Summary:
In this episode I address the reasons behind Trump’s improving approval ratings. I also address the breaking news about the Mueller investigation. Finally, I address the budget problems, some interesting economic news, and what they mean for you.
News Picks:
Australian gun control will not work here.
Why is President Trump more popular than ever?
Is Congress considering cutting some of its out-of-control spending?
The Left insists that more guns equal more homicide. But the data says otherwise.
The suspicious timing of this Rod Rosenstein memo should raise eyebrows.
1 in 6 people would raise taxes on the rich even if they knew it would hurt the poor.
Here are two major problems with the Bob Mueller witch hunt.
How much would we have to cut from the federal budget to fix our debt problem?
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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 Joseph.
How are you today?
I am doing well, Dan.
Very good to be here.
Thank you.
Folks, Joe, there's a lot of dancing going on out there.
I know.
Your dancing's mattering, by the way.
It's mattering big time.
I'm going to cover this in the beginning of the show, but this disastrous omnibus bill, this gross overspending budget bill that was signed into law, what is it, last Friday?
No, the Friday before last Friday.
I remember being in the gym and I ranted on it and I said, listen, it was a bad deal.
Trump shouldn't have signed it.
I appreciate the fact that I think he understands now it was a mistake.
I was really upset at the GOP Senate and the House for abandoning their principles once again, but You guys are speaking out, ladies out there, and it matters.
I'm going to put a story at the show notes today, Yahoo News, that members are going home to their districts.
Members.
What?
Members.
That's such a, like, swamp term.
Sorry, I just read it all the time and I shouldn't be using ridiculous jargon like that.
Congressmen and women are going back to their districts and people are...
Up in their grills, in a nice way, we don't do violence like the left, but they're up in the grills, Joe, in the grill, and saying, dude, lady, what's the deal?
I thought we were the party of fiscal responsibility, you're spending us into oblivion, and the message is getting out there.
This is why I tell you all the time, You know that quote, the enemy is not vanquished until he considers himself so.
We're not vanquished.
Keep speaking out.
The dancing matters.
I'm getting it from people left and right.
I talked to a guy the other day, I'm not going to say who or even hint, but someone of influence who said the same thing.
That back in their district, people are like, what the mm happened with that spending bill?
Yeah, I'm getting the tweets too, man, of people that are dancing, giving you the examples.
Go, go, go!
Yeah, and we're getting great emails, and the contest is fully underway.
It's the dance contest.
You sent us your story of how you danced, and my wife has already narrowed down to a couple of where we got a few.
We keep sending them in now.
It was a great story.
I heard the other day of a guy who does a carpool.
You know who you are.
I'm not going to mention your name.
He does a carpool, Joe.
So I think he picks up randos on the way, like random people to get in the carpool lane.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
And I've got lipstick on.
My wife kissed me before she left.
She left some lipstick remnants on me here.
She's taking a quick trip.
But he said in the car, he puts on my show.
So if you're listening now in that carpool, thank you for doing that.
Apparently somebody in the carpool complained and found it offensive.
And he was like, My car, daddy-o.
You can walk if you'd like.
We go in your car, you put on what you want.
So, I love it.
Your stories are great.
Another great one.
I get an email from a person.
Said every time they go in a Verizon store with the phones, they switch all of the phones to go to the Drudge Report for their homepage.
Greatest story ever!
So good job sending them in.
We're going to pick six winners and I may continue this contest for a long time.
I got a lot of books.
I only have six of Kilmeade's books, but I have a whole lot of my books.
I'll sign them for you.
I may continue this for a long time.
I'm having so much fun with these emails about you all.
I'm telling you folks, if you want to act big, you want to run for office, go big.
You want to go small and switch all the phones in Verizon to the Drudge Report, either one.
I think they're all great and they all make me laugh.
My wife and I get a kick out of them.
She's helping me.
Read through the hundreds and hundreds of emails of people making small gestures and dancing each day.
So, good job.
All right.
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All right.
So that Yahoo news piece is terrific.
It'll be at Bongino.com today.
And the gist of it is just that, that you speaking out is making a serious difference.
These Republicans now are terrified.
They're terrified because they want to get reelected in the 2018 midterms, a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives, which is up every two years.
They're terrified that they're losing political support amongst their base because of your emails, because of your phone calls.
Folks, this matters.
It makes a difference.
When you speak up, people know it.
Now, let me give you a piece of advice from a candidate who has run for office before about the inside baseball of politics.
If you are a, let's call you a prolific voter, you vote in primaries, you vote in school board elections, you vote in city council primaries, city council elections.
In other words, you don't miss an election no matter what.
That's me and my wife.
I don't think I've missed an election in, gosh, 10 years.
I vote a lot.
This is important.
You will have a voter score.
Now I know, forgive me Joe, I know we've talked about this before with the audience, but some of you are new listeners and this is very important you understand this.
Those voter scores are public information.
Everybody on the planet knows you voted.
I don't know if you know this.
They don't know who you voted for.
It is a secret ballot.
Nobody knows that but you.
That is not public information.
I know Joe's a conservative.
I assume Joe voted for Trump.
But honest to God, I have no idea.
I mean, we could ask him and Joe, I'm sure, would tell us he voted for Trump.
But I don't know that.
I can't categorically prove that.
And I can't search the internet for who Joe Armacost voted for.
But I can search the internet to make sure Joe Armacost voted.
Now, what does that do?
There are companies out there that use this data and sell it to candidates.
They sell it to other people, too, who are interested in voting behavior for market reasons.
People who vote may also buy pet rocks.
So pet rock companies would want to know if Joe... You get what I'm saying, Joe?
It's not, you know, it's not just available to candidates.
It's available to anyone.
But obviously political candidates are interested in this information.
Why would that be?
Because if you're running in a competitive primary on the Republican side amongst 10 candidates, primaries only Republicans can vote in in most states, right?
And you're out there knocking on doors and you're sending mail and you're targeting people on Facebook, you want to make sure you target people who vote in primaries, right?
So they sell you a voter score.
Now, uh, one of the systems I used...
Was it voter gravity or true... I forget.
We used a few different systems.
Voter gravity was very good.
I think they were scored 1 through 16.
And 16 meant like a nuclear explosion wouldn't keep you away from voting.
A 16 voter, if that was the system, it may... I forget then.
It doesn't really matter whether it was 10 or 16.
It's irrelevant.
But the highest number was 16.
If you were a 16, Joe, you hadn't missed a primary election or a general in probably five or six election cycles.
I wasn't a 16.
Yeah, I mean, listen, to be candid, very few people or somebody misses for various reasons, you know, and that's understandable.
I get it.
I'm, you know, I'm in this business.
So, you know, I just enjoy the whole practice of engaging in the civic discourse there.
But most people do miss one.
But those 16, Joe, are super valuable.
Why?
Because they are going to vote no matter what.
No matter what.
A lot of them happen to be older folks.
It's why people who are, you know, 55 and older have really outsized political power.
They do, which is just the fact that they vote.
Good for you.
Good for you for staying involved.
Matter of fact, one of the reasons younger folks, you know, the 20 to 55 crowd don't have the political power of older folks is a lot of people 20 to 30, 30 to 40, as they go up, they vote more.
But as they go down in age, they vote less.
I bring all this up in context of the rescission debate, which I discussed last week, and the fact that you're speaking out, and members are worried, because if you are one of those 16-score voters that votes all the time, please, I'm begging you, call or email your congressman's office about the spending bill, the budget bill.
Please.
I can't.
Please dance with me on this one.
Your voice, if you are a 16, or a 100, or whatever, you vote all the time.
They will check you out, your congressman's office.
Not in a creepy metadata Jim Clapper kind of way, or John Brennan spying Obamagate kind of way.
They will check you out in a standard database, typically.
They get emails and they'll look you up.
Again, they don't know who you voted for, but they'll know your party affiliation.
That's public record.
They'll know you're a registered Republican, and they'll know you vote all the time.
Folks, you are gold to them.
Gold.
Now I'm not saying, just to be careful, I'm going to be very careful, I'm not saying that, let's say this is the first time you're going to vote.
You're 18, or you've been out of the political process for a while, you listen to my podcast and right now you've decided to become re-engaged.
Yes, your voice is valuable too.
Send that email.
CUT SPENDING.
Big caps.
Or you're losing my vote.
Your email's valuable too, but I'm just being candid with you, it's not as valuable as the people who voted for the last 20 years and never missed an election.
Those people are gold.
Gold.
That's you.
I shouldn't say those people, it's some of you listening.
You are gold.
You have to stay on them, because that rescission bill, that impoundment act we talked about last week, and not to redo the show, but just so we're clear on this, the 1974 impoundment act allows Donald Trump, the President of the United States, within 45 days of the passing of this awful omnibus bill, this overspending orgy they engaged in, it allows him to suggest cuts to Congress that they can, I shouldn't say cuts, it allows him to impound money, in other words, not spend it, which is just as good as cutting it, With simple majorities of both houses.
But we gotta push, we gotta push, we gotta push, and we gotta push.
This will be the first time this has been used significantly since Reagan.
We got to do it, folks.
We have to turn the freedom train back, even in small little steps.
This is our opportunity to dance with them.
But it's going to require you to send an email, to call the office.
Be cool about it.
You know the drill.
I mean, you don't need any lectures from me.
You know how to handle it.
But I just want to throw that caveat in there.
If you are a four by four voter, someone who's voted in the last four primaries and last four generals, you probably have a super high voter score.
They are going to look you up.
And when they look you up, your word is going to carry the weight of 10 or 15 others.
Please reach out.
And by the way, some people have asked me whenever I cover the voter score, how do I get my voter score?
The answer is, you don't.
It's not like a credit score.
You can if you want to go open up an account with whatever voter gravity or whatever, that's up to you.
But it's not like a credit score where you're entitled to three free copies of your voter score.
And remember, a lot of these entities score you differently.
So, you know, whatever, one's on 1-100, one's 1-10, one's 1-16, doesn't really matter.
But you could get it, but you'd have to probably pay for it.
So just know this, you don't have to, you don't need a voter score.
I'm telling you, having run for office, if you voted in the last four primaries and the last four general elections, you have a high voter score.
That's all you need to know.
And people know it.
That's why, did you notice you get all the robocalls?
Why do you think that is, folks?
You think that's random?
Why do you think during election time everybody's knocking on your door?
Why do you think at election time you're getting 500 mailers in your mailbox?
Because they bought your information and they know you vote.
Now you may find it annoying that people are knocking on your door and sending you mailers, but my humble opinion, you should consider it a badge of honor.
Listen, again, being frank here, your voice matters more than other people.
Because you vote.
And that's why these congressmen and these local state senators and state representatives are knocking on your door.
They know you're going to vote.
That's just the hard facts.
We live in a constitutional republic.
Everybody has the opportunity to vote as long as you're a citizen and you're not a felon in a lot of states.
But if you choose not to, Then again, just being frank about it, most politicians choose not to knock on your door because you're not going to vote.
I get it that you think it's annoying, but it really does matter.
Hey, one more note on this topic of rescission and impounding funds.
Gosh, we're in a really bad spending situation right now, folks.
That's why I was so bothered by this omnibus bill.
The level of spending cuts, you know, let me take a note on this, Cato, because I may, I don't want to forget, once in a blue moon I forget to put things in the show notes.
There's a longer version of a story from Cato today, but it matters, about the level of spending cuts we're going to need to get back to some level of fiscal sanity.
Right now we're at the point where we owe in debt, accumulated debt, the entire amount of our economy produces in a year, our GDP.
Folks, that's a danger zone.
There's a lot of good, strong research that once countries reach that 90% point with debt, in other words, they owe 90% of what the country produces in a year, that you start to reach a dangerous and uncontrollable tipping point because interest gets out of control.
I mean, think about that in terms of Of microeconomics.
It's simply narrowing it down to your house, Joe.
If you make $50,000 a year and you owe $50,000 a year, soon the interest payments on that alone start to overwhelm your daily expenses.
Once you start getting to $100,000, where it's double what you make in a year, the interest payments alone start to become... you can't even meet the interest payments.
So now you have that death spiral of interest and you never get to the principal at all.
We're getting to that point, folks.
Now, one of the takeaways from this report, the amount of spending cuts we're going to have to start to engage in right now.
Okay.
This is dramatic.
It's about five to seven hundred billion a year if we're going to get on track.
Folks, we spend four trillion now.
Those are massive cuts.
But the longer we wait, this is the takeaway, the worse it gets.
If we wait five years, they're gonna be 800 billion and 900 billion.
Soon it's gonna have to be a trillion a year in cuts.
Bottom line, reach out.
Email your congressman, call them.
They have to start somewhere.
And this Impoundment Act and the rescission of funds is a place to start.
You know, please, I'm imploring you to dance a little bit with me on this one because it's important.
Okay.
Let's see.
So much going on.
Hey, I have a great piece at Bongino.com today.
We're producing original content by my resident debunker-in-chief, Matt Palumbo.
So I'll put a piece in the show notes today, again, about the Australian gun control and their confiscation program.
It's a new piece up there at the debunk this section of Bongino.com.
About why Australian gun control would completely entirely blow it here.
It would not work.
It would be disastrous, folks.
Australia is one basically big island.
They do not have borders on land.
Guns are smuggled into this country from foreign countries all the time.
It is not that the demographics are different.
It would be a disaster.
Matt covers this in a piece.
I'll put in the show notes today, but it is available at Bongino.com.
I encourage you to read it.
He does a good job.
I asked him to write the pieces short and sweet, you know, four, five hundred, six hundred words, just, you know, bottom line up front.
He does that.
So check this piece out.
It's really good.
On that note, there's another great piece at the Federalist today.
I have a... I took a screenshot of it.
I'm gonna... some of you who follow me on Twitter may have caught this interaction.
This is funny, Joe.
So the other day, I'm on Twitter, and I don't know what I tweeted out, but a woman tweeted back to me that, you know, we were buffoons at the NRA, that I was a buffoon, and we were, you know, really dopey and whatever.
So she challenged me to a debate in the Second Amendment.
She is a law professor.
Now, ordinarily, I'm really, really desperately trying to avoid Twitter wars back and forth these days, because they go on all day, and seriously, they take up a lot of energy, and a lot of times nothing gets done, and it turns into a slugfest, and I'm just not interested.
But I forget her name, Miranda something?
But she is a professor, so she challenged me to a Second Amendment debate, and I initially just gaffed it off, but then I thought, Okay.
I'll take that debate.
So, we're trying to schedule her to, you know, to her credit.
She said, all right, I'll come on.
She wants to come on.
We're going to do it on my NRA TV show, Friday, 5.30 p.m.
Eastern Time, live at NRATV.com.
So, I hope she shows.
She said she would.
So, she's a woman of her word and she really wants this debate.
We'll see what happens.
So I'm looking forward to that.
Now, on the gun control argument, there's a piece by Adam Mill in the Federalist today that will be up in the show notes, which is really terrific.
And it shows some basic correlations on a point I've tried to make often.
And the point I've tried to make is that gun control Excuse me, gun ownership, the left's premise that gun ownership is going to lead to more gun violence and more crime is refuted by simple basic facts.
Joe, if that's your premise, right?
More guns equal more crime, then you would think you'd be able to show in places where there are more guns that there was in fact more crime, more gun crime.
Yeah, you'd think so.
Yeah, that evidence is, the evidence is largely the opposite.
Now, I'm not going to, I've discussed this in the past and you know I don't like to repeat shows, But what's interesting about Mill's piece is he takes it from another angle.
He says, listen, let's look at countries with the lowest gun ownership rates.
Because if your assertion, Joe, that more guns equals more crime is in fact accurate, then the inverse should be true as well, that low gun ownership should equal low gun crime rates and low homicide rates and low crime rates, right?
That would be correct.
Well, let's look at this.
So Mills' piece in the Federalist, which will be up at the show notes at my website.
Here are some of the states, some of the places with low gun ownership.
El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Jamaica, Lesotho, Belize, South Africa, Guatemala, Trinidad, Bahamas.
He compares that with the rates of gun homicides and murder rates, and you find out that the places with the lowest gun ownership rates have some of the highest murder rates or higher murder rates than other countries that have extremely high gun ownership.
So folks, The correlation doesn't make any sense.
This is very simple.
If you're trying to say that increased intake of aspirin is going to lead to fewer heart attacks, then you would look for people who take high doses of aspirin, and you would look to see the heart attack rates.
I'm not suggesting this is the case, but if increased dosages of aspirin led to more heart attacks, then you would throw out your premise that more aspirin leads to less heart attacks.
Right?
Yeah.
But the left, who professes to believe in science, throws all of that out the window when it comes to guns, because this is not a debate based on law, it's not a debate based on reason, it's a debate based on emotions.
Low gun ownership rates, high murder rates.
Countries with high gun ownership rates, Norway, some of the others, have very low gun homicide rates and homicide rates in general.
So the correlation just doesn't fit.
You're trying to fit, you know, a square peg into a round hole and it's not working.
It's just, oh man, is it frustrating.
Gosh.
You know, we do facts on the show and they try to fire back.
Well, you know, look at Australia.
That's why, by the way, I keep putting these, I have Matt do these pieces on Australian gun control.
Because Australia, there are more guns now in Australia than there were before the gun confiscation program.
So your premise that more guns is somehow going to equal more crime is nonsense.
There are more guns now in Australia than before they confiscated the guns.
So if you're saying there's less crime now due to the gun confiscation program, you haven't accommodated your statistics for the fact that there are more guns.
What part of this are you missing?
All right, I got a lot more to get to today.
Busy, busy, busy news day.
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Okay.
Interesting piece in human progress that I will put up in the show notes today as well, while we're talking about economics and the budget.
This is entirely unsurprising to me, but it goes to show you, Joe, the The pathology of the liberal ethos, you know, the class warfare ethos, the rich people, fair share, how dangerous it is, and how liberals... I've encouraged you often to not fall into the trap that liberals are stupid.
Liberals know exactly what they're doing, the radical ones.
They know how to prey on human emotion, and they know how to prey, importantly, on human envy.
This is one of those must-read articles.
It's a little wonky, but it's really, really interesting.
Again, to be at the show notes, it's at Human Progress, and it was a study done of people's attitudes towards taxation, Joe.
And what they found out, which was not surprising to me, but I guess was to some of the researchers, Joe, one in six people would hike taxes on the rich even if they knew in advance that it was going to hurt poor people.
Now, that may not make sense to you, but it does, it entirely makes sense to me.
And when you understand the evolution, and they address this a little bit in the piece of us from, you know, hunter-gatherer types and small packs of people.
And what I spoke about yesterday, Joe, with Nassim Taleb and his how groups, the size of the group matters on how people think collectively.
Like people don't think collectively in terms of the United States, but they can think collectively.
In terms of small groups, families, nuclear families, even in some senses tribes in our pre-industrial era.
But how when you start expanding the group out to this, you know, amorphous blob of people, people can't, you know, people can't comprehend United States.
What does that mean?
United States?
Everybody?
I mean, I don't, I don't get it.
Like I'm supposed to care for a guy over here.
I don't get it.
They don't understand and they start to think differently as the size of the group expands.
I found this interesting because it describes how in the hunter-gatherer days, Joe, things were zero-sum.
In other words, if someone accumulated a lot of food when there was a small, say, pack of 10 or 15 people, that that one person accumulating food, given the local scarcity, would likely accumulate that food at the expense of everyone else, who then couldn't go out and pick a berry or kill a deer because, you know, the resources were scarce.
So we evolved over time a sense of envy, a sense of like, well, Joe shouldn't have all that food, I should have some of it.
But folks, as the economy expanded, as we've imported and how global resources have expanded and productivity has expanded dramatically, envies become quite counterproductive because what the rich accumulate in a capitalist economy that's very productive does not necessarily, and matter of fact, does not most of the time, come at the expense of anyone.
The rich generally accumulate in a capitalist economy things because they produce things and find holes for products that weren't there before.
The reason Bill Gates is rich is because he came up with a computer design no one thought of before him.
Or they'd be Bill Gates themselves.
They'd be Donny Gates.
Or Joey Botts.
Or Joey Bag of Donuts Gates.
But Bill Gates thought of it first.
The guy who thought about putting music into a phone, in the first iPhone, thought of it before anyone else.
Or at least got it to market before anyone else.
That's probably a more precise way of saying it.
How do I know that?
Because there was no product out before that produced on a mass scale.
But the Democrats understand that vestigial relic of our personality.
Do you see what I'm saying, Joe?
How envy served a purpose back then.
Because we were hunter-gatherers.
Like I said, if you had all the deer meat and all the berries in your tent, someone else was probably starving.
We have never quite shaken that, and liberals understand that.
Radical liberals understand that one in six people would hide taxes on the rich, even if it hurts the poor.
Because they're taking advantage of this vestigial envy remnant left in our brain that makes no sense in today's economy at all.
None.
But liberals get it.
And that's why I always caution you on the show to not underestimate these cats.
They know exactly what they're doing.
People like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who rail against the rich while being rich themselves.
Note the hint of absurd irony there.
Bernie, what did he buy?
Three homes or something like that?
These people are rich themselves.
They rail against the rich because they know people.
One in six is a pretty big number, by the way.
They know people will, oh, yeah, yeah, we gotta get what they've got.
Well, what they have right now was built because they produced the product other people needed.
That's not necessarily the case in a zero-sum limited resource environment that's local only.
Scale down to local.
That make sense, Joe?
Yeah.
That was a very meek yes.
When you're in a local environment, and again the deer population is limited and the fruits and berries locally are limited, yes, envy may benefit you because you're like, hey, why is Joe taking all the food?
But when you expand that, to a bigger collective global economy in a world where we we constantly dig up new resources every day and have the benefit of technology uh you know and and uh you know productivity enhancements it doesn't necessarily make sense but liberals never forgot that do not underestimate these people but read the report in human progress it's interesting and it'll give you some keen insight into how liberals do what they do all right let's uh see oh on the uh
On the car report yesterday, Joe, about the EPA mileage guidelines.
Oh, yeah.
Hey, by the way, with regards to yesterday's show, I just want you to know I really do deeply appreciate all the feedback.
I know the topic yesterday we brought up tariffs can always be controversial with the audience, but I read your stuff.
You know, even you who ferociously disagree.
And, you know, some of you make very, very good arguments.
And I'm not a liberal.
I'm always open to hearing it.
Some of them are very persuasive.
And hopefully we'll readdress the topic, you know, someday, maybe, you know, in the next week or so.
And I'll bring up some of the countervailing points, too, that some of you brought up, because they're interesting.
But I do appreciate your feedback, and I don't want you to think for a second, I ignore it.
Like I said, I only asked yesterday, and I hope we don't lose you.
I really do.
That you just hear my points out, too.
And you don't have to agree, and I'm listening to yours.
And, you know, some of you make some very convincing arguments.
And I'll bring up some of the other stuff hopefully in a later show.
But I do appreciate the feedback on the show.
My wife and I read all of it all the time.
It matters.
The show is for you.
We do it for you.
It's not, you know, it's not for me.
But in regards to yesterday's show, I had discussed those EPA mileage guidelines and what a genius maneuver it was for Scott Pruitt, EPA administrator, to attempt to scrap these Obama mileage guidelines because they were destroying the U.S.
car market.
And one of the interesting points about it I neglected to bring up yesterday, Joe, was that the irony of these mileage guidelines.
Obama instituted a 54 miles per gallon guideline by 2025 for the fleet, the average across the fleet, which, as I said yesterday, makes it impossible for American car companies to successfully compete.
Because they build SUVs and they build trucks, they build them well, they're popular, people buy them, and they don't get 54 miles a gallon.
So they gotta build a bunch of crap small cars nobody wants to average across the fleet this 54 miles a gallon.
Now, I neglected to include one of the whys.
One of the whys in this show, why the Obama administration did this, Is because what kind of car do you, let's say you have a truck, like I have a Raptor, and it gets like 18, 20 miles a gallon.
You sell a lot of Raptors, that means you're gonna have to sell, Joe, to get your average corporate fleet, to get it up to 54, just by doing simple math, you're gonna have to sell a whole lot of cars that get like 70, 80 miles a gallon, right?
Now, do you know any fuel-only car that does that?
That's in mass production.
No.
But what does that?
Electric and hybrid cars.
This has been a push by the Obama administration for a long time to get us onto this electric car nonsense.
Which, listen, if you want electric cars, that's terrific.
Do your thing.
But another thing here, Joe, this is one of the whys I missed yesterday.
I'm going to test you on this.
I'm sorry I put you on the spot.
All right then.
But Joe, when you drive around and you see people driving Priuses and things like that, are they...
I'm not tricking you, but do you think they're more like Florida panhandle conservatives, or do you think the people driving Priuses are like bowtie-wearing foie gras eating New York City liberals?
What do you think?
I think they're like foie gras eating liberals.
Yes!
Yes!
They've got the dead giveaway on it.
Civility.
Bumper stickers.
Listen, I am not stereotyping.
Please don't take this the wrong way.
I'm trying to make a point here.
Yeah.
But if we were to take the average income of say someone in, my uncle lives in Dothan, Alabama, and the average income of someone who rents an apartment in Manhattan, who drives a Prius, who do you think would be higher?
A person who drives a Prius.
Yeah, in Manhattan!
Right!
So folks, not only does this benefit the electric car industry, because as I just said to you, Joe, these fleets will have to produce a bunch of electric cars to offset the Raptor and the Tahoe and the Dodge Ram, which, by the way, a lot of people just don't want.
I know people down here in Florida where I live in, you know, Palm City, they don't want them.
Yeah.
But a lot of city dwellers who have trouble parking their cars and who are in fact liberal will go out and buy the Prius and other cars like that.
But what winds up happening?
The car companies, Joe, lose a fortune on these small cars.
These small cars that these American car companies are producing that nobody wants, they are losing a fortune.
Matter of fact, in a Wall Street Journal piece today, they talk about this Fiat model, Joe, I couldn't believe this.
I had to double check to make sure I didn't get this wrong.
It says they lose $14,000 for every sale.
Is that incredible?
I read it and I was like, is this right?
Now, let's say it's $1,000.
They're not making money on every car.
They're losing money on these cars.
Now, what does that mean?
In order to sell these cars, they have to sell them at this serious discount, meaning that the people who are paying elevated prices now, for the Raptor and the Tahoe and the Suburban and the Ram, are paying those elevated prices to offset the losses of the rich people buying the Prius.
So this CAFE standard, these corporate fleet standards, which I applaud the Trump administration, and I certainly applaud Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, for doing this.
...are wiping out a subsidy from basically lower-income, the middle-income folks who drive trucks and SUVs to really rich, wealthy city dwellers who drive these Prius-y type non-gas guzzling cars.
Oh, isn't that interesting.
Yeah, it is!
I mean, we're paying for them to drive these little crap mobiles around.
And you know what?
This is one of the reasons I, you know, despite my disagreements on isolated policies here and there, this is one of the reasons I really, on a very serious note, I really appreciate what the Trump team is doing.
You know, I know there are a lot of anti-Trump conservatives out there, but let's be honest, there are other You know, they knew the media was going to go nuts with this, Joe, because the media loves this pseudo-environmental policy.
The media loves their rich friend's Prius, the price of it being subsidized by Raptors and Tahoe buyers in poorer states.
They love that.
They knew there was going to be significant backlash to this.
And you know what they said, Joe?
And they did it anyway!
I just gave Joe the universal sign of, we don't care.
But it was a little more vulgar than that, I'm sorry.
The Trump team was like, nah, we don't care, but thanks, have a nice day.
Now that ties in neatly to the next topic I wanted to bring up, which is related to this.
I'm going to put another article up at the show notes today.
There's a lot of show notes today from The Week, which is, you know, not a far right conservative outlet, by the way.
And in this article, the author does a decent job, Joe, of explaining why Trump's popularity, despite, you know, Stormy and all this other garbage, continues to go up.
He's actually approaching 50 percent.
Yes, he is.
And he makes a couple great points, and I wanted to bring these points up in light of yesterday's show and today's show, and the EPA thing.
Trump doesn't care, folks, about the politics.
He doesn't!
Now, sometimes that works against me in some cases, you know, I disagree with some things, but let's be honest, Joe, he does not lie!
Trump ran on a couple things that he's still pushing for.
He ran on a sensible immigration policy, he ran on a wall, he ran on China.
He ran on tax cuts, and that's exactly what he's doing.
He's not kidding around.
I mean, I can say whatever I want about tariffs, but it's not like it was a surprise.
Trump ran on all of this and, you know, you got to appreciate the man's honesty.
I mean, we've been lied to for politicians for what?
You know, since the inception of the Republic?
I mean, this guy actually does what he says.
He does not care about the political backlash.
Other presidents have.
Now, what's interesting about the piece is he touches on something, the writer, about why Trump's popularity is high that I think is an imperative for anyone looking to run for office or influence the political debate in the future.
This is important.
He addresses in the beginning of the piece all these potentially damaging political narratives that came out, Joe.
You know, the stormy story and all this other junk.
Yeah.
But he brings up something you and I have talked about before, how the only real damaging political narratives, Joe, Are those that change a pre-existing perception about who that person is?
Think about it.
Why did the Monica Walensky impeachment...
I can't believe I just said that.
I said that as a joke one night to my wife, and now it's in my head.
Lewinsky!
One night I joked around, I'm like, what if they refer to her like Wolinsky?
It's a stupid joke.
My wife's probably laughing right now.
But now it's in my head.
The Monica Lewinsky impeachment trial of Bill Clinton.
Why did he leave office with nearly 60% approval?
Because folks, the Lewinsky trial and the incident, I'm not justifying it, I'm not morally justifying anything.
I'm simply stating to you, it did nothing to change the pre-existing perception of who Bill Clinton was!
Nothing!
Zero!
Everybody understood what, you know, old Bill was up to.
And when new stories started coming out, they just were like, okay, we don't like it, but... Now!
The premise of the article here about Trump is similar, that everybody understood he was brash, so his tweets, people have just become used to it.
The tweets aren't really bothering... Folks, his approval's going up.
If the tweets were bothering people, his approval would be going down.
It's not.
Numbers do matter.
Facts matter, okay?
Yeah, it's just Trump being Trump.
Trump being Trump.
I mean, Trump never hid his proclivities for eccentric behavior on the Howard Stern show when he was out there.
None of this changes any pre-existing political narrative.
None!
Now, to give you an example of how it would, Imagine a story like that came out about George W. Bush, who is known as a deeply- you know, I worked for the man.
I can tell you that's not an act.
He is sincerely a deeply religious guy.
I don't appreciate a lot of his politics.
He spent a lot of money.
But besides the point, I worked for him and his wife, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that that is not an act at all.
W is a deeply spiritual and religious guy.
That is not some kind of farcical, let me play this up for the camera routine.
I don't think that's going to surprise any of you, but that's my point.
If a story, God forbid, not saying this would happen, it wouldn't, but if it came out about George W. Bush, it'd be a little different, Joe.
It would significantly change the existing political narrative that that's who this guy was.
But that's not who Trump was.
Trump ran as a big, brash, bold Queens businessman who had been out in the forefront of the public and had led, you know, an eccentric life before.
None of this changes any pre-existing narratives.
Now combine that with the fact... You know, I hope you like today's show because I put a lot of work into tying all this together, folks.
Seriously, today's show took like two and a half hours, which for me is a long time.
Combine that with the fact that I'll put another article in the show notes today from CNBC.
That job growth is through the roof.
March payrolls, folks, 241,000 jobs.
Estimates were for 205.
Almost 40,000 more jobs than even high estimates in March alone.
Combine that with that, that people are like, well, okay, so what?
We got this lady on 60 Minutes talking about some kind of thing with Trump.
I got a raise, right?
My company's hiring.
Job market's hot.
I mean, we're generally at peace.
Obviously, we have the threat of the North Koreans.
The Iranians don't want to be hyperbolic.
But there's not, at least now, not a Cold War-type, World War II event going on.
There's always the threat of terror, of course.
We have Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria.
But Trump's, I think, success is also on the world stage.
The North Koreans getting him to back down a bit.
Some people, you know, like the way he's confronted China.
And I think you're starting to see what is a narrative of, hey, Donald Trump, he's big, he's bold, he's brash, he tweets.
You know, sometimes it puts people on the uncomfortable side of what they would consider presidential or not, but he's the president.
Therefore, it's presidential.
The job market's moving.
My job is better.
And you know what?
I don't mind it so much.
Nothing has been done yet to change the political narrative.
And I say that because it's a model for the future if you're thinking about running.
If you have a whole bunch of skeletons and stuff, you better get them out there.
Because once the narrative is set about who you are, You'll be fine.
But if you lie about it, and something comes out later and makes you look foolish, you're gonna have some splainin' to do.
Yeah.
So, interesting piece.
Biva has a lot of content in the show notes today.
I strongly encourage you to check them out.
Alright, couple more things I want to get to, because there was more breaking news yesterday.
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Okay.
Yesterday, big news yesterday came out regarding the Trump investigation.
First chunk of news was from Carol Lennig at the Washington Post and Bob Costa, and the breaking news from them was that, and this has really surprised me because I think they're revealing the whole game here, is that Trump, Joe, let me just read to you directly from the piece, make it easy.
Special counsel Bob Mueller informed President Donald Trump's attorneys last month that he is continued continuing to
invest read it. Listen. Listen. Listen, this is important That he Mueller that is is continuing to investigate the
president But does not consider him a criminal at this point
according to three people familiar with the discussions Let's skip something here, but Mueller described Trump as a
subject of his investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 elections
Prosecutors view someone as a subject, again this is important, when that person has engaged in conduct that is under investigation but there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges.
What have I told you over and over and over again about this case?
They are not investigating a crime.
They're investigating Donald Trump.
They basically admitted these three sources.
He's a subject.
Well, what does that mean?
That means we're investigating him, but we have no evidence he committed a crime.
What are you investigating him for then?
I don't understand.
Do you understand how devastating that statement Lenny and Costa have in their piece is?
Think about that, Joe.
Yeah.
Cops show up at your house.
Joe, you're a subject of an investigation.
What did I do?
Oh, nothing.
Do we have any evidence of a crime?
No, none.
But you're still the subject.
Well, what am I the subject of?
An investigation.
Into what?
We don't know.
Well, did I commit a crime?
We have no evidence of that.
Well, why am I a subject?
Because you are.
I've...
I'm just taking a note here because I don't want to miss this.
One more thing I want to get to.
But this is frustrating!
Frustrating beyond belief.
The Byron York has a piece in the Washington Examiner.
It's another one of those must-read pieces.
It'll be in the show notes today.
Byron York, who is a very level-headed... I get very passionate about this stuff.
No one's ever going to accuse Byron York of being in any way a hothead in regards to these issues.
I get it.
I get very passionate.
This stuff matters to me.
It matters to him too, but he is a...
Not uninterested, but disinterested observer.
He has a piece in the Examiner about how dangerous what's going on now is, folks.
The reason I've covered this, and you know, sometimes it's been five minutes of the show, sometimes it's been a whole hour.
But the reason I continue, and the reason that we're wrapping up the book now, and I know I keep telling this, but we're just big news on that coming soon.
The reason this is so dangerous, York makes two points, Joe.
Number one, they used the Logan Act.
The Logan Act, a crime never successfully charged in the history of the Republic to charge Mike Flynn.
In other words, folks, they had no evidence of serious criminality, so they invented a crime.
Now, the Logan Act is real.
Real in the sense that it's on the books, but not real in the sense that it's never, ever been used to successfully prosecute anyone.
So what did they do?
They pulled it out of their hat and they used it to prosecute Mike Flynn.
You may say, oh well he didn't plead guilty to the Logan Act.
That was the reason for the interview they claimed he lied in when they later claimed he didn't lie.
He was charged with false statements despite the fact that the FBI said he didn't lie.
But they were there to interview him for violations of the Logan Act which nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted on ever.
It's essentially a fabricated crime.
So York's piece of the examiner's like, that's part number one.
If we're going to start doing that now, because we are, Joe, creating subjects.
We are not creating criminal investigations.
We're making people subjects of crimes that don't exist, that we're fabricating crimes to fit people.
We're not investigating crimes, finding people later.
We're finding people and finding crimes later.
Do you understand the difference?
The way crimes are investigated in the United States, people report crimes, investigations happen, they find the people who commit the crimes, they are arrested, prosecuted.
Potentially jailed.
We do not target people and then go look for crimes later.
That's York's premise about why this is so dangerous and also why I read to you that Carol Lennon and Bob Costa piece about, oh, Trump's not a criminal target.
Oh, but he is a subject.
Is there any evidence?
No, there's no evidence.
They are not investigating a crime.
They're investigating Trump.
You all could be targets next.
Point number two, the takeaway from York's piece, which is critical, is that the dossier obviously was debunked or at a minimum not verified that we are now using bought and paid for political dirt and opposition to prosecute our political opponents Folks, this is really a troubling, troubling development.
Two big takeaways.
We're inventing crimes because we're going after people and then we're sticking those crimes on them.
And secondly, we're now using political opposition to stick it to the court system to prosecute people.
No, no, no, no, no.
This isn't right.
Now, because I had a ton of stuff to get to.
One other piece of the show notes today from legal insurrection.
I, as you know, I told you to take it east with Sessions.
I know some of you disagree, but I think there's a lot going on behind the scenes there, especially with Huber, the new United States attorney looking into this.
Or prosecutor signed by the government assistant United States attorney.
I think he was the U.S.
attorney for Utah.
But I am no fan of Rosenstein at all.
There is some shady, shady stuff going on with Rosenstein.
Did you see this development yesterday, Joe?
Yeah.
Where's my notes?
I think I know what you're talking about.
Yeah.
Gosh, what did I do with this?
Oh, here we go.
Rosenstein writes a memo to Mueller on August 2nd of 2017.
Expanding the scope of Mueller's special counsel investigation into Manafort's dealing with Ukraine.
Now, this is important.
Because when you are assigned as a special counsel, you are limited to the appointment.
And the appointment is very specific.
If you read the legal insurrection piece, you can read Mueller's basically scope of duties.
And it says the Russian collusion into the investigation and other crimes resulting from it.
So it was broad, but it wasn't overly broad, or in many people's opinions, it wasn't broad enough to include an investigation into Manafort money laundering into Ukraine.
Now, that may have been a crime, but that should not have been the result of the special counsel investigation based on its limited authority.
Does that make sense, Joe?
In other words, Mueller was investigating Manafort in Ukraine when he shouldn't have been.
He was not charged to do that.
It's fascinating that Manafort goes to courts, you know, basically sues Mueller over this, and a memo is produced on August 2nd of 2017, a Rosenstein memo, giving Manafort basically permission to go, I mean, excuse me, giving Mueller permission to go and look at Manafort's business dealings with Ukraine.
Hmm.
Why should that matter?
Because Manafort's house, folks, was raided a month earlier on July 26th of 2017.
Right.
So if Manafort's house in an early morning raid was raided on July 26th of 2017 in relation to his business dealings with Ukraine, how the hell is a memo drafted up on August 2nd, 2017, giving Mueller authority to do that?
Let me do the pen on desk thing.
Does that make sense to you?
Does this sound like a ex post facto basically butt covering technique?
That Mueller may have said, We just raided this guy's house and the legal team is telling me that we may have not had prosecutorial investigative authority to, in fact, target him.
Hey, Rosenstein!
Can we get that memo?
Guys, did you raid the house already?
Yeah!
Yeah, we did that last... What do you mean you did it last week?
Alright, let's draw up this memo.
This is why I don't trust Rosenstein at all.
Rosenstein, of course, was also the United States Attorney in charge of the 10X prosecution related to the Uranium One case.
I don't trust Rosenstein one bit.
I think this was a butt-covering technique later on.
I think someone on the legal team for Mueller went back after the raid and said, hey, Bob, I'm not quite sure we have the authority to do this.
Oh, let's go to Rosenstein for a memo.
Read the legal insurrection piece.
It's awesome.
It lays it all out for you.
How, again, this thing, and this is why I get a little disturbed at some of the emails.
Like, cool, send them, but don't mistake for a second my support of what's going on behind the scenes, I think with Sessions' approval to investigate Fisergate, Flingate, and Obamagate, with support for Mueller or Rosenstein.
Those two are a disaster.
The Mueller investigation should be shut down and Rosenstein's approval of it is pathetic.
Don't mistake those are two completely separate things.
I know they seem related, but they're not.
There is stuff going on behind the scenes.
I know it.
I'm sure of it.
I've already bet my reputation on it.
This show matters to me.
But the Mueller investigation and Rosenstein's memo on August 2nd to expand an investigation where a raid occurred on July 26th.
To me.
Let's see Dr. Phil.
This stinks to high heaven.
Sure does.
Sure does, Daddy-O.
There's something wrong there, folks.
All right.
I really appreciate you tuning in today.
Read that article.
Show Notes is packed with great material today.
Matt Palumbo's article debunking that Australia thing is there.
So please check us out, Bongino.com.
If you subscribe to my email list, of course, we'll get it right to you.
And check out my NRA TV show tonight, 5.30 p.m.
Eastern Time, available at NRATV.com, Roku, Amazon Fire, and Apple TV.
Thanks again for tuning in, folks.
We'll be announcing winners soon.
The Dance Contest, keep sending them my way.
Me and my wife are really getting a kick out of them.
We'll see you all soon.
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