Summary:
In this episode I discuss the real reason behind our massive trade deficits and how to rebalance our economy. I also address the cultural impact Hollywood is having on America and why the relaunch of the "Roseanne" show was significant. Finally, I address the liberals' two-front attack on democracy.
News Picks:
Another bombshell revelation about White House coordination in the spying operation on the Trump team.
This article should be posted in the office of every lawmaker considering an attack on the Second Amendment.
The mainstream media caught lying about the census citizenship question.
Maryland is moving toward automatic voter registration.
Jeff Sessions’ DOJ makes another strong move.
Hollywood is doing some “soul searching” after the successful relaunch of “Roseanne.”
Liberal judges say tear down that cross!
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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.
Welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm feeling very well to be welcomed here on the Dan Bongino Show.
Yes, you're always welcome.
Hey, people missed the dude, by the way, the dude drop, you know, yeah.
Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion, man.
A couple people emailed me, but we got to roll him back in.
A couple of updates here.
Hey, I know a couple of weeks ago, I said I was going to do a contest.
I have six books here from Brian Kilmeade.
It was nice enough to donate copies of his book, Andrew Jackson.
The Miracle of New Orleans, which is an amazing book if you get the opportunity to pick it up, by the way.
So I have six copies of that, and I'm going to include six copies of my own book, which I'll sign, in a contest.
And I will be announcing that contest next week, along with some other big news.
My wife has prohibited me from disclosing the details of the contest, but let me just give you a hint.
I have been deeply inspired by all your dancing stories.
If you're regular listeners, you know exactly what I mean.
I mean really inspired.
You guys and ladies out there are just, you're in full beast mode and I love it.
So I want to reward some people.
So I'll be announcing the details of that next week.
We'll be giving away some books.
I got a lot to get to today, including some commentary on what happened with the culture war and the Roseanne show.
Because there's two divergent opinions on this now, and I think one of them is a little misguided.
And it's probably not what you think.
So stay tuned for that.
And I want to talk about the trade imbalance and a couple of other things as well.
There's just a lot of news going on.
A breaking bombshell last night from Sarah Carter as well.
All right.
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All right.
So first story I have to get to is there's a fascinating piece in the Wall Street Journal today about trade deficits, trade imbalances.
And I'm not going to beat this thing like a dead horse, but I want to just because this is a You know, this is a topic right now, everybody with the tariffs and the trade wars, and there's a lot of economic misinformation that's out there.
And the piece in the journal, somebody complained that I didn't say the author's name, because some people are subscribers, is by a guy named Sean Rushton.
R-U-S-H-T-O-N.
I'm not going to put it in the show notes because it's subscriber only, but as always, I'll summarize the main points for you.
Here's the gist of it, folks.
I've said to you repeatedly, do not get overly concerned with tariffs.
Not tariffs, excuse me.
Sorry, folks.
I slept really good last night.
Sometimes when I sleep really good, my brain is like, you need one of those nitric oxide tablets to give you that brain boost in the morning.
Don't be overly concerned with trade deficits and trade imbalances.
I know that is verboten to say.
You say that and people, I know I'm going to get emails and that's fine.
I'm ready for it.
I'm used to it.
Like I said, if the show is not for you because I say things you don't agree with, then the show is not for you.
I don't know what to tell you.
I'm telling you the economic facts of the day and if you don't like it, you don't like it.
I don't know what else to say.
Don't be overly concerned with trade imbalances because trade imbalances are not Are not the death sentence we think they are.
And this is what the guy's trying to say in the piece.
Let me just explain to you an analogy what I mean here.
Our trade imbalance is more of a function right now of our status with the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Here's what I mean by that, Joe.
If, let's say the world's reserve currency was gold, and gold has to be mined, like literally physical gold, right?
And gold was a form of money.
Now, the reason people like the gold standard, and people like me love the gold standard, is because you can't print gold.
It takes effort to use gold as money.
Why, Joe?
You have to mine it.
You have to go literally into mines.
You have to mine it.
You have to put it into gold coins.
And the very process, and by the way, the supply of it, Is constrained.
It's limited.
By what?
There's only a limited amount of gold in the world.
So you can't print it endlessly.
You can endlessly print for all intents and purposes money.
And you can endlessly electronically create it.
Right?
If you wanted to.
You just create new money for the Federal Reserve.
Print, print, print, print, print.
Right?
The reason libertarianist types like me like gold is because it's naturally constrained.
Now, what would happen in a world with a naturally constrained money supply where government couldn't print money and devalue it till kingdom come?
What would happen is trade imbalances, Joe, would naturally balance themselves.
Here's what I mean by this.
I've used this example before, so forgive me if you heard it on a prior episode, but it's important right now because this Sean Rustin piece is really, really good.
Let's say there was a trade imbalance between us and China.
Whereas Donald Trump would say, China, China, and he always says it twice, China, China.
And they were buying, we were buying more of their stuff, and they were sending more of their money, so we're sending more of their money there.
What should happen is, let's say, forget China and the US, because it's going to incite a lot of emotion, I get that.
Let's say there are two countries and they're trading.
And one country, there's a trade imbalance, so more money, more gold is headed to one country than the next.
Why?
Because they're buying more products than they're selling, right?
In a perfect world, Joe, if we're selling 50 widgets to them, and they're selling 50 widgets back, and the money supply is stable, then they're sending us, say, 50 bars of gold, and we're sending 50 bars of gold back to buy their stuff, right?
Does that make sense?
Let's say there's a trade imbalance, and they're sending more bars of gold to us for more stuff.
What would happen is, eventually, gold would start to accumulate in our country, or whatever the country the trade imbalance was, and as the gold starts to accumulate, prices would go up, as more gold would be chasing the same amount of product.
So you'd have, say, 100 bars of gold now, instead of 50, chasing the same 50 computers, or the same 50 chairs.
So prices would go up.
So in that country, the prices would go up and it would make that country basically less competitive because the prices for the computers and chairs would be higher.
So people would say, well, let's go start buying the computers and chairs from that other country again, where the prices are going down.
And the trade would naturally imbalance as the gold and the money started to leave the country where it accumulated and started to chase the same amount of products.
And it would head on back.
Now, this is a very simplistic example.
The ebb and flow of commerce, excuse me.
Right, exactly.
But we're not taking into account productivity, because I'm trying to keep this example simple, because Rushton's piece is very good.
Now, the prices would go down relative to the prices in the other country where the gold was accumulating.
And then the gold would say, oh, okay, well these computers and these chairs are getting expensive here because all the money's accumulating here and it's chasing these computers and chairs.
Let's just go back and buy them from the other country.
And gold would start to leave and trade would naturally... What I'm trying to tell you folks, and I'm sorry if I'm being disjointed, Here.
Is this making sense, Joe?
Yeah, I think maybe to me, because I've heard it before, and I still need to hear it again, by the way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is an important conversation here.
If we had a, this is what I'm trying to tell you, if we had a stable money supply, not based on the printing press and government whims, and it was based on something like gold, which had to be mined and is naturally constrained by its supply and the fact that you have to mine it, Trade imbalances would not be as profound as they are today.
What's happening in the United States is the prices don't go down like they would in the other country that was buying a boatload of stuff.
Prices don't go down.
And the reason they don't go down is the US dollar is the de facto gold of the world.
We are the world's reserve currency, meaning that a lot of international pricing, And benchmarking is done in U.S.
dollars, meaning countries need U.S.
dollars.
Countries need them to stabilize their own currency.
You may say, well, why is that bad?
Well, it's, I mean, it's not necessarily for us because we get low interest rates because the cost of money for us stays relatively low because we're getting a free loan every time they do this.
But ordinarily, if there was a stable money and not a printed money, The prices of the products in the United States would go down and trade would naturally rebalance itself.
Now, in the Rushton piece, let me just read to you a quote from the piece, because I'm sorry, but this is so important, this stuff, and I really wish more people would understand why I'm so, you know, against using exclusively trade imbalances to dictate economic, fiscal, and monetary policy.
I like this stuff, by the way.
I think the listeners do, too.
I hope so.
He says in the piece, to defend against crises, especially at times of major U.S.
monetary easing or depreciation, foreign governments stockpile dollars.
In other words, what he's saying is the fact that we don't use gold as money internationally, or we don't have a real standard, gold being a constrained standard, you can't print it, okay?
A lot of countries are forced to benchmark the value of their money, not to gold, but to U.S.
dollars.
So in order to prevent the collapse of their own currency, like I said before, by money leaving their country to go to other countries and prices go up and prices go down, they've had to stockpile not gold, but U.S.
dollars.
Which allows us to do what?
To print the snot out of U.S.
dollars because people vacuumed them up.
Because they're using it in lieu of gold.
He goes on.
This is a crazy number, by the way.
He says, in 1973, the world held $500 billion in foreign exchange reserves.
In today's dollars, by the way.
That was in 1973, the year before I was born.
The world held $500 billion in foreign exchange reserves.
You may say, wow, that sounds like a lot.
Last year, it was $11 trillion, a 22-fold increase.
About two-thirds of total reserves are now denominated in dollars, our dollars.
Because of high global demand, the dollar's international position is always stronger.
You get what I'm saying now?
Prices can't go down.
You see what I was talking about, that gold analogy before?
How gold would leave the country if we were using gold instead of printed money.
It can't, because people keep vacuuming up our dollars.
is always stronger, and U.S.
interest rates are lower than they would otherwise be.
This in turn means that America's budget and trade deficits swell in tandem, while U.S.
exports are costlier and imports are cheaper, regardless of trade practices.
Folks, again, I'm not trying to incite a riot here.
I know every time I mention this, I get really nasty feedback.
But what the author is simply saying is the fact that the U.S.
dollar is not benchmarked to some standard.
It's not!
We just print money, folks!
It's not bedrock to gold.
It's not linked to gold.
It's not handcuffed to gold.
It enables us to basically print the hell out of it because foreign governments just vacuum it up because there's no gold standards, there's a dollar standard.
And the prices then don't adjust.
So the cost of our labor, the cost of our products stays super high.
And what do people do?
They move their manufacturing overseas.
I agree with every one of you that has sent me an email.
Every single one of you.
I love you to death.
And I understand our manufacturing base has been entirely hollowed out by China's entry into the WTO.
And a billion people coming onto the market at the same time.
It was a peerless moment in human history, and not for the betterment of the United States in many respects.
I get that part of it.
But I am a free trader.
And I want you to understand that the trade imbalances and the trade deficits are not simply a function of just what happened with China.
If we had a benchmark United States currency benchmarked to gold instead of the ability to print it, prices would go down, the cost of labor would stay competitive, and we would have a better manufacturing base in the country.
But that's not what's happening.
Because our government can basically print the living snot out of things because U.S.
foreign governments scoop it up because it's the world standard.
Now again, there are benefits to this, too.
We can't talk about this in a vacuum.
The benefits are interest rates stay very low.
In other words, the United States can basically sell loans anywhere because people need their money.
Put a bond out there.
Oh, we'll buy it.
We need the dough.
We need something denominated in U.S.
dollars.
We get free loans all the time because the dollar is the world's reserve currency.
It was an interesting piece, and I just want you to understand that, that a natural rebalancing would have occurred if we would have had some kind of a gold standard internationally, but it collapsed.
And since we don't have that, that gold, air quotes, can't leave the country and go back where it's cheaper for a little while and rebalance over here the prices, the prices for labor and everything else.
So we stay really high, because we don't have to rebalance, because we can just print the hell out of money.
All right.
I'm sorry if I got confusing.
I just love economics.
It's my pastime here.
I read about it all the time.
And let me just give you two quick solutions to this, too.
Obviously, No.
1 we already addressed.
Solution No.
1 would be a sounder monetary policy.
A sound monetary policy would have short-term and potentially a little bit longer-term consequences.
So, solution No.
1 would be to go back to some form of a gold standard.
Now, the consequences to that would be, right now, interest rates would probably spike.
Interest rates would go very high because money would be harder to find.
Why is money not hard to find now?
Because we print the snot out of it!
If you couldn't print it, because we bedrocked it to gold, in effect, we had to start mining our money again, if you get what I'm saying, Joe.
And the supply of money was constrained, interest rates would go up, probably dramatically.
There would probably be some form of a short-term recession.
But in the long run, it would make our money, and your money, stronger.
It would make, even though, now this is gonna sound strange, but follow me here, this is important.
The dollar you have would be stronger, but so would the dollar of your employer.
Because it would be worth more.
Because they're not just printing endless amounts of them.
More supply, less value.
Less supply makes things more valuable.
That's why diamonds are valuable, because there's not a lot of them.
We want dollars to be like diamonds.
Now, that would potentially mean your salary would not go up or even go down, potentially.
But remember, Joe, that money, even less of it, would buy more products.
Yes, it would, yeah.
Let's say Joe makes $100,000 a year.
We'll get round numbers, right?
Why not?
Joe may have had to take a pay cut.
Joe may make $80,000.
But Joe may make $80,000 that buys what $200,000 bought five years ago.
Folks, what do you want?
Do you want a $100,000 salary that buys 10 widgets?
Or an $80,000 salary that buys 30 widgets?
What do you want?
This is the value of strong money.
This is why it's so difficult for people to get.
They confuse the real value of money, what it actually buys, which is its only purpose, right?
Money is nothing but fuel for a fire.
Throw it in a fire if it doesn't buy anything, right?
Money, paper money's only value is transactions to get you stuff you need.
That's it.
To pay your taxes, to pay for you to live, or for you to invest.
That's the only value of paper money.
If not, throw it in a fire.
It's no different than the paper you write on from my show notes.
What I write on from my show notes.
That money should mean something.
Don't confuse the nominal value, the numbers on the front, with what it actually buys.
I told you the story on my NRA TV show the other day about Venezuela.
That's printing so much money that they had to lop three zeros off the face value of the currency.
Because the nominal value is meaningless.
It doesn't buy anything.
So there would be a short-term downside.
The short-term downside would be interest rates would go up dramatically.
Because the interest rate is a cost of money, right?
If you go to get a loan in a bank, it has a cost.
The cost is the interest rate.
Joe needs a loan to start Joe Armacost Productions.
The bank says, hey, we'll give you a loan for $100,000, Joe, at 10%.
That's the cost.
If money's hard to find because the supply of it's constrained by an attachment to a gold standard, meaning we can't endlessly print it, Money would be harder to find, and Joe, they may say to Joe, Joe, it's going to be a 20% interest rate.
That's a lot.
That may cause a short-term recession as people find it a little bit harder to invest.
The upside to it is as the economy readjusts to the new prices and the new, better, stronger, real, real, real value of money, not the nominal value of money, you may even get a pay decrease.
But you can buy more stuff.
That's the point.
The dollar's worth more.
The dollar buys more, too.
You get more house for the same dollar.
You get more food for the same dollar.
The dollar's lost 90% of its value since 1913.
Imagine if it gained 90% of the value.
Imagine that.
Your $500,000 house would cost you $200,000 now to buy.
The mission would be worth $200,000, too.
It doesn't matter.
The same $200,000 would buy you a $1,000,000 home if there was a readjustment.
Your money would be worth something.
So step one is we have to enact a more sound monetary policy.
And just so you understand the 30,000 foot of what I'm talking about, don't get obsessed with trade imbalances as easily solvable through things like Like tariffs.
It's a deeper problem than that.
The global reserve currency being the US dollar.
The lack of a gold standard.
This all plays into it.
But secondly, there's another way to fix this.
The Chinese are not our friends in the economic market.
This is clear as day.
One of the things we have to address immediately with them is their intellectual property theft, and Rushton brings this up in the piece, and it's a great point.
They're stealing our stuff, folks.
They're forcing companies to relocate over there to get access to their market and saying, Side agreement here.
Here's what you're going to do.
You're going to turn over all your sensitive technology to a Chinese corollary to your company.
No, no, we shouldn't be doing that.
We're turning over all our intellectual power, all our intellectual capital to a country that is not our friend.
And I'm clear on that.
But the issue is bigger than just as simple as tariffs.
Sorry, I spent a lot of time on that.
I'd love to hear your feedback on it.
I never know how this stuff goes over.
That's why I put my email out there.
Reminds me of some of our earlier shows.
We've done whole shows on economics.
Yeah, because I love it and I'm fascinated by it.
If I can have a moment of being candid with you folks, if you'll allow me.
I'm very sensitive to the audience feedback on the show.
It's your show.
The show is here for you.
And I don't have a thick skin.
So, you know, when people email me as if I don't care, I get upset.
I really do.
I mean, it hits me personally.
I even send them on to my wife.
I'm like, you believe this?
People email me, especially when I talk about tariffs and things like this, as if I talk about it as some kind of, like, obtuse, you know, academic wonk who doesn't give a crap about American workers, which is total, complete garbage.
As a matter of fact, my Where I'm going to go next with the Roseanne show, I set this up intentionally this way, should be evidence to you that is absolutely 100% not the case.
I grew up in a working class family.
My dad was a plumber and a building inspector.
My brother's an electrician.
I was a cop and a secret service agent.
What I'm suggesting to you is in a world right now of bad options, There are.
There are no really good ones.
We have to look at what the least bad option is.
And the least bad option right now is to stabilize our money.
And stabilizing our money would stabilize our economy, would naturally rebalance the trade flows, naturally re-empower American workers, and would naturally re-empower again the value of the U.S.
dollar.
But also, as I acknowledged on point two, I think it does require some offensive stuff against the Chinese.
You know, we have to go to bat with them on this intellectual property theft.
There's no doubt about it.
Their government procurement practice is the Chinese, where, oh, you're going to have to buy all these Chinese products.
Yeah, you want to compete on the international stage?
You shouldn't be favoring your own stuff.
So I agree with you, but I just, the emails really kind of, you know, I get it.
I, you know, send them my way, but they do, Don't think for a second this isn't on my mind all the time.
These places have been hollowed out.
A lot of places in Iowa, in Pennsylvania, you know, in middle America.
And I understand that.
I remember going to Cumberland, Maryland when I was running for office and, you know, you look in Allegheny County out there and the place has been decimated.
Decimated.
The paper mills, you know, all these places shut down.
This is real.
I get it that it's real.
I'm just trying to figure out what the best path forward is.
That may not be for you, though.
I totally understand.
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Okay.
Um, there's a little, uh, divergence fork in the road over the significance of the relaunch of the Roseanne show.
Now, listen, this isn't entertainment tonight.
Okay.
I, what I love about my show in the audience is we try to delve into the, to the bigger why issues and the more cerebral components of the topics of the day.
So, but this is important.
For those of you who missed it, and there may be some, Roseanne Barr, a famous comedian from my era in the 80s and 90s, relaunched her show, eponymously named Roseanne.
The show was a mega, mega hit.
The show relaunched to 18.2 million viewers, to put that in context.
It was the largest launch, I think, in six years for any show, and the Will & Grace reboot only did 10 million.
This did 18 million, and the second episode, from what I heard, the audience was even larger.
I read that, and there's an interesting article in my show notes today from Deadline.com, at my website at Bongino.com.
Check it out about this, how large the audience was, and how, quote, Hollywood is now engaged in some soul-searching.
Let me give you the good and the bad about what this means.
And again, Joe, as the audience ombudsman, and seriously, forgive me if that opening segment sounded disjointed or confusing.
I just love economics, and that's why I use Joe a lot as the audience's voice.
Thank you.
There are two separate divergent paths on how to analyze this.
Path number one is, let's call it the good one for conservatives to keep it simple.
Roseanne in the new show is an avid vocal Trump supporter.
And she does not duck the issue.
Matter of fact, the opening show is mostly about her being a Trump supporter fighting with her sister Jackie on the show, played by Laurie Metcalf, who is not a Trump supporter.
Matter of fact, she hates them.
She has a shirt on in the show and the pink hat, if you know what I mean, and the shirt that says nasty woman.
So the sister hates Trump and she really goes after it in the show.
She doesn't duck it at all.
So the good conservative breakdown analysis of this launch and the fact that the audience was overwhelmingly large is that Hollywood is now going to get a big wake-up call that, hey listen, Trump supporters are a political force and you better damn well pay attention to them in the economic model of Hollywood Or you guys are going to continue to get smoked.
Because remember when ABC, that relaunched the show, Roseanne?
Joe, what are they selling?
What do you sell on radio?
You sell ears, right?
You sell ears.
Joe's WCBM radio station.
Time!
We sell time based on ears.
And me at the podcast, this is what we do.
I have what's called a CPM, a cost per thousand downloads.
That cost, we charge a rate per thousand downloads.
That's why I tell you please subscribe and download the show.
That's how we pay for the thing.
That's based on your ears.
Our advertisers filter by Helix Sleep today.
Freedom Project Academy is going to be our last read of the show today.
Later.
They are paying to access your ears.
Why?
Because they respect our audience.
That's why I always tell you, please support our sponsors.
These people chose this show and you.
They pay for you, folks.
They are paying to get your ears.
They're not running from it because it's a conservative show.
Some of them share my politics, some don't.
But they respect you enough to understand your buying power.
I guess I know this is...
I can't be objective here.
I get it that it benefits me to tell you.
It does.
But I'm telling you, these companies don't care that this is a conservative show.
They're not political companies, but they respect you enough to understand your buying power and the fact that you matter.
That's why they're on this show.
That's why Joe's show is unabashedly conservative.
The morning show Joe's on at WCBM.
Sean and Frank, they are not in... Believe me when I tell you, Sean Casey does not mess around with his politics at all.
He's as Tea Party as he gets.
But advertisers still come in.
You bet.
That has not been happening in Hollywood.
Shows in Hollywood and movies have largely disrespected conservative art.
Not only disrespected them, to be candid, it pretty much crapped on you.
They put out shows on TV which make you look like idiots.
We're a bunch of hillbilly dopes.
We're all a bunch of religious freaks.
Oh gosh, you mentioned Jesus.
You can't do that on a show.
They make us look like idiots, even worse.
Now, I'm gonna fork off in a minute here to the second, the bad path, but we're still on the good path here just so we're clear.
The Roseanne show was a cultural earthquake because it's one of the first times for a major, major reboot, not the first time, but for something with this much investment, with a celebrity with some power, Roseanne still has some cachet, That they put out a show where not only do they not hide being Trump supporters, they celebrate it!
The lead character in the show goes at it with her sister about how dopey she is for being a big Democrat.
Matter of fact, at one point, Roseanne, in character, says to her sister, Jackie, about single-payer health care, that the joke is, Jackie, you just can't do basic math.
These are things, Joe, that were absolutely verboten in the past.
Oh my gosh, to say this.
This is crazy.
You don't say that.
Folks, Hollywood got a smack in the face like you have never seen with Roseanne.
They are selling eyeballs.
We sell ears, they sell eyeballs.
Now they're selling 18.2 million eyeballs.
Do you have any idea how much money that is?
Now, We're still on why this is good for us.
Now do you understand why I spent a good swath of one of my shows last week talking about how important it is to support Christian-based movies, faith-based movies, family-based movies?
You may say, why are we giving money to Hollywood people anyway?
Folks, they, listen to me here, This is a good comeback.
You may say, well, why would I give money to Hollywood producers that are just doing this because it's about money?
They don't care about Roseanne's politics or Trump.
They all hate Trump.
Because they're a big propaganda machine.
Make them do what we want, not what they want.
Their natural instinct, despite the fact that they see the Fox News phenomenon.
They see what's happening with Roseanne.
They see the backlash against the NFL.
Despite the obvious... I said to my wife last night, Roseanne was the most predictable economic success in American history, Joe.
Hey, let's do a show targeted at, what, 50% of America?
But why didn't they do it?
Because their natural instinct is as kooky nutbag leftists.
And they just can't!
They can't get past it!
They think we're all nuts!
You know, Roger Ailes, who has since left us, Roger Ailes spoke at a Secret Service graduation ceremony when I was an instructor.
And he said something at the graduation ceremony that resonated with me.
He was so sure Fox News would succeed.
Because he said the business model was obvious.
We're only targeting 50% of America.
What other business do you say that about?
My podcast, we are now like the second or third, depending on the week, biggest conservative podcast in the United States.
Folks, candidly, we still target a small sliver of people.
It's a good chunk.
Per month, download-wise, maybe 1 300th of the population, right?
Fox News was targeting 50% of America.
Now obviously they don't all watch, you get that, but the point they're trying to make, especially with the Roseanne thing, is this is a huge market.
People who identify as conservatives, or let me say this better, as not Democrats.
Does that make sense?
We are not them.
We're conservatives, libertarians, republicans, maybe independents, but we are definitely not Hillary supporters or Bernie supporters, okay?
This was the most predictable economic success in television history.
Why did nobody do it before?
Because it's not their instinct.
They are hardcore leftists in Hollywood.
They understand the value of the propaganda machine they have, and that is the eyeballs and the ears of all these young kids, middle-aged folks, older people.
They can propagandize everybody.
Make them do what we want!
The propaganda machine is not going anywhere.
Television, video mediums, whether it's Netflix, HBO, ABC, Fox News, is going nowhere.
People love imagery.
We are visual creatures.
Whether you watch it on your smartphone, your TV, you stream it, you tune into terrestrial television, I don't care.
The video medium is going nowhere.
What better message to send to Hollywood people, television and video medium production types, that, hey, you want to make money?
You better start producing more stuff like this and not more crap like that.
It ain't going anywhere, folks!
So our choices are either allow the propaganda or own the propaganda.
You own it because you are the eyeballs and you are the ears.
That is why this was such a critical moment.
This Roseanne show.
Now, again, to give you both sides because this is, you know, we tend to dig deep into these issues here.
There's another side of this.
I noticed, you know, Ben Shapiro seems to have some objections.
Now, let me just be clear.
I like Ben a lot.
I know Ben and I have some different political views with regards to some things, but Ben's show is incredible.
He's the biggest conservative podcast in the country and has done an amazing job on college campuses, you know, breaking down some of the stereotypes about conservatives.
He makes some very valid points, though, about the Roseanne thing.
His thing, Joe, and if I'm summarizing him wrong, forgive me, but I was reading a tweet stream he had yesterday and his line on this has been, hold your support for this because she's really not...
A conservative.
She's more of a caricature of what a conservative is to Hollywood types.
In other words, let me just say that clearer.
In the show, there's a kid who has some gender identity issues.
The sister, obviously, is a big Sanders supporter.
And a lot of the stuff Roseanne says about trade and things like that, they're not traditional conservative issues.
Shapiro's point has been like, hey, this isn't really a culture thing.
Like, one of the daughters, considering being a surrogate, there's really not much of a celebration of what we would call, I guess, cultural values.
It's more of an economic populist show than a conservative show.
You see what I'm saying, Joe?
Yeah.
Like, Roseanne's speaking out more against the hollowing out of manufacturing in the show.
She's not really speaking out for bedrock conservative cultural values as well.
The value of religion, spirituality, family values.
Yeah, I get it.
I see that.
But here's where I disagree with him.
The left is smart, Joe.
The freedom train with the left has left the station a long time ago.
And what the left does with the freedom train is they don't speed away from the station, because then people go, oh my gosh, my freedom's leaving, and they get worried.
And this has led to revolutions throughout human history.
I mean, that's just a fact.
People don't want to let their liberty and freedom go.
So what the left does is they move the freedom train away, slow, slow.
Let me give you an example, and let me make it specific to Hollywood.
This is how they do it, by slowly and incrementally raising taxes, by slowly implementing state-run health care, by implementing new things.
They move, they move, they move.
Next thing you know, it's all gone.
The government controls your health care and they're controlling 90% of your money.
They do the same thing in their cultural Marxism, in their war on the culture.
Hollywood is left-leaning.
They have a set of values they want to get across to you.
They're not your values in many cases.
So let's say it's on the men in the women's room and women in the men's room fight, just as an example.
Hollywood will do a show and they don't want to, you know, open, you know, a few years back, you remember this issue 10 years ago, people would have been like, what are you crazy?
Like we're talking about putting men in the women's room and women in the men's room.
This is a serious issue in Maryland and in other States, right?
I'm not making this up.
No.
Hollywood wants to deconstruct the idea that gender and biological sex matter.
They want to do that because that's the left's agenda, because they want to get rid of any objective truth and replace it with the values of the state.
That's why, you know, liberals can't stand the idea of gender and prefer gender fluidity, which is, you know, I don't even know what to say.
So Hollywood will do a show, let's say 10 years ago or so, and you know, a guy will like peek in a women's room and someone will come out and say, Hey, what are you doing?
Well, today I identify as a woman.
And first they'll, they'll test the backlash.
You know, it's kind of like the Murphy Brown effect with the single mom, right?
Yeah.
And this is how they destroy the culture.
And eventually over time, next thing you know, 10 years later, they're doing shows, not only where the guy's like peeking in the women's room, the guy, A guy refuses to go into the women's room and another guy calls him like a transphobic guy because he refuses to use the women's room instead of the men's room even though he's a guy.
This is how they do it.
They slowly but surely culturally creep away from the freedom station until at the end you're like oh my gosh like wow am I that I'm supposed to be using the women's room too?
Like this is what they do.
It's precisely regardless of your opinion on gay marriage, I think the government should be out of the marriage business altogether.
I'm a Christian, my faith doesn't practice that, but I don't believe government should be in the marriage business.
But regardless of what your opinion on it is, it's the same thing the Hollywood culture did with that as well.
To the point now where you're obligated I shouldn't say obligated, but you're, Joe, obligated, with a wink and a nod, a lot of these Hollywood types, to put a specific amount of gay characters in a show, regardless if it's applicable to the storyline or not.
Right.
They move slowly.
The left is tactical.
So my problem with the analysis of some other folks out there, and Ben's analysis on this thing, is we have to do the same thing, Joe.
We have to move slowly the freedom train back to the station, even in the culture wars.
And I think, although Roseanne in the show is not a, as far as I know, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but it's not like a church going, you know, big advocate for Christianity or Judaism or spirituality in general.
She's not, you know, there are some values in the show that are obviously not culturally along the lines of what we would call conservatism.
It's a first step.
And maybe that first step is showing people on a mass scale, Joe, 18 million people is nothing to sneeze at.
New.
Maybe it's showing a bunch of 18 to 49 year old people, kids to, you know, middle aged folks, in the key, I use that because that's the key demo that they're targeting.
Maybe it's showing them first that people who support Trump are not crazy.
Maybe that's just the first step, folks.
Maybe the second step, and please read this deadline piece at my website.
It's at my website, Bongino.com.
It'll be in the show notes today.
If you subscribe to my email list, I'll email them to you.
It's a good piece, read it.
They were also, Joe, talking about potentially a reboot of one of Tim Allen's old shows, Home Improvement.
All right.
Now, Tim Allen is, in fact, a spiritual and rather religious guy.
Maybe that's the next step.
Maybe the next step isn't a show about a Trump supporter.
Maybe it's a show about a religious guy who has, you know, really firm, good, strong, bedrock family values.
Now, I know we've already had some Tim Allen shows like that, too.
That's what I'm saying.
Roseanne's not the first.
It's the first to hit like this.
But maybe that's the next step.
And then maybe the next step is Hollywood saying, Crikeys.
These Christian movies are blowing it up at the box office.
Roseanne's doing $15 to $18 million a show.
This Tim Allen reboot's doing $12 to $15 million.
Hey guys, we gotta start putting more spiritual, Christian-based, conservative-based, liberty-based programming on TV.
Yep.
That's how we win.
That's how the left won.
And that's why I dispute the second pathway, that this was not necessarily such a good thing.
I think it was.
If getting the left to see Trump voters and the concerns of middle America involves us in the show, putting in some left issues too, a couple here or there, you know, some left-leaning issues, I'm okay with that.
I know you may disagree, but I think if the Roseanne show would have come out of the box with Roseanne all of a sudden is a Reagan tax-cutter, and geez, it wouldn't have been real!
I mean, think about it, Joe.
Let me give you an example from your era, and a little bit of mine.
Norman Lear's, you know, All in the Family.
Yep.
All in the Family had Meathead!
Meathead was a- wasn't he a big, like, hippie?
No, he was a huge lib, yeah.
Yeah, Meathead was a lib!
And I think that's one of the reasons the Archie Bunker show- and listen, Bunker obviously said a lot of provocative character in the show.
Yeah.
What was his name?
Carol- Carol O'Connor.
O'Connor, that's right, yeah.
By the way, the beginning of that show, with the row houses, that was filmed in my neighborhood in Glendale.
It was pretty cool.
But it was meant to be somewhat controversial.
To show how real people in real America sometimes talk and sometimes it ain't cute.
Maybe that's what this did.
Maybe it stopped with this nonsense that everybody's all cute and clean and everybody's falling in with the, you know, identity politics, left agenda and gender fluidity and all this other... Maybe this is what we needed.
You know, it's funny.
I had these two topics, dude.
And I swear, I usually try to time it out to give you a decent scope of stories.
Rarely, if ever, do I spend an inordinate amount of time on not one, but two topics at the same time.
I thought this would be over by now, but I think it's interesting.
So, again, I always appreciate your feedback on the show.
All right, final read for today.
I got a couple more things, so don't go anywhere, folks.
A couple more important stories, including a major league bombshell by Sarah Carter last night.
I was like, I sent out a tweet.
I was like, what?
Then do it!
Then do it!
Yes, do it!
Do it!
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All right.
Major bombshell last night by Sarah Carter.
Of course, it'll be largely avoided by the mainstream media, but I am going to include another one of these must-read pieces in today's show notes at my website, Bongino.com.
It is a link to Sarah's piece about some new information, Joe.
New information that's just going to blow people away.
Apparently, did I take a photo of this?
No, I didn't.
That's okay.
Sometimes I take screenshots, but I can explain it to you pretty simply.
So, some new texts.
First off, before we even get to that, what have I been telling you?
What's the theorem we've been operating, the hypothesis we've been operating on with Jeff Sessions?
Here we go.
Take it ease with Sessions!
Take it ease!
I'm telling you, things are happening.
McCabe's been fired.
The IG report's been coming out, which is damning.
People are cooperating in the FBI.
I'm absolutely convinced, Joe.
I wish we had a ditto cam for that one.
Gotcha!
Things are happening!
Just give the guys some time!
Things are going down!
What did we find out yesterday?
Before we get to Sarah Carter, it'll be another piece in the show notes, say, from the Washington Examiner.
Now we find out there's an investigation going on into the FISA process.
In other words, into the process used to spy on Trump.
Oh, we just found that out?
You don't think this has been happening the whole time?
You don't think there were little cooperators in there?
Little kind of birdies whispering in people's ears?
Folks, the investigation's already going on.
Scrap that for a minute.
That's point number one.
Take it easy with Sessions on the Take It Easy Theorem.
Take It Easy Theorem number two!
More text messages are coming out between Peter Stroke, one of the lead FBI investigators in this case, and Lisa Page, who was a FBI attorney he was working with and had a relationship with as well.
These text messages have been creeping out.
They're slowly coming out as the OIG report's coming out.
We find out yesterday that the White House, the White House itself, Was likely involved in the coordination of this attack on Donald Trump.
Now folks, where have I heard that before?
I don't know, on the Dan Bongino show maybe?
When I was talking to you?
That's right.
Yeah, it's right here.
Now, the sourcing on this has been solid.
Sarah's sources are not, I'm pretty sure they're not mine, based on what she says in the piece.
She kind of, she doesn't say who they are, but she hints at, you know, where they're coming from.
So by those hints, they're not my sources, but I've already told you that there was some White House involvement in this.
Now, how do we know that?
What we learned in Sarah's piece, according to her sources, is that there was a meeting in August of 2016.
between a lead FBI investigator by the name of John Mafa, who had a key role, by the way, folks, in the Hillary exoneration letter.
Remember the speech by Jim Comey about that exonerated Hillary?
They laid all this stuff out and then they said, oh, and by the way, we're not going to prosecute.
So this is a upper level manager in the FBI.
Follow the timeline here.
So be quick.
In August, early August, he meets with the White House Chief of Staff, Dennis McDonough, to talk about this case against Trump, against the Trump team, and probably about Hillary, too.
White House Chief of Staff, you're now a breath away from the President of the United States.
Right.
MAFA meets with McDonough in August.
Why is this timeline August of 2016?
Why is this significant?
Because what happens in August of 2016, too?
John Brennan.
Oh, Joe, where did we say that the master of puppets here might be John Brennan?
Again, on the Dan Bongino Show.
Yep!
John Brennan in August of 2016.
What does he do?
He waltzes his butt up to Capitol Hill and gives a briefing to the gang of eight there, Harry Reid included.
About this case, includes in the briefing, which is highly likely based on a letter Reid produces just days later, briefs them on the dossier he said he knew nothing about in December, which is after August.
So in August, just to be clear about what we're talking about, for those liberals out there listening to the show who think the White House has no attachment to this scandal at all, in August of 2016, Senior high-level managers of the FBI, who had a role in drafting the exoneration letter for Hillary Clinton, meet with White House officials, the White House Chief of Staff, a stone's throw away from the President.
In that very same month, the President's CIA director, a noted political hack and a liar in John Brennan, briefed members of the Senate and the Congress on a dossier he claims he knew nothing about, And just days after that briefing, Harry Reid fires off a letter to the FBI requesting that they investigate Trump, of which, by the way, right after that, Stroke texts Lisa Page, here we go, insinuating in the text that this was all planned the entire time.
Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man.
Yeah, it is.
And it's a good one.
So now, does this kind of hammer home what I have been telling you?
The return.
But he loves that guy.
I have been telling you from the start that this, the White House knew.
The White House was deeply involved in this.
Brennan was running point on it.
Brennan, what was Brennan's limitation in this though, folks?
If you listened to the show a couple weeks ago, you already know the answer to this.
Brennan was a trusted political hack of the White House.
Brennan has access to foreign intelligence streams, but Brennan is the head of the CIA.
He has no law enforcement powers at all.
They need to bog down Trump in the United States legal system using the law and law enforcement tools.
Those law enforcement tools are not available to John Brennan.
The CIA cannot swear out a warrant.
But who can?
The FBI.
So Brennan needs the FBI and Jim Comey.
Brennan, though, to get the FBI on board, can't be seen pressuring the FBI himself, Joe.
So who does he use?
Harry Reid and the Democrats up in the Congress.
He walks up there.
He briefs them.
Harry Reid fires off a letter to the FBI.
Now the FBI's got to get something done.
Brennan can then claim hands off.
I didn't do anything.
I just briefed them on fake information.
Conveniently, right around the same time that members of the FBI are briefing the White House and the President's Chief of Staff.
The FBI, who is already, by the way, I believe, involved in this, but needs a push, gets it from Harry Reid.
Yeah, hey, we covered this this morning on the radio show, and when I heard it, the first thing I thought of was, well, I knew that three weeks ago.
We did.
We talked about it a while ago, but Sarah's great.
That's cool.
Sarah Carter is terrific, and her sources are not mine.
I can just tell by the way she writes.
Yeah, man.
And yeah, we had heard a lot of this stuff, and we discussed John Brennan's role in doing this a while ago, but now Sarah's piece is really good, and I'm telling you, Brennan needed the FBI.
The FBI was involved, but needed a congressional push or some formal reason to get involved.
They needed to put a legal face in their investigation.
Brennan's role in this, in going up to the Hill and talking to these people and Harry Reid, and then Harry Reid writing a letter to the FBI requesting they investigate it, was exactly what they needed to start this whole operation.
And then Stroke, Who seems to know this was all in the plan from the beginning.
Alright, we're going to wait for Harry Reid to write this letter and then we're going to get going on this.
Texas girlfriend there, Lisa Page.
Here we go!
Right after an article in the New York Times comes out about this stuff.
Fascinating.
Alright, I've got five minutes, so I'm going to make this quick.
There's a twofold attack going on right now on our democracy.
One of them is automatic voter registration.
I'm going to get into more of this later, by the way, on my NRA TV show, NRATV.com.
It's available on Roku and Amazon Fire.
It's live every night at 5.30 p.m.
Eastern Time.
Thanks to everyone who tunes in.
Maryland is now going to be, looks like the 11th state, you saw this Joe, to pass automatic voter registration.
So there's a two-front attack going on in our election system and the two-fold attack by the Democrats is substantial and it's just as dangerous as any of these foreign attacks we've seen as well.
They want automatic voter registration very simply and it's going to be based on anyone's interaction with state agencies.
Now who has interaction with state agencies?
People, a lot of them, who are in the country illegally.
They want to get you signed up for the voter rolls so that they can go out and target you.
It's relatively easy if you're on the voter rolls for people with walk lists to go out and knock on your door.
And listen, voting's great.
You should vote.
I'm not disincentivizing anyone to vote.
But you should be voting because you can vote, you're legal, you're in the country legally, and you have an interest in the process.
If you don't have an interest in the process and don't care, you know, then you're a disinterested voter.
Then, you know what?
That's fine.
Do your thing.
It's your freedom to vote or not vote.
But automatically enrolling people in the process, which potentially enrolls illegals as well, is very, very dangerous.
So step number one is this automatic voter registration.
We're seeing it now in Maryland, where they're trying this now.
I'm going to include an article in the show notes.
It's a short one from The Hill about this today.
They would be the 11th state to automatically enroll people, which would, in my opinion, unquestionably include people in the country illegally.
Secondly is this fight in the courts to overturn what they call partisan gerrymandering, right?
I only bring this up because the Democrats have lost control of the states.
Republicans control the overwhelming majority of state legislatures and governorships, including in blue states like Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois.
Democrats hate that.
So Democrats want to overturn the ability of the states to control what their congressional districts are.
Now, what's fascinating about this is Democrats are fighting on both sides of this, but in some respects, so are some Republicans.
That's where I'm going to jump in.
Democrats are saying in Pennsylvania, we don't like the gerrymandering here, because why?
Because Republicans control the majority of congressional seats in Pennsylvania.
But in Maryland, Democrats are arguing the opposite.
No, no, gerrymandering is great, because we control every seat in Maryland outside of one.
Andy Harris' seat on the Eastern Shore.
It used to be split 4-4, you know, what, 10-15 years ago when Bob Ehrlich was in the Congress, right?
Remember that?
Now it's 7-1.
Why does this matter to me?
So the Democrats' Eric Holder is waging a war against partisan gerrymandering, or what he calls it, nationwide, because he understands that Republicans are in charge.
If Democrats were in charge of the governorships, I promise you Holder would be fighting for partisan gerrymandering so those Democrat governors could do what they did in Maryland and take away congressional seats by redrawing congressional lines using computers.
So it's fascinating, the hypocrisy.
The problem I have with this is some Republicans are fighting this as well, and in Maryland it involves me, because a Supreme Court case being heard this week, what is it, Benyshek v. Lamone, involves the 6th Congressional District of Maryland, where I ran, which was unquestionably gerrymandered.
Badly.
And that's why, you know, we lost by a point.
But folks, what I'm trying to tell you is be careful with this.
Be very careful in introducing a judicial component to the drawing of congressional lines.
Because what's going to happen is it's going to happen in Pennsylvania, where you're going to see state courts drawing up districts that, depending on the partisan breakdown of the state court, is going to result in Democrat districts, not Republican ones.
Don't introduce the courts.
If you allow the politicians to control it, at least the politicians are somewhat accountable.
You know what?
You don't like the partisan lines in Maryland?
Great.
Vote for Larry Hogan for governor for re-election.
He gets to redraw them when it comes up in 2020.
You don't like the Democrat lines?
Vote out the Democrats.
But it involves me.
I thought I'd throw it in there because I ran in that district and my name is being invoked in the Supreme Court case.
I'm not necessarily happy about it, in some respects.
The Democrats being phony about it, too, that is.
They're invoking my name, saying, hey, look, Dan Bongino almost won.
It wasn't a partisan gerrymander.
All right, this is interesting stuff.
All right, folks, please go to Bongino.com, sign up for my email list there, and I will see you all tomorrow.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
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