Ep. 723 The Surveillance State and Its Media Allies
Summary:
In this episode I address the troubling tactics of surveillance state regimes. I also address how some of these same tactics were used against the Trump team.
News Picks:
An illustrative piece by Andy McCarthy on The NY Times efforts to drive the new narrative on the spying operation against Trump.
More evidence that John Brennan knows more than he’s letting on.
An older piece that debunks the idea that Christopher Steele was the “source” of the dossier information.
The leaker in the Michael Cohen case will likely be prosecuted.
The president called MS-13 “animals.”
They are.
Is Google looking to vacuum up personal data?
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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.
All right, welcome to Dan Bongino's show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Feeling groovy, Dan, feeling groovy.
Yeah, man, yesterday was our biggest day ever.
Ever?
Ever!
Joe stealing words from the Scooby-Doo mystery machine.
Groovy!
Remember that?
I used to love Scooby-Doo.
Groovy!
That was one of my favorite cartoons, man.
When I was a kid, I loved that.
I totally dug Scooby-Doo.
Scooby!
Alright, we got a lot going on.
Yesterday's show, our biggest show ever, thanks to you.
Gosh, close to a record.
What we did yesterday in one show, we did About six months ago, in two or three days, we did in 12 hours yesterday.
So yesterday's show took off and it explains how the media is now moving on from the Russian collusion narrative onto the cover-up narrative.
They have to because it's all coming out and John Brennan is going to be left holding the bag going, oh, what do I do now?
Because he's in a world of trouble.
I got a lot of other stories to talk about that I missed during the week and some other angles on this that I think are interesting.
Andy McCarthy has a great piece in National Review, which will be in the show notes, which sums up a lot of this.
So this is terrific.
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All right.
What do we got?
First story, before we jump into some other stuff.
Remember my Trump theory, Joe, on Trump baiting these Democrats and the media?
Because they're the same thing.
I've put this theory out there repeatedly, how Trump has this magnificent ability to bait the media and the Democrats.
We know they're the same thing.
They're a symbiotic organism like, you know, venom.
And if you're a comic book fan, with the name of the guy he takes, what's the guy's name?
The bad guy.
I know you'll all email me afterwards at the show.
I don't know.
Yeah, I was kind of getting out of the whole comic book stage at that point.
But it's a symbiotic organism.
They work together, they feed off each other, they need each other's life energy, their chi or whatever.
Yin yang!
No, it's like the yin and yang.
Like, the yin and yang is the good and the bad, but the yang and the yang is like the bad and the bad, right?
Like, the yin and yang's meant there's some balance to the universe.
The universe is unbalanced because it's either a yin and a yin or a yang and a yang.
You got dopey Democrats and dopier media types, okay?
That's why the force is unbalanced.
We're just pulling analogies out of all kinds of pop culture today.
Well, my theory on this has been that Trump has a magnificent way using language, whether he knows it or not.
You know, I'm not suggesting, I want to be careful, that this is even deliberate on Trump's part a lot of the time.
Sometimes it just happens.
And what he does, Joe, is he has this fascinating ability to bait the media using Hyperbolic, I'm not even going to say over the top, but normal common everyday language that the foie gras eating crowd, the bow tie crowd, the media and cultural elites are not used to seeing in the media space and the public space.
Are we tracking?
We're cool.
The media is totally used to hearing this in their everyday lives.
Some of them.
Americans are used to hearing this in everyday lives.
F-bombs, cussing, this is the greatest thing ever, it's huge, these guys are jerks, screw them!
This is kind of the way people in everyday life, you know, talk.
In the public space, in the focus group tested world of politics, the media and the cultural elites and the Democrat elites are not used to hearing this from Republicans who were, you know, in the past have been coached to be castrated and to act as such in the public space.
Don't say that, the media will paint you as being a violent Neanderthal.
You gotta be very careful.
Yeah.
So what does Trump do?
He comes in, Joe, and drops a neutron bomb on political correctness and just starts talking however he talks.
Hey, people are gonna cross the border.
These people are dangerous.
Some of these people are rapists.
That was how he started.
You know, of course, it was immediately mischaracterized by the media.
But I had suggested in the show a little while ago that whether this is a deliberate strategy or not on the part of Donald Trump, the follow-up tactics definitely are.
Here's what I mean.
So what happens now?
I have a piece from Breitbart up at the show notes I encourage you to read where Trump has repeatedly referred to MS-13.
La Mara Salvatrucha gang members.
They are savages, they're animals, they're beasts, these people.
These MS-13 violent gang members, Joe, he has referred to them repeatedly.
I think Breitbart has nine instances, Charlie Spearing has a piece of it, it's at the show notes, where he's referred to them as animals.
Yeah.
What does this have to do with the current news?
Well, in case you missed it, he was in a White House Presser the other day, a meeting with some immigration folks and local sheriffs on immigration, and a woman asked a question about MS-13 to which Trump responded referring to them as animals.
Now, for any sane person, note that doesn't include people in the media, we're talking about sane people and liberals, so you guys can tune out now.
To sane people, he was obviously referring to the woman's question about MS-13 and his follow-up when he was referring to animals.
Yeah.
Now, the media, of course, immediately characterized that statement as, Trump calls immigrants animals.
That is not what happened.
Anybody who listened to it who has a brain knows that.
But again, I said have a brain, which does not include most media folks.
That's why a lot of them are liberal journalists.
They couldn't hack it anywhere else in actual real careers.
And when you talk to a lot of them, which I did running for office, you will be disturbed how dumb some of these people are.
I'm not kidding.
You may say, oh, that's harsh.
No, it's reality.
Yeah.
When you talk to some of them, you're like, this guy can't, and some of them were women too, this man, this woman can't possibly know this little about what I'm talking about.
They do.
I've been at editorial boards.
I've been talking to journalists for a long time, and I'm always astonished how dopey they are.
A lot of them.
Not all of them, but a good amount.
This is a tactic on Trump's part.
He calls MS-13 animals in the media.
Instead of the media now accurately characterizing his comments as Trump calls gang members savage gang members animals, that's not what they do.
They say Trump calls immigrants Animals.
Now they're forced into some form of a correction, but now in order to save face because they have Trump derangement syndrome and they can't control themselves, Joe, they get baited into an argument where they do what?
They have to defend an outrageously far-left position that makes them all look like idiots and fools, like Nancy Pelosi did the other day when she came out and said, Trump preferring these people.
These were all children of God all of a sudden.
Really?
Because that's funny.
We've been saying that for a long time.
We've been saying that for a long time, including children in the womb, but you've seemingly disregarded that, Nance.
Now, you don't seem to think human beings in the womb are animals, but you want to, uh, you know, are human beings, excuse me, but you're, you're offended now about MS-13 members being called animals.
I mean, it's a joke.
The point of this is he manages to do this all the time, Joe, where he takes a, an inflated over the top position using language or something else.
You know, build the wall and Mexico's going to pay for it.
Instead of Democrats coming back with what you would think would be a response like, hey, listen, we may disagree on how this is going to happen, but we do need a sensible immigration policy.
What do they do?
Democrats come back and start talking about people have a right to come to this country, taking an extreme far left position, which is Trump's purpose the entire time.
I believe after he comes out with this language, which is to get the Democrats to show their butts.
Does this make sense?
He does this all the time.
He does this all the time.
You tell me a position.
He takes an exaggerated, candidly sometimes impossible position, where he says something like, we're going to ban Muslims.
And he doesn't actually take that position until we can get, I think he said, until we can get a hold about what's going on.
He knows that's not going to happen, but I don't believe that's really his intention.
His intention is to get an exaggerated response from the left.
Always.
We're going to build this wall and Mexico's going to pay for it.
Folks, that's not going to happen.
I mean, the wall is probably going to happen, but making Mexico pay for the wall is, I mean, it's almost impossible.
You can do it through all kinds of But I don't believe that was his goal.
Now, this happened again with the animals comment.
He calls MS-13 animals, and instead of them coming back and questioning MS-13, maybe questioning the language a little bit, what does he do?
He's got Nancy Pelosi up on a nationally, not live televised, but at least the soundbites, nationally televised press conference in terms of using the soundbite defending MS-13.
Nobody is better at getting Democrats, other than Trump, to show their butts!
So now the Democrats, you know, open immigration!
MS-13, these are human beings too!
This is what he gets them to show their butts better than anyone!
That is why I believe, as I was reading a tweet by Dave Rubin the other day, who's a liberal but a pretty fair-minded and decent guy, He said in a tweet, he anticipates unprecedented participation in this upcoming presidential election by minority groups.
And I think a lot of that is going to be, at least relatively speaking to prior elections, is going to be unbelievable support for Trump.
Because I believe a lot of those groups, this is let me sum this up this way.
Step one, Trump uses inflated language.
Step two, instead of a more reasoned, delicate response to that, the Democrats come back with an equally ridiculous proposal on the left, which shows people who the left really is.
Open immigration!
MS-13 are, you know, these are human beings, they need to be treated with respect!
Step three.
People who have been fooled by the Democrats the entire time, who still believe this is a party of reasonable people, now see the Democrats for what they are.
Wait, let me get this straight.
You're saying MS-13 members, my neighborhood's being infiltrated by, not mine specifically, I'm talking as a generic voter, my neighborhood's been infiltrated by gang members and now Nancy Pelosi's on TV defending MS-13?
Nancy Pelosi's on TV talking about open immigration?
Nancy Pelosi's on TV talking about how a thousand dollar bonus I just got are crumbs?
Now all of a sudden people who have been fooled, what we would call persuadables, persuadable voters, who've been fooled by the Democrats all along, that they're reasonable Joe on immigration, they're reasonable on the economy, are now for the first time in a long time seeing the Democrats for who they are.
And who has masterfully done this?
Trump!
And he's done it through a very, I believe, very strategic, if not initial comments, I agree, sometimes he talks off the cuff.
I'm not suggesting the animals comment was pre-planned, although he said it before, as you'll see in the Breitbart piece today.
But I am suggesting to you that the response after the fact, whereas most Republicans, the castrated masses in the Republican Party, The establishment swamp rhinos who have no guts at all.
Joe, what would they have done?
They would have come out with a presser.
Ladies and gentlemen, we really were not referring to MS-13 as animals.
These are troubled young men and women in some cases in these gangs.
And we need a very delicate response and we need a robust social sciences department in the colleges to combat the psychology and sociology of gang violence and allegiance to violence principles.
Everybody's like, what are you talking about?
Are you like a crazy person?
Are you like a crazy person?
Meanwhile, what happens?
Trump comes out, doubles down the next day, flips the double barrel middle finger and goes, yeah, you know what?
Guess what?
It's his words.
Yeah, we're going to keep calling them animals because that's what they are.
Matter of fact, Kirsten Nielsen, the DHS secretary, comes out on Fox News this morning, I retweeted the tweet, and she's like, maybe the controversies we should have called them worse.
Good for you, DHS secretary Nielsen.
Maybe that's the controversy.
Maybe we should have called them swine instead.
What do the Democrats do?
MS-13.
They're not that bad.
They're just troubled young kids.
Meanwhile, Americans who are having their communities infiltrated by these animals, yes, animals, are sitting there like, wait, what, Nancy?
Nobody has been able...
No one has been able to get the Democrats to show their hides like this guy.
It has never happened.
And precisely because the Democrats are so used to dealing with Stockholm Syndrome Republicans, the Vichy Republicans, right?
They are so used to dealing with them that they really, I'm telling you, they don't have a tactical response to Trump.
They've not figured it out yet.
Nobody has yet put out Let me explain to you why, though.
Nobody has yet put out a collective strategy for how to deal with President Trump.
No one on the Democrat side.
No one I know.
A party strategy.
That's when I say collective.
I'm not talking about communist terms.
I'm talking about a party.
That's what a party is.
It's a national infrastructure for a group of ideas.
No one's put that out that I've seen yet.
Anything effective.
And here's the reason, Joe.
The left is catering, because of gerrymandering and all kinds of other things, to a far-left wingnut base that is dominating their primaries.
This far-left wingnut base in California and New York that dominates its primaries, meaning if you're running in a Democrat primary for Congress, for the Senate, for governor, for whatever it is, the people who show up in primaries to vote are usually your most passionate voters.
In the case of the Democrats, it's now the wingnuts.
They hate Trump so much that you almost stand zero chance of getting on the ballot and winning a primary as a Democrat.
If you do not come out and just dismantle this guy for everything he says, even when he says something rational like MS-13 or animals.
Is this making sense?
It's important we get this.
Having run for office, I know how this works, believe me.
You get a lot of pressure from organized groups, from people on both sides of the aisle.
Conservative groups do it too, and that's good.
We pressure people to abide by the Constitution.
There's nothing controversial about that.
But the money and the people who show up to actually put you on a ballot so you can run in the general, you have to win a primary first.
On the Democrat Party, the wingnuts are dominating it.
The wingnuts are pushing these people to do it.
Now, What's the problem with that?
You may say, okay, Dan, so if Democrats want to win a primary, they got to run to the wingnuts.
What's the big deal?
The big deal is the wingnuts are in California, New York, and some portions of Illinois.
The wingnuts, though, do not speak for voters in Pennsylvania who had thought in the past that the Democrat was the party of the little guy.
This is critical.
You know, coal miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Appalachia, areas throughout what the Democrats call flyover country now.
Even for some voters in Montana, you know, in Wyoming who may have grown up with the JFK Democrat model where there were blue dogs out there.
There's, for the first time, a lot of them are seeing these national press conferences going, wait, wait, my family's been voting for Democrats for generations.
And all of a sudden, tax cuts are crumbs.
Immigration doesn't matter.
Everybody should come here all the time, no matter what.
And MS-13 gang members, we should be defending them as human beings while Trump's calling them animals?
This is the destruction in lifetime of the Democrat Party.
This is why I think Trump's going to win re-election by a larger margin than he won the initial election, even though that was an Electoral College landslide.
You may say, oh, well, he lost the popular vote.
Exactly!
Proving my point, Joe!
The wingnuts are in California, New York.
The lefty wingnuts.
There's a lot of them, there's no doubt.
But they're only voting for California, New York.
If Trump was running for governor in California, New York, he'd get destroyed and the Democrat would win.
He's not.
He's running to be President of the United States and to represent the whole country.
And there is nobody better at him.
than him, of pointing out that the Democrats have turned into a party of far-left wingnuts.
To sum this up, he does it by making big, bold, enormous pronouncements, some of which practically, you know, frankly speaking, are probably impossible.
He makes these pronouncements and instead of doing what Republicans have done in the past and apologizing later, ah, I was a little insensitive in those comments, he doubles down.
And instead of the Democrats either ignoring it, Or giving a—I'm using air quotes here because, you know, the Democrats, nothing's rational—but a semi-rational, reasonable response.
What do they do, Joe?
They're pushed by their wingnut base in California and New York and the money people to give an incredibly outrageous, overwhelmingly ridiculous response in the other direction.
Which exposes those people, the Democrats, the Pelosi's and everyone, to a national audience of former Democrats who are reasonable moderate people who go, wait, wait, wait, wait, we're defending MS-13 now?
This is the genius of Trump!
I'm not, again, I'm not suggesting to be, I'm not kissing his butt or anything.
I'm not telling you he doesn't speak off the cuff like this was planned.
I'm telling you the tactical response to it afterwards is different That has been done in the past with the sellout Republican Vichy crowd.
Where all of a sudden, they're like hostages to the Democrats and the media.
They say something, and now the best way to fight back when the Democrats call you on something where you're not wrong, where Trump wasn't calling them animals, is just to go on the attack again!
Instead, Republicans in the past, oh my gosh, we've offended the media.
Joe, what are we going to do?
He does not do that.
He doubles down, says, ah, double-barreled middle finger to the media.
You guys are fake news.
We're ignoring you.
Tsk, tsk, go away.
Goodbye.
Oh, by the way, that's Nancy.
And then Kirsten Nielsen.
Maybe we should have called them worse.
Good for you.
Finally.
Some fortitude in this party.
Sheesh, it's been long enough, you know?
Gets me sick when you watch these people fold like a cheap suit.
Alright, I got another interesting story I want to get to and I want to cover some other stuff.
I keep getting a lot of calls, by the way, from politicians.
Can I give you a little behind the scenes, folks?
I don't know how they get my number.
You know, listen.
I'm the wrong guy to call.
If you're calling me about running for office, I'm not trying to be a jerk.
I'm just trying to tell you, as I mean this as a friend, I'm the wrong guy.
I ran for office because I thought I could change things.
I'm thoroughly convinced it was the wrong avenue.
I have now found my calling here, thanks to you.
We have been granted by the Lord Almighty a power to change minds in an audience, which I thank him for every single night.
But I'm just saying because of my phone, I know who it is.
Here's my advice.
Unless you are a die-hard conservative with a ton of money to defend yourself against malicious attacks, Build up an audience first before you do it because you are going to be assaulted from all ends and you are not going to be prepared.
I get this all the time.
They call me and they go, well, no, I'm ready for this.
I've been in the Republican club.
I've been in business.
I know what it's like.
I'm telling you, you don't.
Words of wisdom, brother.
I'm not suggesting you don't run either.
It's in your heart to do it.
I'm just telling you, I would strongly, strongly recommend to you.
You go out and build up, however you have to do it, a significant base of donors, a bunny, and a professional group of people who fought in the conservative space before because you are going to get kidney shots and liver shots you have never seen in your life.
You have never been exposed to some of the stuff you're going to be exposed to when the liberal hack machine comes after you.
Ever.
Right Joe?
Am I making this up?
You've had how many?
A thousand politicians on the radio station at WCBM where he works in the morning?
The minute you get a degree of notoriety, the liberals through the media will ruthlessly cut you down.
Be ready.
That's why I say I'm the worst person, because I have the most pessimistic attitude, but it changes everyone.
There are people I trusted, including my own congressman, who later, you know, it's disappointing.
Politics is a way of corrupting people like nothing else.
I've never seen anything like it.
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Okay.
I saw a piece today about the Chinese surveillance state in the Wall Street Journal.
Forgive me, it is a subscriber only, but I wanted to kind of briefly cover this before I jump into this Andy McCarthy just terrific piece at National Review, which is another one of those must-read pieces.
It's so good.
Doubling down on yesterday's show.
But there's a fear in the intelligence communities around the world amongst friendlies, Joe, that the Chinese surveillance state, the model for it, is being exported elsewhere to other countries as well.
I think they mentioned Cambodia in there.
And the Chinese, this is really disturbing stuff.
By the way, I wanted to bring this up today because Some of you asked, I get this a lot on email about the Russia case.
You know I'm interested in it, of course.
It's been my passion for six months.
And it's also our, you know, by far our most listened to episodes.
But I get the question a lot, but why?
If you don't think there's going to be prosecutions, I do, by the way, but why do you keep talking about this?
This is it, folks.
Because once we allow this to pass, illegal surveillance of anyone, Donald Trump, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, or anyone else, and we put our imprimatur on a de facto surveillance state, It's over.
Because the technology is there right now to leverage assets to make everybody a potential target of surveillance like is happening right now in China.
Oh, that's not going to happen here.
It did!
What are you talking about?
That's why the Trump case is so important.
Whether you're a liberal, conservative, anti-Trumper, never-Trumper, pro-Trumper, love-Trumper, it doesn't matter.
We have to call these people out, publicly humiliate them, expose them for the scam they were involved in, ensure when necessary and the evidence is there, prosecutions, and keep the pressure on our elected officials.
Or we're going to turn into China.
What are they doing?
Well, if you read the journal piece, They're using artificial intelligence and the development of artificial intelligence technologies and massive data mining, Joe, to do a couple things.
Number one, to scrutinize financial and social interactions.
This is really scary stuff.
Think about this.
This is what worries me about the, you know, the debit card, credit card, electronic banking era.
Let's be honest, folks.
Very few transactions, comparably speaking to where we were 50 years ago, are conducted in cash anymore.
If the government wanted to, this is why organizations like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, established by the Obama administration to monitor credit card activity across the country, scare the living crap out of people like me.
Oh no, we're just here to protect the consumer.
Give me a break.
You're not here to protect the consumer.
You're big police staters, you always have been, and you're looking to do what you did with Obamacare.
To get a national collection of health records database in electronic format so you can search it.
You're looking to do the same thing with credit card data.
Just be honest about it.
Oh, it's all anonymous.
Really?
We thought that too before Mike Flynn was unmasked.
We thought our conversations were anonymous.
You believe this line of crap?
No.
Now, I'm not suggesting we're there now.
I'm not some crazy conspiracy theorist.
I'm telling you, once the government has access to information, at some point the temptation to use it will be there, just like it was in the Trump case.
Oh, we've got these recorded calls.
Oh, man.
How do we listen to them?
Well, you could get a criminal case.
Well, we really don't have any evidence of that.
I got an idea.
Let's use a national security letter and let's just unmask them.
Sounds good to me, fellas!
Yeah!
By the way, Vipa loved your Russian New York Times thing yesterday.
New York Timesky.
That was great.
I got a ton of emails on it.
Funny stuff.
The temptation, once you accumulate and acquire and databank the information for the government to use it, is just too tempting.
They've already done it.
This is what worries me about this Trump case and what terrifies me about this Chinese surveillance state model.
So they're using AI to scrutinize financial data and social interactions and they're using some of that data to form what they call a social credit score.
This is the most terrifying thing I've ever heard.
It's, you know, we have credit scores, you know, 700, what's good, 700 or something like that.
You know, 700's a pretty good credit score, but what if you had a social credit score like they're putting together in China?
So, Joe, think about this, right?
Now Facebook is, and other tech companies, right?
They're aligning with some of these groups, not Facebook specifically in some cases, but other tech companies we know, as I covered on my NRA TV show yesterday, are aligning with far-left groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center to police, quote, hate on the internet, right?
Now, it's interesting that hate is only going to be defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate group themselves, by the way.
They are a far-left hate group.
Wouldn't it be interesting if something like this happened in the United States?
By the way, the tech companies aligning with the Southern Poverty Law Center is actually happening.
It's not a conspiracy theory.
Including places like Amazon and others.
So now they're going to police hate, and what they're really going to do is police conservative ideas and liberty-based ideas.
That's the Southern Poverty Law Center.
They find legitimate hate groups, the Ku Klux Klan and others and things like that, but then they lump them in with people who have nothing to do with hate at all, like the Family Research Council.
Bingo!
This is what they do.
So you'll conflate the two, which have nothing to do with one another at all.
The Family Research Council supports family values.
The Ku Klux Klan supports racism.
They're not related at all.
There's no intersection.
But the Southern Poverty Law Center places them in their hate group category, hoping you're too stupid to know the difference.
Now, Amazon and other tech companies are using them.
Can you imagine now, with the accumulation of artificial intelligence at places like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, health records, and the monitoring by tech companies of all of this stuff, the United States going down the same road and forming an intelligence community, some form of a social credit score here.
Listen, it's not happening today.
But it is happening in China.
This is what worries me.
This is what motivates libertarians at night and liberty-minded folks.
Why we've constantly said, you know, the Lord Acton quote, power corrupts absolute, power corrupts absolutely.
I say absolutely to that!
They're scrutinizing financial and social interactions.
So think about it.
You're on Facebook, Joe.
You're friends with a couple of Republicans in your area in Baltimore County or in Anne Arundel County where Joe lives.
Yeah.
All of a sudden what?
Your social credit score goes down?
Why?
Joe Associated with Joey Baggot Donuts.
Joey Baggot Donuts is a conservative activist at TeaParty.org or whatever it is.
This is why this stuff frightens conservatives.
Second, they're using, so they're using AI to, again, financial interactions.
Oh, here's another one, Joe.
Maybe you go in the local gun store.
You pick up, you know, I was in the gun shop yesterday.
I picked up about eight, ten boxes of ammo.
Five, five, six.
I went shooting yesterday at my new Daniel Defense, which is nice, by the way.
The Daniel Defense AR pistol, that thing is awesome.
Well, I have a Halos on site, which is really good.
It was way off, but I had to get him to zero that sucker in.
It was all over the place.
Guy was really nice at the range, so hat tip to Lotus Gunworks.
The guy at the range is awesome.
But all of a sudden, Joe, they find out I purchased eight boxes of ammo, and I'm friends with Joe Armacost, who's a conservative on Facebook, and I tweet him on Twitter.
My social credit score goes down big time!
I was a 700.
I was a trustworthy citizen.
Citizen like Starship Troopers.
I was a trustworthy citizen.
All of a sudden, Joe, keep this guy off the trains and planes, put him on a no-fly list.
Oh, that's not happening.
You're crazy.
No, it's happening in China right now.
Read the article yourself.
Folks, here's another one.
They're using AI.
To perfect digital imaging and face ID.
Wait, what?
So now all of a sudden you log in.
This has always worried me.
Me too, Dan.
Yeah, you log into your new phone.
I have the iPhone, what is it, 10 or X, whatever it is, and I log into my accounts using Face ID.
Now, you know, I gotta be honest with you, you don't have to do it.
You can shut it off, but I've done it.
But it does worry me that my facial contours that are being used as a password, I don't know if they measure the distance between your eyes and cheek, I have no idea how they do it.
It's proprietary, Apple has it.
But for those of you who don't have the iPhone X, You can log into your bank accounts, you can log into Amazon, everything with that face ID.
Now, you know, the Chinese, by the way, they're already doing this, so please don't send me conspiracy theory emails.
This is really happening.
Right?
What happens if these big government hacks that are involved in major spying conspiracies, using the IRS to target American citizens, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau creation, what if they find out one day with this?
They can use this face ID to track your Amazon purchases.
Now, all of a sudden, they know, well, number one, through your financial transactions, you're buying ammunition and firearms.
Number two, they know you're associated with conservatives.
Number three, on Amazon, they find out you're buying whatever, emergency food.
This guy, this guy's definitely a future tyrant.
Let's open up an investigation on this guy too.
Oh, that never happens.
No, it did happen in the Trump investigation where they opened up an investigation into a presidential candidate with equally flimsy BS information.
This stuff should scare you folks.
It scares me.
We don't have to live paranoid.
I believe there are enough good people in government to, you know, keep Pandora's box shut for a little while.
But if we keep voting in these hack Democrats and we don't start to terminate the positions in the government, start to shrink down the government and the bureaucracy that are instituting these rules and regulations, allowing kind of this stuff and allowing it to pass without speaking out, then yes, a dystopia in the future does await us because the power corrupts.
There's no way around it.
All right.
Andy McCarthy.
What a piece.
What a piece in National Review.
Short, too.
Andy usually writes some pretty lengthy stuff, but this one is good.
It's short, and you have to read it.
Yesterday's show, which, thanks again to you, is our most listened to ever.
I really, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, appreciate it.
You guys and ladies are awesome.
Really.
We're blowing up.
The show is just taking off.
Joe and I wake up every morning, we're like, hey, what if we did this number?
And then next week we're doing double that number.
We're like, it's crazy.
I remember when 20,000 downloads a night a year ago was like a big deal.
We do that like before 8 a.m.
now.
I remember the first time we hit 20 and I called you right away.
I remember we were at CPAC and we hit 20,000 downloads and we thought it was, uh, was that two, three years ago?
We thought it was such a big deal.
Now, sheesh, we do that in the lunch hour.
Thank you.
But McCarthy is a great piece.
And yesterday I was talking about how the New York Times put out a piece Clearly designed to prepare the public for six things.
Soften the blow.
Yeah.
Soften the blow.
Now just a quick review of those six things.
They're trying to limit the players in the DOJ because they were political appointees.
So the New York Times in the piece finally acknowledges there was a spying operation on Trump.
They're trying to limit the impact for political appointees in the DOJ.
Why?
Because they were appointed by Obama, a Democrat, and the New York Times is Pravda for the Democrats.
Second, they're trying to limit criminal liability because there were criminal leaks here, folks.
Don't ever forget that.
There were criminal leaks of information.
They are trying to protect people.
They're preparing the public for the fact that Brennan's going to be a scapegoat.
Brennan has to be a scapegoat.
Why?
Because Brennan was the puppet master in this.
The information flowed through Brennan when he was the director of the CIA.
The information was fake.
We spied an American citizen because of fake information and Obama team people are running for the hills.
Clapper included.
They have nothing.
Notice how quiet Joe Susan Rice has been on this?
They are all shutting their mouths because they're getting ready to throw Brennan under the bus.
Um, they, they preparing them for the clear the deck excuse.
Oh, a lot of this was done because they just thought Hillary was going to win.
That's why they slow rolled the Trump investigation.
No, no, no, no, no.
They slow rolled the Trump investigation precisely because it was a setup the entire time.
And I think they were, there were some, at least players in the FBI hesitant because the information they were getting was shady at best.
Sixth, and the final point, they're trying to rehabilitate the image of Christopher Steele, the creator of the dossier, which I'm going to dismantle here in the next 25 minutes, because now they understand that this whole case was started because of the dossier.
It was used as the basis for the investigation and spying operation on the Trump team.
And the dossier is fake.
So now they have to rehabilitate Christopher Steele's image, the creator of the dossier, as being highly credible.
The problem is it wasn't Steele's information for the thousandth time.
Now, what did I miss yesterday that Andy McCarthy picked up?
Again, please read the piece at Pongino.com.
If you subscribe to my email list, by the way, we had record subscriptions yesterday.
I will send you these and other articles I take from the internet that I think will really highlight your day.
Here's McCarthy's take on the New York Times cover job.
Remember, they're moving on from Russian collusion now.
They know it's not going to happen.
Now they have to cover up this conspiracy to spy on the Donald Trump team.
Number one, he's like, listen guys, they're trying to frame this as the New York Times piece.
As, oh, you know what?
This was really unfair because Hillary Clinton's investigation into her email scandal was conducted almost in the public space with Jim Comey coming out giving press conferences.
But look, Joe, if Trump's investigation for spying would have been handled the same way, the public would have known Trump was a possible Russian colluder and he may have lost the election.
Don't miss me here.
This is important.
Now, this is garbage.
I'm going to explain to you why in a second.
But McCarthy breaks this down.
He's like, this is the spin I missed.
I should have made this bullet point seven.
Hillary was treated unfairly because her case was exposed to the public.
We didn't find out about Donald Trump's investigation until after the election.
You tracking?
Yeah.
In other words, the public.
Oh, is Hillary guilty of something?
And they're saying, well, if someone would have put out this information, they were investigating Trump.
Trump would have, in the public space at least, would have suffered the same level of scrutiny.
Here's the distinction, as McCarthy so eloquently points out.
Number one, Hillary's team, there were actual crimes committed!
There were actual crimes!
How do we know this?
There is an email record of the crimes.
Please delete the classified headings from this email if you resend it.
From Hillary!
Folks, there was information that appeared on Hillary emails that was only on compartmented computers.
Meaning what?
I know some of you haven't worked in the government, or understandably, a little bit confused about how this works.
There is information that exists in facilities.
This is the essence to understanding the Devin Nunes presidential daily brief.
You know, as Democrats call it, the midnight run, by the way.
Maybe I'll get to that in a second if I have time, but.
Yeah, please do.
There's information in the government that is stored only on computers, not connected To the external internet.
In other words, you want to read information from Joe's Central Intelligence Agency, you gotta go to Joe's apartment.
He can't email it to you, there's no way to get it out.
But there is a way to get it out.
How?
You can read it, you can take a camera shot of the screen as you're reading the information, and then you can retype the same information on an open source email.
Now, on an open internet email.
Keep in mind, what you're doing is committing a federal felony.
That is information so classified, Joe, it is kept on computers, isolated from the internet, in very specific spaces.
These computers are not connected.
Information appeared in Clinton emails that was only on those computers, saying to any reasonable observer that someone from the Clinton team, Joe, walked into a sensitive facility, took deeply classified information, either took a screenshot, Took some kind of a USB stick if there even was one.
Downloaded either mentally or by picture of the information and retyped it onto an open email.
Committing a federal felony.
These were actual crimes!
Yeah.
Hillary's investigation was conducted in the public because of public interest, and Comey says, and McCarthy says, excuse me, and he's right, that I'm not defending Comey's press conference.
Comey was a mess.
He goes out and gives a press conference about how Hillary's guilty and then says, but we're no reasonable prosecutor.
I'm just saying the Hillary email investigation existed because of Hillary's screw-ups and crimes that were committed.
Comparing that to the Trump investigation, the CI investigation against Trump, the counterintelligence investigation, which the very release of the existence of it is a crime.
The existence of counterintelligence information, classified, releasing that information to the public for the purpose of, oh, we should just let everybody know?
Is a crime.
But the whole point is, there was no crime!
Right.
You see how the New York Times now is trying to paint the- Oh look, Hillary really got screwed.
The FBI announced her investigation, but not the investigation of Trump.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh, New York Times, Hillary's team committed crimes, Trump didn't commit a crime.
The scandals that the Trump investigation was- existed in the first place!
I totally missed that angle yesterday and hat-tipped Andy McCarthy for pointing that out.
I mean, I knew about it, but I just, I didn't, I should have put it in the bullets.
Everybody knows the answer, but it's the way he says it, which is so right.
The New York Times trying to paint Hillary as a sympathetic figure.
By the way, just to go back to that one thing, because I don't want to leave you in suspense there.
Information that is on these computers, you can only get from that computer.
It can't be emailed, it can't be taken out.
That is why when Devin Nunes Nunes, right after the election of Trump, and right after the new Trump Director of National Intelligence is appointed, Dan Coats.
This is the critical point the media always misses.
They say, oh, Devin Nunes went to the White House right after Trump's new National Intelligence Director was appointed, implying that it was done to scheme, Joe.
In other words, like, oh, we know Trump was spied on, but Nunes was scheming with Trump.
That's not what happened.
The reason Nunes went to the White House and the White House complex is because the information they were analyzing about the attack on Trump, the spying scandal on Trump that Nunes was looking for, was only contained at the White House.
What does that tell you, folks?
That tells you that the information used to spy on Trump we now know was fake.
likely made it into the president's daily brief and the information was was compartmented inside the white house complex not elsewhere that's why nunes had to go to the white house because they were looking at information given to obama that's why it's such a scandal but the media avoids that whole angle oh he went to the white house to coordinate with trump no he went to the white house to read information that was given to obama you dopes are you too dopey to figure this out or you're just ignoring it OK, second point he brings up.
So again, the Trump investigation, The Times completely ignores the story that the CIA investigation against Trump shouldn't have been started at all.
Now they think it's unfair that the public wasn't leaked information about an investigation that was entirely disingenuous?
What's wrong with you guys?
OK, here's the second point, which is brilliant that he makes.
They make this big, huge effort in there To paint this as a suspicious investigation about Russian influence of Trump.
Why does this matter?
Because, as McCarthy says, rightly so, Joe, if it was a counterintelligence investigation into Russian influence in the election, nobody would care.
I don't mean, I mean partisans.
Republicans and Democrats alike would be like, okay, terrific.
If the Russians try to influence Republicans or Democrats in the election, and this was a fair investigation into Russia and their attempted influence in our elections, everybody would support it.
The reason the Times is framing this as a Russian influence operation on Trump is because this wasn't a counterintelligence investigation into Russia, which we would all support.
What was it?
It was a counterintelligence investigation into Trump.
There's a difference!
There's a difference!
That's why the Times has to set this up like, oh, it was just an innocent mistake.
Look at all this evidence we had against Trump that turned out later to be crap.
Because it wasn't a counterintelligence investigation against Russia.
It was a counterintelligence investigation against Trump.
Russia... In other words, the Times is trying to make this out like, oh man, this was just an innocent mistake.
The core of the case was Trump, not Russia.
Russia was an add-on.
Do you understand now why yesterday's show is so important?
Why the Times and the Peace needs to reframe this as a, and they're getting ready to throw Brennan under the bus?
Because the whole case, and the intelligence community assessment that was used to tell America after the election, this famous 17 intel agencies have determined that Russia interfered in the election.
And, and the end is critical.
And they wanted Trump to win.
That is why that ICA, Intelligence Community Assessment, is so critical.
Because if the core of it was just that... Joe, you've got to stop me if I lose anyone.
McCarthy's premise here is that if the ICA assessment had simply said that the Russians tried to interfere in their election, which they did.
They're not our friends.
But had left out in order to help Trump.
What's the logical question, Joe, about the CI investigation?
What the hell were you investing the Trump team for?
Investigating the Trump team?
Why weren't you investigating Russia?
The ICA and the Brennan emphasis on investigating Trump, not the Russians, is going to go down in flames.
Now, why is this important?
It's important because the intelligence community assessment forever, John Brennan and Jim Clapper, had denied that the dossier was a part of that.
So remember, the intelligence community has come to the conclusion that Russia tried to hurt us and they wanted to help Trump.
The first part is true.
The second part is false.
At least based on the information they had.
Where did they get the second part?
The dossier!
Now do you understand?
While Brennan and Joe played the audio yesterday, we played it the day before.
We have audio of Clapper saying it.
Oh, the dossier played no role.
The dossier played it.
Why do you think they would lie about this and take on such liability?
Because their entire premise for hitting and hammering the Trump team in the most disgusting, disturbing overreach of government power in my lifetime to spy on Trump was not that the Russians interfered in the election, it was that they did it to help Trump!
That's only based on a dossier that's fake!
Brilliant, brilliant analysis by McCarthy.
Brilliant!
Brilliant!
What was that TV commercial?
Brilliant!
I can't even remember.
You remember that?
A beer, yeah.
Was it a beer?
Yeah, it was a beer I think, right?
Brilliant!
It's like, that's great!
He's spot on!
That it's not... Nobody on the planet would have had an issue with the CIA, NSA, FBI, DIA, and everyone else investigating how the Russians try to infiltrate our constitutional republic.
That's not what they did!
They investigated the Trump team because they believed, air quotes, believed, they really didn't believe this, they just hated Trump, but they believed, as they said, that the Russians were trying to help Trump, so they started investigating Trump, but that whole belief is based on a dossier they all deny knowing about.
Now the New York Times is setting you up for the fact that they did know about it.
Brennan did know about it.
Clapper's already acknowledged now.
Clapper's trying to come clean, I'm convinced.
Clapper, if you read that Paul Sperry piece in yesterday's show notes, Clapper is now starting to acknowledge that the dossier played a role because he's going to get busted.
Brennan is still holding out and that's why I think the Times is preparing everyone for the fact that Brennan's going to have to go down.
Legally speaking or civilly speaking.
There's no way around it.
They're preparing you for this Now another interesting angle.
I put a little bit of an older piece by Paul Sperry in the piece In the show notes today.
It's older.
It's a few months old, but it's still critical Because it just goes to show you the level of Russian involvement in the Hillary Clinton campaign and operation and how the real scandal here is going to be, Joe, that they investigated Trump because their premise was twofold.
The Russians tried to hit us and they tried to help Trump.
The real scandal here, Joe, is going to be we all agree about point one, Democrats and Republicans, but that the Russians tried to help Hillary.
That's the real cover up here.
Now, we've been talking about this for months.
Their involvement with Uranium One, their involvement with pro-Russia Ukrainian dictators.
I haven't even gotten to Pinchuk and Craig.
I had so much stuff today.
It's really stacked.
Maybe I'll try to rush some stuff in before the end of the week.
This is important.
I put an older piece by Paul Sperry.
The whole case that Russia, the second prong of their two-fold attack, Russia hit us, they tried to help Trump, the second prong is all based on a dossier which has now been thoroughly discredited.
They're all left holding the bag.
There's real panic here.
The New York Times is panicking and now they have to cover up.
The Sperry piece covers the genesis of the argument That the Russians were trying to help Trump in the dossier.
And this is why I told you they're trying to rehabilitate the image of Christopher Steele, who wrote the dossier.
The problem is, if you read the Sperry piece, it's not Steele sources.
Sperry makes the case that the real source for the dossier information that the Russians were trying to help Trump, which the Democrats desperately wanted to be true but is false, was a guy by the name of Ed Baumgartner.
Now, this is where it gets crazy time!
Crazy time!
Crazy noodles!
Crazy pool noodles time!
You know, pool noodles, right?
We love those.
Yeah!
New York timeski.
Ed Baumgartner worked with Fusion GPS.
Remember now, this is the guy who in Sperry's piece is making a credible case Put all the info in the dossier relating to Russian sources claiming they were helping Trump.
Baumgartner worked with Fusion GPS too, who was working for Hillary.
Who did he also work with?
Right around the time of this whole operation, he worked with Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Where do we remember that name from?
Boomski.
Where do we remember that name?
Natalia Veselnitskaya is the Russian lawyer who shows up with a former Russian intelligence asset, Rinat Akhmetson, who features prominently in my book, by the way, to Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr.
Yeah, babies.
This was a setup the whole time.
Hey guys, go meet with Don Trump Jr.
Dirty this guy up.
Tell him you have Hillary emails.
By the way, while this lady, this Russian lawyer, who's admitted to having ties to Russian intelligence assets, she brings a Russian intelligence asset, Rinat Akhmedsen, with her to this meeting.
They're working with this guy Baumgartner, who is steel source for the entire dossier.
This was a setup.
The Russians played us for idiots.
They played us for idiots.
This was a setup the whole time.
They were playing into Hillary Clinton's desire to dirty up the Trump team.
They sent their own assets into this meeting, trying to get negative information on everyone to completely throw chaos and gasoline into the fire of a contested, really, Hot American election.
And Hillary played in the whole time.
It was not Steele's info.
Follow me.
I'm gonna walk you through in a mental Venn diagram, right?
John Brennan hates Trump.
He has no criminal case against Trump.
He's a CIA.
He has no law enforcement authority at all.
John Brennan needs to take Trump out because he's a deranged political hack.
John Brennan has nothing.
There's no criminal charges, no predicate crime at all.
What do they do?
Oh, well, if we don't have a crime, we can go push the FBI to start a counterintelligence investigation.
To start a counterintelligence investigation, what does Brennan need?
They need evidence.
They need some evidence of something.
You don't just walk into the FBI and go, hey, Jim Comey, start an investigation into Joe Armacost.
For what?
I don't know.
Something.
All of a sudden, magically, a dossier appears.
A dossier alleging that the Russians are not only involved in our election, but are helping Trump.
Look!
They're helping Trump!
Let's go get him!
Jim Comey like a sucker.
Okay, let's do it.
Okay.
Following along like a lemming off a cliff.
This guy's supposed to be smart, by the way.
How did they get the dossier?
Jim Comey claims, oh, I still don't know.
Don't know anything about it.
John Brennan, I don't know anything about it.
Jim Clapper, I don't know anything about it.
They get it from a British spy.
Oh, a British spy.
Wow, he must be really credible.
Oh yeah, he was working with the FBI.
Oh, so the information the spy on Trump and the dossier used to start this investigation must be legit.
It wasn't his info.
Wasn't his info!
Wasn't his info!
It comes from a guy named Ed Baumgartner who's working with a Russian lawyer connected to Russian intelligence that magically shows up at a meeting with Trump Tower saying they have information on Hillary.
They were working with these people!
The Clinton team was working with the Brennan team, with Russian intel, to dirty up the Trump team, the Russians knowing they're suckering everybody the whole time to throw chaos into our elections.
And these idiots played into the whole game.
And that is a great way to do it, man.
I mean, yes.
Does that make sense?
One thing after another.
Smooth as can be.
I think everybody can understand that.
Yeah.
I hope so.
I like that.
Because this is the whole thing.
And this is why now, in yesterday's piece, This is why in yesterday's piece, the New York Times needs to throw Brennan under the bus.
Because when you revert... Joe, can we... I don't mean to repeat this, but let's do this in reverse and it'll make more... The New York Times effort yesterday to start to prepare the public that Brennan has to go down.
By the way, we're talking about legally for you violent media matters idiots who listen to the show.
I can't say that enough.
You dopes.
They're obsessed with violence.
He's nutbags.
But Brennan has to go down here.
His fingerprints are all over this.
Reverse engineer it and it'll make sense.
We have what?
We have in the end an investigation that nobody can explain why it happened.
They're saying, oh, the investigation started because a Russian lawyer met with the Don Trump Jr.
and they alleged to have Hillary's emails.
Right.
They didn't.
They did not show up to that meeting with Hillary's email.
Don Trump Jr.
put out all the emails about the meeting.
They showed up.
They wanted to talk about Magnitsky and adoption.
They're basing.
So Trump colluded.
How do we know he met with Don Trump Jr.?
Now, all of a sudden, you say, well, what happened?
Reverse engineer it if you're an investigator.
Well, what happened at the meeting?
Well, nothing.
Don Trump Jr.
left early.
Keep in mind, the whole time as you reverse engineer this, if you're an investigator, you're looking for a reason that this investigation started.
You need the Genesis crime, the Rosetta Stone.
So you say, well, investigation started.
It started because of this Trump meeting.
Okay, what's the Rosetta Stone in that meeting?
Surely they exchanged information that was illegal.
Hillary Clinton's tax records.
No, nothing happened.
Okay, so let's reverse engineer that back.
Well, because we still need a crime or something.
Nothing happened at the meeting.
So, let's go back again.
How did that meeting start?
Well, the meeting started because this Russian lawyer reached out to a friend of Trump's and set up the meeting with Don Trump Jr.
Well, who's the Russian lawyer?
Well, she's working with an intelligence asset in the Kremlin.
Wait, what?
That Kremlin Russian asset is also working with who?
Oh, a guy called Ed Baumgartner who was responsible, according to the Sperry piece, for the allegations in a dossier.
And the dossier was used to do what?
Start this investigation.
Was the dossier real?
No, that was fake too.
So you still don't have the Rosetta Stone as to why this started.
So that was fake.
Well, who had the dossier?
Oh, Clapper, Jim Comey, John Brennan.
Well, surely Comey, Brennan, and Clapper will admit they knew about the dossier.
No, they're not admitting it either, so you don't have the Rosetta Stone there.
Well, you go back even further.
Well, what happened then?
Well, how did the investigation start?
Do you see why the story about how it starts keeps changing?
Because every time they go back and reverse engineer the crime, they're waiting for the bank robbery.
They're like, surely someone robbed the bank, right?
We're investigating the largest bank robbery in American history.
700 million in cash stolen from Bank X.
You go back, you go, okay, $700 million, let's investigate Joe.
Was Joe involved in the bank robbery?
No.
But he said Tony was.
You investigate Tony.
Was Tony involved?
No.
But there was a meeting at Trump Tower with Tony and Don Trump Jr.
Did they talk about a bank robbery?
No.
Okay.
What happened before that?
Well, the guy who met with Don Trump Jr., Trump Tower, about a bank robbery that never happened, he met with a Russian intel guy.
Oh, so the Russian intel guy knows about the bank robbery?
No, not him either.
Who is the Russian intel guy working with?
The Russian intel guy was working with a political operative.
Oh, so the political operative knows about the bank robbery.
No, no, they don't know either.
So the political operative is running for office against the guy alleged to have robbed a bank, but there's no bank robbery.
Yeah, that's what happened.
Do you understand why the Genesis story keeps changing?
There's no bank robbery!
No bank was robbed!
That's why every five minutes the story changes.
Carter Page did it.
George Papadopoulos did it.
Alexander Downer did it.
Stefan Halper did it.
There's no bank robbery!
Now we find out they had a human spy inside the network of bank robbers.
They did?
Surely he has information on a bank robbery.
No, he doesn't either.
But he asked them about the bank robbery.
But it didn't happen.
But he asked them.
He asked them about it.
Asked them about what?
The bank robbery.
Which bank?
I don't know.
A bank.
Where?
Somewhere.
Brennan's the guy!
When you dial this thing back and reverse engineer it, you are left with John Brennan with his unit in his hands and a fake dossier that started this whole thing.
Brennan is in a lot of trouble, folks.
And he's gonna have to come clean soon.
He started this whole thing based on bogus information.
I didn't even get to this Pinchuk angle.
Someone sent me an email yesterday about Pinchuk.
I didn't even realize it's Pinchuk.
Remember I keep telling you how all of these people are being investigated by the Mueller probe, how it's a smokescreen?
And it's interesting how none of their connections to the Hillary team seem to be being investigated, but their loose, at best, investigations of the Trump team are.
And why?
Because I think they're hitting these people for Trump connections going, hey, shut your mouth, because you're deeply connected to the Hillary team.
I totally forgot.
One of Hillary's biggest donors, Pinchuk, was also involved in that Ukrainian election, where John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's consigliere, right-hand man, his brother, Tony Podesta, was involved with Manafort in lobbying for some of the same people in the Ukrainian government that Pinchuk was involved with, who was a donor to the Clinton Foundation.
Again, everybody shut up about that.
Let's investigate Pinchuk for his relationship to the Trump team, for a speaking fee.
Pinchuk, keep your mouth shut.
Unbelievable.
What a scam.
All right, folks, thanks for another great week of listenership.
I really appreciate if you subscribe to the show, if you can.
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We were at the top charts.
I think we were like top 20 yesterday, which is incredible, considering there's like two, three million podcasts in the world.
We were like top 20 or so.
Really flattered, flabbergasted at the same time.
Thanks to you, but please subscribe if you can.
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Thanks a lot.
I'll see you all on Monday.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
