Ep. 676 What Happened Last Night and Why It Matters
Summary:
In this episode I break down the special election in Pennsylvania last night and why the results matter to you. I also discuss ways to fight back against potential political losses in the upcoming midterms. I address the stunning revelations about more Obama administration connections to the spying scandal. Finally, I cover school choice and an Obamacare lawsuit that could be the victory we’ve been waiting for.
News Picks:
Republicans are beginning to worry after last night’s special election.
The recent hit job on Trump’s education secretary was full of lies.
The media can’t make up their minds on what the firing of Rex Tillerson means.
Is Obamacare in real trouble in the court system?
Another stunning revelation about another Obama administration official and the spying scandal.
Did Obama use Fusion GPS too?
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Get ready to hear the truth about America with your host, Dan Bongino.
Hey, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm on the right side of the dirt, so things are cool, man.
Yes, you are.
On the upside, not the downside.
Yes, sir.
We like that.
Yeah.
We definitely like that.
After that session this weekend of jujitsu, I got back into rolling.
I'm feeling like under the dirt, maybe a little more comfortable at this point, above the dirt.
Man, everything hurts, always.
These joints getting old.
I remember when I was a kid, you got beat up a little bit.
You fell asleep for six to eight hours.
You woke up, you feel great.
Now you wake up, you feel worse.
It's amazing.
Don't you feel that?
You wake up, you're like, oh, I wish I wouldn't have went to sleep.
Like the cesspool of sore chemicals creeps in while you're sleeping at night.
Amazing.
Oh, boy.
Yesterday, a lot of news to cover.
Obviously, this Pennsylvania race.
I'm going to give you some analysis on this.
You're not going to hear in other places.
All right.
Listen, it was bad.
There's no way around it.
And I'll tell you, though, importantly, why it was bad, what happened in Pennsylvania.
There was a congressional race last night.
I'll tell you why we shouldn't jump off the bridge here, why it's not full-blown panic mode yet.
No.
And I'll also give you some inspirational words from someone who has been through a brutal congressional loss just like that.
I guess you could say, though, that Saccone got lamb blasted.
He got lamb blasted last night.
That is absolutely correct by our buddy, and I use that term very loosely, Conor Lamb, who ran, by the way, as a Republican, although he was a Democrat, which was interesting.
But I got a couple of inspirational words on this because I don't want anybody to You know, people, we all tend to, we don't want to be like liberals who lost their minds with Trump derangement syndrome after the thing.
There's ways to fight back here, folks, and I'm going to give you a few of those.
Also, a couple stories here on some incredible breaking news yesterday, which if you're a regular listener to the show, you've already heard about the Obamagate spying scandal.
A couple of bombs were dropped yesterday on this thing, and I did an appearance on Hannity last night where I discussed some of this stuff, so we'll get into that.
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All right, so I'm going to tie in a Christian-themed movie in the race in Pennsylvania last night.
You're probably like, what the heck?
Where do I start?
I got an email yesterday from a guy And this is where this is all going.
And it was a great email.
I read all of your emails.
I can't respond to every one of them, but keep sending them.
I promise you, I read them.
Some of them are really long, and I have to kind of skim portions of them, but I read them.
And to show you I read them, someone sent me an email yesterday.
You know who you are.
And it was great.
It was a quote, Joe, from a Roman poet in the Republic, Quintus Aeneas.
And the quote goes as follows.
The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so.
You're darn right!
There are no victories, that is a great quote, that is an accurate quote, and it describes where we are now in the culture wars by the liberals, the political wars they're waging against us.
They want us to feel vanquished, but as the quote says, the quote victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so.
We lost last night, okay?
We lost the race, although it's still not decided because of the slim margin of victory by the Democrat Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district.
This is not a A major loss unless we consider ourselves vanquished and we walk off the field, take our toys and go home.
Now what happened last night?
Why should this matter to you?
Folks, it was a loss, okay?
And a bad one.
Here's why.
The Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district is a solidly Republican district.
It is in the Cook PVI.
I'll tell you what that is in a second, but it is an R Republican plus 11.
A Republican plus 11 district.
The COOK PVI, named after a political analyst less named Cook, stands for the Partisan Value Index.
It is a measure of how Republican or Democrat a congressional district is.
It measures the lean of the district, the Republican lean of the district, based on the average over two presidential elections of how deeply Republican or how deeply Democrat it is.
R plus 11, Joe, is pretty darn Republican.
Yeah.
To give you an example of how Republican-leaning it is, I ran in a district in Maryland, a congressional district, which at the time was a D plus 6, a Democrat plus 6, and was considered universally by everyone who I spoke to had any experience in politics to be entirely unwinnable.
Nah, we came within a point of winning that race in what would have been a huge upset at the time.
But we didn't win.
We lost.
That was a D plus 6.
This was an R plus 11.
Nearly twice as Republican-leaning as the district I ran in was Democrat-leaning.
And it looks like this guy, Lamb, may actually have pulled it off.
Folks, that's bad.
It does me no good or you any good for me to sugarcoat that and go, ah, listen, nothing to worry about.
But now, Saccone may pull it out.
Apparently, there's a lot of absentee ballots out.
There's some military ballots out.
The chances of him pulling it out, I think, are unlikely at this point.
I saw some of the absentee counts from one of the counties.
They were going 60-40 for Lamb, the Democrat.
So I don't see that being likely at this point.
But it does me no good to lie to you and go, ah, nothing to worry about here.
There is something to worry about.
But until we consider ourselves vanquished, they don't win jack squat!
I'm going to tie this into our Christian movie in a minute, but let me give you some explanations as to what I think is happening here so you understand how we can fight back electorally.
Some takeaways.
There's a suburbs network effect going on here, folks.
You may not hear this analysis anywhere else.
You may, but the problem we're having now, which we didn't have in the presidential election to that degree with Trump, is if you were touching a suburb anywhere as a congressional district, Joe, and some of these guys, the Pennsylvania 18 had some areas that did touch suburbs.
Suburbs are now turning against Trump in droves at this point.
Now, I have a theory for why that is.
I call it the suburbs network effect.
A lot of people who live in the suburbs, Joe, work where?
In the cities.
Yeah, in the cities, right?
I mean, we see it around where you are in Baltimore.
Joe works in Baltimore at WCBM.
What are the suburbs?
Baltimore County, you know, you have the area surrounding Towson, around there.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
A lot of those people who live in the suburbs work in the cities.
The cities are virulently, virulently anti-Trump for a number of reasons why cities vote Democrat.
They rely heavily on government services, whether it's public transportation, policing, there tends to be, that's beyond the scope of this podcast, but obviously cities tend to lean Democrat.
Again, the reason is they rely a lot on government services.
That's one of many, many reasons.
I don't want me to oversimplify it.
When you work in the suburbs and you're constantly surrounded by people who are, you know, Trump... I don't even know how to say it.
It's a family-friendly show.
Trump's a bad guy.
I can't use expletives on the show.
It's worse than that.
You all know how Trump derangement syndrome sounds.
That's why I'm hesitant to open my yapper on this one.
But when you're surrounded all day by people who rip this guy to shreds, Based on just pure emotion, not reality, what's happening.
After a while, folks, that's going to take effect.
So you have this suburbs network effect where you have congressional districts that are touching a suburb somewhere.
We saw it in the Ossoff race, too, even though Ossoff lost to the Georgia candidate, who was one of the first special elections afterwards.
They had places that touch suburbs, too, and touch cities.
There's this suburb network defect.
If your congressional district touches the suburbs, you are seeing people being contaminated by a nonstop anti-Trump tirade emanating from the cities.
Secondly, so, okay, so takeaway number one from the race lesson, again, you touch the suburbs, your congressional district, you better start mobilizing now and you better start speaking out.
Number two, Voters right now who voted for Trump in the presidential election are not, not all, but many of them have no allegiance whatsoever to the GOP.
And after, you know, the GOP's reluctance to do anything outside of the tax cuts, I don't blame them.
They're not giving them anything to vote for.
What are they giving them to vote for?
We had the tax cuts.
Great.
What else?
What about Planned Parenthood?
What about sticking up for the Second Amendment rights?
What about getting rid of Obamacare?
That failed.
These, you know, you have to move on agenda items.
You can't just sit back and rest on your laurels and go, hey, well, listen, you know, we cut taxes.
Okay, great.
That's terrific.
What are we doing about spending?
Ah, not much.
Planned Parenthood?
Oh, not much.
These are core items that matter to people, too.
The allegiance is not to the GOP.
It's to Trump.
How did that affect the Pennsylvania 18 race?
Trump wasn't on the ballot.
It was a special election for a congressional race.
It was Saccone versus Lamb.
Now you can say, oh, well, Trump showed up for it.
Folks, listen, people don't vote for endorsements.
They don't.
I'm telling you, even if it is Trump, they vote for candidates.
And the bottom line is Trump wasn't on the ballot and the allegiance was not to the brand.
It was to Trump.
So if Trump's name isn't on there, a lot of people just didn't want to show up.
But a lot of Democrats did.
Because their allegiance is not even anymore to the Democrat brand.
They'll vote Democrat.
But more importantly, it's to the anti-Trump brand.
So there is an anti-Trump tidal wave growing out there amongst Trump derangement syndrome people who are spreading the anti-Trump virus everywhere.
Again, based on at this point what appears to be, Joe, emotion alone.
Because remember, Lamb ran almost as a soft Republican.
The allegiance to the anti-Trump brand is being driven by anger.
So the point I'm trying to make is the excitement to get out for the GOP, the get out vote, is not there.
Because the excitement is for Trump, not the GOP.
Make sense, Joe?
Trump's not on the ballot.
But the anger at anti-Trump ...is getting some people with Trump Derangement Syndrome to come out and vote for a brand they're not necessarily associated with, the Democrat, but they associate it as being anti-Trump.
And anger is a more powerful motivator than the false excitement for the GOP brand, which isn't there.
I hope that makes sense.
Anger is a more powerful motivator to action.
We saw it even during the Obama years.
And there's nothing wrong with saying that.
During the Obama years, Joe, people felt like their health care plans were under attack, which they were through this awful Obamacare.
They felt like their Second Amendment rights were under attack, that their income and their businesses were under attack.
We saw it in Maryland with the rain tax, when Governor Martin O'Malley instituted a rain tax.
People were getting bills for thousands of dollars for a tax on the impervious surfaces on their property.
People were mad.
That's a powerful motivator, but there wasn't enough corresponding commensurate excitement on the other side for people to get out and vote for a guy who wasn't Trump.
That's in a way to be expected, but we should never ever accept it.
Oh yeah, one more.
Okay, one more.
Wait, here's a bit of good news for this, by the way.
So it was an R plus 11 district.
That's kind of a, you know, big downside.
This was a big upset.
There's no way to paint it any other way.
But the district's gonna be gone in the upcoming election.
Pennsylvania, there was a Supreme Court case in Pennsylvania, a Pennsylvania Supreme Court case, where they wiped out the district lines.
It's a bad case, it's a terrible case, but it looks like the district, as we know, it's gonna be gone anyway.
So this may have been, the reality is, for as much as a message victory as this was, and it was, Joe, again, that's the point I'm making.
Doesn't mean no good to lie to you here, right?
As a tactical victory for advancing Democrat policy initiatives, it is as irrelevant a victory as you're ever going to find.
Yes, it's a flip from a Republican to a Democrat.
The seat election day is coming up this November.
That district's probably not even going to exist.
So, tactically speaking, don't lose any sleep over it, I'm at it.
But messaging-wise, make no mistake, this was significant for the left and it doesn't do me any good to sell you otherwise.
Now, how does this tie into a Christian-themed movie out there?
Folks, you know, The left frequently exchanges cultural power for political power and vice versa.
When they have political power like they did under Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat House and a Democrat Senate, they will use that political power to implement the powers of the state and decrease the power of the individual.
They will take your money.
They will take your health care through higher taxes, through Obamacare.
They will destroy school choice programs to send your kids to schools they choose, not you choose.
The Democrats will use political power endlessly.
When they don't have political power right now, they don't have the Senate, they don't have the House, they don't have the White House, they will exchange what they don't have in political power for cultural power.
You're seeing it today with these walkouts where they're using basically kids to advance one of their agenda items, meanwhile suppressing the views of other kids who may have different opinions.
This is what the Democrats do.
They love cultural power.
Now, With reference to the quote we started with, the victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so.
Why are we vanquishing cultural power?
So the point I'm trying to make here is the Democrats may very well be on the road to taking back political power, which they will use.
But why don't we emulate their strategy?
Remember, when they lose political power, like they don't have it now, they just take over through the culture.
Through shaming on college campuses, through Hollywood movies making us look like idiots, through, you know, TV commercials, you know, putting messages in television shows we're all supposed to watch, making us look like idiots in the media.
That's what they do.
Why don't we pay them back?
Folks, there are ways to do this and we have to start looking at moving from political power to cultural power seamlessly if we lose.
Folks, we may lose the House.
We may lose the Senate in this upcoming election.
I don't think we're going to lose the Senate, by the way.
I think there's a good chance we lose the House, and I think Trump stands a decent chance of getting re-elected.
But we should be moving seamlessly to the cultural realm, and we should take it!
Now, there's a Christian-themed movie out.
Let me just throw a caveat in there.
Buyer beware here.
Actually, it's not buyer beware in a sense, but I just want to put this out there.
I have no financial stake in this movie at all.
I don't know anybody associated with it, the producers.
Personally, I've never met any of them.
I'm just telling you there's a Christian-themed movie out right now.
What is it called?
I can only imagine about the song.
If you go to church, you've probably heard this song.
It's become very popular.
It's a great song.
The Christian-themed movie out now is about that song and the writing of that song.
Folks, I'm all about dancing, as you know.
You gotta dance.
We gotta dance, baby, dance!
I told you that, did the whole show on that.
Thank you for all the tremendous dancing stories you've been sending to me.
Go listen to the show, you'll know what I mean.
But there are ways to dance every day to start to take back the cultural side of this equation from the Democrats if we lose political power, and this is one of them.
I went today, I'll be more than happy to tweet out the Photo of my receipt, but I just went before the show and bought a ticket to this movie.
Folks, I'll be honest, I'm probably not gonna go.
I don't think I'm even gonna have the time.
Go see it.
If you can't see it, buy a ticket.
You're like, Dad, that's crazy.
You're asking me to buy a ticket to a movie I have no financial interest in and I may not even be able to see?
Buy a ticket.
Why?
Folks, how many of you, any of you go to business school or take a business course?
A lot of you have probably heard of SWOT analysis.
It's not SWOT like a SWOT team.
It's SWOT with an O. Strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats.
They teach you this in business school.
It's an interesting matrix that you can use in strategic analysis in your business.
And basically the gist of it is, How do you mitigate weaknesses by mitigating threats and leveraging opportunities?
How do you leverage your strengths by mitigating a threat and leveraging an opportunity?
It's a pretty good tool for businesses to see new opportunities in the future by brainstorming.
It's one of the few things in business school you learn, along with five forces analysis and net present value, that may actually help you in business later on.
I actually learned a lot in business school.
I mean that.
I had a really great time there.
But SWOT analysis here applies in this case.
How do we mitigate a weakness in the culture war?
By conquering a threat.
What's that threat?
That threat to us has always been Hollywood.
And I don't mean it in a conspiracy theory way.
We're not liberals here, okay?
We're realists.
But it is a threat.
Hollywood is clearly overwhelmingly biased against conservatives.
I mean, just take the actors.
Just go follow them on Twitter.
It's not hard.
They hate us.
They hate Trump.
They hate the Second Amendment.
They love big government.
These are not things we believe in.
This is a threat to our ideology.
I'm not talking about threat in a violent way.
I'm talking about a threat to the things we believe in and our principles.
Right.
And clearly, this is a weakness.
So how do we mitigate this weakness?
By conquering that threat using a basic SWOT analysis here.
We take it!
We take their stronghold!
They can't stand the success of Christian-themed movies!
It drives them crazy!
They can't stand it!
That Sean Hannity's Let There Be Light, which I think is out on DVD.
I do know Sean, but again, I have no financial interest in this at all.
Zero.
Do what you want with your own money.
I'm telling you what I did, and I lead by example.
I will be buying Sean's DVD, Let There Be Light, of his Christian movie, which did very well.
Generated $7 million in sales on a $3 million budget.
Pretty darn good return, if you ask me.
And this, I can only imagine, I already bought a ticket.
Came out to $12.17 on Fandango.
$12.17.
I'm probably not going to make it.
Go buy a ticket.
Take it!
Take their stronghold.
Conquer their stronghold.
Spend no money whatsoever on any of their Sex, drugs, and violent-fueled, anti-conservative garbage don't buy a ticket anywhere on their stuff otherwise.
But when you see a Christian movie, folks, some of them, because they're Christian movies, it doesn't make them great.
Some of them may not be any good.
Buy the ticket.
I don't even care if you go.
Buy the ticket and dance.
Because it will take their stronghold.
Pretty soon it will.
They are seeing right now, Hollywoodmen, believe me when I tell you, it is scaring the hell out of them.
They are seeing right now.
That they are going to have to change a lot of their marketing plan, a lot of their money allocation into these movies because this is the only movies people will see.
But you may say to yourself, and this is a fair enough criticism because I can already see some of the emails, which is cool.
I don't mind.
You may say, well, why would we enrich Hollywood producers even if they make Christian films?
Folks, we're not going to change these people.
These people are embedded in the cities I just told you about where the network effects are real.
They are going to stay liberal in perpetuity.
But gosh, how great would it be if we can force them in their own liberal strongholds to put out movies and information which advance our cause, not theirs.
They're not going anywhere!
They will find a way to earn money.
Let's make them earn their keep by producing what we want, not what they want.
And remember, when you're doing what your opponent wants you to do, you are probably doing the wrong thing for yourself strategically.
We want them to do the wrong thing for themselves strategically, because they're our opponents.
We want them to do that.
Don't watch any of their crap shows on TV.
Don't watch any of it.
But when you see a Christian movie, buy a ticket.
Buy a ticket.
I did it.
I went out.
I don't speak with forked tongue here.
I bought that movie Risen.
It was okay.
I bought the DVD.
You know, I bought the DVD for the movie Risen when it was free on cable.
I'm not kidding.
I could have hit record on cable.
I bought it anyway.
Take their stronghold.
Because there's a darn good chance we may lose political power.
The anti-Trump wave of anger may not, we may not have enough excitement in the midterms.
I think in 2020 with Trump on the ballot, we will.
But in 2018, there may not be enough pro-GOP excitement because of their lack of accomplishments to overcome the anti-Trump anger.
But don't consider yourself vanquished.
We move seamlessly into the cultural realm.
And we fight these skirmishes.
It's a guerrilla war.
You know, you lose on a bathroom issue here, you move into entertainment there.
You lose on the entertainment thing, you move seamlessly.
You make them fight a 30-front war.
You make them fight on so many fronts they get fatigued like they've been trying to fatigue us.
But the difference between them and us is they will feel vanquished because they're snowflakes and we're not.
We will be victorious in the culture wars if we stick it out because they don't have the guts for this in the long haul.
They're pajama boys!
Remember the Obama ad?
The pajama kid with the hot cocoa?
That's them!
You know what I'm talking about?
These are men who get manicures!
These are the betas!
The beta males!
We're the alphas!
We have the guts.
We have the gusto.
We have the physical and mental strength to stay in this fight for the long haul.
This is your fight.
This is your dance.
We lose politics right into the culture war.
We lose in the culture war right back into politics.
Fatigue them.
Wear them down.
Make them fight everywhere until they are mentally exhausted.
I can't say this enough.
Keep moving.
Shift seamlessly one front to the next front to the next front to the next front.
Do what they do to us.
Take their strongholds.
Leverage strengths.
Mitigate weaknesses.
Where's our weakness?
Our weakness is in culture and academia.
How do we leverage opportunities there?
How do we mitigate threats there?
Oh, send your kids to Hillsdale.
Send them somewhere else.
Go to a college class.
Get a C in that class for promoting conservative values and publish that thing everywhere on Facebook and humiliate the professor who did it to you.
This is how we dance.
Don't worry too much about these political losses.
Worry enough to get you to the polls.
But worry is not a substitute for action.
I'm asking you to do things.
Get out there and do something.
Worrying ain't gonna fix anything.
I'm smiling today, you should be smiling too.
Was a loss, doesn't do us any good to paint it otherwise.
But let's get back in the fight and start doing the next day.
Because the Democrats, I'll just leave it with this.
The Democrats and the liberals do not have the guts to fight this out in the long run.
They just don't.
This is the beta pajama boy crowd.
The snowflakes.
That's not us.
All right.
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I love those, man.
That's the best.
I got a lot of emails about that.
They were excited about the comeback.
Yeah, yeah.
They love that.
So they appreciate your drops there.
All right, moving on to number three.
Big, big news yesterday in this Obamagate case.
Now, if you're a listener to the show, it probably wasn't big news to you.
But there was a piece in the Washington Times, which will be in the show notes, please check it out, by Rowan Scarborough.
And it's about a book that, now the book, I highly recommend you do not buy it.
It is written by two left-leaning authors and it propagates a lot of myths in the book about, you know, Logan Act nonsense.
And I don't really, I don't like the whole, the whole idea that the, The core focus of the book, I think, is, in other words, on defending the Democrat narrative in this case.
But there are some interesting revelations in the book.
It's by Isikoff, Michael Isikoff, and David Korn.
And one of the things they throw out there in this new book on the Russia tale is that the person who connected Christopher Steele, the foreign agent working for the Clinton campaign to go gather dirt on Trump and who put together the dossier, the person who connected him with the FBI or okayed the meeting, is probably a better way to say it, okayed the meeting between him and the FBI, was one Victoria Nuland.
Now, if I always tell you, remember the names!
And I went on Hannity last night and I put this out there and got a ton of email.
Matter of fact, I'll be on the radio today on Hannity because they were very excited about the connections I had made.
Now, those of you regular listeners probably know this connection already.
Why is that name drop in this Washington Times piece yesterday important?
Victoria Nuland worked at the State Department.
So according to this book, She somehow inserts herself into this and contacts or is contacted by the FBI and okays a meeting between the FBI and Christopher Steele, a guy who's already known to multiple people in the State Department who know the Clintons because of his work on a prior case.
Now, I find it hard to believe that Nuland didn't know he was also working for the Clinton campaign to generate anti-Trump stuff.
Who is Nuland?
Nuland's the former chief of staff to a man named Strobe Talbot, who was a high-level diplomat in the Bill Clinton administration.
Who is Strobe Talbot's brother-in-law?
Cody Scheer.
You remember this show?
I sure do, yeah.
Who was Cody Scheer?
Cody Scheer was working with Sid Blumenthal in Libya.
Sid Blumenthal, Hillary Clinton's right-hand guy, one of them, was working with Sid Blumenthal in Libya and also passing information to the State Department to Jonathan Weiner about more dossier related stuff.
There was a second dossier that came from Blumenthal.
So look folks, this network never ever ends.
I keep telling you this was a Clinton scam the whole time.
So now think about it.
The connection between the FBI and Christopher Steele is okayed by a woman named Victoria Nuland working in the State Department.
Newland was the chief of staff to Strobe Talbot in the Clinton administration.
Strobe Talbot's brother-in-law was Cody Scheer.
Cody Scheer is working with Sid Blumedal, who is also passing dossier-related information to Jonathan Weiner at the State Department that is also making it to the FBI.
You can't make this stuff up!
One big happy family!
They all know each other!
I've been trying to tell you the whole time that everybody involved in this case has either some connection to the Clintons or some connection to a scandal and the Clintons that they needed to cover up by generating negative information on Trump.
There was another revelation yesterday too, by the way, that's important, but I just, I don't want you to lose this one.
So the anti-Trump information in the dossier, the nonsense about Russia and all this other stuff, comes from two sources, folks.
It comes from Sid Blumenthal, who works with the Clintons all the time, and who's over in Libya doing his thing, and has some contracts involved with Libya.
And the second source is Christopher Steele, a British spy, paid essentially by the Clinton campaign to go gin up information on Trump from Russia.
Those are the two sources of information of all of this stuff, all the lies.
How they get into the federal government on the information superhighway is now clear as day.
Steele gives the information to the FBI.
The meeting to meet with the FBI is okayed by Victoria Nuland.
Nuland used to work with Strobe Talbot.
Talbot's brother-in-law is Cody Scheer.
Cody Scheer is working with Sid Blumenthal, who is the other pathway of information into the federal government for anti-Trump stuff.
This was all a Clinton scam the whole time.
It's becoming clear as day.
Now, again, if you listen to the show, you probably know that.
Now, another stunning revelation.
Please read the Washington Times piece, by the way.
It's a good one.
Another piece in the Daily Caller.
I'll put in the show notes today.
That's a must read.
Also in the book, and again, don't please, do what you want, it's your money, but I would not buy this book.
They are not our friends, but I think to maintain some patina of credibility, Joe, they had to put some information in there to act like they were doing some investigative work, right?
But there's another revelation in there that is just jaw-dropping.
That apparently, in the Obama-Romney race, one of the opposition research firms, Hired to do anti-Romney opposition research was... Fusion GPS!
Shaggy!
Folks, it never ever ends!
Fusion GPS, the same company hired by the Clintons who hired Christopher Steele to go get the fake Russia information about Trump!
The Obama administration used the exact same outfit to go bang up Mitt Romney in the Obama-Romney presidential election.
Wow.
This was a setup the whole time!
The levers were already in play, the buttons were already there, you just had to push them.
Hey, we got a guy for you.
Go try these Fusion GPS guys.
They'll go generate information, whatever you want.
We used them on Romney.
They're great.
Folks, read the Daily Caller piece.
It's great.
It'll be in the show notes today.
Obama used Fusion GPS, too.
They made a massive payment to them.
Obama also made a payment to Perkins Coie, the law firm which hired Fusion GPS for the Clintons.
The circle of deceit, folks, never ends.
It's sad, it really is, how people are still getting snookered by this entire thing.
Alright, I've got two other stories today that involve news of the day, but they're important and they're takeaways you need to know about.
So, uh, number one, uh, actually, well, that would be number four based on stories, but have you seen the 60 minutes piece they did on Betsy DeVos?
Uh, it was a, it was a hit job.
Yeah.
I've heard a couple of parts of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was now Betsy DeVos is the secretary of education and it bothered me a bit.
I, uh, you know, I'll be candid with you because some of the answers to the questions that were asked by Leslie Stahl of Betsy DeVos, um, There was an easy answer to them, and I'm trying not to pile on the train because I really respect a lot of what she's done, Betsy DeVos, but they weren't answered well.
And of course it was made to look even worse, Joe, by 60 Minutes, which obviously is interested in a left-wing agenda.
The questions were about DeVos being the Secretary of Education.
She is a big believer, as I am, and she's done incredible philanthropic work on this and school choice and allowing parents to pick the schools they want to go to.
And, of course, Leslie Stahl had a pile on, and she made a number of absurd, outrageous claims, and I just wish Betsy DeVos would have answered the questions differently.
I'll get to the specific claims in a second, and we'll debunk them, but The entire premise and line of her questioning, Leslie Stahl, was this, was, hey, well, you're visiting all these school choice schools, Joe, and, you know, you're doing your thing over there, but why haven't you visited any, you know, public schools or a large number of public schools that are failing to see what's going on there?
And, you know, she panicked a bit, and then she started going along this line of questioning, too, that You know, well, hey, that's great, these school choice programs, but don't they, you know, take money from public schools?
A point we've debunked repeatedly on this show, which she could have.
Debunked.
But she didn't.
So I would have stopped right there and said, let me get this straight, because this is what you have to do with liberals when you're debating with them.
Don't forget this, folks.
Liberals will always try to lose you in the wonkery.
That's what they do.
Liberals love wonkery and they love to lose you in it.
They don't want to talk about big, bold ideas.
That's not their thing.
What they want to talk about is they want to talk about specific cherry pick studies and things like that in the hopes to lose you down like a rabbit hole.
So what you have to do with liberals when you're debating with them, and I highly recommend you take this tactic, is keep it about umbrella ideas all the time.
Because for whatever study you throw out there, they will throw out another cherry-picked study.
Perfect examples on gun control.
They'll say all the time on gun control, you know, we should model Australia and the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, the Australia thing is nonsense in and of itself.
But they'll say, look, they haven't had as many gun homicides as we've had, and they have strict gun control.
And then, you know, you could come back and say things like, well, what about Chicago?
What about Washington, D.C.?
What about Brazil?
They have strict gun control and the gun homicide rate there is, you know, is high.
The point I'm trying to make, you see where I'm going, Joe, is they'll always find a counterexample and they'll always massage the statistics.
So the way you have to argue with them is you got to take it out to kind of first principles here.
And what we should have said, what DeVos should have said to Leslie Stahl is, so the point you're trying to make by saying something like school choice takes money from public schools, and a lot of these charter schools are public schools, by the way, too, but the point you're trying to make, Leslie, is that money equals results, correct?
I mean, that's what they're trying to say, right?
If Stahl's premise is that money leaving public schools is a bad thing, what you're trying to suggest is that money, taxpayer money, being put into public schools is a good thing.
Okay, so now you have them on that point.
Now, will you double down on them and will you hammer home and will you go for the, you know, will you go for it, right?
After you say, well, okay, listen, we have spent 400% more dollars at the state, federal, and local level on education in the last 40, 50 plus years.
We have seen education scores flatline.
So before I dig into your premise and acknowledge your premise that more money equals better results, you're gonna have to prove to me what you just said is in fact true and what you just said is categorically false.
Some of the states in the union in the United States that have low per student spending have great results.
Some that have high student spending have horrible results and vice versa.
Meaning that clearly there is no trend for more money, better results.
Same thing around the globe.
Some countries that spend half of what we spend on education per student have scores that are far better than we do on internationally recognized metrics of academic success.
So do you see how when you combat their overall premise, that's why I always take, even on gun control, I always take it out to the big issue.
So let me get this straight.
What you're saying is less guns equals less gun crime and less homicide.
That's what you're saying, right?
Because you want to take guns away.
That's what I'm saying.
Where is that shown to be true?
Well, where is that shown to be true?
Because there are more guns in the United States right now, a lot more guns, and there's less crime.
So that's an irrefutable statistic.
Their entire argument after that falls apart.
It's not a coaching class.
I'm not trying to be like your debate coaching mentor here.
Just having been through political debates and being in the conservative sphere and arguing on TV, Almost every night.
I mean, it'll be on tonight, again on, what is it, Wednesday?
Oh, tonight's Tucker.
So, you know, being on every night, having to debate in front of three million people every night.
After a while, you learn by experience about what liberals do, and that's one of the tricks they lose.
They lose you down the rabbit hole.
Come out of the rabbit hole, keep it at 30,000 feet, and they can't win.
Now, I can back this up.
Here's a great, great, great piece by The Daily Signal today on this Betsy DeVos interview.
It'll be on the show notes.
But I'll read to you a portion that should matter to you.
This is about more money equaling better results in education, which is not true.
Nationwide, Joe, per student, spending has increased nearly 30% since 1990 after adjusting for inflation.
Stahl's comment, that's the 60 Minutes person there, Stahl's comment that education research is complicated glosses over increases in taxpayer funding for education, uninspiring to mixed results, and examples of remarkable student success when parents have opportunities for their child's education.
But the significance of average scores and percent funding increases lost on parents that just want their child to succeed.
The ability to provide this in South Carolina is so wonderful.
It is exactly what Jed needs.
Richardson says, we're talking about a parent here.
So, One of the points she's trying to make there too is that the spending's increased, the scores are flat, and I'll get to the scores flat in a second, but that still does not speak to individual parents in school choice-based programs who just want to pull their kids out of schools that are failing them!
I mean, try explaining to a parent, and I'm gonna...
I know I don't want to confuse you here, but try explaining to a parent whose public school is failing that because a 1.2% increase in a fourth grade score on international metrics is a reason to keep their kid in school.
Again, you have to take it out to the big issue.
And the big issue on that front is this.
Leslie, why are you stopping taxpayers who fund the education system from taking kids out of schools that are failing?
Why?
Pull it right out to 30,000 feet.
Write out the 30,000 feet and make it about the parent and the choice, because that's what it's about.
And that was never done in the interview.
Another quote from the piece, again, about the spending.
According to the Nation's Report Card, a reliable indicator of average student learning state by state, 12th graders are scoring the same today in reading and math as they did in the 1970s.
So folks, The 30,000 foot point that Leslie Stahl was trying to make was a lie!
It's disingenuous!
She was trying to say, oh well look we've had some creep up in scores and we've spent all this money.
No you haven't!
You have not!
It's just not true!
It's wrong!
You made it up!
You're not robbing money from public schools either.
The amount of spending per school has stayed roughly the same.
Spending per student's gone up dramatically in a lot of these districts.
Despite the growth of public school option programs.
Can't buy me love, babe.
No, you can't.
And you can't buy education results either.
Education results are going to be a function of what we have right now.
Here's an analogy I always give people, right?
I spent a lot of time running for office in Maryland.
One of the things I always found fascinating about Maryland, which entirely refutes the left's argument that the government should run schools and pay for them with your money, is you have a system, and this is how it's all about choice, right?
When you're at Prince George's County, Maryland, which is an interesting county in a number of senses.
It's one of the wealthiest minority counties in the country, but they vote largely Democrat in Prince George's County.
But even though there are very wealthy portions of Prince George's County, what's fascinating about Prince George's County, Maryland, is that the public schools are some of the worst in the state, despite the money that's there.
They're some of the worst in the state.
Yet you have some of these awful public schools in Prince George's County.
And then right next door, Joe, you have what else is in Prince George's County?
The University of Maryland in College Park.
How is that?
They both receive some semblance of government funds, right?
Well, University of Maryland is a state school.
You have a public school, which is entirely funded by taxpayer funds.
Why is it that the University of Maryland, located in the exact same place and county as these public schools, is a, it's a terrific school.
It's a very liberal school, but it's a, it's a wonderful school.
It's always in like the top 50 for public institutions there.
Why is the University of Maryland so good and the public schools right next door so bad?
Because you picked the University of Maryland, that if they give you a crap product, you're not going to go there.
Liberals, this isn't complicated.
These are the kinds of 30,000 foot stories we absolutely have to get through to our liberal friends.
Choice matters.
Choice matters because it forces the producer of the product to produce a product you want because you have a choice.
That's why school choice matters.
That's why I was so bothered about this hit piece.
So just to sum up before I want to move on to one final story here because it's important.
Money does not equal results.
We have spent dramatically more money.
Triple digit increases since the 70s on education.
The scores are flat according to the nation's report card.
They've gone nowhere.
So money is not associated with better results.
Countries that spend less money get better results.
That is not the equation.
That matters.
That equation is nonsensical.
Liberals like that equation because liberals want to spend money.
That's why.
Liberals want to spend government money.
And that money winds up in teachers' union coffers, which vote for Democrats.
That's the sole reason liberals want to advance the argument that money equals results, despite the fact that it doesn't equal results.
Secondly, choice matters.
I just gave you the example.
You go to colleges that have to attract your services, they produce a good product.
You go to public schools that don't have to attract your services because you're forced to go there, all of a sudden they don't produce a good product.
That's why.
All right, folks, today's show also brought to you by our buddies at Freedom Project Academy.
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Ain't that the truth?
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Tell them we sent you over there.
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All right, this is a big story.
I've been holding this for two weeks or so because there's just been so much going on with the Trump thing and the Russia case.
Every day is a litany of new news stories.
Did you hear what's going on with Obamacare, Joe, in this lawsuit?
This is genius.
Which one?
There's a lawsuit out there amongst the states.
Now, embedded in the tax cut plan, the Trump tax cut plan, was a zeroing out of the individual mandate tax on Obamacare.
I hope this doesn't get too complicated, but I'm gonna tie it up real simple for you at the end, I promise you.
The gist of it is, With Obamacare?
No mandate tax, no Obamacare, okay?
So that's where we're going with this, so you have that in your head.
Alright.
Embedded in the tax cut plan was a zeroing out of the individual mandate tax, meaning this, if Joe Armacost now chooses not to get insurance, that tax you used to have to pay, that penalty under Obamacare, is now zero.
Alright.
So, according to the Supreme Court ruling that saved Obamacare, John Roberts, who saved Obamacare, unbelievably, ruled that the penalty for not buying Obamacare was, in fact, a tax.
You know, it was very controversial.
It's not a tax.
As a matter of fact, Obama's people in news interviews said it wasn't a tax.
In an interview Obama gave with George Stephanopoulos, he said it wasn't a tax because he didn't want to run on the time about being a tax hiker.
So what do they do?
They claim, no, it was just a penalty for not buying insurance.
Well, a penalty for not doing something is clearly unconstitutional.
That's where the case was going to get thrown out.
It didn't get thrown out because John Roberts said, shockingly, oh, it's not a penalty, Joe, it's a tax, and a tax is constitutional.
Well, in a particularly genius move by some Republicans who put that in there, they zeroed out the tax.
And given the severability, meaning like, hey, listen, you can't, this thing can't be judged in pieces here.
It has to be judged in total.
No tax, no law.
All right.
So states are, not that difficult.
So some states now are suing and there's a lot of optimism in Republican circles right now for a bit of good news.
Again, because I don't like to leave you in a bad mood after Pennsylvania last night.
There is some really good healthy optimism in these Republican circles that if the Supreme Court takes this case, another opportunity in Obamacare, that Obamacare is going to be deemed unconstitutional because no tax, no law.
And what I love about it is the Democrats are usually very good at messaging.
A lot of them got blindsided by this and are now starting to panic a little bit.
But listen, you heard it here first.
Not a lot of people are covering this right now.
If this lawsuit makes it to the Supreme Court, I'm relatively confident it will be a death spiral for Obamacare, that there's no way it can survive.
No tax.
No law.
And we will be free of the shackles of this legislative abomination.
Finally.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
Please check out my NRA TV show tonight at 5.30 Eastern Time.
It's available for free at NRATV.com.
We're also on Roku, so you can check that out.
You can also check us out on Facebook, the NRATV page.
And go to Bongino.com, read the show notes today.
I will include an article.
From the Washington Examiner about this Obamacare case.
It's short and sweet, but it'll explain to you exactly what I just said and how Obamacare may be looking at its last legs.
