Ep. 718 Was There a Spy Embedded in the Trump Team?
Summary:
Today’s edition of liberal myth-busting takes on some net neutrality myths.
A terrific piece about the war on wisdom.
Why are wages not going up, given the hot economy?
Conservatives under attack on another college campus.
A piece about Stefan Halper that will open your eyes.
More on Stefan Halper and his Russian allegations.
What was Hakluyt’s role in the spying scandal on the Trump team?
“Who is the source” is the most important question in D.C. right now.
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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 today?
It's Friday!
Ready to go, baby!
Yeah, I don't get the weekends off.
I wish I did.
Sundays sometimes, but I think even this Sunday I'll have to work a little bit too.
That's alright, no big deal.
Yesterday, folks, I got a lot to talk about still on this sore story.
Kim Strassel, amazing piece in the Wall Street Journal today.
So good.
I'm going to break my rules and put it in the show notes, even though it may be subscription only.
I'm not sure.
If you go to her Twitter, though, Her Twitter feed, I think you can read it free.
If not, I'll summarize some of it today.
I know I'm going to get some backlash.
Every time I put a Wall Street Journal article in the show notes, I get backlash saying it's subscriptional.
It's so good, though.
You gotta love Kim, man.
She's great, isn't she?
She's terrific.
She's been doing amazing work on this.
It's about how damaging the source story is.
Who is the source?
The question we've been asking for the last few days, of course, is, if you've been listening, Who is the source for the FBI?
Who has been feeding information to the FBI and the Mueller investigation about the Trump team?
And what does that mean, Joe?
It means that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in conjunction with the Department of Justice and White House, was not only using signal intelligence, in other words, wiretaps, unmasking, interception of communications, to spy on the Trump team.
But it was using a human source?
What the heck?
I'm not laughing.
This isn't funny.
Yeah.
This is like serious Deep State stuff.
Deep State, you guys are all conspiracy theorists.
Yeah, unless it actually happens and it's not so much a conspiracy theory.
I wish it were.
I hope this all goes away tomorrow and someone goes like Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons.
All a joke.
We were just kidding.
None of this really happened.
I'm not looking for the dismantling of the Constitutional Republic to make a political point, unlike many liberals out there.
Nothing would please either Joe or me more than to hear this is all a big bad joke and none of this really happened.
Unfortunately, it did.
Who is the Source is now the biggest story in Washington D.C.
It's like, who shot J.R.?
I don't remember Dallas very well, Joe, but that was a big story, who shot J.R.
Huge, huge.
If I remember, and you may not even know this, I don't mean to put you on the spot, I think it was a dream sequence, right?
He really wasn't shot or something like that?
I can't remember.
You're right, yeah.
But this is not, in fact, a dream.
This actually happened.
There is an actual human spy working within the Trump campaign who is feeding information, has foreign connections, we know this from media reporting, and has been working with the Mueller team.
Oh my gosh, this is a huge story.
So this has taken over all of basically the DC scuttlebutt is about this.
Who's the source?
Who's the source?
So I got some more on that I want to get to.
Also some other stories.
A really great blog piece about economics today, which I found fascinating.
I think you'll love too.
Actually, the comments are more fascinating than the blog piece, but it's super good.
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Alright.
Who was the source?
So...
A lot of fascinating information.
There's a lot of speculation, I'll be honest, me included, because it's so interesting, the story, I can't seem to let this thing go.
But now we know, according to Devin Nunez's inquiries, the Republican congressman from California, that there apparently was a human spy inside the Trump team.
It's like, whoa!
You know, neutron bomb just dropped on Washington, D.C.
there.
That's just for Beckett Adams at the Washington Examiner.
That's not real.
It wasn't a real neutron bomb, okay?
I'll get to that in a minute, too.
He's probably waiting to hear what I have to say.
That guy's really jumped the shark completely.
That's a whole other story.
Now, Kim Strassel brings up some key questions.
We have been told from the start about this entire investigation into Trump by the FBI that it was started, Joseph, by a meeting in May of 2016 between a Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, and Alexander Downer in a London bar, an Australian diplomat.
We have been told this repeatedly over and over and over again.
Now, folks, I know some of you are fatigued by the story I get, and I have a lot of the stuff I'm going to get to today, but please, this is super important.
Because when we find out who this is, it is going to be, I think this is going to be one of those eureka moments where we're like, oh, now it all makes sense.
Hmm.
Strassel brings up an interesting question, Joe.
Did the source start working with the FBI before Or after the Papadopoulos meeting in May of 2016.
Joe, why would that matter?
Now, I'll explain to you.
It's actually me just throwing it out there, using you as a proxy for the audience.
Why would it matter?
It would matter because if the source was working with the FBI prior to the Papadopoulos meeting in a London bar, Papadopoulos being a Trump campaign team member, and Alexander Downer, it throws the FBI's entire story out the window.
If the FBI story has been the entire time, Joe, that this Trump campaign team member, Papadopoulos, met in a bar with this guy, Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, and Papadopoulos mentioned something about Hillary emails, but a source was working within the Trump team before that?
Then obviously, Joe, you see where I'm going with this?
The FBI story about, oh, well, Papadopoulos started the whole thing is wrong.
I'm surprised I didn't think of that.
Yeah.
It's clear.
No, listen, a lot of people wouldn't.
Strassel talks about this in her piece today.
It's a great point.
When did the source start working with the FBI?
If the source started working with the FBI before the Papadopoulos meeting, Houston, we got a problem.
Because your story about how the case started is wrong.
There's another point to this, Joe.
OK.
Funny, I'm watching Fox right now.
Kim Strassel's piece is fantastic.
They have a highlight of it up on the screen now.
Another point, Joe.
The FBI story, again, so point number one, just to sum up the entire time, has been that the case started when a Trump aide started talking about Hillary emails to this guy Downer, who basically called up American Intel and said, hey, this guy knows something about Hillary's emails.
The Trump team's colluding with the Russians about Hillary's emails.
If the FBI had a spy in the campaign that was working before Papadopoulos, then clearly a case started before Papadopoulos!
You're lying!
You're lying!
In my very worst Oprah voice.
Remember Oprah when she used to sell books?
My mother used to watch Oprah.
Why is this interesting also?
Joe, if the source started working with the FBI before the Papadopoulos meeting, the FBI alleges started the investigation, then who sent Papadopoulos or who sent Downer into that bar to get that information?
I noticed I said that right.
I didn't screw that up.
Who sent Papadopoulos or who sent Downer into that bar to inquire or get information about Hillary's emails?
I don't know if you're picking up what I'm putting down here.
In other words, what is the premise we've been operating on the entire time during this show?
That this was a setup the whole time.
Yes.
This was a sting operation being run against the Trump team.
Hey guys, look, we got Hillary's emails.
It wasn't the Russians doing it.
It was Hillary pushing, it was Hillary's team pushing people into People working with Hillary's team incentivizing Trump people to say things about Hillary's email so they could later say, look, they were colluding with the Russians on Hillary's email.
Please tell me this makes sense.
Because if that setup and the premise of the setup and the core of the setup doesn't make sense, nothing I'm telling you makes sense.
Yeah, you're cool.
You're cool.
Okay, good.
If the FBI story, which, by the way, conveniently covers the FBI's butts, That a Trump aide in a London bar said, hey man, I got information about Hillary's email, started this whole thing.
Notice how that reflects on the FBI.
Oh, look, we were just responding to a Trump aide speaking out about potential collusion with the Russians who may have stolen Hillary's email.
We were just doing our thing.
But if that's not the story, Joseph, and the story is somebody sent someone into that bar or somebody was in that bar or somebody set up that meeting in that bar with the sole intent of the Russian email topic coming up to frame the Trump team and to say, look, Papadopoulos said something about Russian emails.
Look what they did.
Now let's spy.
You got a damn big problem you're going to have to iron out.
Now does it make sense, Joe, why the DOJ and the FBI are desperate to hide this name now?
I know a few people in this movement.
I've been honored and privileged enough, and I mean that thanks to your support, to have grown a pretty large podcast and people, I guess, I don't know, take us seriously, who may not have when a hundred people were listening.
So I know that people know the name of the source.
I'm pretty confident I think who it is.
I've been kind of tossing around some ideas because I don't think it's a sole source operation.
But there's some people out there who've been doing some homework on this, who are speculating on the name.
Now, yesterday we dove into a number of source possibilities.
It may not be this specific source, but sources, and we backed it up yesterday talking about Nader, how reporting, George Nader, how public reporting has already said that he's been a source in this case and is working with the Mueller team.
We're just quoting the sources that already are publicly available.
That's why I say I don't believe it's a sole source operation.
And not being CNN, we're not going to mention it until it's verified.
No, and I'm not.
I'm not.
But I will say this.
There is, again, information we've already put out in the past, and I don't want to connect the two, so don't make any assumptions here, but there's information we've put out in the past on an operator in this case who elicits an inordinate amount of suspicion due to his contacts with the intelligence community.
Now, If you're a regular listener to the show, you probably remember the name Stefan Halper.
Stefan Halper is an interesting character in this case.
In addition to the Papadopoulos downer meeting, again, which the FBI alleges started this whole case, but may not be the case.
That may not, in fact, be true, which would be devastating to them.
There are other people who approached Papadopoulos as well.
Why this focus on Papadopoulos?
I have to be candid with you folks.
I'm not completely sure.
Is it he was a weak link?
Is it that they felt he had loose lips and loose lips sink ships?
Is it they felt that he was just naive and was He could be an easy patsy for them.
I don't know.
I don't know the reason.
I can't get in their heads.
My guess is he just was in over his head, they saw him as an easy target, and they figured they needed an end to the Trump campaign to frame him for a collusion fairy tale, and this was a guy who didn't have enough savoir-faire, whatever it is, to figure out he was being played.
Hence the contact with Downer, and the contact months later Remember, he meets with Downer in May.
Months later, he's approached in September.
Now he's approached this time, again, by another guy, Stefan Halper.
Stefan Halper is one interesting character.
Now, Chuck Ross at The Daily Caller, you've heard that name before, too.
He's not part of the scheme.
I don't mean it that way.
Remember, the name usually has a negative connotation in my show.
Chuck is an investigative reporter who's done some just phenomenal work at The Daily Caller.
I'm going to put an older piece that's been in the show notes before in the show notes again today about Halper that he did.
That's incredible.
You can't read it and not be suspicious of what Halper did.
So Joe, in September, September 13th of 2016, Stefan Halper approaches George Papadopoulos and says to him, allegedly, So, George, you know about those Hillary emails.
Joe, I don't know about you, but am I sensing desperation now that they're trying to set up Papadopoulos?
The Downer meeting happened in May.
Nothing really came of it.
Papadopoulos is alleged to have said, hey, someone has Hillary's emails, which everybody already knew anyway.
It's not working well.
The FBI is having trouble with this investigation getting any hard evidence to keep it going.
So would it make sense then that somebody would walk into the Trump orbit and try this again?
This time, Halper's a little more direct according to the allegations made against him.
That Halper actually says to Papadopoulos, hey George, you know about those emails?
Basically, I don't know, waiting for him to say yes.
Look, we got it!
Someone in the Trump team knows about Hillary's stolen emails.
Collusion!
Collusion!
Why is Halper a fascinating fellow?
Well, Halper's connections are deep.
His political connections are deep.
His intelligence connections are deep.
Halper's, through marriage, has deep connections to managers within the Central Intelligence Agency.
Halper also was a Cambridge Fellow and a member of that Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.
On that Cambridge Intelligence Seminar was also Richard Dearlove, who was the former head of MI6, a British intelligence entity.
They were on this Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, and Dearlove and him suspiciously quit this Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Joe.
I'll put this article in the show notes.
Conveniently timed around the election, saying, hey, there's too much Russian influence, they may be spying on us here.
I'm telling you, folks, the fix was in from the beginning to put the blame on the Russians and Russian collusion if Trump were to win.
That appears to me to be the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page insurance policy.
It's clear as day.
It's clear as day.
Now, what's interesting also about Halper, not only his connections to the CIA through marriage, Not only is connections to British intelligence, who we know at this point, based on CNN's own reporting, some former British intelligence people and connected people connected to the British intelligence apparatus.
We know, according to CNN's own reporting, we're passing information on Trump to the United States.
That's a scandal in and of itself.
It's the scandal Judge Knapp got in trouble with for talking about on Fox News.
Why did the British respond so forcefully?
Why didn't they respond against CNN that already reported on this?
By the way, they have not retracted the story that British intelligence passed information to US intelligence about Trump.
Halper... Halper's involved with this British company, remember the names, Hacklet.
Hacklet is a British company full of former British spies.
Halper co-authored a book with the United States representative for this company that houses former British spies, a guy named Jonathan Clark.
I'm gonna put this together for you in a second.
Just try to follow me.
I'm trying to set up a fact basis to interconnect these things so this makes sense.
Okay.
Hacklet is where Christopher Steele was associated with them as well.
Hacklet may in fact, Joe, be the British version of Fusion GPS.
An opposition research company full of former intelligence people, or in the Fusion GPS case, reporters, whose sole purpose is to gather intelligence using their former connected people in the intelligence community in the UK and the United States themselves.
They get paid.
Hacklet's private, Joe.
It is not a government entity.
Hacklet gets paid to get intel.
Intel is valuable, both in politics and in the business community.
By the way, I'm not suggesting any of this is illegal, what Hacklet's doing.
This happens all over the place.
I actually met with a guy once who wanted to consider...
I asked me to consider joining one of these type firms, former Secret Service and other folks, and you go out through legal means and you just get openly available information on the internet.
You provide like an intelligence portfolio.
Sure.
You know, I wasn't really interested at the time.
I know things going on, but I'm not, I want to be clear.
I'm not suggesting this is illegal.
The part I'm worried about is how this information made it into an FBI investigation that may have, in fact, at a minimum, been unethical.
You gathering negative intelligence on a political opponent is as old as political racists themselves.
Using it to fund a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI?
No, we have a problem there.
Yeah, I understand.
You see the point I'm making?
This is the setup.
People keep approaching this Papadopoulos.
Again, let me be clear, I don't know why.
Maybe he's weak.
Maybe he wasn't.
Maybe Papadopoulos knew something himself.
I don't know.
But they keep approaching, somebody's out there, the, who's that guy in the Avengers movie now, the bad guy, Thanos, Thanos, the big bad guy.
There's a Thanos out there somewhere, working with the Democrats in the United States saying, we need an insurance policy against Trump if he gets elected.
The insurance policy is going to be this, they colluded with the Russians to win, in the event they win.
How do we do that?
I've got an idea.
We're going to send people into the Trump sphere repeatedly saying, look, we've got Hillary's emails.
The Russians got Hillary's emails.
What do you want to do about it?
This happens over and over and over.
The Agalarovs.
You have the Millian connection.
You have Alexander Downer.
You have Stefan Halper.
It happens.
It's the entire premise of my book.
It happens over and over and over again.
I use the analogy with Joe a lot.
If someone knocks on your door every day, someone you don't know and have never met, and repeatedly asks you to go and rob a bank with them, there's only two possible answers to this.
Number one, they want you to rob a bank with them.
Or number two, they're framing you for robbing the bank.
Right?
What's the third scenario?
There isn't one.
Papadopoulos clearly and Carter Page were the weak links.
Now, I bring this up in terms of who the source is, because there's a lot of speculation out there about who it is, and Halper's name has come up amongst many people who've done good work.
I'm not knocking their work.
And I'm just not ready yet to commit to that one person, because I'm not really sure.
There are a number of potentials here.
Now, Hacklet.
Hacklet is likely the United Kingdom's Fusion GPS.
If Hacklett has some kind of, and I believe I understand now, the incentive for the, again, the United Kingdom and former British intelligence people to go all in on this anti-Trump thing.
One of the angles, I believe, were the attacks on David Cameron, who people may have taken it personally.
Some of it may have had to do with Brexit.
The other angle, again, I'm not trying to tease or be a jerk with you at all.
I just have to be very careful with it because it's very, very sensitive and involves some Republicans that are really not going to like it.
A Republican, specifically.
But I'm pretty sure we have the motive.
Thanks to Denise, my co-writer.
But putting that aside for a minute, because you'll be the first to hear it.
They can't use formal intelligence channels because there would be a paper trail.
Remember Devin Nunes' interview with Maria Bartiromo, Joe?
We still have not found any official communication channels.
In other words, formal British intelligence operators have a formal relationship with the CIA, the NSA, and other folks in the United States in the intelligence community.
What will that do if those channels open up?
It'll generate what, Joe?
Paperwork!
They don't want a paper trail spying on Trump.
So what better way than to use this channel through the Senate, through Dianne Feinstein's office, and this Dan Jones, the Dianne Feinstein staffer, who's still working, according to reporting, on this anti-Trump project, and then pass the information through the State Department that is not an intelligence entity.
We already know that channel.
Cody Scheer and Sid Blumenthal passing information to Jonathan Weiner, who worked at the State Department.
He's already written about this.
Weiner had admitted to it in the Washington Post.
And then passing it to Victoria Nuland back to the FBI through John Kerry.
You notice how they're laundering the information, Joe?
Yeah.
Hacklet's the perfect way to do this because you have intelligence people who worked in the intelligence community, Joe, who still have the connections but have no government paperwork to generate because they don't work for the government anymore.
Who's buddies with people at Hacklet?
Stefan Halper.
Halper is a U.S.
citizen.
He has prior CIA connections through family.
He has connections to Hacklett and former British intel through his association with Dearlove, the former head of MI6 at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, which they conveniently leave because of Russian influence right around the election.
Amazing how that happened.
Halper also co-authored a book with Jonathan Clark Jonathan Clark is the domestic head in the United States of Hakluyt Operations.
Who's Hakluyt's parent company?
Their holding company?
Excuse me.
A company called Holdingham.
Now, I have a really good piece in the show notes from the Market Watch.
It's in the show notes.
Just click on the link.
Please read it.
It's so good.
I know you all are asking for visuals.
I get it.
They'll be in the book, and it's all going to come out and make sense.
And I do the visuals on my NRA TV show at night at 530, evening at 530 Eastern Time.
It's free.
NRATV.com.
Check it out.
I do visuals and charts at night.
Obviously, on a podcast, it's difficult.
I'm trying to paint a mental picture, and I do understand it's hard.
But the Market's Watch piece, it's by a guy named Carlson.
His last name's Carlson.
Read it.
He walks through it and links to this systematically, and maybe it'll make more sense when the show is over.
But it's important you understand the show and make these connections.
Hacklett, which has these former British Intel guys, who are perfect to launder information, Joe.
There's no official channels, right?
Right.
Hacklett's holding company is a company called Holdingham.
Yes.
Yes, it's Holdingham.
Now, on their board members, their board at the Holdingham, is a guy named Louis Sussman.
Sussman, nicknamed Joe the Vacuum Cleaner.
Why is he called the vacuum cleaner?
Because he sucks up money.
You suck!
He apparently... I did not plan that.
Sussman is nicknamed the vacuum cleaner because he sucks up money for Democratic donors.
That's not me.
Just read the article.
I didn't nickname him that.
That's apparently his nickname within Democratic circles because he's a prolific fundraiser.
Who is he a fundraiser for and a very good friend to?
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
So let's just walk through that again.
This guy Sussman sits on the holding company, the parent company, Hacklett, on the board.
He's a big fundraiser for Obama and is very close to Hillary Clinton.
The company they're the holding company for is Hacklett.
Full of British spies, which CNN has already reported British intelligence was passing information, spying on the Trump team, and passing it to American Intel.
A guy associated with people who work for Hacklet, this former association of British spies that gathers intel, is a guy named Stefan Halper.
Stefan Halper, who has connections in the CIA, and has co-authored a book with a hacklet guy who runs the US operation, who also approaches a Trump team member right around the election time and goes, hey George, you really know about those Hillary emails, right?
Right?
Right?
Is it possible that this guy could have been a source too?
And when did he make contact, if so?
Did he make contact?
You understand how deep this is?
By the way, Halper, one other angle on Halper.
He is a prior Republican operative.
This is important because remember what I've been telling you too.
Don't for a second think this was not a bipartisan operation to hit Trump.
Ladies and gentlemen, this was clearly, clearly a swamp operation.
Democrats and Republicans included.
And the angle we have on the United Kingdom's motive for taking Trump down is going to be very uncomfortable for one specific Republican.
Halper worked for Reagan.
Halper worked for Nixon.
Halper was not a Democrat-specific loyalist.
What did he do for Reagan, Joe?
He tried to do opposition research based on Ford's foreign policy contacts and foreign policy information.
In other words, he was an oppo guy.
He was quite familiar with running opposition intelligence-based operations against opposing political campaigns.
The Halper connection, folks, is extremely, extremely suspicious in this case.
So just to sum up, because I want to move on to some other things, but this is important.
I appreciate you bearing with me because we've been on this a long time and this is becoming a work of passion for me.
Not necessarily, really.
I don't, the yesterday's show was our second most listened to show ever, but this is really, this matters to me.
Again, the Trump team was spied on.
They were spied on based on a setup being guided by political operatives.
The setup was this.
Dirty up the Trump team by telling them the Russians stole Hillary's emails and get them to say they know about it.
People approached the Trump orbit.
Numerous people.
Sergey Millian, Agalarov, the Russian lawyer working with Fusion GPS who shows up at Trump Tower for the Trump Jr.
meeting.
Alexander Downer meets with a Trump orbit member, Papadopoulos, in a bar.
The FBI says, oh, that started the whole thing.
Now we find out there's a human source in this who's a U.S.
citizen.
The critical question, was that before that Papadopoulos meeting?
Because if it is, you're lying.
It is not possible then that Papadopoulos started the case if you already had a source working on the case.
Who is the source?
We already know Nader from yesterday.
George Nader.
In that meeting with Eric Prince and a Russian who was familiar with Clinton donors whose firm represented that Russian direct investment firm.
That Russian direct investment firm, their parent company, is a bank.
A bank who provided cover for a Russian spy who was taken down by Carter Page, who the FBI was spying on, alleging Russian collusion as a member of the Trump team.
This was the setup.
Who was the source the FBI was using to set them up?
Who was the guy?
Who was the guy either wearing the wire or reporting back to the FBI in these meetings with the Trump team?
I WANT THE TRUTH!
You can't handle the truth!
Jack, what was Halper doing emailing Papadopoulos?
They didn't know each other.
Papadopoulos himself has speculated that this was a spying operation.
Yeah.
A guy emails right before the election.
It's clear, Joe.
They're desperate at this point.
Yeah.
They're not biting on the Hillary email thing.
We got to get more.
Hey, Halper, email them.
Meet up with Papadopoulos.
They paid him $3,000 for a paper that they never used, by the way.
Halper's team.
Halper's, connected to a British intelligence firm.
The British intelligence firm, Hacklett.
Who sits on the board?
This is the coup de grace.
Who also sat on the board of Hacklett?
He's since left.
But still associates with them, according to reporting out there?
Alexander Downer, the same guy who meets with Papadopoulos in the bar in May and is alleged to have started this entire investigation.
The same Alexander Downer sits on the board of Hacklett associated with Halper who's also approaching the Papadopoulos orbit trying to get information about Hillary's emails.
Downer sat on the board of Hacklett Downer signed a memorandum of understanding between the Australian government and the Clinton Foundation for a 25 million dollar transfer that's since been investigated for potential fraud.
You see how this hacklet sphere, this company of former British spies, it's all running through there?
What better way to launder information by not using formal channels and using informal channels of former spies.
No government paperwork's generated.
Your paper trail disappears.
Awful lot of political nepotism going on here.
Oh, man.
Is it the network of people and relationships and people who know each other.
It's just disturbing.
It's amazing.
Does that make sense, what I said, folks?
Yeah, it does.
Does to me.
All right, good, because it's super important.
All right, I got a lot of other stories to get through.
She's got a lot else.
Sometimes in the morning I get so excited I stumble over my own words sometimes, which is all right.
My wife knows when I'm really into a story.
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Okay.
Moving on.
So we will find out who the source is soon, and when we do, it is going to be explosive, and if it's one of the names I mentioned, I will be happy to bring this up again next week.
Yesterday, something happened yesterday I wanted to fill you guys in on, because a lot of you ladies and gents out there, our view is in my NRA TV show at night, I appreciate it.
Again, it's 5.30 Eastern Time, it's live every night of the week.
It's free.
NRATV.com.
We just refreshed the website and it's really pretty killer right now.
Oh, we can't say that.
We can't say that.
I forgot the snowflake crowd, the snowflake crowd.
They don't get anything, Joe.
I had to put a sign up.
This is not a threat because anytime you say anything with the snowflakes, they lose their minds.
So something happened on the show two days ago and it was interesting.
I was giving kind of, my show, by the way, folks at NRATV is not, There's no copy written for me.
It's... Joe knows the term.
It's kind of an industry term for when people give you things to read.
I don't do that.
I don't read off a tele... I have a teleprompter on my studio, but it's not... There's no copy in it.
It's not scrolling text.
I see in my teleprompter what you see at home, and if you watch the show, you'll see what I'm talking about.
When a tweet comes up on the screen, I'll point to it, because I'm seeing what you're seeing in the teleprompter.
I want to be clear.
This is important.
I'm not trying to bore you to death.
This is just a warning for people thinking about getting in this business about what's going to happen.
Yeah.
I do something most people don't do.
I'm not patting myself on the back.
I'm just saying, I do my show extemporaneously.
That's it.
There is no copy written for me.
That's important because at the end of the show, two days ago, I was discussing voter turnout in the primary elections in West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana that were held this week.
I was using a tweet by a Republican operative named Chris Wilson, who I respect.
He's a really nice guy.
I interviewed him once at CRTV.
About how Republican turnout, I don't know if you saw this story by the way folks, was very high.
Extremely high.
Matter of fact, near record highs in some of these places.
Republican turnout, I didn't get that backwards.
Meaning that the blue wave, listen I still believe there's going to be significant Republican losses, especially in the House, but The blue wave theory that the Democrats are going to wipe us out in the 2018 election show is premised entirely on the fact that Democrat turnout is going to swamp us.
I was simply making the point that that doesn't appear to be the case everywhere.
At least in Ohio, West Virginia, and Indiana, Republican turnout was better than Democrats.
I mean, this isn't a difficult point, folks, to understand for the liberals listening who are having a tough time comprehending the point I was trying to drive home.
If your blue wave theory is that Democrats are so mad they're gonna turn out in droves and Republicans don't care, you would think you'd have the numbers to back that up, and in some places you do.
The point I was trying to make, Joseph, is that's not everywhere.
Right.
The turnout in these primaries was crystal clear.
It was very high for Republicans.
I then, because again the show is from my head, there's no copy written for me, as I usually do, Got into a discussion about how winning elections is going to be based on some sense of collective sacrifice and suffering.
And you know, I'm always hesitant to use those terms sometimes because of the stupid class.
You have to liberal.
I call it liberal-splaining.
You know, they have that thing, mansplaining, whatever.
You have to liberal because liberals are just, a lot of them, not all of them, are not very bright.
And they're eager to be victims.
So, oh, threats, threats, whatever.
So you have to be very careful with your language, unlike liberals who can say whatever they want and get away with it because they're liberals.
You know, they don't have any real ethics.
So I made the point at the end about how, Joe, you're going to have to go out in the heat and you can listen to the segment yourself.
It's available.
I didn't put the clip up.
I don't want to bore you.
I've done enough clips of me.
It's hot, it's the summer, but we're gonna have to go out, we're gonna have to knock on doors, we're gonna have to chin up support for strong, conservative candidates.
This is the fight we're in.
It requires a little bit of suffering.
And I use the chess analogy.
I'm not a big chess player, but I am fascinated by the intellectual, you know, the chops it takes intellectually to play the game and play it well and proficiently.
So I used the chess analogy and I said at the end that in the midterm elections that it was going to be important to get out and vote because if we lose the House, Trump will be impeached, which I believe he will.
Now whether he's convicted in the Senate trial is, I've already said, I think is not going to happen, but you can be impeached and not convicted.
It's like an indictment and then you get off a trial.
And after that, and this is my mistake, because I assumed liberals had brains, and that was my fault.
I will never do that again.
I used the chess analogy, and I said, you know, that talking about the suffering and the sacrifice, that it would be time to go out and protect the crown.
Of course, liberals and some conservative imbeciles who hate everyone, who out there, that's not, you know, part of their little circle of toolboxes, pounced.
And there's a There's another story I can't get into about the tweet.
There was a tweet sent out that was cut off at the exact moment.
I'm not going to get into it.
It was cut off at the wrong spot.
I was not talking, a matter of fact, I immediately sensing, Joe, that knowing I'm gonna have to liberal-splain that.
Remember, the show's off the cuff.
I said, I'm not talking about a monarch here, President Trump.
I was referring to midterm elections, Trump's not even on the ballot, and a strategic chess analogy, how we're all going to have to, like in chess, you sacrifice some of your players to protect what matters to you.
That's what I was talking about.
If you listen to the clip, it's clear as day.
A bunch of knuckleheads and liberals on Twitter jumped the gun.
This guy's talking about tyranny and Trump's a king!
They didn't listen to the clip.
None of them.
Because the ones that did had to come back later and apologize, including Joe Walsh, who I don't know what's up with this guy.
He's a former congressman.
He's a Republican, by the way.
But he did apologize.
Oh, well, I listened to the clip now.
Well, thanks.
Maybe you should have listened to it first before you commented.
But I wake up this morning, and this is why I'm bringing this up.
If you get into this space, and I know many of you want to because I get emails about how do I start a podcast, how do I start a blog, I want you to expect this and just be ready for it.
It's not snowflakey, I don't have a thick skin, I'm not going to lie to you, it still bothers me, but I'm used to it and I understand this.
I wish it weren't, but it is.
This is part of the space.
You are going to get attacked.
As viciously by establishmentarian so-called conservatives as you are by liberals.
I know you think that's crazy.
Why would they do that?
We're all on the same team.
No, no, we're not.
We are not on the same team.
This happens to me two or three times a week where some blue checkmark buffoon on Twitter who claims to be a conservative like this Beckett Adams at the Washington Examiner Who didn't even watch the clip, or if he did, he was too dumb to understand the chess analogy.
Comments, he says, Dan Bongino, like he's mocking me.
The Second Amendment's necessary to safeguard against tyranny.
Dan Bongino, protect the crown.
To protect the crown was a strategic reference to chess, to protect those rights.
Beckett's not smart enough to understand that.
He's a blight on the Washington Examiner, which otherwise is a very good outlet.
But I'm just warning you.
That there is a group of people that what they do is they go out and drink on Friday nights in bars in DC.
I'm not kidding.
I've been invited to this gathering of buffoons.
Soirees.
These soirees.
They celebrate themselves.
They have semi-decent followings on Twitter.
Now, I don't bring this up to sound like a pretentious jerk.
I'm just saying.
There is money to be made in commentary.
There always has been.
People pay for commentary.
Sponsors pay to be on Rush Limbaugh.
Advertisers pay to be on Fox News.
You want the commentary other people pay for.
There is money in this.
When you grow a profile, if it happens to you.
When you become a Ben Shapiro, or a Steven Crowder, or a Jordan Peterson, or anything else, there are going to be people out there, and I'm not, listen, I'm not getting into their content, I know Steve's a great guy, I'm just saying, there are going to be people in the conservative movement who view that as zero-sum, Joe.
You and I have seen this firsthand.
From the beginning.
From the beginning.
Your success is taking money out of their pockets.
Don't doubt me for a second.
If you want to get in this space, just wait for it.
They will ignore you and ignore you and ignore you.
And the minute you get even a slight foothold, ours has become a mage.
I mean, we were the camel's nose under the tent.
We've now taken over the tent.
We're the second or third biggest podcast in the country.
Thank you.
Thank you exclusively to you, by the way.
That is your doing.
People now put the bullseye on your back because they see it as you taking something from them.
It's disgusting.
It happens all the time.
I usually, I try not to get into this a lot because it's, I get it, it could come off as snowflakey, and that's not my bag of chips.
But for what it's worth, this happens every week, and this is the first time I brought it up.
Because it's such an obvious example of a hit job from an idiot who wasn't even clever enough to watch the clip.
Or if he was, he doesn't understand chess analogies, yet commented on it anyway.
And you know what?
To be fair, my fault, again, for assuming That the intelligentsia conservative class that meets in the bars on Friday night... By the way, you got to see them walking out of the bar.
It's embarrassing.
I've been to one of these.
It's pretty disgusting.
It is.
It's... I mean, seriously, get a hold of yourself.
It's my fault for assuming that they would understand what I was talking about.
I will be clear in the future to liberal-splain everything.
And by the way, thanks to the liberals that attacked me yesterday, And I'm not trying to play tough guy.
It bothered me the whole day.
It ruined my whole day yesterday.
I'm not trying to gloss over this.
But the NRA TV show last night was the largest audience we've ever had by far.
And the clip on Twitter, Joe, has now been viewed over 300,000 times.
So I don't know who you think you were hurting in the long run by going after me for something you didn't understand while simultaneously tweeting out the clip yourself.
Really stupid.
All right, I want to get to this story because it's really, really good.
So yesterday, I don't know where I got this.
This may be from a listener, I'm not really sure.
But I have a blog post up at, forgive me, I'm killing Joe today.
Poor guy.
I should have this up and ready to roll, but I don't because I've been so busy talking about this stuff.
We'll leave this in.
Yeah, leave this in.
This is a blog post from econlog.econlib.org.
Yeah, leave it in.
And it's good.
It's a response to a Paul Krugman article on the wage paradox.
Now, it's super short.
It's not long.
But I want you to do me a favor.
It's in the show notes today.
Read the comments at the bottom because it's a fascinating discussion about a very serious puzzle right now that's going on.
The piece is fascinating.
Here's the wage paradox right now.
The economy is super hot right now.
We know that.
Unemployment's dropping.
We know that capital investment's happening.
We know money's being inserted back into the economy thanks to the corporate tax cuts the Trump team signed and the Republican House and Senate pushed through.
Good job on that.
The paradox here, Joe, is why aren't people making more money?
I mean, in general.
There's obviously trends in specific fields, but...
You would think, for this level of economic growth, that wages would be increasing substantially.
And the big paradox, and Krugman's a lefty, and I don't really have a lot of respect for a lot of stuff he says, he seems to be more of a politician these days, but it is an interesting enough commentary on, you know, his commentary on why wages aren't going up.
So, I wanted to propose to you a couple of different theories that are brought up in the comments that are fascinating.
The general overall theory on this is that, well, globalization.
That's what's covered in the premise of the piece.
Well, globalization.
In other words, Joe, you know, listen, your wages aren't going up as a sound engineer and executive producer of a podcast because I can just call someone in India, China, Vietnam or whatever in a globalized economy and say, you know, hey, you know, Joe from India, can you do this cheaper?
Yeah.
You know, I mean, I'm not going to tell you what Joe gets paid, but someone could say, say, you know, what's Joe getting paid?
Joe's getting paid X. I'll do it for half of X. You get what I'm saying?
So that's keeping the competition hot for your job amongst people in lower wage economies that are competing away your salary.
Joe, that was not the case in a non-globalized economy where we didn't have the internet and the communications infrastructure we had now.
What was I gonna do, you know?
I can send an email to India now.
50 years ago, what were you gonna do?
Pay $30 a day for a long-distance call to India to arrange a podcast?
There was no podcast.
It wasn't gonna happen.
You see my point, Joe?
You're competing with a big pool of workers that are driving your wages down.
The problem, though, and this is what I like about the piece, again, it's super short, as the author brings up, is, well, that doesn't make a lot of sense, Joe, because Demand for labor here is super hot right now as well.
So in other words, if there's this oversupply globally of labor, and it's making all of us irrelevant, and we're being competed away by foreign workers, then why is it that companies are still putting up signs for U.S.
workers like, hey, come work here, we'll train you.
That's happening right now.
You get the point, Joe?
Yeah.
You can't make simultaneously two separate arguments.
Argument number one, You know, where, hey, listen, global demand is driving down demand for U.S.
workers.
Point number two, but there's still hot demand for U.S.
workers.
It doesn't make sense.
If there's still hot demand for U.S.
employees, then U.S.
employees' wages would be going up, not down or stagnant.
So he says, I'm going to scrap that theory.
Here's another theory, this is mine, this isn't in the piece, but one of the theories I have is skill loss.
The Obama economy, and I'm not taking an unnecessary shot at the guy, I'm just telling you, the Obama economy was bad.
I'm not going to argue that, the numbers speak for themselves.
In that Obama economy, we had record low labor force participation.
In other words, people exited the workforce, sometimes for long periods of time.
Joe, when you got into even let's say 10 years ago, would you make, can I make a strong case using you and as an example, that in the last 10 years your skill set while you worked exclusively in terrestrial radio at WCBM and your skill set now are almost entirely different?
Yeah, absolutely.
Did you have any idea, but be honest, did you have any idea how to start or maintain a podcast before this?
You know, I didn't, no.
No, we learned.
You knew sound engineering, you knew Adobe Audition, but how to fit that into a RSS feed, how to advertise it, how to load it to Spotify, iHeart, how to tag stuff, this was all new.
Well, not how to tag stuff, but it was all a new skill.
I know, Joe and I walked YouTube, you and I had to figure that out with Paula.
We didn't know what we were doing.
Joe's skill set's entirely different now.
But Joe, what if you were out of the workforce 10 years?
Now, you come back in.
You're still the same guy you were 10 years ago at CBM, but you've been out of the workforce due to a bad economy.
The employer, you're looking for a healthy salary.
You want, say, 60K.
You submit your resume.
You go in for the interview.
The employer goes, Joe, are you familiar with RSS Feed, Spotify, iHeart?
Joe's looking going, um, nope.
Sorry, but I know the soundboard at WCBM pretty well, which is complicated in and of itself.
You see the point I'm trying to make, folks?
The Obama economy was so bad, there was such a dramatic and collective loss of skills amongst employees out of the workforce, that as they come back in, they're driving down the wages because they have to demand less.
In other words, Joe goes into that interview, there's four or five people applying, They can, you know, say that three out of the four are super skilled, and then they have Joe.
They go, well, listen, we got potential with this guy, but he's been out of the workforce ten years.
But here's the good news.
Because he doesn't have the skills, we can train him, but we can pay him $10,000 less than these other guys.
Make sense?
The skill loss, collectively, probably is playing a role in driving down wages.
Couple other points.
One of them is monetary policy.
In other words, we've been printing the snot out of money.
Which does what?
Makes the money we all have now worth less.
Common sense, right?
If we print $100 to chase 100 bagels, each bagel could fetch $1.
chase a hundred bagels, each bagel could fetch a dollar. If we print $200 to
fetch a hundred bagels, each bagel, the cost inflate is going to go up.
Each bagel can cost two dollars, but there's still only a hundred bagels.
There's not two.
There's just more money, but there's the same amount of product.
So inflation goes up, making things cost more.
Meaning what?
That people may be getting some nominal raise.
In other words, hey Joe, we'll give you a hundred dollars extra more, but it's not buying anything new because money's worth less.
One of the other theories, that a lot of this inflation is being driven by rent.
Rent inflation.
Due to housing policies.
So in other words, it's not just monetary policy, Joe, but it's super strict zoning in big cities that's driving rents through the roof.
That, in other words, why aren't wages going up?
Well, they are!
They just don't pay for anything because people can't afford their rent.
One more.
Healthcare costs.
The damaging effects of Obamacare.
So again, the big question, just to pull it out to 30,000 feet, this is a huge paradox amongst economists right now, and there's not one consensus answer on what's happening.
The economy is expanding rapidly.
Why can't people buy more stuff?
That's the question.
You get it, Joe?
Why can't people buy more stuff?
Inflation may play a role.
Skill loss driving wages down.
One other theory is Obamacare.
Obamacare and the general decline in health care quality and the rise in costs.
So employers, Joe, may be getting more nominal money, but it's going to pay for health benefits that just cost more than they did 10 years ago.
So you're not getting anything.
You're effectively at the same place you were 10 years ago because you're paying for the same benefits just with more money.
It's a really good piece, but I encourage you, again, read the comments.
It's a fascinating discussion on rent inflation, inflation, monetary policy, skill loss, globalization.
Real good.
If you have any interest in economics like I do, it's a really great piece.
I strongly encourage it.
Hey, one more story here quickly.
We have a really, Matt Palumbo has been doing, we hired him to do some, he doesn't work for my company, but he writes some pieces for me once in a while and, you know, we pay him for those pieces.
I just want to be clear, but he writes on this section called Debunk This.
Debunk this, I think, is the best debunking session website anywhere.
We put a lot of work into it.
You guys send recommendations, Matt debunks them.
He writes for some other places too, but he does really good work on my site.
He has a piece up today debunking some net neutrality myths, and it's absolutely terrific.
One of them that they're putting out there now, Joe, is that, oh, net neutrality, we got to pass it.
Or there's going to be a la carte pricing.
In other words, Joe, Yahoo's going to charge you.
Google's going to charge you.
Matt just destroys and annihilates that argument, in addition to some throttling arguments made, too.
I'll have it at the show notes.
It's up at the bunk, this.
But please go check it out.
And please go shop in the Chum store.
We've been selling out like crazy.
But there's still some Joey Bag of Donuts and other stuff out there.
