special Agent at the FBI Boston office, said in a statement. Folks,
seriously? Really? I'm... so let me get this to be clear on this.
Companies involved in the Skolkovo initiative donate potentially tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
It's estimated between 6 and 23 million.
This initiative is called out by the FBI as an attempt by the Russians to steal dual-use military technology to potentially attack us with.
And this was supported by the Clintons.
Now do you see why yesterday's show makes so much sense?
And why these shows, you know, I get it.
I listen to your emails.
I read every one of them.
I get a lot of positive feedback.
But once in a while, why do you keep focusing on this?
Because it's not just about spying.
It's not just about the Fourth Amendment.
It's not just about the Trump presidency.
It's not just about quid pro quo or pay for play or how Hillary's rotten and Bill's rotten and all this other stuff.
Folks, this is about critical national security and the very... the sanity of the Constitutional Republic going forward.
Are we seriously doing this stuff?
We're letting people serve as Secretary of State whose foundations, named after her and her husband, are accepting money from companies involved in an initiative that the FBI says is an attempt to steal potentially military secrets to use against us?
And now you wonder why the Democrats want a lot of this to go away right now.
You think?
And by the way, one of the great ironies of the IG investigation, Joe, is that the IG investigation was requested by the Democrats.
Because they thought Bob Mueller, excuse me, they thought Jim Comey cost Hillary the election.
So that is one of the greatest ironies of all, that the Democrats, in an effort to really stick it to Jim Comey and the FBI, asked the IG for this investigation that is now uncovering all kinds of stuff they'd rather, let's call it stuff, swept under the rug about the Clintons.
Folks, again, I just want to sum it up at this point, I'm going to move on.
The Russian involvement with the Clintons is going to get ugly, and that is why the Democrats need the special counsel to continue its work and to continue on the next path down.
There's no collusion, so now it's going to be obstruction.
If it's not obstruction, it'll be money laundering or something else.
They will find a crime.
Everybody's ripped the mattress tag off.
They will find something.
They need it.
They need the special counsel to do the, look, squirrel, look, shiny red ball, to distract people from what's really going on, which is the Obama year corruption, the Obama administration corruption, and the extensive involvement in the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation in some shady operations, at best.
All right.
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Like, gosh, I have to shoot again?
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Okay.
Listen, this, you know, it's been a couple of days since the, Really indescribable tragedy.
I mean, I can't, you know, I can't imagine what these people involved in Parkland are going through.
And, you know, there's an interesting article, a couple of them up out there I've seen at their various websites about something I got into the other day about why I think the debate about firearms never goes anywhere.
And I was trying to sum it up without repeating any content.
And I thought of this, and I just wanted to put this out there.
The problem we have here is that you have a small pool of people in this country.
The criminal justice research is conclusive on this.
You have a very small pool of criminals in the country that cause the overwhelming proportion of crimes.
Forgive me, but I don't have the exact number, but I'm telling you from years in law enforcement and having researched this for other shows we've done, there is a small pool of people that cause an inordinate amount of chaos.
They are the hardened criminals among us.
I'm not talking about the pettit larcenies and the turnstile jumping, although that's part of a bigger picture, especially when it comes to broken windows policing.
Which is the idea that you get the guy who jumped the turnstile, he's the guy who goes and robs people later on the train.
But you have a very small group of people who are evil enough and basically mentally damaged enough That they go out and they commit the rapes and the murders and the felonious assaults and the burglaries and break into homes where people are home or where people aren't.
It's a small group of people.
This small group of people, folks, obviously does not... They don't... I don't know any simpler way to say this.
I tried to make this argument to Geraldo on a Fox and Friends... Excuse me, on a Hannity appearance on Fox.
This small group of people, they don't care about your laws.
They don't care about our laws, your laws, their laws, however you want to describe our law.
It's of zero interest to them at all.
If they cared about laws, rules, and regulations, they wouldn't violate them constantly to get ahead.
They are what we would describe as sociopaths.
They live in a world without consequence.
You know, I'm not trying to be preachy here, but God gave us shame as a gift.
You know, we have shame.
We have a feeling of shame.
What is it?
Shame's not real.
You can't touch it.
You can't bite it.
You can't grab it.
But you know what it is.
Everybody knows what it is.
Shame was a gift from God.
Shame and guilt are gifts.
I believe this, folks.
It was a gift.
It was a gift so you feel an internal, not tangible consequence to an act you knew was wrong.
And that's the penalty.
Do animals really have shame or guilt?
I don't think so.
Maybe your dog once in a while when you come in and the dog pees on the carpet.
You know that look they give you once in a while?
But animals don't.
We have a very complex brain that operates in a very complex way.
These are gifts from God.
Again, I'm not being preachy.
I just want to get to a point here.
You have this feeling of shame and guilt that God gave us.
And gave it to us so it would prevent us in the future from repeating malicious acts.
Sociopaths and the evil among us don't have this.
So you have this small group of people that don't care about the laws.
So what I don't think the other side of the firearm debate understands is you have this small group of people causing an inordinate amount of damage that don't care about the laws.
The way we see it is We need protection against these people because they don't care about homicide laws, they don't care about burglary laws, robbery laws, felonious assault, they don't feel shame, they don't feel guilt, they will just do it because that's what they do!
So whereas to people on the Second Amendment personal protection side like me see it as a debate about how do we protect ourselves against the wolves in society, People on the other side of the debate see it as a, well, if we just create more laws as a disincentive against the wolves, then the wolves won't do what they're doing.
They don't care!
They don't care!
Folks, if they don't care about laws against homicide, which clearly this maniac in Parkland didn't care, I'm asking you a very sincere question.
I'm not trying to be a jerk here.
Because I get it, there are a lot of people who are genuinely, and should be, genuinely disturbed by this, who are looking for answers.
But why would you think an additional law, restriction, regulation, whatever it would be, is going to stop these people who didn't care about the most serious laws?
So, you have a guy, or a woman out there, Who is sociopathic enough, feels no shame, no guilt, and no remorse.
They don't care about laws against murdering other people.
Homicide, nothing.
None of that bothers them.
Obviously not, because they did it anyway.
But you're convinced that more restrictive guidelines on obtaining firearms would somehow do what?
And I get it.
I'm trying to understand this from the other side's perspective, unlike the other side of this firearms debate, which is not in any way trying to understand the Fremonts because they're obsessed.
We're calling us all accomplices to murder.
We have blood on our hands.
Yo, you don't believe me?
Follow my Twitter account if you think I'm making any of this up.
I'm trying to understand your point of view.
Now, your point of view may be, Joe, Well, you know, at least it would make it a little more difficult.
And as I've said to you, one, it doesn't make it anywhere close to impossible because the black market for weapons is a vibrant and robust one.
It is not hard for criminals to obtain weapons at all.
So your law at making it marginally more difficult at best to obtain a weapon, just to be clear, I'm telling you from evidence on this, evidence on I told you in yesterday's show about Australia and the gun confiscation, when criminals want weapons, they get them.
Period.
Full stop.
Boom.
The restrictions you're placing though on the criminals, which don't restrict them, because they will get them, whether it's in a black market or elsewhere, Do restrict law-abiding, patriotic Americans interested in protecting themselves and their families from obtaining those very same firearms.
So what I'm getting at is you have, again, you have this small group of people that cause inordinate chaos because, folks, the risk of dying in a mass shooting is still very little.
I'll put a Cato piece up today in the show notes.
Take a note on that.
I don't want to forget this because it's a good piece.
It's called Are Mass Shootings Going Up?
And the evidence, folks, does not support that.
That is not to take away from the colossal tragedy this was.
But the evidence does not support that.
There's an average of 23 people a year who were killed in these incidents.
That's 23 too many.
But the data does not support that.
And what a point I'm trying to make is this is all done by an inordinately small group of evil sociopathic folks who are not restricted at all by the new laws and restrictions you want to put in place, but those very same restrictions, folks, this is where we're going to sum it up, prevent the 99 out of 100 people who are law-abiding, God-fearing folks from protecting themselves against the 1 out of 100 who want to do them harm.
That is why we fight for this.
We all have kids too.
We're all believers in a peaceful, prosperous society.
You think any of us want our kids going to school being worried about being shot up in an attack by one of these deranged killers?
The point we're simply trying to make is your restrictions that affect the 1% of killers and chaos makers, it's actually far less than that, do not really restrict them.
While they severely restrict the 99 others trying to protect themselves against that 1% or 1% of 1% of people who are causing the chaos, death and destruction.
That's the point.
I don't know if I summed that up at all, Joe.
I mean, does that seem to make any sense?
Yeah, that was good.
The law hurt the lullaby.
Yeah, it does.
I just remember in the 75 precinct being a police officer in this 5.6 square mile precinct, which was very crime-ridden at the time when I was back there in the 90s.
And it was the same guys, Joe, all the time.
You had, I don't know how many people lived in the precinct, a hundred thousand plus?
A lot.
And it was the same guys in jail all the time.
I remember this one guy.
He was a retired law enforcement guy.
Yeah.
Retired law.
Every weekend we'd see him.
We'd see him in the car.
What was he doing?
Patronizing some prostitute or something.
And this guy, I mean, he was a mess.
He was into drugs and everything.
And I remember the first time I saw him.
We wind up arresting him, and I see him in a car, and don't worry, this will be family-friendly, I know some of you listen to your kids, but I remember saying, he's in a car with a woman who's, you know, engaging in that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
And they're not doing anything specifically, but I see the guy, and it's very suspicious, the windows down, I didn't say, I just went up to him and said, yeah, what's going on?
Now, I hadn't met this guy before, but the guys in the pre-set, I found out later, knew him.
And, you know, all of a sudden he's acting all suspiciously, infertively.
You know, it was the middle of the night, windows were down, it was cold, it was just very strange.
And I remember saying, what's her name?
That was the first question that came to my mind.
And he's like, I don't know what he said.
You know, Joy?
I don't know.
Carmella?
I don't know.
It doesn't matter.
I said, don't say anything.
I said, "You guys got ID?" and the woman produces ID and of course that's not the name.
So I knew right away something was up.
Turned out all you had to do was look and there was some stuff in the car that should have been.
I'm not going to go into the details, but we arrest the guy, bottom line.
Keep in mind, this guy's former law enforcement.
I bring him in the precinct and he was a mess.
He had newspaper in his shoes, his shoes had worn out.
He must be broke, have no money.
And the cops are like, oh man, this guy's here all the time.
Like this is like the 20th time this guy's been arrested for this.
My point is that it's the same people all the time.
Folks, they don't care about the rules.
They don't care about the rules against murder, burglary.
They don't care about any of this.
You think another rule.
Oh, we're going to wait seven days to buy a firearm.
Okay, they'll wait seven days then.
Oh, now we're going to make it illegal for them to buy firearms that are ARs or in that kind of class.
All right, they're just going to get them off the street.
It's not going to restrict them.
It's only going to restrict you.
And that's why I'm so passionate about this.
You know, folks, if I may, one last thought on this before I move on.
I'm telling you as a friend to many of you, because I read a lot of your emails, and I feel like I know some of you.
Ben and Judy and all your people email me on a regular basis.
I read your stuff.
I just, unfortunately, given the volume, I don't have the time to email you back.
If I didn't believe in what I was doing, believe in the places I work, believe in the mission of some of the outlets I work, you know I'm a contributor over there for NRA TV.
I'm not their spokesperson, but if I didn't believe in it, I wouldn't do it.
I believe we're doing the right thing.
I believe liberty matters.
And I believe the freedom for you to protect yourself against the wolves of society is something that should be passionately fought for.
If I didn't believe in it, I absolutely wouldn't do it.
Folks, as Joe and I know, I'm not bragging.
I'm not patting myself on the back.
This podcast earns us more than enough money.
We are good, thanks to you, forever.
We don't need to do anything.
I do stuff because I believe in it.
And I believe I'm telling you in my heart that this is the right thing.
That your ability to protect yourself, to defend yourself against the wolves of society should be the full stop, period, end of sentence.
That should come first.
Talking about additional restrictions that are not going to restrict the bad guys but only are going to hurt you is not the way to make society safer at all.
There is very little, if any, evidence at all to support that.
Firearm ownership has gone up dramatically in the country and crime rates have gone down dramatically at the same time.
That's the biggest sample size possible.
Okay, I want to move on to this little bit of a lighter note, this story about a cashless society, because it has me worried.
I brought this up before, and it's kind of a warning sign to everybody out there.
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I mean it.
This is not just something I say from rote memory.
You keep this show free, and I really appreciate it.
You know, should I say this, Joe, but I did get a complaint.
A guy emailed me last week, hey, you know, you got a lot of sponsors.
Folks, this is one complaint that, keep in mind, out of probably 6,000 emails I received last week, if not more, these are good companies.
They keep this show free.
Joe and I do not want to charge you for the show, so we allow good companies to come in and advertise on our show, which we select and we vet and we go through, and that's why we do this.
So, um, you know, there's nothing, I can't apologize for that.
These are good companies here that do the right thing.
And, uh, I'm really happy to have them on board.
So to the guy who complained, you know who you are, I'm very sorry, but you're going to have to go.
What did you tell me, Joe?
And what is it in terrestrial radio?
You can get up to 14 minutes worth of commercial spots in an hour of terrestrial radio.
We do six minutes of advertising in an hour show.
Beat that.
Beat that, folks.
And one more thing, not to like pat ourselves on the back, but because you matter to me, folks, you really do.
Joe, right?
If it's terrestrial radio, you would never be able to say this on the air.
They'd be like, don't say that.
They would say, you can't talk about the air.
But we are offered four and five spots a show.
And we turn it down.
You understand?
We leave money on the table to keep the content heavy.
I just feel the need to put that out there.
Folks, you matter to me.
Joe and I aren't like a bunch of mercenaries.
The show is very expensive to put on.
Thanks to you, we take up a lot of service space now.
All right.
Sorry about that, but I like you all and I don't want you getting the wrong idea.
Okay, interesting story, I'll put it again in the show notes today, about how cash is disappearing in Sweden, that these stores are putting up signs now, you know, no cash, no cash, basically you're going to have to engage in financial transactions electronically, you know, and we do that here, debit cards, credit cards, and I think pretty soon the overwhelming majority of transactions in the United States, if not there already, are going to be electronically as well.
Now, I did a show a long time ago, but I saw this today, and I don't like to repeat shows, but the point in light of the U.S.
debt situation right now is going to come up again.
Here's what I mean.
I did a show, I don't know, four or five months ago.
Forgive me, because we have such a deep library of shows right now, I don't know the number.
But the show is about the dangers of the government wanting excessive inflation as a way to debase the U.S.
dollar, as a way to devalue its own debts.
Here's what I mean by this.
John Maynard Keynes, who was the founder of Keynesian economics, disastrous Keynesian economics, but he did have an interesting A little point he made in one of his books where he said, you know, think about it, right?
The government could take your money one of two ways.
Directly.
So if the government wants to take, Joe, say 25% of everything we make as U.S.
citizens, they can tax the economy at 25%.
All right?
It's a simple answer.
They're effective tax rates versus, you know, actual tax.
We get it.
But just play the game for a minute.
So if the economy is worth $1,000 and you tax it at 25%, The government would take $250 out of the economy, you know, whatever percentage from a certain amount of people, but that's what they would do.
But there's another way to make people pay for government spending.
And the other way to do it is to inflate the hell out of the U.S.
economy.
And here's how they would do it.
Keynes gives a great example.
He says, well, let's say the economy is worth $1,000.
The government has monopoly power over what?
The printing press.
The government can print its own money.
The Federal Reserve is, for all this nonsense about how it's an independent agency, it's not!
The government, they're influenced by politics like everyone else.
They're only human beings, the Board of Governors and all the folks who work there.
Another way to take 25% is to just say the economy's worth $1,000, is to print $300 and say $30.
Now, you had $1,000 circulating before.
is to print $300 and say $30.
Now, you had $1,000 circulating before.
The government just prints $330 and spends it.
Now, $330 of $1,330 is right around 25%.
Now, you may say, "Hey, that's great! Nice job!
They didn't have to tax anybody. They printed the money.
They get to spend 25%."
Everybody wins. Everybody loses. Why?
Because, folks, as you print more dollars, not backed by any real value,
the value of the dollars you have now goes down.
That's right.
Joe's giving us the big thumbs growl.
The value of the dollar you have now collapses.
If printing money was a way to create value, we would just print it.
No one would have to work.
You would literally be giving a home printing system.
The government would issue it and say, print whatever you need.
What limits the supply of money is the value that backs it.
So if you print $330 and you spend it, the 25%, what happens is the value of the dollar collapses.
Meaning there's now, you know, $1,330 in circulation, still chasing $1,000 in goods.
$130 in circulation, still chasing $1,000 in goods.
So prices go up.
That's what we would call inflation.
Because you have more money chasing the same amount of goods.
So if you had a hundred widgets, that hundred widgets, $1,300 is now chasing a hundred widgets rather than a thousand before.
Does that make sense, Joe?
Mm-hmm.
Why am I bringing any of this up?
Low interest rates in the economy are one of the ways, forced, not natural interest rates, but forcing interest rates lower, are one of the ways the government, via its de facto printing press, by forcing interest rates down, has tried to induce inflation in the economy.
Because if you print extra money, you can buy up assets and drive, let me just, because I don't have that much time left, but If the government wants to drive down interest rates through the Federal Reserve, if the Federal Reserve wants to do it, they can print the money or create it electronically, which is typically just how it happens.
And they can buy up assets and drive interest rates down by doing that, because then those assets don't have to compete in a free market for higher interest rates.
In other words, you know, if Joe's got a company and he, you know, issues a bond, you know, the company may get, say, 5% on that bond, 6% on that bond.
If the federal government enters in and goes, hey, we'll buy it at 3%, the federal government can drive down interest rates because it can print money while other people can't, okay?
So by driving interest rates low, the federal government can induce inflation.
So by inducing inflation, you want lower interest rates.
One of the things I warned you about in one of these shows in the past was the idea of negative interest rates.
Now, negative interest rates destroy the value of money.
Think about it.
It's very simple, right?
If you put your money in the bank at a positive interest rate, your money grows, right?
If you get 5% a year, then your money every year grows by 5%, compounded.
If you put your money in a bank at a negative interest rate, your money loses value.
If it's negative, negative 5% would be unbelievably high, by the way, or low.
You would lose 5% of your money every year, which also negatively compounds, right?
Negative interest rates have always been a way to destroy the value of the dollar.
Now you say, I don't get it.
What are you saying?
Why would the government want that?
Folks, governments would want that because when the United States government owes $20 trillion, do you want that $20 trillion to be able to be worth $20 trillion now or $20 trillion inflated away?
I'll ask you a simpler question.
Do you want to buy your house at the value your house is worth now or the value your house is worth when it was built in, whatever, 1970?
Now, most of you go, of course, I want to buy it for the $30,000 it was worth in 1970.
But it's the same house.
Alright, you made some upgrades, but it's the same house.
You get my point?
It's not the house that changed outside of some cosmetic stuff.
It's the value of the dollar.
The dollar lost its value over time.
Therefore, you need more dollars to buy the same house.
You get it?
Yeah.
The United States government that owes 20 trillion dollars does not want to have to generate more dollars or more value and steal more money from you to pay that 20 trillion off.
It wants the dollar worth less.
The government loves inflation because it destroys the value of the dollar and simultaneously destroys the value of the debt.
Now, low interest rates are needed for inflation.
Artificially low interest rates.
The government loves to push them down.
Now, one of the ways negative interest rates would work is you would keep your money in the bank.
You would keep your money in the bank and it would force people to spend, spend, spend, because, look, people take money as, you know, they were selling it as a way to induce consumerism and consumption.
In other words, Joe, if your money's in the bank losing money, they think, well, negative interest rates would be great.
People take their money out and spend it and it will have this flowering economy.
Folks, it's not what happened.
What actually happened in Japan is people took their money out of the bank and put it in safes.
That's what happened, which took more money out of the economy.
It had the exact opposite effect.
But the point is, the lower interest rates go, even into negative territory, it works really, really well for governments that owe a ton of money.
Does that make sense, Joe?
Yeah.
So now you're in the negative interest rate territory.
The only way to make that work, to destroy the value of all this government debt, which you want to do because the government spend a ton, is to make sure that people don't have cash.
Because if people have cash, they'll do what they did in Japan.
They'll just pull it out of the bank and put it in a safe and say, my money's safe now.
Because remember, Joe, it only loses value if it's in the bank account that has the negative interest rate, okay?
Mm-hmm, yep.
So the people in Japan, it was great for the safe industry.
I gotta get a safe, by the way.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
People would pull the cash out.
But if you read this story about what's going on in Sweden where you're turning into a cashless
society, do you now understand why governments love this kind of thing?
Now, to be fair in the article, some government officials are like, "Hey, this is trouble
because the elderly don't have access to some of these electronic payment mechanisms.
They're not very familiar with, you know, whatever Apple Pay and other things."
So I'm not suggesting that this is some devious X-Files like David Duchovny, you know, Trump-Russia fairytale nonsense.
I'm just telling you, whenever you hear about a cashless society, especially you youngsters out there, I don't mean in a condescending way, I mean literally.
For you younger folks who are very tech savvy and you see Apple Pay and Face ID Pay and all this other stuff as an efficient mechanism.
You're right, it is and I enjoy it too.
I'm just suggesting to you be very careful when you see governments getting involved in it and trying to incentivize more of this stuff because their motives may not be what yours are.
Your motives are clearly convenience and clarity and the ease of not having to carry around cash and lose it.
Mine too.
I'm with you.
That is not the government's motive.
The government's motive for a cashless society is making sure you keep all your money electronically.
That way if they ever have to drive interest rates lower and lower and lower to the point where your money's losing, literally losing money dramatically, you have to keep it in the bank because there's no other way to pay.
You can take your cash out, but nobody takes cash, so it doesn't matter.
Be very careful.
Does that make sense, Joe?
Did I tie that up?
Yeah, yeah.
It's an important story, and I'll do my best, because I did almost an entire show on this, and people loved it.
I wrote a piece at Conservative Review a while ago about it, too.
Be careful.
Government motives are not yours.
They are not yours.
The government needs desperately to devalue the $20 trillion in debt it spent that it didn't have.
They will do anything, and if they get desperate enough, and you start seeing negative interest rates induced by a loose monetary policy, they are pretty soon, you may see something like, hey, let's incentivize companies to accept payments only electronically.
Oh, why would you want that?
So people don't take money out of the bank.
That's why.
If you can't use the cash, you have to do an electronic payment, which requires you to keep the money in a bank.
By the way, that's why governments hate Bitcoin and other things like that as well.
You know me, I'm a little bearish on Bitcoin, but I'm not at all bearish on cryptocurrencies.
I think they're a great idea.
I just think some of them are overvalued a bit.
I know I'm going to get nasty email on it.
Listen, I love it.
I love cryptos.
I'm serious.
Please don't email me nasty grams.
It's just my opinion.
I'm not your financial advisor.
Invest how you want.
I'm just suggesting to you again, for the younger folks listening, be very careful about government rules and regulations designed to make this the hip and cool thing to do because they're not doing it for the reasons you think they're doing it.
It is a way in the future to potentially devalue their own debt at your expense as your money gets clogged up in an electronic system and every day goes down and down and down and down as negative interest rates kick in.
All right, folks, I appreciate you tuning in.
It'll be a busy week at CPAC.
Please come say hello.
If you're there, I'll be over at the NRA TV booth, excuse me, over there in the corner.
And please go to my website, Bongino.com.
Check out the articles today and subscribe to the email list.
I'll send them right to you.
Thanks a lot, folks.
I really appreciate you supporting the show and spreading the word.
I'll see you all tomorrow.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
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