Summary:
In this episode I address the absurd, hysterical media coverage of the Trump-Kim summit. I also discuss how liberalism is eating itself alive in Seattle and elsewhere.
News Picks:
The Secret Service has its hands full with the North Korean summit.
The Democrats, and the media, are engaged in a dangerous game of anti-American rhetoric.
CNN’s Jim Acosta grandstanding, again.
The media coverage of the North Korean summit has been horrendous.
The CEO of Twitter actually apologized for eating at a Chik-fil-A
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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 the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Well, I'm just doing great.
That's all right.
I was talking to Joe before the show, and I was distracted.
As you probably saw, I was looking at their Twitter feed.
I always get a kick out about liberals.
They're just the angriest people.
Whenever you say something they don't agree with, That guy, man, you need to get a job.
A job?
Okay.
Sure.
Get a job.
Do you have any idea how many jobs I have?
Oh, man.
It's just funny.
People with like seven followers on Twitter.
Seven or eight followers.
Hey, you need to get a job.
Get a job.
All right.
Thank you.
It's from an 18-year-old in mommy's basement roasting s'mores and playing Minecraft or something.
You need to get a job.
If they only knew.
I'm a prolific muter and blocker on Twitter.
I get tired of it easy.
Big day yesterday, no question about it.
The media melted down again, completely humiliating themselves, looking like total fools.
We're going to get into that.
All right, let's dig into today's show.
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Okay.
Yes, the media lost their minds yesterday.
The denuclearization summit with Kim last night was a historic moment, and the media is melting down because they don't want to give Trump credit for everything.
Now, I am, as we have been, Joe, on the show, I'm not really optimistic about it.
I'm glad it happened, but I don't have a lot of faith in the Kim regime.
Il-un or Il-sung or any of them.
Kim Jong-un, any of his predecessors before it, they have not been people of good faith.
Having said that, I would rather be sitting down and discussing this with these North Koreans, even though the guy is a tyrannical animal, than not.
And I'll tell you why.
I think it's only fair for me to lay out to you, if you choose to listen to this show, the reasons I think this is true.
And it's not good enough to say because Trump did it.
I get that.
I support the president.
That's obvious.
But, you know, I support conservative ideology first.
And I believe this is a net positive.
And I'm going to lay out a few reasons and I'm going to move on.
Number one.
This buys us time, no matter what, Joe.
People forget that just a few months ago, there was actual discussion of Kim launching a nuclear device in the direction of Guam and Hawaii.
And there was also talk about the possibilities of the West Coast of the United States.
This was actual talk going on.
Right, right.
You remember this, Joe?
Oh, sure do.
How is it going to- what would happen?
What would be the nuclear fallout?
How would we respond?
How many people in Seoul would die?
Because Kim has, you know- The false alarms in Hawaii, remember?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, people legitimately- I forgot about that, but you're right.
People were legitimately concerned, and they should be.
This is a nuclear regime that has the capability to snuff out hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives and alter human history forever.
Yep.
At a minimum, Joe, at a minimum this buys time.
Might.
Number one.
Yeah.
Number two, we're not in an active war footing now with them right now.
Yes, I get it that, you know, we still haven't signed the Korean War.
Technically, it's still ongoing.
But when I say active war footing, I mean practically for well-intensive purposes on the ground.
We don't have hundreds of thousands of soldiers storming into North Korea right now, costing hundreds of thousands of lives, potentially.
So one, it buys time.
Two, we're not in war.
And third, this is kind of a Affirmation by negation.
But let me use a negative to explain to you why this is a positive.
The negative is the media has been like, whoa, whoa, you shouldn't have done this.
This is a victory at home for Kim.
Guys, you know, will you please stop, you media goons?
Will you please stop for a moment and think about how dumb that sounds?
This is a propaganda victory for Kim at home.
Joe, The guy's a domestic tyrant who has, you know, hundreds of thousands of people in prison camps and millions under his political subjugation, and you're talking about a victory at home?
Oh, like the next election's gonna matter?
Hey Joe, Kim Jong-un's up five points in the polls, buddy.
I mean, is this the dumbest conversation we've ever had or what?
A propaganda victory?
Guys, ladies.
He's starving his people to death.
When you're not eating, I'm pretty sure that the focus group tested polls in North Korea don't really matter.
It's like you're in a North Korean focus group.
I'm not making light of this.
I'm just saying how dumb To humiliate how stupid the people who keep bringing up this dumb point.
As if like a focus group matters, Joe.
Like you're sitting around in North Korea.
The guy's got a gun to his head.
What do you think about Kim?
Kim's great.
We love him.
He's wonderful.
Man, he's in great shape.
He's really good looking.
He's a great actor.
He can really sing.
By the way, he's the best baseball player I've ever seen.
He's not too bad at bocce ball either.
Guys, ladies, seriously?
The whole Kim regime is propaganda!
By force!
What are you, forced to put a photo of Kim in your house?
I mean, it's outrageous!
He's the supreme being or whatever nonsense.
There's a victory at home!
That's an absurdity.
He doesn't need a political propaganda victory at home.
He rules by force.
There's no elections.
Nothing but victories.
That's it.
I mean, Kim, yeah, in his mind, right?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, and if he doesn't win, he just kills you.
I mean, that's a fact.
He kills you or jails you.
The guy killed his own family with an anti-aircraft gun, one of his uncles.
I mean, to say that it's a propaganda victory at home and therefore a negative for Trump is just absurd.
Everything's a victory for this guy.
He's a tyrant.
So, if we can buy time, not have to engage our armed forces in yet another war overseas that's going to cost... God, you know, Joe, I know we joke around a lot and the joke can be sarcastic.
Sometimes, yeah.
If you'll allow me for a moment, I never knew my uncle, my uncle Greg Ambrose.
I never met him.
He was killed at a very early age in Vietnam, rather heroically trying to save his friends in combat in a battle south of Thu Duc, Vietnam.
It changed my family forever.
I never met him, but I know from reading his bronze star with a V, the story of what he
did, that he was an incredible American hero.
I acknowledge him every year on Memorial Day on this show.
This is a serious thing.
Thank you.
Does the media understand what war with North Korea would look like?
What is this, a joke to you?
Is this some kind of a joke?
Are you an idiot?
Do you understand what this would look like?
The almost complete annihilation of Seoul?
At a minimum, regional nuclear combat, we're not exactly sure about the North Koreans' ability to reach the continent in the United States.
We're not exactly sure about the delivery vehicles, and we're not sure about the explosives and the re-entry capabilities.
But at a minimum, Joe, do you understand that the potential to hit Japan, Guam, Hawaii, South Korea with tactical nukes and others?
Do you understand, like, what the death toll, the apocalyptic, the fallout from the nuclear blasts alone?
The potential for then a subsequent war with China?
Are you an idiot?
You media goons?
You think this is funny?
By the way, this is why, and I get it, some people watched me on Ingram last night, they had some issues with some of my comments.
This is why I have an issue with CNN and others trying to make light of this thing by trying to make a reality show out of it.
This is serious stuff!
You may not like Trump, you may not like some of his rhetoric, I don't mind it.
I think it's changed the course of human history when it comes to this specific event, precisely because of the bellicosity of it.
I'm talking about this event with North Korea.
I don't mind it at all.
We've had no groundbreaking at all.
We've been screwed over a thousand times.
Trump finally lays down the law with them and they come to the table.
What's your alternative?
No, I'm serious.
What is your alternative, you media goons at CNN and NBC and all the anti-Trumpers out there?
What's your alternative?
100,000 American troops storming across the Yalu River to fight the Chinese while they're engaged in nuclear combat?
With the North Korean regime wiping out half of Japan and potentially a nuke hitting California?
That's your alternative?
This is serious, man.
My family was never the same.
We lost one person.
One.
You want to lose hundreds of thousands of Americans, potentially millions of people worldwide?
You think this is funny?
100,000 stories like my family's?
They were never the same.
My uncle was supposed to come home and two individuals from the army showed up with an announcement to make.
And it was not a good one.
And it ruined everything.
Forever.
My grandmother was never, ever the same.
She never recovered from that broken heart.
You want millions of those stories?
You want nuclear fallout, nuclear catastrophe, war with the Chinese?
Are you serious?
You get the- Yes!
Is this guy a tyrant?
100%.
Is this guy trustworthy?
No.
Are we now buying time so that we- Maybe a solution- Who knows?
Maybe there's a coup in North Korea and the North Koreans overthrow him.
But what is your alternative?
You want to go to war tomorrow to make a point, you wise asses?
You think this is funny?
Cheering on the North Koreans like a bunch of idiots in the media, Joe.
Yeah.
Jim Acosta yesterday.
No, this guy's a disgrace.
I'm done with this guy.
I was giving him the benefit of the doubt because I met him once in a CNN green room and he was nice to me.
But being nice to me doesn't mean you're... This guy... This guy's an idiot.
I have an article up at the show notes today from Newsbusters.
Check this out.
Jim Acosta.
My website, by the way.
Sorry, in case you're a new listener.
Acosta, in the middle of signing this momentous...
uh decree that they're going to at least proceed for what was you know was it the be-all end-all no is it a start it's something what does it cost to do joe instead of just for a second just for a second expressing a moment of solemnity and letting them sign this thing that you commit to denuclearization how are you gonna talk about Otto Warmbier listen the Otto Warmbier question is a very serious one the guy was tortured and killed in a north korean gulag i get it But you, folks, do you think for a second Acosta really think he was gonna get an answer from the North?
Kim doesn't even speak English!
He's signing this thing!
Can you shut up for two seconds?
Yes, those are serious questions, but right then and there, Acosta had to be the story right there.
He wanted to be the story.
Oh man, meanwhile, remember when Obama was in the Rose Garden and was it Neil Monroe from the Daily Caller?
Yelled out a question in the Rose Garden, Joe, and everybody, oh my gosh, disrespect!
Disrespect!
They wanted this guy executed the next day, the media.
I think it was Neil Monroe, I could be wrong.
It was definitely a Daily Caller.
And then all of a sudden they were, oh man, disrespect to Obama.
You're signing one of the most important foreign policy documents we've seen in years.
Unquestionably a momentous, historic, potentially game-changing moment.
And that's the moment you yell out a question?
Listen, I am an avid, vocal, vibrant supporter of a free press.
Yeah.
And the ability of the free press to be freely stupid, which they typically are.
I get it.
You can't be a libertarian and a supporter of the Constitutional Republic and claim otherwise, even when they act like idiots.
And I will back up his right to be an idiot and yell that in Singapore all he wants.
But that doesn't make it right.
That was just dumb.
And I ask you again, what is your alternative?
A million Greg Ambrose stories?
That's my uncle.
People coming home and saying, hey, listen, we lost your son.
Why?
Because the media preferred a nuclear war on the North Korean peninsula rather than giving Trump for five minutes the benefit of the doubt.
You know what, dude?
Don't vote for him.
Fine.
Whatever.
I'm going to in 2020.
Don't vote for him.
But maybe just shut your mouth if you have nothing to add to the conversation.
This is ridiculous.
Totally, completely, utterly ridiculous.
Let me add one more thing.
There are some hard decisions ahead.
And this is one that I need you all to consider.
Because it's being discussed in amongst the foreign policy intelligentsia who I have almost zero respect for anymore.
Because they're not the intelligentsia.
They're the ignorentsia.
They are, Joe.
I hear you, bro.
Pretty sure that's not a word, but- It is now!
Darn right, I just said it.
Kim may, in fact, commit to the dismantling of his long-range delivery vehicle program.
In other words, he may commit, at some point, to wiping out his ability to wipe out us on the West Coast.
That would leave in place a short-range nuclear program which would, of course, deeply impact the South Koreans and the Japanese.
I'm telling you this is a serious question out there that smart people are discussing.
I'm not saying smart meaning right, I just mean smart meaning it is out there and it would only be fair, now that we have a step forward, to understand that our options here aren't all great.
I don't believe Kim is going to denuclearize.
Why?
As George Rasley wrote in Conservative HQ a while ago, hat tip to him, the Iraq war, Joe, changed everything.
Ladies and gentlemen, people understand, world leaders who are not friends of ours, despots and otherwise, understood after the Iraq war that you never, ever go to war with the United States in a traditional war.
You will be annihilated.
You will be annihilated quickly.
You will be annihilated with massive casualties on your side.
And you will be annihilated with minimal casualties on ours.
You don't have the technical sophistication.
You don't have the combat experience.
You don't have the bravery.
I'm sorry if our soldiers aren't even close.
You have nothing.
You will be destroyed.
That is a fact.
Now, Joe, you're old enough to remember, as am I, that before the Iraq War started, there were all these predictions again.
By people in the media and otherwise in the foreign policy establishment that's frequently wrong that Saddam Hussein's army, Joe, is one of the world's largest.
This is going to be, oh, this is going to be drawn out.
This is going to be horrible.
Now, again, I was never a big supporter of the Iraq war.
Again, to be candid, I still am not to this day.
I think we could have spent our money elsewhere.
So just to be fair, so you know where I stand, you don't have to agree.
That's fine.
I understand.
But I'm not going to lie to you.
That did not happen.
We absolutely annihilated the Iraqi military in record time.
The vaunted Republican Guard.
Yeah, we destroyed everybody.
Ran for the hills.
The white flags could not come out quick enough.
Now, after that, what was the lesson taken away by other world leaders?
That did not like us.
That if you have nuclear weapons, you darn well better hold on to them because if you don't, you are going to get your butts destroyed on the battlefield.
The fact that Libya committed to not pursuing the nuclear path and Qaddafi was disposed probably did not help our argument with Kim either.
He's obviously, as a human being, is afraid of losing power.
Which is what tyrants do.
Again, having said that, that leaves open the commitment that do we allow him to keep short-range nuclear weapons Which would threaten his neighbors.
Yeah, I know.
I can see your hesitancy even talking about it, Joe.
While simultaneously denying him the ability to attack the United States.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are real questions to consider.
If there's a way to verifiably destroy his delivery systems to hit us, but he doesn't commit to giving up his nuclear weapons entirely because of that Iraq War lesson, Where do we go from there?
I think Donald Trump has to consider strongly that we have to defend the United States first, obviously.
That is our goal.
There would be some significant fallout with international relations, there's no doubt.
But I think that's a question that we all should consider now, because I don't think that Kim is going to denuclearize completely.
Can I just say one more thing?
I'm asking as if someone's going to answer back.
Yes, Dan, you may say that.
Sure, Dan.
Thanks, Joe.
You can answer for the audience.
I appreciate that.
A lot of these media clowns who don't understand even basic history.
I am not a historian, but I do enjoy history and reading about history.
I'm not claiming to be an expert on every single region of the world, but I do a lot of homework on these topics and I enjoy it.
A lot of these idiots in the media, there's no model for denuclearization out there.
Kim is not going to give up his weapons.
I'm giving you the counterpoint to what I just said.
I don't think he will.
You know where I stand?
I just made the point on that because of the Iraq war lesson.
There are others saying, well, there's no model for that.
You know, he's not going to do it.
And they agree.
But their reasoning is wrong.
There is a model for denuclearization in South Africa.
The South Africans gave up their nuclear weapons.
And listen, the country is far from perfect.
Obviously, it's got a lot of issues right now, especially significant issues right now with institutional racism going on.
I mean, this has been a problem in South Africa for a long time.
But they did denuclearize and the country still exists.
Now, on the counterpoint, the Ukrainians gave up their nuclear weapons as well, which were really Soviet weapons over there, but gave up the custody of those weapons, and obviously, look what happened there.
So again, there's a point and a counterpoint for everything.
But that's why I always say, when it comes to foreign policy on this show, with taxes, there's a right and a wrong answer.
I can tell you historically that this is what happened with tax cuts, and this is what happened with government revenue and growth.
The numbers are irrefutable.
It's history.
It already happened.
I enjoy foreign policy.
I don't discuss it much on the show, but I enjoy it because these are all open questions.
If Kim says, listen, we're looking to give up our long range ability to attack the United States, but in exchange, we want to keep nuclear defensive capabilities at home.
That's a tough question for us.
Do we say, no, we want neither?
Folks, I don't know how it'll turn out.
That's why I put out in the show.
These are open questions.
Again, when people say, oh, there's no model for denuclearization, no, there is a successful model in South Africa.
There's also tons of examples of unsuccessful models based on domestic policy, Ukraine being one of them.
I bet Ukraine would kill to get those nuclear weapons back now, based on what happened with the invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
I just want to emphasize that point one more time, though, folks.
What is your alternative?
When you're arguing with your liberal friends, what's your alternative?
Are you going to go to war?
Because real people die.
Real lives are lost.
Real families are destroyed.
Real blood is shed.
This isn't a joke.
This isn't a focus group.
And there's no propaganda victory at home.
His whole regime, as Joe said rightly, is a propaganda tool.
He's a tyrant!
Victory at home.
Don't be an idiot.
I'm not talking to my listeners.
I'm talking to these media goofballs.
All right.
I got a lot more to talk about.
Hey, just quickly, before I get to this read here, good news on the IG report.
You may say, what?
It was released?
No, that's the good news.
Mason, what are you talking about?
The IG report, the internal affairs report by Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, that is going to, I believe, have some bombshells about the horrendous Hillary Clinton email investigation, malfeasance potentially, or misfeasance in the FBI with regards to how poorly the Clinton email investigation was handled about the private server, was not released, which is good.
Why was it good?
Well, because there was a rumor out there that they were going to release it, Joe, During the summit to make everything go away.
Like, oh, look, what happened?
It's released today.
No one would pay attention.
It was not released.
So that's a good sign that the Department of Justice, who I'm not a huge fan of, especially Rosenstein, at least they didn't do that.
So a little bit of good news, nothing more to report on that.
But I did want to put that out there that if they put that out during the summit, that would have been a jerk move for the ages.
Like, are you guys kidding me?
And I think they kind of knew it, too.
So that would have been obvious.
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A ton of stuff to get to.
So, Amazon.
Interesting story, Joe, here about Seattle, and it goes to prove my point that I've made often on the show that the curse of liberalism is that it hurts liberals, too.
Liberalism is an idealistic, almost ethereal kind of otherworldly ideology, that when it's forced to grapple with the problems and the mechanics of how the real world works, it almost always fails and collapses.
I say almost always, because sometimes liberals see the constraints of their own liberalism and stop it, as we saw in Maryland, where Joe and I used to live, where it was being ravaged by big government taxes, big government education policies, and they then voted in a Republican governor, because even liberals Based on pure math, liberals dominated the polls in Maryland.
I think it's about 60% of the state is Democrat.
Eventually, there was a rain tax implemented where people were taxed on the impervious surfaces on their property.
They voted in a Republican governor.
Liberalism will always bite liberals in the butt.
The gift of conservatism is conservatism even benefits liberals in the long run.
Because conservatism stops at the front door of your house.
Liberalism starts at the front door of your house.
Conservatism is the idea that individual, big R, God-given rights are preeminent.
That I should be able to dictate what I do with my money, with my kids, with my kids' education, with my health care, with my property.
That stops at my front door.
I don't go over to my neighbor's house and try to steal their money, try to put their kids in indoctrination factories, and determine when or when they don't get health care.
Does that make sense, Joe?
It stops at my front door.
Dude, yeah.
Liberalism, in contrast, starts at your front door.
Yeah.
They want your money.
They want your kids.
They can never, ever, ever leave you alone, liberals.
And they never will.
This battle is perpetual.
Don't ever think there's a win here.
Every win should be followed up by seeking another fight with them, because they'll never stop.
Whatever you win, you get a tax cut, they're moving somewhere else for a tax hike.
It never stops.
Never happy.
Never.
They are never happy.
This is a perpetual fight.
You are going to have to dance with them forever.
And that's fine.
I believe the lesson of Jesus Christ was sacrifice, and that you are here to sacrifice and fight, and that there's a second creation coming where hopefully you don't have to deal with any of this.
But this time on earth is about the fight.
That's why I named my second book that.
No question in my mind.
And this fight is ongoing.
I bring this up because there was an interesting story in Seattle, where Seattle passed a head tax based on employees at a company.
If your company was over a certain amount of revenue, Joe, you were going to have to pay a $275 per employee tax that was going to be dedicated to eradicating homelessness, ironically, which was being caused, homelessness, by liberal policies like excessive zoning, which was causing a restriction in housing supply, which was causing an upward tick in rents and housing prices.
So liberals, this is you know the broken leg fallacy, where liberals break your leg and then offer more of the so-called remedy which actually broke your leg in the first place.
They offer the poison that broke the leg as the solution.
So liberalism offering, in Seattle, offering more liberalism to solve the problems liberalism caused with the housing crisis and the increased cost of living.
We've seen this over and over again.
In San Francisco, Seattle, and elsewhere.
So they instituted this tax on employees, which was only going to affect big companies.
And why did it affect Amazon and Starbucks?
Because they have massive facilities in Seattle.
It was going to cost them, Joe, an exorbitant amount of money.
So left-leaning companies like Amazon, who won't hesitate to jump in a social justice warrior fight, Starbucks too, ironically, when slammed in the pocketbook, their own pocketbooks, by liberalism, Fought back against this tax.
Now, Seattle's considering getting rid of this tax now, but it's interesting that in a city dominated absolutely monopolistically by liberal ideology, that when liberalism bites these companies, these liberal-leaning companies in their own wallet, they're the first ones to turn around and fight it.
Folks, liberalism's a joke.
It's a golden calf.
It's a hypocritical mess wrapped in an enigma that's not understandable to rational people because it's not rational itself.
It's impossible to explain to rational folks.
Why, when they're suffering problems of their own in their own household, that they should forfeit their money to a government that's causing the problems that are existing in their own household.
Nobody understands that.
They pretend to understand that, but when the problem hits them, and it's like, oh, well, what do you mean?
We gotta pay for this liberalism?
We gotta pay for the nonsense?
They don't wanna do it.
Just thought I'd bring that story up, because I thought it was...
I thought it was interesting.
Um, all right.
There's a lot of news going on as well here.
You know, just one more thing about Acosta.
I'm sorry I took an onus.
This guy is really driving me crazy seeing him yelling.
You know what I kept thinking when he was yelling these questions at during this press conference show?
Like, what is he doing?
Like what?
Isn't he embarrassed?
You know what it reminded me of?
You ever see, um, Is it Wedding Crashers?
You ever see that movie with Vince Vaughn?
Yeah.
Will Farrell comes in at the end.
They crash weddings, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.
They crash weddings, they show up at weddings uninvited.
Of course, nobody knows who they are or anything.
But in the end, They get together with this guy who was like the wedding crasher of the day, and now he's crashing funerals, and he's a real loser.
So they're in the house and they're talking to him, and at one point he's like, hey, Will Ferrell says to them, hey, you want some meatloaf?
Mom!
Mom!
The meatloaf!
The meatloaf!
And she's taking forever, and Will Ferrell goes, what is she doing?
I never know what she's doing back there.
This is what I was thinking about Jim Acosta.
What is he doing?
Like, we needed Will Farrell.
Like, what are you doing back there?
Man, just clam up, Acosta, for two minutes.
Gosh, sometimes you just gotta be a d***.
Oh, man, he does every time.
He manages to far surpass expectations, Joe, every single time.
All right, another downfall of liberalism story, which Liberalism, as I told you with Amazon, in a Seattle story, always winds up consuming itself.
It is a self-destructive ideology.
Here's another one to follow up on that.
I'm sorry, but the news of the day I've been missing a lot with all the Russia spiky stuff.
Yeah, it's kind of tough, dude.
But this is important, we catch up in a second.
Bill de Blasio, the communist mayor of New York City, who is driving that city into the ground, back to where it was in the early 90s, before its re-emergence on the scene as an economic powerhouse, due to some, at least, lurch towards the right and conservative-leaning economic principles.
De Blasio is determined to destroy the city.
So Joe, they have these eight high schools in the city.
Stuyvesant, I think it's Bronx Science and others that are incredible.
They're high performers.
They're, I mean, internationally competitive high schools where people who come out of these high schools are the best of the best of the best, the cream of the crop.
There are eight of them in New York.
Now, in order to get into these high schools, you have to take a test.
The test is standardized.
It's not, you know, unique to each student.
It's a standard test.
So everybody, I say that because everybody gets the same shot.
Okay.
Now, Joe, that means what?
That means that there's competition to get into the schools.
And you know, Joe, what do liberals hate more than anything?
Competition.
Everything has to be equal.
Everybody has to be relegated to equality and failure, equality and misery.
There is to be no competition because competition assumes that there are differences between people and the drive and willingness to work.
Why does that matter?
Because if that matters, Joe, you can't blame the government or the failure of government and then your desire to fix it on people's condition.
It's important what I just said.
I may have kind of screwed that up a little bit.
I got you.
Did you?
All right.
I'm just going to say this quickly again because this makes sense.
Liberals hate competition anywhere.
Competition to get into elite schools, competition in sports, competition anywhere.
Liberals want to blame your poor economic condition, if you are in it, on poor governance.
Poor governance meaning limited government.
Meaning if they were to introduce their bigger, more vibrant, more powerful government, they would level the playing field and you would not be in that poor condition.
Yeah.
Now, certainly there are people who've fallen on hard luck and are poor due to no fault of their own.
They may have broken a leg, broken a back, you know, been hit in the head and lost some cognitive abilities.
I mean, I'm not trying to be in any way sarcastic.
There are legitimately people who are hurting economically because of things that have happened that have just been strokes of bad luck.
There are also significant portions of that lower income population that are in that position because they made unquestionably poor life choices, Joe.
Whether they didn't want to work, they chose not to go to school, they quit jobs, they engaged in criminality.
Liberals, they want to blame that on the government so they can introduce a bigger government fix.
Again, the broken leg fallacy.
Got it.
They broke the leg, they want to introduce more government to fix your problem of a broken leg.
They don't want competition.
They don't want you to understand that life is under, largely, Under your control.
The path for success is hard work, education, and showing up on time and doing the right thing.
They don't want any of that.
They hate competition.
So de Blasio has to come in and level the playing field.
The standardized test was no good for him because what happened, Joe, in these eight schools?
These eight schools have become populated highly with Asian-American students.
Oh my gosh, you can't have that!
Wait, wait.
I thought they were all about equality and advancing minority interests.
Asian-Americans are a minority group as well.
Total BS.
Total crap.
That's not what they care about at all.
Now, this is a big story because now that de Blasio wants to institute racial quotas, Joe, undermining the standardized test because he's saying, well, there aren't enough black and Hispanic students.
Asian-Americans in New York City who've worked hard to send their kids to these eight schools understandably are saying, wait, wait, wait.
This is zero-sum, Comrade de Blasio.
If you change the standards based on racial quotas and you dump the standardized test, they aren't standards.
In other words, you're allowing people to be admitted based on the color of their skin, Joe.
That comes from where?
A seat someone who worked hard, whether Asian, white, black, or Hispanic, is going to have to forfeit because you gave a seat based on a racial quota, based on intellectual ability and hard work.
Asian Americans showed up in protest, a large number, and the story, just recently by the way, the story was avoided by almost all of the New York City liberal media outlets besides the New York Post and a couple others.
Why are they avoiding this story?
Because Joe, you can't have a critical theory narrative and this Asian American revolt story at the same time.
Why?
Liberalism, as I told you with the Amazon story, will always eat itself.
It will eventually run out of money.
It'll eventually run out of people when it institutes a health care policy based on rationing.
It'll eventually upset parents by indoctrinating them in their public schools and failing to educate them because their kids will run out of prosperity.
Liberalism always eats itself.
But when it comes to critical theory, liberals need a unified minority community to win.
Critical theory is the bedrock of modern liberalism.
It's the idea that your problems are caused by a white male patriarchy.
Well, patriarchy, but in firm male, but you, well, who knows now with the liberals and their ideas on gender, right?
I mean, liberalism will always eat itself.
The problem with liberalism is this idea that white males, that knowledge they project on you is just a construct of power.
In other words, there are no absolute truths.
The white males use science and everything else to dominate minority communities, therefore you are a victim of the white male patriarchy.
Everything they do is to advance that power construct, and you in turn will be subjugated.
This is the bedrock of critical theory.
What's the problem with that, Joe?
The problem with it is once you start instituting policies that by their very nature turn minority communities, you need coalesced against the white male patriarchy against Joe themselves.
Yeah.
Now all of a sudden you're like, wait, wait, wait.
Critical theory makes no sense.
I thought it was the white male patriarchy.
Now Asian Americans are upset against a white male who's in office trying to hurt them and their kids.
Folks, it can't, you see what I'm getting at right here?
The intellectual ideological friction, these two ideas can't exist.
So the white male screwing you over, minorities unite, and let's knock them out of power, but you put a white male in power in Comrade de Blasio who's inheriting a minority community.
Got it.
Those ideas can't exist at the same time.
One of them is false.
Of course it's critical theory.
Critical theory is junk.
But it's collapsing because it's a white male in power that is actively hurting a minority community in Asian Americans and I think the liberal media in New York understands the damage this story causes to their big government liberal ethos and therefore they're ignoring the story altogether.
Shh, don't mention it though.
Because what are you going to do?
Are you going to accuse Asian Americans of being racist?
Now, if it was a rally of largely white parents, of course they would do that.
That's what they do.
But they need minority communities coalesced together against what they see as the white male patriarchy.
By the way, these are their ideas, not ours.
Conservatives judge people, Joe, shockingly, I'm being sarcastic, of course, by their character.
Oh, yeah.
Liberals are obsessed by the melanin component of your skin, your religion, where you live.
Identity politics is their thing.
But do you understand?
Maybe I didn't explain this well, too.
I just want to wrap it up on this point.
They need minority communities coalesce.
Why, Joe?
Well, it's self-evident.
Because they're minority communities, meaning they don't make up a significant amount A significant enough amount of the population, Joe, to take electoral power by a 51% voting majority.
That's why they're minority communities.
Minority is not a character-related term.
It's a population percentage term.
They need Asian Americans, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Gay Americans, Bisexual Americans, Transgender Americans, Muslim Americans.
They need these communities coalesced against the Republican Party.
Because they're not, in and of themselves, the numbers aren't large enough to gain political power.
Identity politics is the means they do that by uniting them, Joe, into that 51% majority-minority, if that makes sense, against the, quote, white male patriarchy and critical theory.
But that all falls apart when your policies start to And gender infighting within the minority community themselves.
Once they start to splinter off and go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Liberalism's coming after my Asian American kid now?
The whole majority-minority identity politics tactic falls apart.
It's a strategic loser.
Boom!
Darn right!
The same thing is happening.
This is why I tied these two stories together.
In Seattle right now, Where it's the big businesses who they thought were on the social justice warrior side are getting slammed in the pocket by liberalism.
They're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
All of a sudden, you're seeing people working in these communities who are, you know, maybe minority or whatever saying, wait, I may lose my job because of Seattle's policies.
I'm not so sure anymore about this liberalism thing.
It's not going to work.
Now, one final tie in to all of this.
Identity politics, socialism, majority-minority unification against the white male patriarchy and critical theory.
These are staples of the modern left.
Socialism is the governing principle they operate by.
In other words, that governments will control the means of production.
That the economy will be dictated by the government, they will own the means of production, the food, the services industry, medical services, healthcare services, education.
This is the liberal, the far-left guiding ethos, right?
Socialism is their religion.
Yep.
Now, they believe that will be some great leveling mechanism.
That capitalism, and just to go back to where I was, I'm sorry if this show is maybe a little confusing, but it's an important show.
Matter of fact, I think it's one of the most important I've done in a little while here, because I haven't been able to address this.
They believe capitalism has an inherent unleveling effect.
In other words, people will become richer at the expense of the poor.
They ignore, of course, entirely that that competition is largely based on will to work, the will to get educated.
Yeah, of course there are going to be people who get rich and people who are going to get poor by no cause of their own.
There are people who inherit money and, you know, that they didn't do anything for.
That's a small percentage of it.
There are also people who become very poor because, like I said, medical circumstances, some bad luck in life.
But the large majority of people who succeed, succeed because they follow the plan.
Get married, stay married, work hard, get an education.
This is not complicated.
It's called the American Dream for a reason.
Socialism is the belief that the government can level that playing field and will do so benevolently and philanthropically.
That the government somehow, when you're anointed to power in government, you have some, you're benighted with some special knowledge and that that knowledge is going to level the playing field and take away from those who didn't earn and deserve and give to those who do.
Of course that's nonsense.
What the government does is when people get in power and government, it corrupts them and they steal and plunder and loot and destroy and kill and maim like they've always done throughout socialist regimes from Stalin to Mao.
This is happening now in Venezuela.
I read one of the most... Joe, this morning I'm looking through Mary Anastasia O'Grady has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about Venezuela and its 40 and 50 year history.
It's decades long history with socialism and the destruction of a wonderful hard-working people, the Venezuelan people.
Of course, socialism has reached a peak catastrophe.
Well, I shouldn't say peak.
But socialism, Joe, sadly, it can always get worse.
I shouldn't even say that.
Because next you'll see an exponential growth in police state tactics.
We've already seen it over there.
It can always get worse.
But she has one of the most troubling pieces I've seen on Venezuela in a long time.
Remember, this is your liberal religion.
Comrade de Blasio, the people in Seattle, socialism, the government's going to level the playing field.
No, the government is going to kill you and steal your stuff.
It is going to starve you to the point where, you know what's happening right now in Venezuela, Joe?
We've already talked about them eating pigeons, eating dogs, eating wildlife, people starving to death, people fleeing across the border into Colombia and other places to escape the horrors of socialism in Venezuela.
People are going through the garbage in Venezuela.
Now, Joe, if I were to tell you that, that people in Venezuela, a starving country, are going through the garbage, why do you think they'd be doing that?
I'm sure you're going to answer this the same way.
Why would you think they'd be doing that?
Because they're hungry.
That's the first thing that came to my mind, too.
Yes, you'd be right.
But that's not the reason.
They're going through the garbage and emptying the garbage bags, not only looking for food, To resell the used garbage bags, because they can't find money, they can't find jobs, or any... I thought to myself, I'm glad you said that, because that's exactly what I thought.
I said, okay, you know, of course they're starving, they're looking for food, they are.
But Mario Grady writes, they're actually selling used garbage bags in an attempt to gather any amount of income they can to feed themselves, after looking for human garbage to eat.
This is what, you know, guys, ladies in college, some of you may listen to my show.
You may have just found it.
You know, thanks to our audience.
I, you know, I deeply appreciate you all spreading the word.
But if you're a liberal in college who's listening to this.
I'm begging you.
I mean it.
I'm begging you.
I'd get on my knees right now if I had a video camera to show how genuine I am.
I'm not kidding.
I'm begging you to please, please, before you put on that Che Guevara shirt, before you go trying to lecture your friends at 18 and 19 about how the wonders of egalitarianism and socialist government rule and the leveling effect on society and how philanthropic and beneficial it will be to all of us, I'm begging you to read that piece.
It's subscriber only.
It's in the Wall Street Journal.
You may even get to read the first few paragraphs for free.
I'm not sure.
But find it.
I'm sure there's other pieces on Venezuela Today too you can read.
This is not a mystery.
Eating the garbage out of the garbage and then trying to sell the garbage bag?
Do you understand the human catastrophes?
These are real people dying and starving to death while you're sitting there on a college campus or elsewhere in the media.
Or even worse, you're an adult who actually has a job and you're still dumb enough to advocate socialism.
And you're sitting there with your Che Guevara.
Let me read to you one piece on this too.
This is a quote from the piece.
She's upset because we're not telling the true historical narrative, the author of the piece in the journal.
And we're deceiving kids.
She says, if anything was more predictable than the mess created by Chavez's Marxist-Bolivarian revolution, it is a pathetic effort by socialists to deny responsibility.
Amen.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain tweeted recently that Venezuela's problem is that socialism has yet to be tried.
It blamed the crisis on a... Joe, listen to this, this drivel, this complete stupidity.
It blamed the crisis in Venezuela on a profit-driven capitalist economy under leftist state control.
Even more preposterous is the claim by some academics that economic liberalism in the 1980s spawned the socialism that has destroyed the country today.
Folks, if you can't even tell the truth about what happened in Venezuela, its decades-long history with catastrophic socialism, with price controls, with government control of the means of production, how can you be trusted to dictate to us what's beneficial today?
This is really, really disturbing stuff, folks.
These people are lying to you.
If you're a parent who has a kid who believes in this stuff, I'm asking you to please pull them out of this ideological bubble they are for a minute and make them read one article today about the consumption of human garbage and the sale of garbage bags by people living under socialist terror.
I wrote this question down, Joe, and I'm going to leave it with this.
One of the best lines I ever heard was from a guy named John.
I met him at a speech I was giving in southern Florida one time.
He's a very bright guy.
He's from Michigan, and he had done some political activism and some political advisory.
He had some political advisory roles in the past.
And I'd given a speech, and he was very complimentary after the speech.
And he said, let me give you a piece of advice, though.
He said, people can avoid an assertion.
In other words, an assertion.
Socialism sucks.
I asserted that.
People can avoid it, Joe.
And they do.
A lot of people, there's a mental block.
They've been indoctrinated by their professors into believing socialism is somehow some benevolent force in our lives.
So they just avoid it.
It hits that skull and it just bounces off.
But he said to me, people cannot avoid a question.
And he's right.
I thought it was one of the most simple yet brilliant things I'd ever been told.
And that's why on the show, that moment changed my life.
And I think that's why our show has been so successful.
I constantly use analogies and stories and I try to leave and leave it with an exit question for you to think yourself.
In other words, take what I told you in the story and then go and run with it.
Here's the question.
Here's the homework.
Leaving something other than an assertion as a question plants a seed in the brain the brain can't avoid.
A question starts a process in the brain you cannot shut down.
So I ask you this.
What do you think did this?
What do you think did this in Venezuela?
Venezuela has a decades-long history with socialism.
More socialism under Chavez and Maduro, more poverty.
Less socialism, they've had periods of general prosperity.
The relationship is 100% crystal clear.
As Venezuela has moved over decades into a more or less socialist government control the economy position, they have had times of relative prosperity, and as they've moved in a more socialist government control position over the economy, they've moved into starvation, depravity, and economic duress.
I'm asking you a simple question.
What do you think did this if that relationship, which I told you is absolutely true, if that relationship holds?
What do you think?
If there's one thing I could do, it would be to change... These kids are just being led down the wrong path, Joe.
It's so disturbing.
All right.
Man, today's one of my favorite shows.
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Today's show brought to you... You can tell I go in a row.
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Alright, let me just wrap up with this.
So, net neutrality rules enacted under the Obama administration expired yesterday.
And of course, the apocalyptic predictions.
I know, I know I'm gonna get emails on this.
Listen, I love you guys.
I love your emails.
I read your emails last night.
I value your opinions greatly.
That's why my email's on the website.
I read the Twitter.
The Twitter.
I read the Twitter.
I love and enjoy your commentary.
I know this is going to evoke a response.
That's fine.
I'm not here to avoid controversial topics.
That's what we do.
But net neutrality rules under the Obama administration yesterday, this week, have now gone the way of the woolly mammoth.
Now, the apocalyptic predictions and forecasts of the left, of course, are not going to come to fruition and they will be embarrassed when they don't.
Remember the apocalyptic prediction show?
The internet, oh my gosh, it's going to shut down and all of a sudden these internet service providers are going to charge you billions of dollars and there's going to be fast lanes and websites are going to be blocked.
Folks, that's not going to happen.
How do I know that?
Because they didn't happen before 2015 when, in fact, net neutrality ruled.
I mean, really.
So I'm going to read to you a quote.
I'm going to wrap up on this.
I found from James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal today, which is a very good one, about the preposterous apocalyptic predictions about how when this three year, you know, nonsensical net neutrality journey we've been on now disappears.
All these predictions about how the Internet's going to, they're going to charge you more money.
They're going to block websites.
They're nonsense.
He says this.
The preposterous notion that the survival of the internet hinges on a rule that didn't even exist until three years ago and is antithetical to the regulatory restraint that allowed the internet to flourish in the first place.
He's absolutely right, folks.
You know, I had covered for a moment during the show the indoctrination, the propaganda put out there about socialism and how it's Led so many of our young Americans down the wrong path to actually believe that this is a viable system.
Not only is it not viable socialism, it's deadly.
But the propaganda efforts of some Silicon Valley companies on this net neutrality thing, you know, I can't believe in a way they've succeeded.
How so many, some Republicans too, have been baited into this.
I just, I want to again leave you with a question.
These rules were not in existence in 2015.
The internet flourished.
It was one of the worldwide gems as an example of economic advancement in the United States and all over the world.
These rules were not in place.
Your predictions about what was going to happen are not going to.
None of it came true.
Broadband investment after net neutrality went down significantly because people can't recoup their capital if they can't charge for what their services are worth.
And I want to ask you this.
Why would you think for a moment That the government has a solution for this.
The government, everything the government's touched, it's destroyed.
They've touched their tax policy, they've destroyed it.
The more money they take, the more money they waste.
They've dominated tax policy, they've driven us into mounds of red ink and tidal waves coming ashore.
Obamacare.
Total disaster, they couldn't even run a website.
A regulatory regime that suppressed the U.S.
and really suppressed the U.S.
and suffocated U.S.
business development.
Why do you think the government was going to fix the internet when the government stayed off the internet until 2015 and the internet flourished?
What evidence do you have of that at all?
Now, you have none!
Zero!
I have evidence that your net neutrality regime put a halt to broadband development.
And now, going forward, this show is on the record.
Of course, we don't delete our shows.
When what you said was going to happen, alright, net neutrality is going to disappear and there's going to be internet fast lanes, we're all going to be charged all this money and all this, when this doesn't happen in the future, I want you all to seriously consider why you went wrong in your analysis.
You went wrong in your analysis because, by the way, internet service providers are already being challenged by wireless and all kinds of other technologies.
In contrast, you think, oh my gosh, broadband, they've got a monopoly on the lines in the ground.
Well, they put the lines in the air!
It's nonsense.
It's a very simple game, Dan.
Liberals.
Everything they say is a lie, and everything they've tried fails.
Every single time!
And why conservatives and some Republicans got baited into this net neutrality debate that somehow the government was going to fix this problem is utterly outrageous.
The government has no incentive to fix the problem.
They're not investors in the problem.
The government has an incentive to do one thing.
Power.
To get re-elected.
That is it.
And whatever they can do in the power of no to tell people no to get them and these companies to lobby them and give them money towards getting re-elected to get the yes they will do.
This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.
Disappointing.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Please check us out at Bongino.com.
Check out the show notes today.
I have some really great coverage of the media's just utter failure on the North Korean summit yesterday.
It's pathetic what they did.
So go check that out, Bongino.com.
I'll see you all tomorrow.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
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