Summary:
In this episode I address the importance of combatting liberal identity politics and the warning signs on the horizons with regard to the economy.
News Picks:
No, the Reagan tax cuts did not cause the deficits.
Is a trade war brewing?
The liberals have now moved on “Christian privilege.”
Is artificial intelligence going to be watching you in the workplace?
Trump’s EPA pick makes a solid move for the auto industry.
Liberals love attacking inanimate statues.
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Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
Alright, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you on this fine Tuesday?
I'm doing well, Daniel.
Thank you very much.
Oh, man.
Thank you for the feedback on yesterday's show.
Appreciate it.
It was very newsy.
Yep.
Um, but it was a Monday, and I know we got through a lot of stories yesterday, and it was kind of a different format, I think, than other shows, but I thought they were all worth talking about, even if in some abbreviated format.
You know, usually I like to dig deeper than other shows out there on the stories, but yesterday was critical.
We gotta let stuff out there.
I've got a lot of interesting stuff for you today as well.
I don't want you to miss today's show or a second of it because all the stories are interesting.
Also, thank you to everyone who's been going to our new section on our website, Debunk This with Matt Palumbo on bungino.com.
Yeah!
We'll be picking some debunking.
And I will get into that today, too.
And Matt did a great piece on debunking the myth that the Reagan tax cuts caused the deficit.
So I'll be talking about that a little bit because it's entirely relevant to the conversation going on today.
And I got a lot of other stuff, too.
All right.
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Ah, all right.
So last night, I was reading Taleb's new book, Nicholas Taleb's new book, Skin in the Game.
Yeah, yeah.
And he was talking about group identity.
Don't worry, don't be like, what the hell?
Listen, this is important stuff.
He was talking about group identity, and there was a piece in there Actually, a quote by the Graham brothers, Jeff and Vince Graham, where he talks about scale-free political universalism.
What the heck are you talking about?
He makes this terrific point.
That I think summarizes the essence of federal government intervention.
I think this matters now because we're seeing this more with liberal far-left radical activism, the imposition of global rules on the entire country, the whole essence of federalism.
The whole essence of it was that different states were going to have different agendas based on different needs.
You had agricultural states, industrial states, states with ports, states with landlocked, states with a lot of farmland, states with not a lot of farmland, states with mountains, states without mountains.
This all matters, folks.
Mountains could be natural geographic dividers that provide an economic Economic trouble, basically, for free commerce.
I mean, it's a barrier that'd be hard to get through before the invention of blasting powder and the ability to create roads through them.
Different states had different needs.
The whole principle of federalism was the federal government was going to limit itself and that the rest of those rights would be delegated to the states.
Now, the problem we're seeing now, especially with regards to a lot of these current debates, and I'm going to get to a few of them in a minute, these are important stories going on right now.
Trade wars, the EPA scrapping, the EPA's in the process of scrapping one of the fuel mandates for cars Obama put into effect.
These were all rules designed to go national that are having selectively different impacts in different areas of the country.
One of the points Taleb makes, and he points out about political universalism, in other words, the idea simply that rules should apply everywhere, globally, on a mass scale, is probably a better way to say it, is that people don't think that way.
There are specific size groups where people think differently dependent on the size of the group.
And I remember listening to an Econ Talk episode, I'm pretty sure it was with Mike Munger, where he did an unbelievable episode on this.
How the identity of the group and the size of the group matters to how people think.
I'll sum it up for you, this will make all the sense in the world after I read this quote from Taleb's new book.
He's talking about this saying by Jeff and Vince Graham.
It says like this, it goes like this.
I am at the Fed level Libertarian, at the state level Republican, at the local level Democrat, and at the family and friends level a Socialist.
In other words, the rules that apply within our family You're the father, you're the mother, you are the monarch, or you are the queen.
Your rules matter.
It's not a democracy in your home, right?
It's not.
No.
What you say goes.
I mean, Joe as little Joe, I have Amelia and Isabel, and what I say goes because I know best.
We're not voting on it.
It's not a constitutional republic.
It's not a representative government.
It is essentially a monarchy, or in some respects, socialism.
I own the means of production in my house.
You are not allowed to take possession of those means of production.
And I will distribute the goods as I see fit, as a socialist government would.
Folks, I'm not advocating for socialism.
Don't be ridiculous.
But it's an interesting point that he's making here, that the size of the group and the identity and makeup of the group matters.
But because, in fact, you, your family, the rules within your family, apply within your family, and for many of you work quite well within your family, does not mean those rules are transferable at a larger scale, scaling up universally to the entire collective United States.
That's the problem we're having right now.
I read this last night and I was like, man, this is such a great point when it comes to the gun control debate right now.
This is an unbelievably good point.
It's a great point when it comes to, you know, tariffs, when it comes to EPA fuel mandates.
How they are trying to impose the left a set of universal principles upon everyone.
Universal principles of, you know, universal background checks, a ban on what they call assault rifles, which is a meaningless term they made up, with no respect whatsoever for the size of the group.
Maybe there's a small group of farmers in, you know, Iowa somewhere who have completely different needs for an AR-15 style rifle than someone who lives in Los Angeles.
Imposing upon him your idea of what the rules should be completely disregards the size of the group and the needs of that group by imposing your needs upon him.
You now understand why the essence of the Bill of Rights was to limit the power of a federal government?
Because the federal government disregards the size of the group.
Because whatever the federal government does applies to everyone.
Regardless of the size of the group.
You live in the United States, it happens.
Does this make sense, Joe?
Yeah.
It's a wonderful point.
And Munger, who is a very libertarian by the way, did a great piece on this.
How the size of the group matters.
How there are some groups and some You know, he gives examples where some people who can cooperate with each other through some set of imposed collective identity, basically the socialist ideal, but they do it voluntarily.
Whether it's fishermen fishing some part of the sea that all know each other, they don't want to overfish that part.
We're talking about small groups, right?
But when you expand the rules to this bigger and bigger and bigger group, including the entire United States, and you ignore things like subsidiarity, local control, that all goes out the window.
And why am I bringing this up?
Because it breeds resentment.
It breeds resentment.
Resentment breeds action.
I think you can attribute the election of Donald Trump to a number of factors.
I don't want to oversimplify this like a lot of people tend to do.
But I think without question one of those factors that drove people to the polls was an anger at the imposition of rules at the local level.
I mean at the federal level that did not apply at the local level.
Whether it's an attack on their firearm rights, regulations like the Waters of the United States rule, you know, the farmers who are like, wait, I have a pond in my backyard and now some bureaucrat from DC's flying out to, you know, to Iowa farm country to tell me what to do with the water in my backyard?
Pound sand!
I'm voting for someone else!
It's a really great book, by the way.
I love it.
I'm almost done with it.
I'm getting to Jordan Peterson's book next.
But I just thought it was a really terrific point.
And it's worth discussing, folks, that maybe it's time for the federal government to start to recognize that a soft secession is already going on.
Because, listen, I'm not talking for the Media Matters idiots that thank you for listening to my show and promoting it.
You dopes.
I appreciate it.
But this is already happening.
And the irony, Joe, is this soft secession, breeded by this resentment of collective rules imposed upon small groups of people, that Joe, ironically, may have found some of those rules palatable voluntarily.
May have.
They may have said, you know what?
Here's what we're going to do with the farmland.
We're going to reduce pesticides on our farmland because you're pesticide spraying over onto my property.
So Farmer Jones, this is Farmer Bob, can we work a deal out that you stop using over spraying or over seeding or whatever it may be?
It's not the rules that are bothering, it's the imposition of the rules by DC bureaucrats who have no respect for the size of the group at all.
People act differently in small groups than they do collectively.
The size of the group matters!
That resentment is driving people crazy.
You know, it reminds me also of another point I brought up a while back that I forget who I heard talking about.
They said we make great partisans but terrible ideologues.
You know, we'll vote for a party label with very little idea behind the ideology sometimes.
And I think the ideology here gets lost because people just want to vote for what's not happening now sometimes.
And this resentment is being ginned up because people feel like rules are being imposed upon them that they don't want.
It was a really amazing, amazing point.
And it's the size of the group matters.
Subsidiarity matters, folks.
Accountability goes out the window, and representation goes out the window.
You know, think about it.
If I live in Martin County, Florida, you want the rules to be, and the people who are accountable to you, at the lowest level of management possible.
You know, I live in Palm City.
You want it to happen in Palm City.
That way, your vote matters because there's fewer people voting.
I mean, obviously your impact on a Palm City election and your impact on a federal government election are far different, right Joe?
Right.
You're talking about one of 330 million people versus one of, gosh, I don't even know how many people live in Palm City, but it sure as hell ain't 330 million.
Your vote matters more there.
Also, you're being, so that creates accountability amongst people who want to do things to you, create new rules and spend your money.
But secondly, it creates a representation issue as well.
Where the ideas that are represented in Palm City by the electorate have a chance to fail, or have a chance to succeed, and aren't imposed upon the entire country.
Meaning, if they fail in Palm City, the rest of the country can take heed and not do it.
But that's not what's happening now.
You have a growing, expansive federal government imposing rules upon the entire country where they may not apply, and you can't escape the failure, and the failure gets hidden by a compliant media.
Vis-a-vis Obamacare, where different states and localities could have found entirely different healthcare solutions, instead had a federal solution imposed upon them.
Great point.
Yeah, I like that last point, yeah.
They all could have found a different way to do it, who knows?
Okeechobee County, Florida could have found a terrific healthcare solution.
That everyone would have said, hey, look at what's happening.
Instead, that's not what happened.
Everybody got forced, got Obamacare shoved down their throats.
It's failed collectively and the media continues to cover, completely disregarding the size of the group.
I bring it up today, Joe, because we're kind of seeing this now.
And there were two stories, sorry for the intro there, but I think it matters and it sets up where I wanted to go.
All right.
There are two stories that busted out into the media cycle yesterday.
One, I'm going to give you the good news and the bad news.
Let me start with the bad news first.
The bad news is, as I predicted, a trade war is breaking out.
Folks, I get it.
I'm expecting the emails.
That's fine.
It's your show.
I appreciate your feedback.
But again, if you don't want to hear ideas you disagree with, that's fine.
But this show may not be for you, and that's okay, too.
I don't like it, but that's fine.
Your choice.
I warned everyone with the tariffs that there was potential for a trade war.
A trade war is a tax war.
I hope you all understand that.
It's a tax war.
That's what a trade war is.
A tariff is a tax.
Everybody gets that, right?
A tariff is a tax imposed upon foreign imports into the country and vice versa when exports leave the country somewhere else.
A trade war is a tax war.
My problem with the tariffs imposed upon steel was it was going to reignite A trade war and a sense of mercantilism that we had hoped had been long exhausted.
I get the downsides, I'll talk to that in a minute, so take it easy.
China's not our friend, I entirely understand that.
China has been devastating to trade by their intellectual property theft, government procurement practices, a number of nonsensical things they're doing.
That are really damaging global trade.
Cheap garbage they produce and ship out.
Potential espionage.
They're not our friend.
Points entirely stipulated.
But make no mistake, a tariff war, a trade war, is a tax war.
So what's happening now is we impose these steel tariffs and aluminum tariffs, and the Chinese have now responded in kind by imposing tariffs on, and just to be clear, to give you a sense of scale here, because scale matters, the tariffs are small.
They're only imposing tariffs on about two to three percent of our exports to China.
But the Chinese folks are doing it to damage President Trump.
What do I mean by that?
Pay close attention here.
They're picking markets in select swing states and congressional districts that are going to do real damage to President Trump's chances of re-election.
Yeah, one of them.
I'll pick one example.
There are many.
And I have a story at Bongino.com at the show notes.
Please subscribe to my email list.
I'll send them to you.
From the Washington Examiner, which discusses Wisconsin ginseng.
You may say, ah, you know what?
So what?
They're taxing Wisconsin ginseng.
No, no, no.
Don't think small here.
They're taxing ginseng from Wisconsin into China for a very specific reason.
One of the counties in Wisconsin that produces ginseng is a swingy type county that helped President Trump win Wisconsin.
If this tariff on ginseng attacks, to be clear, on Wisconsin ginseng supporters who sell their ginseng to China, if this tax shuts down their ginseng market, Or cuts it in half, or even cuts 25% off their sales.
This is going to be very damaging to the local economy.
The Chinese are not our friends, but they are not stupid.
No.
They are selectively picking products, Joe.
Farm products.
Ag products.
They are picking pork products that are going to damage ag communities that Trump won.
Folks, this was the most obvious penalty from the start.
I was wondering how they were deciding on what to throw this punitive tax on.
Brother, this was not random.
Okay.
They did this on purpose.
Now, this is an opening salvo.
Now I get it.
I know what a lot of you are thinking right now.
Screw the Chinese!
Let's get them back!
Screw their trade policy!
Guys!
A tax war is not winnable!
It's not!
You are going to bankrupt prosperous U.S.
farmers in swingy districts that eventually there's going to be a political backlash.
How we win from that, I don't understand.
I get it.
A lot of you are Trump supporters, so obviously I am.
I support the president.
But this is not a good idea.
They're threatening next, by the way, to start the tax major.
Remember, I told you there's only 2% of exports.
The next step is going to be airplane manufacturers.
Sorry, gosh.
I mean, I slept good last night till my stumbling over basic words.
Airplane manufacturers, soybean production, major league exporters into China.
We are talking about thousands of jobs, not hundreds of jobs in swingy congressional districts.
Folks, this is going to, I put, I took a big note here.
This is going to alienate Trump country.
Now, James Freeman, who is a really good writer at the Wall Street Journal, has a piece today where he quotes another journal piece.
And I want you to understand why I'm so worried about this.
I like the president.
I support him.
I want to see him re-elected.
I would not be talking on my show knowing there's going to be at least a hundred emails telling me what an idiot I am today, which is okay.
It's your show.
I get it.
I would not be doing this if I didn't believe that this was genuinely a bad idea.
Here's a quote from Freeman's piece today.
U.S.
factories reported robust demand for their products in March, but say rising prices for materials tied to new tariffs, i.e.
taxes, threaten to slow the industry's expansion.
The Institute for Supply Management said Monday its index of factory activity settled at 59.3 in March, down slightly from 60.8 the prior month.
Any reading above 50 indicates rising activity as measured by factors such as product sales, hiring, and production.
The latest reading was below economists' expectations.
Guys, the sky's not falling.
I'm not trying to be Chicken Little.
The Trump tax cuts were a brilliant idea.
His slashing of government red tape has been amazing.
His appointments to the courts, even despite Democrat obstruction, have been terrific and admirable.
I'm simply trying to suggest to you that the evidence that these tariffs are working is nowhere We are getting isolated successes to be expected in industries that benefit from the taxes.
Of course, if we make Chinese steel and aluminum more expensive, steel and aluminum industries are going to pick up.
The question is, why is the stock market down everywhere else?
Why is factory growth expectation down?
And why are we then telling farmers in Wisconsin, you have to pay for this?
Ginseng farmers.
Pork farmers.
Do you understand this is zero sum?
The Bush administration tried steel tariffs.
They got rid of them.
They got rid of them almost immediately.
Because it wound up costing hundreds of thousands of jobs.
A tariff war is a tax war.
That is all it is.
Now the Chinese are going to raise taxes on their stuff.
So we're going to raise taxes back.
And they're going to raise taxes back.
Who do you think is paying the taxes?
You!
Can I read that again to you?
I'm sorry, I just want you to understand this, what's going on here.
This is U.S.
factories.
These are you.
This is you, folks.
Your jobs.
The problem with their growth, they're citing this.
I'm not making this up.
They're saying rising prices for materials tied to new tariffs are slowing the industry's expansion.
That's not my opinion.
That's a survey of U.S.
factories.
Why would you think I'd be making this up?
I know it's coming, but that's fine.
We are alienating people.
The economy, we had a 500 point drop yesterday plus in the stock market.
These professional financial types discount future, that's what stock prices are, discounted values of future earnings.
It's like a reverse interest rate.
You think a company is going to grow at 8%, that's how you discount the stock and the price of the stock today.
If you think a company's going to grow by half as much, the stock is worth less money.
That's why people sold yesterday.
This is not helping.
Now, China.
They are not our friend.
And the threat of tariffs, at least, has had some effect, at least in renegotiating some of the rules with the South Koreans.
It's been marginally impactful.
We received a quota hike in the number of cars, even though we're not close to that quota, but I'll take it.
But the imposition so far has unquestionably not helped.
Now, a couple of things here.
Some of you said to me, listen, they're selling us cheap steel.
It's garbage.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're buying it.
Do you understand that?
The Chinese are selling cheap steel.
We're buying it!
Just don't buy it!
I don't know any other way to say it.
I'm not absolving them of responsibility for producing garbage stuff.
I'm just telling you, I got... How many emails did I receive in the... Probably 20 or 30 from people saying, but the stuff they're selling us is cheap.
Why are we buying it?
They're not forcing it on us.
Just don't buy it.
I mean, no one talks about that any other way.
Hey, these cars are crappy.
We should all be forced not to... People don't buy them then.
We're buying it.
This is not some government diktat.
It's a free market where people are buying the cheap stuff.
Products made in China sell because despite the assertions of a lot of the emails I've received from people, which I understand about how they prefer made-in-America stuff, the hard economic reality on the ground, the hard truth, Joseph, is that the made-in-China stuff sells because it's cheaper.
Yes.
Yeah.
If people wanted more expensive stuff, made-in-China junk and steel wouldn't sell.
How do you dispute that?
The only reason the Chinese are an international competitor is because they're producing cheaper stuff.
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
But people aren't doing that.
They are buying it.
That is not what's happening.
Secondly, you're right.
China is not our friend.
Their intellectual property theft from our companies and the way they procure stuff where they force the government to buy made-in-China stuff has been disastrous for international trade.
The stuff they produce is cheap.
A lot of it is junk.
We had the Chinese drywall here in Florida that nearly shut down the housing market.
It is garbage.
In the case of the Chinese drywall, it resulted in lawsuits.
We have a legal system for that.
Thankfully they shut that down here in Florida and provided some remedies.
A lot of companies now will not buy Chinese drywall at all.
It had the Chinese pet beef jerky that was killing dogs.
Is that right?
Oh yeah, wasn't there some chemical in it or something?
Now, we have a legal system that thankfully penalizes companies like this and requires some monetary remuneration later on.
But folks, the way to handle IP and GP theft and government procurement and intellectual property theft is to impose the same rules they impose upon us upon them.
Alright, you want intellectual property?
In other words, Microsoft goes to China and you have to give us your trade secrets?
Okay.
Your Chinese companies that do business in the United States, they have to do the same thing.
I have no problem with that.
Free trade is not stealing our intellectual property.
Free trade is not mandating government procurement for made in China.
When they have such a big budget.
Impose the same rules upon them.
But my point is, imposing these new tariffs had the most predictable response in human history.
There was going to be a tax war.
Now, folks, you are paying these taxes.
You.
It is not... I don't know who you thought was going to pay this stuff.
Companies are paying now higher prices for stuff that's tariffed.
And Exporters that export to China and sell stuff overseas are now selling less stuff because their prices are higher because foreign governments are retaliating.
This bothers me because I really, really think this president is on the verge of doing some great things.
But this is a bad call.
It's a bad call.
And the evidence is overwhelming.
All right, now I'm gonna get to some good news, because I don't want to leave you in a bad mood, and I know I'm gonna get some emails on it, and that's okay.
Again, the show is for you.
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Okay, now the good news.
And I'm going to tie this into my opening in a minute here.
I just want to get to the good news here first, because it's important.
Trump continues his deregulatory push and his wiping out and cleansing of government red tape, which has been unprecedented.
He has really taken the reins off the economy, and I think outside of this tariff thing that's unfolding quite poorly right now, everything else is going very well.
But this was a nervy move, Joe.
I haven't seen a move that takes, you know, you get what I'm saying?
Cajones like this in a while.
Scott Pruitt, who is the EPA administrator, who's involved in a little imbroglio right now with some rental fees for a condo.
But besides that, they are scrapping the Obama mandate.
For miles per gallon requirements for the fleet, for a fleet of cars.
They were supposed to have an unrealistic 54 miles per gallon average by 2025.
Now, why is this important?
It seems like a wonky story.
It's not.
The automobile industry is key.
It is a bedrock Keystone American business that employs a lot of people, generates a lot of revenue, generates a lot of ad revenue, generates a lot of marketing, a lot of production, a lot of manufacturing, a lot of management, a lot of consulting.
It is a critical U.S.
industry, the automobile industry.
They've unquestionably had some struggles.
Now, when you talk to automobile industry insiders that aren't interested in politics and are interested in the business of building automobiles, they will tell you that this fleet standard has been devastating, especially to U.S.
carmakers.
Why?
Why is that?
Because, folks, one thing we build with the best of them And, you know, we have some problems.
I mean, you know about my Tahoe, which you said, but I love my Ford Raptor.
My Ford Raptor is B.A., man.
Bad.
It is awesome.
One of the things we build, as well as anyone, is we build trucks.
And we build damn good trucks.
The F-150, the Silverado, the Ram.
We build good trucks.
They have their issues, I get it.
I know I get a few emails from people.
But I love my Raptor.
I know a lot of people love their trucks.
We build them.
We build them good.
They've got some issues.
We're working on it.
But the American truck is great.
And it's the envy of foreign carmakers.
Now, the nice part about the American truck is that the profit margins on American trucks are quite high.
Matter of fact, Joseph, if U.S.
automakers had their say and lawmakers got out of the way, we would probably build 90% trucks and SUVs and 10% small cars probably just for fleets.
Because that's where the revenue is.
That's what a normal business would do.
They would build things that produce, Joe, this is a shocker, revenue.
Crazy money.
That would be money.
That would be money.
Yeah, we should put that in a mug too.
That would be money.
That reminds me, I gotta mention that too.
What Obama did in another one of his genius little moves, and I say that not meaning qualitatively good, he imposed an unrealistic fleet miles-per-gallon average, meaning this.
Trucks and SUVs, as you well know, do not traditionally get good miles-per-gallon.
On a good day, my Raptor gets about 18 miles-a-gallon.
So what the Democrats, and some Republicans, candidly, that played along over the years, they imposed these fleet standards.
And these fleet standards mean that the average across the entire fleet has to be 54 miles per gallon by 2025.
That was the new Obama push.
Well, Joe, if you have a bunch of cars that are trucks that are doing 15 to 20 miles a gallon, what does that mean?
It means you got to produce a whole bunch of little tin can pieces of crap that get 7,000 miles per gallon that nobody in the United States wants.
People don't want them.
Now, showing you the complete impotency of the federal government to get anything right in their complete lack of candor and knowledge, their prediction for today's market on the distribution of the types of cars was that we would have by now, Joe, two-thirds cars and one-third trucks.
The actual breakdown is the opposite.
Two-thirds of us trucks and SUVs and one-third of us have cars.
Right.
Now by doing that, the Obama administration is trying to dictate your behavior, or was.
Pruitt is looking to scrap this thing.
Which is beautiful.
Because it would allow American car makers to, this is crazy Joe, to produce cars and trucks the American people actually want to buy.
Which would earn them money, which would allow them to pay higher wages.
This would be a major boon for the American economy.
But what's going on here?
California, at it again, as I said, this is the point I wanted to get to before I intentionally skipped over because I didn't want to beat myself to the punch where I was talking about the soft secession.
I know the Media Matters types, they're gonna say, oh, soft secession, this crazy podcaster, what is he talking about, a civil war?
No, that's what you're talking about, because you guys are just looney tunes.
There are already states, liberal states, that are soft seceding from the United States now.
Why do I say that?
Because California, Joe, that got a waiver from the Obama administration to produce its own fleet standards, which of course are the 54 miles per gallon.
California got a waiver to do its own thing.
You may say, well, what's the problem with that?
Well, the problem with that is New York and Pennsylvania joined them, and that's a third of the U.S.
car market.
So now, you have two completely different sets of standards now, because California is now saying, you can dump the 54 miles a gallon fleet average, but we're gonna keep it.
Which would mean what?
Car companies have to produce two completely different sets of cars.
That's right.
They'd have to stop selling SUVs by a certain point in California so they don't mix up the standard.
So the car companies are like, what the hell you want us to do now?
There's already a soft secession going on amongst liberal states.
You have liberal states with marijuana laws.
Listen, I don't agree with them, but it is federal law and there's a way to change it.
You already have a soft secession being led by liberal states.
Immigration laws.
Nah, we're not going to follow those.
And yet any time the soft secession is mentioned, you get places like Media Matters who conveniently, oh, you conservatives are stoking the flames of division.
We're not doing anything!
We're pointing out what you guys are doing in liberal states!
Suing Trump for everything he does.
Trump sneezed this morning.
I'm suing Kleenex!
This is what they do!
They've already seceded!
California has already said we're not following federal immigration law.
And by the way, we're going to create our own car standard.
Now, I understand a lot of you will say, well Dan, I thought you believed in federalism.
I thought you believed in the idea that the states should be able to do their own thing.
They should!
But not in matters that affect dramatically interstate commerce.
We can't have a country if you don't have some set of at least common collective tort laws, courts, a common currency.
You can't have California saying, we're going to create the Federal Reserve Note of California.
The State Reserve Note of California, better said.
It doesn't work that way.
There is some collective identity that does matter.
It's a problem I have with the immigration crisis now.
There's a culture.
There's a collective identity.
We don't give people time to adjust to it and we're constantly seeing an influx of new people into the country here illegally.
You lose that.
And what you do is you get tribalism that takes effect.
This is why I brought this up.
People act differently and there should be different standards for different levels of the group.
County.
City.
State.
Local.
Federal.
As we get to those federal levels, rules that bind everyone, these should be rules where there is mass consensus.
We need an army to defend the country.
Pretty much general mass consensus on that.
A common currency.
So if I travel to New York, I don't have to stop at a bank and exchange Florida dollars for New York dollars.
Everybody pretty much gets that.
Some system of roads.
I mean, you don't want a $7,000 toll to have to get into Georgia from Florida.
Does this make sense?
Those are rules at the federal level, at the hierarchical federal level, that should require everybody to obey.
Contract law.
A driver's license should be generally acknowledged.
You shouldn't have to get 49 state driver's licenses if you live in Florida.
Yours and 49 more.
Or in Obama's case, 51 more.
Because he thought there was 52 states.
I know he did.
I'm just messing with you with that dopey speech.
But still, you get my point.
But those rules should be limited.
But they want it both ways.
They want the rules to be limited and exceptions and carve-outs for them, liberals.
But then, in other circumstances, when it comes to healthcare, education, and other things, they want a Department of Education, they want Obamacare, they want it all national.
They don't want to follow immigration laws, but they want to make sure everybody else follows Obamacare.
Why?
Because it aligns with the liberal ethos of control.
California knows exactly what they're doing.
They know right now that if they sue the federal government over these EPA standards and get a carve-out for themselves for their own miles per gallon, that because of the size of California, they will get to impose their will on others.
This is not federalism.
It is reverse federalism.
Disguise this federalism.
Oh, look, states' rights.
No, no, that's not what you're doing.
You know exactly what you're doing.
You understand the power of your market and you are trying to get California to impose a de facto market standard because of the size of your market on the rest of the country.
Because you don't understand hierarchical needs and group size.
You don't!
Or you're ignoring it in your efforts to gain control.
That's what liberals want.
Control of your money, your health care, and your kids.
So the good and the bad.
The bad news is the tariffs are going to backfire badly.
The good news is they're still going forward, and I should have left it off with this because it's important.
Scott Pruitt is fighting this.
I believe California will lose this case if it goes to the courts.
They'll sue to impose their own mileage standard, but I believe they will lose.
I think they're going to lose badly as well.
All right, today's show also brought to you by our buddies at Freedom Project Academy.
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Okay.
Another article I found deeply disturbing, and I want to get into some of the wise stuff about it, is George Washington University, Joe, is having a class or some kind of symposium on Christian privilege now!
Here we go!
First it was white privilege, now it's Christian privilege.
They're moving on rapidly to other privileges soon.
What is it?
Able privilege?
Able-bodied privilege?
They have all these privileges now.
This is another fascinating Not recent development, but a development that's taken on a new head of steam after the statues war, you know, the liberal effort to pull down statues.
I got more on that in a second, too.
But it's an interesting piece I'll have up at the show notes, spongino.com, from College Fix, so go check it out.
If you subscribe to my email list, again, we'll email it right to you.
The Class Joe is meant to attack Christian privilege because they quote, Christians it is, receive unmerited perks from institutions and systems all across the country.
Do you understand what the heck is going on here?
What the heck is going on?
Ladies and gentlemen, the left is out of ideas.
Entirely out of ideas.
They are completely, fully in, 100%.
On the imposition of collective identities on people.
By the way, there has been no more damaging phenomenon throughout human history than the labeling of groups by collective identity and the targeting of those groups subsequent to making... I mean, think about it.
You know, the Jews in Hitler's Germany.
I mean, it goes, the Armenians, the list goes on and on and on of groups that have been given a collective identity.
In other words, your individual characteristics, good, bad, or indifferent, or irrelevant, it is the fact that you are, and name the identity, you are white, you are Christian, you are Armenian, you're black, you're Hispanic.
There has been no more damaging phenomenon, I mean, Jim Crow laws, slavery, throughout human history, the use of skin color as an identifier.
Nothing.
There is nothing more tragic or disgusting than the use of non-character related identifiers to impose a group identity on people and the irony of this is liberals Who champion themselves as advocates of civil rights are moving us back in time to the use of collective identity as a demarcation point for the value of a human being on this planet.
It's absolutely incredible.
That is the 30,000 foot umbrella view of what's going on that you liberals simply cannot refute.
You claim to be champions of civil rights as you entirely diminish the value of an individual and you value that person, man or woman, based exclusively on a collective identity that may have little to do with how that person actually values himself.
And in most cases does.
In other words, I know for a fact, Joe doesn't wake up in the morning and say, well, what are you, Scottish?
Uh, French, English.
English?
Yeah.
Armacost?
Did you wake up in the morning ever and go, I am a white Scotsman or a Frenchman?
I mean, has that ever even occurred to you?
No, never.
No.
I mean, it doesn't affect your actions.
No, it doesn't, of course.
Joe goes to work every day and does his thing.
Well, that's due to my white Christian privilege, Dan.
Yeah, I don't have to think about it, babe.
Well, you may have to take this class at George Washington University to get rid of this.
Now, this is the strategy.
Yeah.
Because the left is entirely out of ideas in the political arena, or the ideas they have are universally unpopular.
Hike your taxes, take your healthcare, expand failing public schools.
They know this.
They understand that these ideas are universally unpopular.
They have to get you to vote for them.
Now, they can't get you to vote for them because I just told you, their ideas are not popular.
Because their ideas are not popular, they don't get you to vote for them.
They get you to vote against the other guy.
Genius strategy.
Yeah.
In other words, the world is a horrible place.
You're all victims.
I'm not going to tell you what our ideas are, but I will tell you this.
We'll protect you against those other guys, and they really hate you, those Republicans.
Now, I've mentioned this before.
It's not new to regular listeners of the show, but it's getting worse, folks.
And it's getting worse because the world is getting better.
You may say, well, that doesn't make any sense.
What are you talking about?
As economic conditions around the world improve.
As the stain of racism ebbs, doesn't disappear, never will.
But folks, any idiot who tells you the country's in the same place it was during slavery in the Jim Crow era is seriously a moron or a liberal.
I don't know which one sometimes.
There are still heavy pockets of people, sadly, all over the world.
I mean, especially outside of the United States, but within the United States as well, there are some people who just can't get that out of their head.
And we should make every effort to combat the scourge of it.
But anyone who tells you that the trajectory is not upwards, and that the stain of racism is not receding, is just simply lying to you, or manipulating you, or is really dumb.
There is no fourth option.
As the world gets better, as economic conditions generally improve around the world, we're seeing, and these are unquestioned metrics, Poverty rates.
Average income per day.
It's going up.
It's not perfect.
There's still famine.
There are still countries that have broken governmental systems.
There's still tyranny, no question.
But we've seen the number of democracies get better.
The number of people who have a say in the vote.
The condition of women around the world.
Not perfect, but getting better.
As that improves, the left, specifically in the United States, which is the greatest country on earth, the wealthiest and the most prosperous, as conditions improve, the left and radical liberals will constantly need to stoke resentment.
Why?
Because, as I told you, the left can't get you to vote for them.
Their ideas poll universally unpopular.
But they keep getting elected in power because they've managed to firmly attach themselves to the resentment strategy.
And the resentment strategy is this.
The Republicans are racist, the Republicans are trans-a-phobes, homo-phobes, Islam-a-phobes, phobophobic-ist-a-phobes, and therefore we will protect you against them.
Going back to the beginning of the show.
Where I told you this idea about group size and how we make great partisans but terrible ideologues.
We attach ourselves to political parties without understanding their ideology because many of us, sadly, not many of the listeners to this show, but people fall prey to the I'm going to protect you against them mentality.
Well, who are they?
Oh, they're the racists.
Well, are they really conservatives?
No, they're not, but that doesn't matter.
We're gonna protect you against them.
Well, you know, the Republicans, what do they stand for?
I told you about knocking on doors in Prince George's County.
Prince George's County, Maryland.
A largely minority, black county in Maryland, where you knock on the door and you would be... If you knew nothing about politics, you would expect, given the Democratic bent of the county, people would be pro-choice, high taxes, big government.
They're not!
They're not!
Knock on the doors!
I did!
But why do the people in those neighborhoods vote Democrat?
Because we make great partisans, but terrible ideologues.
We have been gaslit by the media, told alive for so long that the Democrats are the protectors of the little guy, minority rights, and other things, despite any evidence that that's actually the case.
Despite what I just told you, that the Democrats are actually fostering resentment and group identity.
They're actually doing the inverse, that people believe it, and they align with the partisan label, completely ignoring the ideology behind it.
Now, that's important you understand that in relationship to my statement that as things get better, group identity politics and fostering collective identity resentment is going to get worse.
Because the Democrats, Joe, have to constantly search out new fights.
Now, first it was white privilege.
Now you're white.
There's a privilege to being white.
Folks, I can't dispute that there may in fact be privileges everywhere.
There may be a privilege to white, there may be a privilege to being born into a middle or upper class family, there may be a privilege to being born outside of a city, there may be a privilege to being born inside of a city, depending on its wealth.
Privileges exist everywhere.
The problem with the left is, and I gave this example once on the show in the past, the way we should be handling this as a society We should be saying, okay, how do we get people who are struggling right now, who are not in that quote privileged class, up to those same standards?
How do we improve struggling black schools, struggling hispanic schools?
How do we improve the job market in communities that are struggling?
That's not what liberals do!
What liberals want to do to stoke resentment is not help people who are not, quote, privileged.
They want to get you to resent the people they claim are privileged to stoke resentment because they will be the warriors for your cause against them.
But in a country of growing hospirity and increasing racial harmony, it gets more and more difficult to stoke resentment that generally, generally isn't there.
Now does this make sense, their increasing search for new causes, Joe?
Sure.
White privilege.
Now it's Christian privilege.
I have an article in PJ Media.
This is a must-read.
It's at my show notes.
Check them out at the website.
An article from PJ Media.
They're now attacking statues of presidents.
Did you hear this story, Joe?
Arcata.
What is it, California?
Arcata.
They want to pull down a statue of President McKinley because of McKinley's treatment of the Native Americans.
This will never stop.
It will never stop until you recognize what's going on.
It is an imposition of a collective identity.
The collective identity in this case is Native Americans.
The idea is the Republicans and conservatives hate you.
How do we get you to believe that?
We have to find a new fight because it's not true.
Of course it's nonsense.
But how do we find and discover a new fight in an increasingly prosperous country?
I got it.
Statues.
Statues!
First it was confederate statues, then it'll be presidential statues.
Next thing it's going to be any statue, liberals, anything.
It doesn't matter.
It's going to be statues made from, you know, a concrete that was produced pre-1950 because it was produced in a Jim Crow state.
They will, you laugh, it will never stop.
I took a note here.
Liberals will never stop the search for new points of division to stoke resentment.
Because resentment is all they have.
It is their entire bedrock political ideology is the imposition of a collective identity.
Native Americans.
Trans.
Gay.
Black.
Hispanic.
Not individual identity.
Dad.
Mom.
Family member.
Soccer coach.
Employee.
None of that matters to them.
It's collective identity because their policies suck.
Their policies suck so bad.
That they have to impose a collective identity and then convince that group and the members of it that they've put you in that other people hate you and that they will protect you.
They will constantly search for new flashpoints to do this.
It will never ever stop.
Now does yesterday's show on the culture war make more sense?
Kudos to Fox News for fighting back against this coordinated attack against the Ingram showdown.
Fox News has said no.
No.
No more.
And you should applaud them for it.
She is back on the air on Monday.
Jack Abernathy released a statement yesterday and damn it good for him.
God bless him.
We are done.
This will stop when the majority of the population that realizes that this stuff is crap, that it's identity politics and the stoking of resentment, when they firmly reject it, when they reject it through gestures like this.
Companies boycott, we boycott right back.
Hollywood celebrities attack us, we never see their movies.
Academics in college want to get into pro-Trump rants in a chemistry class?
You record it, put it out in the media for everyone to see.
They suspend you, we fight the suspension.
Remember what I told you from the Roman poet's greatest line ever?
The enemy is not vanquished until they consider themselves so.
We are not vanquished and we never will be.
We fight everywhere.
They fight a 30-front war, we fight on every single front.
It's not going to stop until we stop it.
All right, folks.
I appreciate all your attention.
Hey, let me get to one last thing.
How are we doing on time here?
Yeah, we're good.
We got a few minutes.
All right.
So, Matt Palumbo, my resident debunker-in-chief, who is now writing for my website, Bongino.com, has a really great piece up about the Reagan tax cuts.
It is important because there is talk of doubling down on the Trump tax cuts, which were terrific, and I applaud the GOP for doing that, but there's talk about making the income tax side of it permanent, even lowering the rates a little more, which I think would be a great idea.
The argument will come up, as it always does, and that's why Matt does this stuff.
And by the way, if you have a question for us to debunk, there's an email on my website.
Send it to us.
I'll send it over to Matt, and if it's a good one, we will debunk it for you.
Any liberal talking points you don't like, we will happily take on if they're good.
But Matt makes two key points in this.
The Reagan deficits were not caused by tax cuts.
The piece is pretty detailed.
It's not very long.
It's very readable, but it's terrific.
They were caused by defense spending, number one.
There was an increase in defense spending to combat the threat from the Soviet menace, there's no question about that.
So it was on the government spending side, there was some increased spending, but also inflation.
How inflation was tamed during the Reagan years due to Volcker's policies at the Federal Reserve.
When inflation was tamed, people's incomes, not real incomes, nominal incomes, right?
That's the difference.
In other words, Joe makes $50,000 and it buys 10 bars of gold.
That's preferable to Joe making $100,000 which only buys one bar of gold.
You see the difference, right?
Now, when inflation was high, wages went up, but not real wages, Joe, just nominal wages because money was worth less.
What did that do?
That pushed people in the Carter years into higher income tax brackets who effectively weren't making more money.
So Joe was making that $100,000, but it only bought one bar of gold, whereas $50,000 bought ten.
And now Joe's being taxed at a higher rate, even though he's really not making more money.
So when Reagan tamed inflation, people did not go into those higher tax brackets, Joe, but their money bought more.
And by not going into those higher tax brackets, Matt points out in incredibly easy-to-read fashion how the government eventually lost a little bit of money because they didn't take more of your money because your money bought more and you didn't move into those non-inflation-adjusted tax brackets.
It's a great point.
Read the piece.
I think you're really going to like it.
We appreciate your feedback on it.
And we're going to start the contest soon.
I've been reading all of your emails.
I have them all, so if you sent in a submission in the past, have no fear.
You don't have to resend it.
But send us your emails about how you're dancing out there.
People send them emails about... And it can be... Listen, I'm going to pick six winners.
I'm going to give away a free signed book and a free copy of Brian Kilmeade's excellent book, Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans.
Anything.
You're in the gym.
You change the channel from CNN to Fox News.
That's good.
I like it.
I love it.
But I'm going to pick six winners.
Some people have really bold ones.
I had a guy in work who had had enough and finally stood up for himself at the lunch table at work and told his fellow employers how he felt.
So obviously let's keep it, you know, I don't want to get anybody fired or anything like that.
But I'm going to pick the six best emails of stories of people dancing out there.
Let's start a movement.
And I'll send you an autographed book and a copy of Kill Me's book, Andrew Jackson, The Battle of New Orleans, which is really good.
Pick it up if you get the chance.
But we'll get on that soon.
So I'm going to go through them, and we'll get them out.
I'll just email you back, and I'll get your address, and we'll send them off.
Hey, thanks for tuning in, folks.
I really appreciate it.
I hope you liked the show today.
And again, send me your feedback on tariffs.
I know some of you are going to disagree, and that's fine.
I really hope not to lose you, though.
You matter to me, and I'm just telling you the truth.
