In this episode I discuss how the tide is turning in the liberal culture war. I also address outrageous liberal hypocrisy on the firearm issue and other subjects.
News Picks:
Liberals want to ban guns but consistently embarrass and discredit themselves by having little to no understanding of the firearms they want to ban.
A university instituted a policy allowing concealed carry on campus. Here’s what happened to crime rates.
This piece discusses the data on the opioid epidemic.
Are we going to see a second special counsel to investigate the Obamagate spying scandal?
More devastating information about the failure of liberal cities.
Is President Trump’s tariff talk a negotiating ploy?
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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.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm hanging in there, Dan, dealing with this goofy Maryland weather.
Well, Florida, it's a Down by me in Martin County, it looks like there's about to be a massive thunderstorm and I'm glad that my studio people, the people I work with, with the Fox stuff and all the other hits, they have the entire studio on battery backup.
So my whole studio, cameras, Skype, computer, Focusrite, everything, phone lines, is all on a big massive battery because it just went out.
Right before we started recording this, and I'm still talking to Joe and looking at his Elvis-looking mug here on Skype.
So we're good to go.
I'm a little sore today.
Yesterday was deadlift day.
For those of you who deadlift and lift, it is the most taxing exercise known to man.
I don't know what it is about deadlifts.
I think the fact that you start from a dead stop.
I mean, you're literally lifting a weight up off the ground.
I am sauced, so I am not working out today, which is good.
I don't know why I'm telling you that, but... Good.
Yeah, I'm taxed out.
My nervous system is fried.
I read something that powerlifters who do this professionally, deadlifting, don't do a max deadlift up to seven days out because it's so taxing on the nervous system.
Yeah, rest is important too, man.
Yeah, it is.
I got a lot to get through today.
I got a lot of comments on viewer feedback.
I got some of it's important.
I've been very inspired by some of the emails yesterday, and many of them good.
A couple of them that were critical, but critical for all the, I think, wrong reasons, and I'll tell you why in a minute.
And I also want to get to an article on an outstanding piece by David, forgive me if I'm saying your name wrong, Hirsanyai, at The Federalist, but it's a great piece on liberal hypocrisy.
So I want to get to that, all right?
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Okay, regarding yesterday's show.
I was very inspired.
Our audience is so great, Joe.
I mean, we talked yesterday about how... I know some of you were confused because I said the other day that we were winning the culture war, and I believe that.
And yesterday's show, I was reading a piece by David Brooks in the New York Times that said we were losing the culture war but winning the political war.
That was Brooks' opinion, not mine, folks.
I really, genuinely believe we are starting to turn the corner on academia, on the media elites, on Hollywood celebrities and the musician crowd out there that are attacking us endlessly on social media.
I really believe the corner's being turned.
Now, I didn't say during yesterday's show that we've won the culture war.
It is clear for a long time, and Joe gave a great example of Stockholm Syndrome, where a lot of us have been beaten so long in the culture war by being called racists, xenophobes, misogynists, Islamophobes, phobophobic isthophobes, as we always say.
We're going to put that on a shirt one day.
Joe's right.
They were the hostage takers, we're the hostages, and eventually we almost feel bad for them.
We're like, well, Maybe they're right.
Maybe we are a bunch of gun nuts and maybe we don't like people who look different than us.
Meanwhile, you know that's not true.
Right.
But we kind of back down because we've heard it for so long, you're almost like, well, I don't know.
Is it true?
You've been gaslit for so long.
Gaslighting, where you've been told a lie so confidently over and over and you've been isolated from the truth.
You've been told the lie that if you're a conservative, you're a racist, you get it.
Misogynist, you don't like women, you don't like Muslims.
You've been told that for so long, even though it's not true, that eventually you're like, wait, is there something to this?
I don't, you know, I don't get it.
I'm starting to hate everybody.
That's what they want you, right?
That's what they want you to believe.
And some people, I think, back down instinctively because they're afraid.
I think the tide is turning.
And based on the feedback from yesterday's show, which was phenomenal and inspirational, and thank you so much, I have never ever felt more confident that we are turning the tide.
And folks, again, this is going to be a long, drawn-out culture war.
This is not going to change tomorrow, maybe next year, maybe not in a decade.
The point I'm trying to make is it is changing, bit by bit, by day by day, and more people are getting up and dancing.
I gave you the example of the guy at the music festival on YouTube.
The guy gets up and starts dancing crazy.
I mean, he's dancing crazy.
And how intelligence agencies use this video to show that it's not the guy that gets up first, it's the guy that follows the guy that gets up.
Guy gets up, he's dancing.
I mean, he's dancing crazy.
Everybody's laughing at him.
Just like they laugh at us.
Conservatives.
Idiots.
Racists.
You hate women.
You hate everybody.
LGBTQ.
Everybody.
You hate everybody that's not white and male.
We do?
Everybody laughs at us.
Mocks us.
But you know what happened at the music festival?
Again, second guy gets up and starts dancing with the guy.
Following his moves.
They laugh.
All of a sudden, people are like, yeah, it looks fun.
Third guy, fourth guy, eventually the whole music festival's dancing.
Dance!
Dance!
Get up and dance!
And based on yesterday's emails, there's a ton of dancing going on out there.
Mm-hmm.
Guy emailed me.
I got about 100 emails about this.
Let me give you just a couple examples.
Really?
Yeah, dude.
I have never been so inspired.
Guy emails me yesterday and says, I'm an Uber driver.
I play your podcast.
And believe me, you don't have to play mine.
Play Shapiro's, Levin's.
I'm happy you play mine.
I'm honored.
But I'm not saying this to promote my show, even though it is my show.
He says, I play your podcast in my Uber thing.
He's a driver in Massachusetts.
You know who you are, sent the email.
I'm not going to use your name.
He said, I get poor ratings from liberals that get in my Uber car only because I'm playing your podcast.
Nothing to do with the service.
And damn it, I'm doing it again!
Dance!
Dance, brother!
Keep dancing!
You dance!
You're damn right!
I am with you, man.
I had a long conversation last night.
Dance!
About dancing.
I'm not going to tell you who it is, but it's a very Prominent conservative podcaster, it was his producer.
He knows who he is.
Talked to him for an hour and a half last night.
I'll be.
About dancing, brother!
And he said to me, what are you doing with that sponsor?
I said, they're out!
Money returned, we don't want it!
Because we dance here!
We dance!
Get off your ass and dance!
That's how we turn this ship around.
We didn't want the damn sponsor, and he doesn't either!
Go find another show!
Sayonara, buddy!
Cause we dance here!
I had another guy.
You know who you are, too.
Says, listen, I sit around the lunchroom in my factory.
Again, I'm not gonna say where, it doesn't matter.
He says, and every time these liberals start spouting off about their BS, I fire right back.
He goes, you know what, I know I'm never gonna get promoted.
I know I'm an outcast.
I know every, they can't fire me, but they'll never promote me.
I'm gonna eat it a little bit.
Dance, brother!
Dance!
Good for you!
You dance!
I am with you, man.
I left my job.
There was no guarantee.
Joe, you knew me when I left.
I mean, literally when I left.
My first radio appearance was on Joe's radio station, WCBM in the morning.
Walked away from the Secret Service.
Nothing.
No retirement Zippo.
Had to cash out my pension.
Zero.
There was, I got Zip.
Everybody laughed just like they laughed at the dude at the music festival who was dancing.
They laughed.
Read the articles from, what is it, 2011 when I left the Secret Service?
The Baltimore Sun?
The Washington Post?
What is this idiot leaving the Secret Service to run as a Republican in Maryland?
Cause I dance!
We almost went broke, man!
We had nothing!
Zippo!
There was no writing, written contract.
You'll start appearing on Fox News and your conservative podcast will eventually explode and be the second biggest podcast in the country.
No, no!
There was none of that!
Joe and I didn't even think of the damn podcast idea until three years later.
And even then, when we got 100 listens, we thought it was a big deal.
Remember that?
Yeah, I do.
We were both like, wow, can you believe it?
We were like, oh, look, we made it.
Now we post the darn thing and within a millisecond it's got 10,000 listens.
Because we dance here.
I am with you.
I've got skin in this game.
Matter of fact, I just picked up this, I love Nassim Taleb, he's the Black Swan author.
He's got a new book out about skin in the game.
I've got skin in this game, folks.
I am with you.
And to the Uber driver.
And the factory dude.
And the 98 other people who email me about dancing.
You freaking dance!
This is our fight, man.
Nobody's asking us to take up a musket against the Redcoats.
Nobody!
We live in the most pampered time in human history.
We do!
The poorest among us.
Some of them have flat-screen TVs, cell phones, and the biggest problem in this country is obesity, not starvation.
But there are warriors out there who understand that even their small fight, you may miss a promotion.
You may get a three-star rating for Uber.
You know what?
That's a real sacrifice, though, too.
It's not Valley Forge.
It doesn't have to be.
You know what?
That fight may come someday where you may have to defend your country against a foreign enemy.
I hope it never does.
God forbid the North Koreans get restless.
But that fight's not here now.
But there are fights here now that you dancers dance on and God bless you for doing it.
That's freaking dancing.
That's your call.
You know, to the guy who sent me the email about Hank Williams Sr.
I talked about yesterday.
Yeah.
There ain't no light, Minnie.
Very depressed at the end of his life.
There's no light at the end of the tunnel.
THERE IS A LIGHT!
You need inspiration.
Find inspiration in the fight, not the result.
You are here for the fight.
Listen, I'm a Christian.
I love Jesus Christ.
I'm not your preacher.
You are welcome here if you are Jewish, if you practice Islam, if you are an atheist, if you are a Rastafarian.
I don't care.
You are welcome here anytime.
You are welcome to email me.
I will do my best to respond to you.
You bet.
But I'm telling you whatever religion you practice, I challenge you to challenge me on this.
The central tenet of your religion's core message is I guarantee you one of sacrifice.
The Hanukkah story.
The list goes on and on and on throughout the world's great religions.
It's always a story of sacrifice.
Meaning, you are here to dance!
You're not here to sit there and smoke cigars, sip brandy, and be a fat slob!
You're here to fight!
To fight is your mission!
That's what you're here for!
You're here to put up with this.
Not that there aren't going to be moments of joy.
There's nothing like looking at my kid.
Nothing.
Nothing like looking at my kid.
Joe, I know you know this feeling.
Oh boy, do I. You live and die with every moment.
When they laugh in that way, only your kid laughs.
There's no smile like that on your face ever.
That is the sound of God coming out of their mouth.
You live and die with these kids.
You owe them the fight.
You owe them the fight.
That's what they're here for.
There are moments of joy, but those moments of joy should not overshadow the fact that you are here to fight and you're here to dance.
That's your mission.
That's the light.
The light is not some euphoric fury, you know, a feeling of joy, some chemical enhancement.
That's not what the light is.
The light isn't, oh, my life was full of suffering.
Your life full of suffering is the light.
That's what you're here for.
That's why I left.
I had a nice, fat and comfortable life.
I did.
I had a juicy government salary, a government car, was guaranteed to get promoted, and left at the top of my game in the Secret Service.
I had nothing to lose by staying, and everything to lose by leaving.
But you need skin in the game.
You know, I hate stupid inspirational quotes, but sometimes they are pretty helpful in making an analogy to how this battle works, right?
You wanna be Christopher Columbus, you gotta leave the damn shoreline, okay?
Sooner or later, you gotta say, alright, I may fall off the flat earth, but if it ain't flat, man, we're gonna change the world.
When we keep sailing and nobody falls off, we're gonna change everything!
The suffering, the sacrifice, that is the fight.
You know, I know I go through a lot of books on the show and eventually I'll get a book list out, but what are the books that really changed my life?
Really.
I read a lot of books.
I love books.
is Hugh Ross's book, Why the Universe is the Way It Is.
He's an astrophysicist, but in the book he talks about, he addresses the intersection of religion, spirituality, and science.
How the universe is not explainable without suffering, and the universe is not explainable without a higher power.
It's not explainable!
How Microns and micro-inches and microseconds, if they were different by any way, the universe wouldn't exist.
There is no way that level of precision is available without some benevolent creator.
But he also addresses the value of suffering.
How everything worth having, everything requires some degree of suffering.
You need to dance!
What is Bernard Malamud from The Natural?
One of my favorite books ever.
Great movie, too.
Robert Redford.
It was a huge lib, but it was a great movie.
There's a line in the book where the girlfriend's talking to him.
The path to true happiness is through suffering.
We all live two lives.
The one we learn from and the one we live after that.
We all live two lives.
Think about it.
The one we learn from, the one we suffer, the one we make mistakes, we fall on our asses that life.
And after you've learned from that life, we live our real life after that.
The righteous one.
We learn from those mistakes and we move on.
The real path to happiness.
That's the second line of that quote.
I read it in reverse.
But it's the second line of that quote.
The path to true happiness is through suffering.
You're damn right it is.
One of the greatest lines ever in a book.
That's true happiness.
Temporary happiness is nonsense.
Anybody can snort a line of cocaine or mainline heroin or fentanyl or whatever this latest opioid crisis is.
Anybody can do that.
The question is, who's willing to dance and fight a real fight and come out on the other side knowing you had a positive impact on the world through your personal suffering?
Freaking dance, man!
Get out there and dance!
That's how we're gonna change this.
You wanna start fighting back?
You're a college kid out there who's got some radical kook left-wing socialist professor.
You get up and raise your hand, you dance!
I'm gonna get a C. Too freaking bad!
Take it!
Embrace it!
Take a picture of that paper with a big C on it.
Post it on Instagram.
Post it on Twitter.
Send it to me.
I'll retweet it.
I got a C because I hate socialism.
Good for you!
I've got almost 400,000 Twitter followers.
Let them all see that C. Because you know what that C doesn't stand for?
It doesn't stand for coward.
I can tell you that.
The coward is the professor who gave it to you.
Have some balls!
Dance!
You're not gonna get promoted because you're a conservative?
Then you keep speaking up louder in the lunchroom!
Until there's nobody there sitting there but you!
Until one guy eventually gets up and sees you dancing and says, I'm eating lunch with that guy!
Because I'm gonna dance too!
And then the whole freaking lunch table's eating with you!
But you gotta suffer first.
I had to suffer first.
We almost missed mortgage payments.
We couldn't pay to get my kid's teeth fixed.
It sucked!
Every minute of it sucked.
I'll vouch for that.
Remember me sitting there with you on eBay trying to figure out how to pay for a freaking microphone for this podcast?
The same microphone right here!
This RE-20 you're looking at right now, Joseph.
I couldn't afford the damn microphone!
We had to put it on a credit card.
It's the same mic I am now hammering into right now.
You gotta eat it for a little while.
That's how we turn this around.
You know, a company... You know this, folks.
You instinctively know you're gonna have to dance soon.
There are companies that went after Sean Hannity and other companies out there.
Companies that went after me and companies... Folks, it sucked.
I had to cancel accounts.
You know what?
It took me four hours one day to change my car insurance.
It sucked.
But it ain't freakin' Valley Forge, man.
That was my fight for that day and that was the fight I had to do.
There are movies I damn well wanna see.
I'm just a guy.
I like to take a break from politics, but I can't!
Because I dance!
Every day I gotta dance!
And it's driving me crazy!
I don't sleep anymore.
I barely ate last night.
Because this life is a dance!
I'm not whining, I am here for you!
Because I know you are all gonna have to suffer.
I don't get to see movies anymore.
I gotta wait for them to come out for free because I will not give my money to people not willing to dance in Hollywood.
Who kneecap us willing to dance.
I have to change airline tickets because of stupid moves made by airlines every day.
Because we dance!
You're in a school.
You got your kid in a grammar school.
And the teacher says some dumb stuff about the President of the United States.
Entirely inaccurate nonsense.
You know what I tell my kid?
You dance!
But Dad, I may get a worse grade and I may not get into that school.
You freaking dance!
Because the dance matters!
You dance!
All of us have an opportunity every day to do one small thing.
It is the only way we're going to fight back.
You are the majority.
You.
You can win this.
We're in a classic prisoner's dilemma right now.
Prisoner's dilemma.
For those of you who don't know what that is.
Prisoner's dilemma is, in economics, to make it simple, prisons don't make any sense.
Think about it.
You have 10,000 prisoners and say 100 guards.
Why don't the prisoners, and thank God they don't do this, but it's an economic paradox.
The prisoners could all get together and say, let's just take over the prison.
They overwhelm them on manpower.
The prisoner's dilemma, though, speaks to a coordination problem.
Thankfully.
What's the coordination problem?
The word gets around the prison.
Hey, we're all going to riot today and take over the prison.
One guy doesn't trust the other guy to do it.
He doesn't want to riot himself and get his butt kicked.
It's a coordination problem.
We have a prisoner's dilemma amongst conservatives.
The prisoner's dilemma is we're afraid to dance and we're afraid to speak out even though we know the guy next to us is probably quietly with us.
But I don't want to be the first one to speak up in the lunchroom against the liberals because if I speak up and nobody defends me, I'm going to be the one that's isolated.
No one's going to stand with me.
Folks, someone has to get up at the music festival and dance first.
Be the one with the biggest heart.
Be the one with the biggest will, with an unbreakable steel will, and just get up and dance!
*exhale* Man, I didn't really even mean to go into all that today.
I mean, I seriously had, as you can see, Joe, like 15 topics, and I just had a little note here just to address the emails.
I didn't expect to go down that road.
Well, too late now.
Yeah, too late.
No going back.
But I was deeply, sincerely impacted.
I mean, I almost broke down a couple of times yesterday reading these emails because that's all I'm here for, man.
This show is for you.
It's all for you.
And it's all for the fight.
So thanks.
All right.
On a little bit of a lighter note, I did get some emails yesterday.
Some critical, because I always address the positive and the negative.
Thank you for the good ones.
But for the umpteenth time, I love the feedback, but the book Unholy Alliance, I can't believe I keep having to address this.
I appreciate your emails on it.
There are two books called the Unholy Alliance.
There could be 10 books.
I don't know.
Titles are very common.
My second book, The Fight, is probably the name of about 50 different books out there.
That's why I give you the author, Unholy Alliance by David Horowitz.
I keep getting emails, I don't know why people do this.
No, that book was written by Jay Sekulow.
No, it was written by David Horowitz.
There is another book written by Jay Sekulow, which is a great book too by the way, called Unholy Alliance.
But that's why I give the author.
So thank you for the feedback, but there's no correction necessary.
It is Unholy Alliance.
By David Horowitz.
I promise you if you Google that, it will not go to the book by Jay Sekulow.
And I'm getting a lot of feedback on the free trade show.
Listen, folks, I get it on tariffs.
I get it.
I understand your emails.
I concede the point to you wholeheartedly.
China is not our friend and has engaged in grotesquely unfair trade practices.
I entirely agree with you.
A hundred percent.
I stipulate that point.
I also stipulate the point because it's correct, by the way, That China's entrance onto the world stage and into the World Trade Organization has been unprecedented in human history.
I actually covered this on a show months ago.
Yeah.
How I listened to a pod... It's very rare that I change my mind unless there's conclusive evidence.
I mean, I'm just... I have an open mind on things.
Don't get me wrong.
I don't want to sound like a hardhead.
I just... I've done a lot of homework on tariffs and economics.
I love it.
And I haven't seen conclusive evidence otherwise.
But I did listen to a podcast a while ago on Russ Roberts' econ talk.
Which is an excellent show, I highly recommend.
I think it comes out on Monday mornings.
It's a once a week show.
But he had a show a while back, and it was about trade.
And forgive me, I can't remember the person he had on.
It's a different format than this show.
And the guy made the point that, yes, free trade works.
But China, Joe, has been an unprecedented entrant onto the world stage.
Never in human history, the point he was making was, have we seen hundreds of millions of new people and employees and workers in the communist sense jump onto the world market, start producing cheap stuff at one time?
We've never seen it.
Kaboom.
Yeah.
And he said that this has caused an unprecedented dislocation of American manufacturing assets and basically the bankrupting of small towns.
Of many of them.
I don't disagree with you.
But the emails I'm getting saying, Dan, that's why I think Trump's proposed tariffs are a good idea.
I'm just asking you to And I say this with the utmost respect because some of the emails were downright hostile.
I am absolutely open to any argument that Taras will work if you can show me something.
It seems like a lot of the responses I've been getting are people who are responding emotionally, and I get it.
If you lost your job to this, this really sucks.
I don't blame you one bit for being pissed.
Not one bit.
You're darn right.
Hollowing out America's manufacturing capabilities because of a world entrant practicing unfair trade practices is not my recommendation for the future.
I'm simply suggesting to you this, that the evidence isn't given two bad scenarios, right?
One tariffs and one crappy Chinese trade practices.
Matter of fact, devastating in many cases.
That tariffs are not going to be the solution because it's just a tax on us.
There's no other explanation for it.
And if send me actual article, I'm happy to read them.
I'll make you an offer and I promise you, you have my word.
Send me something from a reputable source.
I don't mean like the New York Slimes or the Washington Post, you know, Cato, Heritage, anyone who think tanks.
You can send it from a Brookings, even a left-leaning think tank.
I promise you I will read it and will readdress the counterpoint.
If you could show me some data that the imposition of a tariff is not going to hurt our entire economy.
I promise you I will read it.
I am not looking to- Joe, do you think it's a recipe for success to piss off your audience?
Uh, no.
No, it isn't!
I'm not here to do that!
No, it's tried and true.
No, it's a tried and true- I'm not here to upset you.
But I am here for the truth, however uncomfortable.
And I'm open to anything, so please respond back with them.
And I will say this.
Yeah, go ahead, Jerry.
Yeah, I was going to say, Dan, that show was about seven months ago.
It was, right?
Yeah, he's right.
It is about seven months ago.
I think the title would give it away if you want to go to the library.
And I'll try to look it up again, but maybe I can link to the Econ Talk podcast.
But the guy does make a compelling case that China is an unprecedented trade threat.
And there are points he makes that I told you at the time.
Changed my mind on trade a bit.
And I even got emails from free traders going, what's wrong with you?
I thought you were free.
I am.
I'm just saying there are points and counterpoints and we can't be naive to the fact that China has presented us with some very unique difficulties.
They gave you hell.
I remember.
Oh my gosh.
I get help from both sides.
But folks, you know, listen, I can't just give you this, you know, impassioned appeal about dancing.
And then, you know, I'm not willing to dance because I'm afraid to lose a few listeners either.
I'm open to any ideas you send me.
I'm simply saying to you, I've not seen any compelling evidence.
This show is about evidence.
We've always been about evidence.
Show me some and I'll happily read it on the air and address it.
Happily.
Gladly.
Eager to.
Okay.
Oh, let me just one final point on this.
I disagree with the tariffs, but I will say this.
If Trump is doing it strictly as a negotiating ploy, and by the way, I have a terrific piece from Cato, by the way.
Cato, a very, very free trade.
But I have a really great piece by Cato in the show notes today, my website, Bongino.com.
About how Trump has used this before, Joe, as a negotiating tactic.
In other words, the threat of doing something, and he doesn't do it, and he gets what he wants in the end.
I will say this to you, because folks, I am absolutely pro-Trump.
I think he's doing a terrific job.
Don't mistake this for, if he's doing it as a negotiating ploy, this threat to impose tariffs, it's genius.
My simple point is if we do it, there are going to be economic repercussions we may not plan for.
But if he's doing it to renegotiate better deals on our behalf, in other words, the wiping out of tariffs in other countries, hey!
Big round of applause.
And he may be.
The guy is a master negotiator as we've seen.
He may very well be doing that.
But I'll put an interesting piece up on Cato, who you would think would rip the president, but it's really good.
They say, listen, he may be doing this, Joe, just to get a better deal.
And they show some evidence of him.
It's a short article, but it's really good.
Some evidence of him doing it on Keystone and other things as well, where he said, we're going to do this and then he backtracked but got a better deal in the long run.
So read the Cato piece.
It's really, really good.
OK, but again, let me leave it with this.
Thank you.
I do mean it.
Thank you for the emails.
I read all the critical ones.
I try to respond to the critical ones.
I can't get to all of them, but I'm with you.
I support the president.
I just I'm here to tell you the truth.
If you can show me another truth, that would lead to a different outcome.
I am game absolutely to entertain it.
Okay.
So thanks for doing that.
I appreciate it.
All right.
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You know I love pointing out liberal hypocrisy.
I love pointing out liberal hypocrisy.
Every morning when I prepare the show, I intentionally search for stories that kind of paint this picture that I've been painting for you for a long time.
And the picture is this, so you understand.
Regular listeners probably get this by now.
I see Joe.
Joe's going for the pen.
I just did a sniffle and I always see Joe going for the pen.
So you didn't hear that sniffle because Joe's cutting it out because he's writing the time marker down.
But the sniffle was in there and so is the commentary about the sniffle and Joe grabbing the pen to mark where the sniffle happened.
So I like pointing out liberal hypocrisy because I like to show you that liberalism is not based on a core set of principles like conservatism is.
It's not meant to insult them.
It's just a fact.
Liberals will change their position on any, air quotes here, principle because liberals care about control.
And when I say control, I mean it exactly as it's stated.
Liberalism is a byproduct of socialism, of the Frankfurt School, of critical theory.
It is a byproduct of a state-centric system which diminishes the individual.
In order to get a state-centric system where the individual is diminished, you can't allow the individual to control anything.
You can't control your money.
I mean, literally.
Turn it over to us.
That's why they like high taxes.
You can't control your healthcare.
That's why they love single-payer or government-run healthcare.
You can't control where your kids go to school.
That's why they hate school choice.
Liberalism is about control.
But in order to get the control over those assets, your kids, your money, and your health care, liberals can't have a defining set of principles.
They can't.
They will change their mind on anything and switch their tactics in a heartbeat.
Perfect example, Joe, was the tax cut bill by Trump and the House and Senate Republicans that passed.
If you listen to my shows, and you've already heard this argument, but I'll pitch it again quick, because it's indicative of, again, how liberals care about control, not principles.
That's what I'm trying to get out here, so we're crystal clear, okay?
Liberal so-called principles, or what they tell you their air quotes principles are, we believe in higher taxes, right?
Right.
Well, why then, When Trump and the GOP were trying to pass the tax cut bill, were liberals out there talking about how, oh, you're only going to get crumbs back.
Remember Nancy Pelosi?
Crumbs.
I mean, you've heard that, you know, $1,000 is crumbs.
Wait, wait, Nance, Nance.
The New York Times and a lot of liberal media outlets are still doing reports about how Matter of fact, fascinating op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today by James Freeman.
I can't include it in the show notes because it's a subscriber only, but he writes about how these liberal media, this is hysterical, Joe, how these liberal media outlets are still doing these reports on turbo tax, how these fictitious American families are going to have to pay more in taxes under the Trump tax cut plan, but how tax accountants are calling him out going, well, you missed this, this, and this, so the New York Times had to issue a correction.
The Times had to issue a correction saying, this fictitious family that was going to pay more in taxes under the tax bill, instead of owing $3,000, it's actually going to get $43 back.
Whoa, wait!
What?
That may be the biggest correction in human history!
So fictitious liberal family A that's going to get screwed by the tax bill and owe $4,000 more in taxes or whatever, $3,000, is now going to get $43 back?
That may be the most mammoth correction I've ever seen.
Your whole premise goes out the window.
My point in telling you the story and showing how liberals don't, it's not about principles to them, it's about control, is their principles have always been higher taxes.
Income inequality.
Remember Barack Obama?
The rich don't pay enough.
In other words, give us your money.
But then they argue that we're not getting enough money back through the tax cuts.
Why would they do that?
I thought their principles were give the government more money.
That's the whole premise of liberalism.
Give us your dough!
Because that's not their principle.
Their principle is control.
To get control of your money, they need power.
To get power, they need to convince you that the party in power now, Donald Trump, the GOP, and the Republicans are bad guys!
So they get in a room and they go, wait.
We're supposed to be advocating for higher taxes, but people hate higher taxes.
So let's go out and lobby against the tax bill saying that people aren't getting a big enough tax cut.
Wait, I thought we were for higher taxes.
No, no, not now.
We want to make Trump and the Republicans look bad so we can beat them in November.
Wait, what?
What the hell are you talking about?
These people never dance, ever.
Am I right?
You doubt me?
You go, oh well Dan, alright.
So they were talking about how the tax cut wasn't big enough despite the fact that liberalism supposedly about higher taxes.
Give me another example.
What about Obama?
If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.
We're gonna cut your family's health care costs by $2,500.
What does he know?
Obama, who is a huge advocate for government-run healthcare.
That's the liberal credo.
That's the base they built their healthcare house on.
Government-run healthcare.
We love single-payer, despite all the rationing and horrible service that goes on.
Obama knows that.
So Obama's principles, just like they should have been higher taxes, and they're not because they know higher taxes won't sell and they need power, so they lie about it.
It was the same thing on Obamacare.
Instead of Obama telling the truth, you won't be able to keep your plan, the government's going to take over medicine, and it's going to cost you a whole lot more money.
What does he do?
They go out there and they lie.
If you like a plan, you can keep your plan.
We're going to cut your family's health care costs by $2,500.
None of that happened.
It was a lie from the start.
It was a lie because liberals don't have principles.
I'm not talking about Democrats and I'm not talking about like casual political observers.
I'm talking about the hardcore liberals out there.
They are entirely hypocritical.
They don't stand for anything.
Contrast that with conservatives.
You may not like us.
You may not agree with us.
I'm certainly not saying we're all saints.
Listen, everyone's a sinner.
I get it.
But our principles are pretty strong.
Give the people back their money.
Matter of fact, advocating for higher taxes is a disaster in the Republican Party.
You're seeing it now with the tariff battle.
Advocating for government-run health care.
Good luck in a Republican primary there.
You'll never get... We don't have to lie.
Government health care stinks.
It doesn't work.
That's a pretty widely accepted premise amongst conservatives.
I'm not talking about sellout swamp rat Republicans.
School choice.
Pretty much universally accepted amongst conservatives to be the better path forward.
There's no lying about it.
We are what we are.
Because our principles matter.
And because we want the individual to matter.
And when we want the individual to matter, we don't need power all the time.
We just need to advocate for principles.
Even if the party in power isn't one-wheat alignment.
If we can get Democrats to support tax cuts, great!
School choice, great!
Individually run healthcare, great!
We need the right ideas to win.
The Democrats need the right people to win.
I bring this up, I'm sorry, that was kind of a long-winded setup, but it's important.
Because there's another terrific piece, again by Hirsanya, David, and The Federalist, which will be in the show notes, please read it, about He doesn't address all the points I'm going to address, but read the piece anyway.
It's really good.
He talks about how this guy, this liberal writer, wrote this piece bashing conservatives on the, you know, quote, gun control issue, Joe.
And the premise of the liberal writer, Joe, is that, you know, you guys come after us on the jargon and it's total BS.
You know, we can speak up about the gun control issue, even though we don't know what the hell we're talking about.
That's the basic premise.
I do this as well.
The liberal writer's point is that just because we call a magazine a clip, it's not a clip.
It's not a clip, it's a magazine.
Just because we mistake a semi-auto with a full auto, we should not be exempted or prohibited from speaking up on the issue.
One, nobody's prohibiting anything.
We're all civil rights advocates and I strongly encourage you to speak out for or against.
I believe in free speech, unlike liberals.
No one's trying to suppress your thought.
But Hirsanyai makes a terrific point, and I'm going to elaborate on it.
And his point is, Joe, knowing the difference between a semi-automatic and an automatic is the very essence of legislating against it.
Yeah, it's kind of important.
It's kind of important!
Yeah.
If you don't know the difference between one trigger pull, one round, and one trigger pull, multiple rounds, potentially until the magazine, not the clip, is empty, then how the hell are you going to legislate against automatic firearms?
You don't even know the difference!
He makes another great point.
If you're gonna talk about things like barrel shrouds, and you have no idea what a barrel shroud is, but a barrel shroud is what you think makes a quote, assault weapon, an assault weapon rather than a standard commonly used firearm, which the AR-15 platform is, then yes, you should shut your mouth.
Because you don't know what you're talking about.
I don't mean legislatively you should shut up.
You should speak out all you want on social media.
I'm just telling you, you don't know what you're talking about.
It's like me advocating for lower taxes not knowing what marginal tax rates are.
I think we should have lower marginal tax rates.
Joe asked Dan, what are lower marginal tax rates?
Hell if I know, but we should have lower... You gotta know what it is!
You're looking to take away our God-given right to defend ourselves against commonly used weapons, which the AR platform is.
By estimates I've seen, there are millions of these in circulation.
Millions, not thousands.
You want to take it away, but you don't know what a magazine versus a clip is.
You don't know semi-automatic versus automatic.
Meanwhile, they're subjected to two completely, entirely different rules to purchase.
Well, Dan, what I do know is AR means Assault Rifle.
I do know that.
There you go.
Thank you for emulating the liberal conversation talking point.
You know it's true.
It's true.
AR stands for Assault Rifle.
Unfortunately, as her son... Yeah, by the way, good point, Joe.
I forgot that one.
It does not.
It stands for Armalite Rifle.
You should know that.
Mistaking that is a big deal.
AR-15.
It stands for the Assault Rifle 15.
The liberal, as he's, Joe, as he's tipping down his glasses and looking at you in a condescending fashion with his bow tie on and he's dipping into his steak tartare into some kind of sauce.
AR obviously stands for Assault Rifle.
No, you dope!
It doesn't!
It stands for Armalite Rifle.
Well, you know it does.
And we're idiots!
By the way, someone emailed me yesterday.
You made a joke and I think they took you seriously.
You said you're giving me a corollary.
And I think the guy really... I know it's coronary.
Joe knows, I promise you folks, Joe knows it was a joke.
He knows it's not called a corollary.
It was a joke.
Thank you for the email.
I promise you.
Joe does not offer up commentary if he doesn't know what he's saying.
And if he does, we delete it.
I've had to do that a few times.
For me, by the way.
When I said something, I was like, dude, you got to delete that.
I said that wrong.
It's a coronary.
He gets it.
It's a joke.
All right.
But yes, of course Joe's saying assault rifle because he knows it stands for Armalite Rifle.
Armalite was the company.
And by the way, Stoner, who invented the gas-powered system involved with the AR-15 platform, sold these rifles to civilians first.
It was the military who picked it up later, not the other way around.
I forgot about that.
Yeah, so please stop lying.
Now, I want to bring this up for different reasons.
The piece.
You know what?
Before I get to that, let me just say, because this is important.
So the takeaway from the first part of my coverage, please read the piece, by the way.
Bongino.com.
Subscribe to my email list.
As always, I will email it to you.
Please subscribe, folks.
I know it's a pain in the butt, but it really helps us keep the show running efficiently.
We're under a lot of pressure.
I don't want to bore you with the details, but if you have the time, please subscribe to the email list.
I'll send you the article in the Federalist.
It's a great one.
Read it.
But the takeaway from that, before I move on to how I want to expand on it, is the liberal point here that the author is calling out, by the way, Joe, is that, oh, jargon doesn't matter.
We're liberals and we should be able to talk about issues, even if we know very little about the issue at all.
So, hold that point in your head, because again, you know how I love to tie things in during the show.
I'm here to make the point to you that to liberals, principles doesn't matter.
Because the liberal writer of the piece that the Federalist writer calls out is making the point, jargon doesn't matter.
If you're a liberal, you should be able to talk and legislate openly even if you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
I'm now going to shred that and show you how jargon absolutely matters to liberals in every case where it doesn't back up their talking point.
All right.
Give me a second on that.
All right.
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Okay.
So, where we left off.
Liberals.
Jargon doesn't matter on guns.
The fact that we don't know squat about guns and we think semi-automatic is automatic, we think clips better, and we think barrel shrouds make it an assault weapon, and as Joe said, we think AR stands for assault rifle.
That doesn't matter at all.
Oh, but jargon does matter.
Jargon does matter everywhere else for liberals.
Joe, have you seen this ongoing pattern amongst liberals who advocate for cultural Marxism and open cultural warfare against us, against people who are afraid to dance?
And one of the things they say is, oh, not only does jargon matter, but jargon is everything.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, if you've been following the news, you've seen that a number of college campuses right now, they have a very specific set of jargon.
And if you deviate from that jargon on pronouns, oh boy, you are a trans-o-phobic, is-to-phobic, homo-phobic, hobo-phobe.
Pho-bo-phobic, is-to-phobic, pho-bo-phobe.
And you are to be expelled from the conversation immediately if you don't use the right jargon.
I saw a thing on Fox the other day, there was a college campus, it was on Fox and Friends weekend.
Sorry, this is why I love tying stories together.
That's why this Federalist piece is so good.
And they said on the college campus, this is now the prescriptive set of pronouns.
It was like, Z...
Xena, Warrior, Princess.
I don't even know what the... Honestly, folks, I'm not messing around with you.
I'm not trying to be a jerk.
I have no... I think it was Z, or Zo, or... I have no idea what they were, but one of them I think was X-E, and if you don't... Or... No, Knee.
I think Knee was it.
I swear, I should have printed it out.
Yeah, there's a list of them.
It was like Z, Knee... I don't even know what that is.
But if you don't use those pronouns, you clearly hate the people you're talking to.
Let me just shut that N right down.
Folks, I'm not your preacher, okay?
I can't say this enough.
You're all welcome here.
I don't have hate in my heart for anyone.
With the exception of one guy.
I don't!
You know who that is, Jack.
I shouldn't say that.
I don't have hate in my heart for anyone.
With the exception of one guy.
I don't!
Everybody has their issues and everybody has their strengths, okay?
I am...
You saying to me that, "Oh, you didn't call a person by "Ni-Z-Lee"
Whatever the name...
I don't even know what they are.
Maybe next time I'll print them.
And that because the jargon isn't used, not only am I prohibited from discussing anything with them, Joe, but I'm immediately labeled a hater and trans-a-phobic or whatever it may be.
Phobophobic-ist-a-phobe.
Doesn't that refute your argument?
I thought five minutes ago you were saying your liberal premise was, hey, jargon doesn't matter on guns.
But it clearly matters on social issues when it comes to orientation and gender identity.
Then it matters.
Not only, Joe, does it matter, but you're to be shut down and labeled nearly demonic the minute you open your mouth.
Folks, I have a note here.
I don't know what I was trying to say.
Oh, this is the hypocrisy!
I'm going to get to this.
The hypocrisy on the left.
The cough medicine thing, by the way, there's another point in the Federalist piece.
Sorry to jump out, but he makes the point where Steve Schmidt, this so-called Republican, made the point on CNN 2 that How, again, the jargon and the talk, it doesn't matter when anti-gunners say it, that, hey, it's harder to get a thing of cough medicine than it is to get a firearm.
Really?
You have to fill out a 4473 to get cough medicine?
What are you, a dope?
Like, it makes you sound like an idiot.
So again, the point of this whole thing, Joe, is that I'm going to point out that, because I'm going to take this somewhere else.
Liberals will tell you jargon doesn't matter when it comes to an issue they want to fight against because they don't want to do the homework.
They're lazy.
They want to say, guns bad.
You're going to do any homework on it?
On any data?
On how firearms actually work?
No, not it.
But when it comes to other issues in society, where they think they can leverage identity politics to make you look like an ass, then jargon is not only matters, it is everything.
Now, one final story on that before I move on, because I want to tie this up for you.
I bring this up a lot.
I was on the air one time at a radio station and some guy called in.
I think it was a caller and he brought up how he was stigmatized at work because he had called and forgive me I'm forgetting the order and I'm not doing this on purpose.
He had called a gay man gay and not homosexual or a homosexual man homosexual not gay.
I forget what it was.
The point is the guy sounded like a genuine guy.
He's like, I can't believe it.
Like I have no hate in my heart for anybody.
Matter of fact, I like this guy, but I was miffed because I was automatically deemed somewhat a hater or a homophobe because apparently it's, you're not supposed to call people who are gay, homosexual or homosexual.
He didn't know.
I don't even remember what the right order was.
Folks, that's the weaponizing of jargon.
That's the very weaponizing of jargon.
But here, you may say, and fairly enough, you may say right now, well Dan, aren't we weaponizing jargon when it comes to firearms?
No, we're not.
Jargon is a use of specific words in a very specific field.
Which is used amongst people in that field, which sometimes can isolate people outside of the bubble of that field.
When you're talking about firearms, of which there are hundreds of millions in the world, and you're talking about actual, clear, critical, categorical distinctions, it's not jargon.
It's like saying, oh, that's just jargon, calling a car a truck, because you're not a truck driver.
No!
A car isn't a truck!
A truck has very distinct categories.
Calling someone Z or Knee is jargon because people outside feel like, wait, wait, wait, what do you mean?
What are you talking?
They don't understand it.
There is a very clear, there is not a clear distinction between Z and Knee and Zena.
There isn't.
It is a subjective difference.
There is not a clear difference to many people out there in the world, Joe, between gay and homosexual.
They don't mean to impugn the integrity of anyone or character.
They don't know it's a subjective difference.
One day someone said, if you call someone gay, that's offensive.
That's it.
It is not a subjective difference, Joe.
Does this make sense?
To say semi-automatic firearms are not fully automatic.
Right.
It is not a semantic difference to say, oh, AR stands for Assault Rifle.
It doesn't!
It's just factually wrong!
That is an objective difference!
It's not the same!
It stands for Armalite Rifle!
Now, I wanted to bring this up for one final topic, and we'll bounce here.
Because it's interesting also how when it comes to gun laws, some of the younger kids have been co-opted into this gun control agenda, but there's some of the same kids, by the way, who support drug legalization.
And I find that interesting.
Why do I find it interesting?
Because the arguments they'll use for the legalization of drugs are Well, drugs aren't all bad.
There are some good components to drugs.
Marijuana can be beneficial in some ways.
I'm talking about the arguments people who offer for legalizing drugs, which are largely, by the way, young millennial America, say.
Now, when we make laws, we're supposed to make laws based on behaviors, Joe, we would consider universally or at least there's mass consensus that they're non-productive for society, right?
We have laws against rape, robbery, homicide and burglary because there are very few people who think these are good things or add any benefit to society at all.
On drugs, fairly enough, I'm not a huge restrictionist on drugs either.
I'm with a lot of the Millennials on a certain portion of this debate, by the way.
They'll say, well, Joe, listen, because I decide to use drugs or marijuana doesn't necessarily impact others in some way.
I'm saying I'm giving their arguments.
So what they're saying is there are some not so bad components of this.
But you know what's fascinating about the gun control debate?
That gets completely lost.
On the gun control debate, you have millions of firearm owners going, okay, you focused on the school shooting in Parkland, an unquestionably horrific tragedy of almost unspeakable.
I can't even imagine what the scene looked like afterwards.
But you can entirely neglect the millions, the tens of millions of gun owners out there who have firearms because it gives them a sense of self-protection, because they hunt, because they're sportsmen, maybe they just enjoy shooting at the range.
There are positive aspects to that too.
How does the drug argument work but that doesn't, the same principles don't apply to the firearm argument?
In other words, what I'm saying is the reason the drug argument works for you in contrast to burglary laws is because you believe it is not universally bad.
Well, I'm asking you to open your eyes and say, well, maybe that applies to firearm laws, too.
And restricting firearms and bans and confiscation of firearms are not universally bad.
They are tools for good for a lot of people.
Open your eyes.
It matters.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Please go to the website, Bongino.com.
Check out the show notes today.
I've got a few other great articles in there, too, for you to read.
I call the news of the day, give you the best ones I find.
Appreciate it, and I will see you all tomorrow.
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