Summary:
In this episode I address the futile liberal rage campaign against Trump. I also discuss the Left’s new strategy to derail Trump’s Supreme Court pick. Finally I address the superiority of free markets over socialism.
News Picks:
Mueller will not present any evidence of collusion in the Manafort trial despite being appointed to investigate collusion.
Why is Paul Manafort in solitary confinement?
Wisconsin was a dry run for the Democrats.
The Left never stopped being nasty.
Liberals are trying to tie Mueller’s probe to the Supreme Court pick.
More millionaires flee California after their tax hike.
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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?
I'm hanging in there, babe.
You ready to go?
Yeah, another early Monday morning for Fox and Friends this morning.
You know, live TV is great because here's the way it works, folks.
For some of you who don't know, you know, you get the They'll give you a general idea of, hey, here's what we're going to talk about and stuff like that.
And so you go on the, you know, you go on the air with the, you know, Joe in the radio, it's probably the same way.
A general idea of, hey, we're going to talk about whatever, McConnell, Supreme Court, whatever it may be.
Breaking news!
You know, great breaking news this morning.
Matter of fact, they rescued the seventh and eighth child from that cave in Thailand.
And you're like, all right, let's talk about the Thailand cave thing.
You just roll with it, man.
So it was up early.
I mean, a great story.
Just unbelievable heroism.
You know, I was telling the story this morning about when I was Listen, let me just be crystal clear.
I am not putting my training anywhere remotely close to that of these Navy SEALs.
Just for context, when you were on the air, I was using a story about how we were in the Secret Service and we used to train in the helodunker, Joe, which is this It's basically a cage.
It's meant to simulate a helicopter crashing in water and it's supposed to teach you how to get out of it.
So they put a blindfold on you and they dunk you underwater.
Now keep in mind, Joe, this is in a pool in the middle of the day that's crystal clear and there's, you know, two or three instructors around.
And, you know, when you're blindfolded, you get disoriented.
I mean, put that in the context of the heroism of these U.S.
Navy SEALs and these other Thai Navy SEALs and others over there.
They're in a, it ain't no pool, folks.
They're in a dark cave, constricted passageways, dealing with kids with no expertise in this at all.
So, God bless them, man.
What a believable heroism.
Real quick, I have a background in diving.
I dove for years and years in the underwater photographer.
Is that right?
What haven't you done, Armacost?
I've won a national contest, a photo shoot.
I'm amazed.
Amazed at what they're doing.
Right.
Incredible!
Oh my gosh, and it'd be under this compressed timeline now because the rains are going to pick up.
Man!
God bless them.
I know the left can't stand it when we say thoughts and prayers.
I always get Twitter backlash, but you know, your prayers matter.
Big time.
So, all right.
It's interesting.
You know, we're recording the show now.
I've been up already for about five You sound like you're wired, dude.
Oh man, I'm always wired.
My brain is definitely wired towards a higher level of base level activity.
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Okay.
I got a lot to get to today.
Big weekend of news.
But story numero uno.
The left changing their story again on the Donald Trump team alleged Russian collusion X-Files fairy tale case.
Folks, the story has changed five, six, seven times.
And now it relates to current news because, as you will see in my show notes today, I have a CNBC article in there, which is actually pretty interesting.
The left's new talking point, Joe, about Russian collusion is Stop Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee because he's under investigation for colluding with the Russians to throw an election.
Sorry if it sounds like I'm fade because I'm backing away from the mic laughing hysterically because the left has now changed its story for the umpteenth time.
Trump was under investigation personally.
His team was under investigation.
He wasn't under investigation.
His team wasn't under investigation.
Now they're under investigation again.
You know, why is all this happening?
Because the left are frauds!
Ladies and gentlemen, these are complete frauds.
I want you to understand that I am a conservative because at least we're authentic.
You may not agree with us, that's fine.
But our positions on things, authentic conservatives, does not change.
Economic liberty, economic freedom, health care liberty, education liberty, a limited state and unlimited individual.
We believe in that.
We don't vary from that at all.
The left will say anything, anything, to obtain power.
Because the very essence of socialism, democratic socialism, communism, it's all the same thing, despite their protestations otherwise.
The end goal is control.
It's power and political control.
The ends justify the means to them.
Meaning whatever they have to do, lie, cheat, or steal, to get to an ends which is obtaining and maintaining power over your lives, that's what they'll do.
I only bring this up because the CNBC article, their new focus group test, The Talking Point, is that, and I'm quoting here, it's, a president under investigation for colluding with a foreign national to interfere with an election should not be allowed to appoint someone to the Supreme Court.
That was liberal Senator Jeff Merkley on the Democrat side.
Now, just, what Joe, a month ago, maybe a month and a half ago, maybe less than that, When it was uncovered that they employed a spy to go and target the Trump team.
When this was uncovered, they ran from the fact that they were investigating the Trump team and said, no, no, no, we were just, we were investigating the Russians.
So first, to make the Trump team appear that they were under investigation before the election, to tarnish them and tar and feather them, to make them look unelectable, Joe, the Trump team and Trump were under investigation for colluding with the Russians.
After the election, they stuck to that script.
When it was uncovered that there was a spy, folks, this is... Listen, don't let any of this go!
They were expecting you to forget this.
They insisted that it wasn't the Trump team that was under investigation.
They were investigating the Russians.
Joe, cue up.
You have that clip of Clapper in case you think I'm making this up.
This is like the fifth time now we've had to play this cut.
Here is Jim Clapper actually saying it wasn't the Trump team they were investigating the Russians because they did not want to be involved in a scandal that involved them spying on the Trump team.
It had nothing to do with spying on the campaign per se.
It was about the Russians.
But wait, what?
That's not what they're telling us today, Joe.
I just quoted you from the CNBC piece.
No!
Democrat, yeah, shocking, Joe.
Democrat Senator Merkley, a president under investigation for colluding with a foreign national to interfere with an election.
What is it?
So now you are spying on the Trump team again?
Folks, these people are complete, total, utter frauds.
They are liars.
They have not an ounce of spine in them.
They are amoebas.
They are amoeba-like creatures.
These are inauthentic human beings.
They are not genuine.
They have no character at all.
The left will change their mind on anything.
Now, again, in an effort, because now that the, thanks to the media, the hacks in the media, covering up the disaster, which I'm not done with by the way, I'm going to get to this in a second, spying operation on the Trump team, the fact that they now know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in conjunction with the intelligence community, had deployed spy assets to spy on members of the Trump team, Now that that story has died down in collusion with the media, now they can go back to making Trump try to look bad again by lying and saying he's under investigation for colluding.
This is what they do.
I wanted to bring that up because it speaks to again the, you know, what do they call it?
Trump derangement syndrome?
It's just insane.
It's really Trump insanity.
It's not even derangement.
It's pure utter insanity.
I'm going to get into something in a few minutes here, and I want you to roll with me, because this is really important stuff.
But this is, as I've said repeatedly, this is the gift of Donald Trump.
I'm going to explain something to you right now, having run for office, being involved closely with a lot of politicians, understanding how they work, having dealt with this through three election cycles when I ran, and being involved in the activist community, Joe.
One of the things I see about Donald Trump and one of the assets, the tremendous assets, the gift he's been to our movement, is his willingness to weather a storm.
We've never seen this before.
The standard Republican approach to elected office has been to trial balloon something, Joe.
Put out, leak a story about what you're intending to do.
We're going to cut taxes on Joe Armacost, whatever it may be.
You leak it, you don't put it out as a formal policy.
Wait for the media and Democrat activist group response, hear it out, feel it out, take its blood pressure, right?
If it's overwhelmingly negative, and the media echoes the message, and it's really loud, and they can get the public on their side through a massive gaslighting effort, telling falsehoods, telling them confidently, telling them over and over again, the Republicans will retract and move away, or if it's already been announced, they'll apologize and rescind it.
Trump does not do this, ladies and gentlemen.
He doubles down.
He hits a brick wall, and he gets a jackhammer and goes right through it.
So the left does not know how to respond because they've never experienced anything like this before.
They're used to the tactical retreat.
And now that they're in a boxing match where their entire strategy, Joe, has been around a videotape of a guy, they've been watching video of their opponent who always tactically retreats, and they've been working their footwork and their attack game around that opponent, they are entirely unprepared for getting in the ring and all of a sudden the guy turns into Clubber Lang in Rocky III.
Who keeps coming forward and forward, they're like, wait, wait, what do we do?
They don't know what to do.
So they are responding in almost violation of their own prior tactical norms.
Is this making sense?
Oh yeah.
And it's leading to complete tactical chaos on the left.
Folks, what they're doing is not helping.
I'm going to elaborate on this in a second.
They are resorting to, because they're used to this, tactical retreat.
They are not accustomed to boxing against a boxer who now is not retreating, and not only is not tactically retreating, but is tactically coming forward.
What do they say in boxing?
You know, the best defense is a good offense.
When you're punching, the other guy is thinking about his defense and not thinking about hitting you.
I love boxing analogies.
You can probably tell.
I did it for a long time.
And again, we'll leave the violent stuff to the left.
That's their thing.
But boxing analogies in terms of competition.
Boxing's a sport.
It's not a fight.
Fights happen in the street.
Boxing is a sport.
I always think of some of the Tyson lines.
Tyson had some of the best lines around.
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face in boxing.
And it's true when you all of a sudden you have this tactical plan and it's interrupted by something you didn't expect.
You know, what is the other one?
They say the best punch in the world is the one you never saw coming.
If you don't see it coming, you don't know how to respond.
Again, this is meant as a sporting analogy, but it's important because the left doesn't know what to do here.
They don't understand and they're responding with higher, more, more, more, um, Elaborate, ridiculous, absurd levels of rhetoric.
Now, Joe pulled this from Dick Durbin this morning.
You have that one, Joe?
This is a good one.
Joe sent this over this morning.
This is Dick Durbin.
Again, normally a more tactical.
He's a senator from Illinois.
Democrat, of course.
Big liberal Democrat.
This is normally a more tactically reserved and efficient politician.
I don't mean efficient economically speaking.
His policies are disastrous.
I mean, I don't like the guy's policies, obviously, but he's normally more tactically sound when it comes to the politics, using focus group-tested talking points, moving the public needle by using these talking points to move the media narrative and to alter the narrative.
This is him using an absolutely ridiculous, absurd analogy because his game before using more nuanced analogies didn't work, so now they have to up the level of their rhetoric.
to absolute absurdity.
Remember the Rob Snyder YouTube clip?
There's multiple ways to say dude.
You know, you get the serial killer around the corner.
Dude.
Dude.
You're confused.
Dude.
You're surprised.
Dude.
Right?
This is one of those.
Dude.
Are you crazy?
Are you making an analogy between these boys trapped in this cave in Thailand and Trump's immigration policy?
This is what happens.
Because folks, please understand what's happening now.
None of this is helping the Democrats.
And I'm not here to give them advice.
Cause I'll get emails saying, stop giving advice.
Listen to me.
It doesn't matter.
They cannot control themselves.
They are, they have lost all their bearings.
They are not more to appear to a doc, anything anymore.
They are out in an open ocean of stupidity, wandering around with no lodestar to guide them back to shore because they don't know how to respond.
They have been trained.
For 30 years now, if not more, hit the Republicans hard, use the media, accuse them of the standard talking points, they don't like grandma, they don't like dogs and puppies, they don't like babies, they don't like single moms, they don't like people who are black, hispanic, just name the list.
This is what they do.
Republicans have tactically retreated and they claim victory.
This is the video they were watching on their opponent forever.
This is what they trained for.
They're not trained for Trump.
At all.
So they're losing their minds.
They're changing their talking points in and out, day by day.
Forgetting we have a conservative media that can, like this show right here, that can just replay Jim Clapper from a month ago.
Trump team under investigation.
We were after the Russians.
Today, Jeff Merkley.
Trump team's under investigation.
They don't know what they're doing.
Dick Durbin.
The boy's trapped in a cave.
They're similar, same thing as a bureaucratic cave.
Are you crazy, dude?
Holy cow.
It's insane.
These people are nuts.
They're losing their mind.
I call it the liberal rage campaign.
This is not helping, but understand this.
This is a movement embedded knee-deep in emotion, ladies and gentlemen.
The emotion is that this is all they have.
The far left, I'm not talking about all Democrats here, but the far left does not have reason.
Reason is not a staple of their movement.
Their movement is emotion.
Reason would be based on a fact and data-based analysis of their policies.
A fact and data-based analysis of their policies.
Whether it's inner cities or states largely run by liberals would lead to disastrous outcomes.
The collapse in San Francisco.
They can't even have conventions there anymore.
People are canceling because of people in the streets doing drugs and there's human waste all over the place.
You go to places like Baltimore, the collapse of the economy because of 50 plus years of far-left policies.
So what do they do?
They rely on emotion.
You know, worry about compassion and tolerance.
It's all an emotion.
When you rely on emotion, And that emotional game doesn't work, and you don't have reason to fall back on.
You have to up the emotion levels.
That make sense?
So the emotion was a three.
It worked in the past.
Now we're going to up it to a four.
Now a five.
Now you start getting it to eight or nine, and now you're in the pure rage category.
Yeah.
They don't have anything else, ladies and gentlemen.
The rage campaign continues.
Now, I have a great piece by Daniel Greenfield from Front Page Mag about this rage campaign, how this is nothing new by the left.
It's at the show notes today at Bongino.com.
Again, if you subscribe to my email list, I'll email these to you.
But please check it out.
And I'm going to make a connection here, and I need you to bear with me for a minute.
I want to show you how this is going to backfire badly in their faces here at the left.
Joe, the RAGE campaign largely relies on what Greenfield refers to as covert support.
People who are mainstream left figures, elected politicians, their ideas are fringe, but they're not fringe.
You have what they would call the centrist Democrats, whatever they may be, even though none of their ideas are centrist, but you get the point.
They rely on covert support for them.
In other words, these people aren't called out.
They aren't called out by the media.
And when I say that, I mean the rage people, the people stalking McConnell, stalking the DHS secretary.
There was a lady who started verbally accosting Steve Bannon in a bookstore this weekend.
These people are generally not called out by the majority of mainstream figures in the Democrat Party, which leads to kind of a covert support, a tacit support.
This doesn't happen on the right.
If you're on the right and you're You attack someone, there's nowhere in polite company you'll be accepted.
And folks, one, I of course agree with that.
I don't think we should be obviously violently accosting or harassing anyone.
We're more than welcome, obviously, to petition public officials, but harassing people is just not sane.
It's not rational.
It's just stupid.
You wouldn't be, there's no home on the right for that.
Matter of fact, there's a great video this weekend of these Trump supporters and a couple of folks showed up with some really nasty ideas and the Trump supporters kicked them right out of there.
But they get this, the left gets this covert support because they're not called out.
You saw this in the 60s and 70s, too, and Greenfield mentions this in the piece.
He refers to another piece in Politico where this is not new, the 60s and 70s, which you, Joe, lived through.
You saw this rage campaign as well about the Vietnam War, but he brings up a great point.
This is a terrific point, and this is from a Politico piece he cites in there about the left's ongoing rage campaign.
Joe, the majority of Americans in the 60s and 70s, towards the end of the war, in the 70s and 80s, objected to the Vietnam War.
But this is interesting.
This is fascinating.
Even more Americans opposed the Vietnam War protesters, even though they objected to the war.
This led to a massive backlash.
Remember the Nixon presidency?
You would obviously remember a lot better than me, being that I was a small child at the time.
But the Nixon presidency was based on law and order.
That was his thing, running against this societal chaos.
And there was a massive backlash.
This is what surprises me about the left, that they don't see this coming.
That they don't understand that Trying to imbue their movement with a sense of aggression, confrontation, violence, chaos.
This is not going to end well for them electorally.
They are going to be wiped clean and out of power.
The backlash for people craving some sanity in their lives is going to be significant and we've already seen this.
This record's already been played.
Yep.
Nixon won in a landslide, by the way, on a law and order platform from people who were like, alright, again, that number, don't forget that number.
I object to the war, but I object to this, too.
The opposition using these tactics to, in some cases, aggressively confront other people.
This will backfire.
Now I want to tie this into a podcast I heard this week, and one of my favorites if you're a regular listener to the show is Russ Roberts' Econ Talk.
It's a really great podcast.
Yeah, I love it.
It's such a great show.
It's a once a week show.
It's an hour long.
It's a little wonky at times.
He's a very soft-spoken guy.
He lives actually in Maryland, Montgomery County, which is odd because he's more of a libertarian.
I don't know how he survives over there in Montgomery County, but that's so liberal.
But it's a really good podcast.
He had Arnold Klingon, who's been on before, and they were talking about what are these things they call mounds, like mounds of civilization.
I want to explain this for a second.
He's talking about it, he's making an anthropology analogy.
How when you do an anthropology dig and you see civilizations that the latest finds are obviously, you know, the people who lived closest to your dig.
And as you go deeper and deeper you get older and older and older and older.
And he makes this comparison to civil norms that have developed over time.
How civil norms feed on each other and how society just Society, let's use the United States as an example, collectively speaking, how we learn how to deal with each other through mounds and mounds of civil norms that have been handed down and over and over like an anthropological dig.
And he makes a really cool point.
You know, we love stories.
He says, Joe, how do you know when you go to the food court in the Annapolis Mall or wherever you go, the Rundle Mills Mall, by no Joe's area, where I used to live there, how do you know that the napkins are free?
Is there a sign?
Nah, they've always been free, dude.
But how do you know that?
I'm serious.
How do you know?
And the fact that you don't know answers my question.
I know.
There's no sign.
Did anyone ever tell you that?
They don't have to, the damn napkins are free!
Right, right, but this is a great point they make in this podcast that the civil society over time there are rules that you don't necessarily know who told you.
You may have seen it, it may be a social modeling and the great part of the podcast is he talks about the intersection between sociology or the study of groups of people and economics which is really the study in many essences of human of the human utility function how we individually act when we require things and want things right but you may have seen it like you may have modeled behavior you may have been in the food court one day and noticed a few people walk up and took napkins and didn't pay but the point is you don't remember right you just know it's but the soda's not free
Right?
The trays aren't free.
The trays are cheap.
Why don't you just walk out with a tray?
Because you've never seen anybody do it, or you did and someone got arrested.
The point is, folks, is the podcast explains how these civil norms develop over time and layer on top of each other.
And one of the civil norms in the United States, to tie it into this liberal rage campaign and how this will unquestionably backfire on them, is the United States is a wealthy, prosperous country.
We have our problems like anyone else, but we've developed norms over time.
One of those norms is you don't walk up to a politician in public, no matter how much you can't stand him, and start screaming with blood coming from your fangs in his face.
Spittle going all over him while recording him and telling him what a loser he is.
I'm sorry, I have some sincere, as Joe does as well, Objections to the policies Democrats have imparted upon us.
Very sincere objections.
It's hurt my health care.
It's hurt my kid's education.
But I would never in a million years think to walk up to a politician in the middle of the street and start screaming in his face, I'm sorry, that's not, there's nothing, there's nothing remotely, uh, palliative about that.
It's going to help us as a society heal.
Nothing.
There's this, I don't understand.
I just, I don't get what they think they're getting out of this.
And once those civil norms disintegrate, everything else goes with it.
That's the problem, ladies and gentlemen, I have with this.
And that's why I think there's going to be such a backlash at the polls.
You get where I'm going with this, Joe?
Yeah, man.
And I can feel the backlash brewing already.
People are tired of it.
You can't tell me moderate Democrats aren't like, all right, I get it.
I don't agree with the DHS secretary over this.
But now the woman's not even allowed to eat in a restaurant without five or six people showing up and screaming in her face.
I mean, come on, folks.
Give me a break.
Seriously.
How is this helping?
Do what the Tea Party did.
Go out there and organize groups of people.
Go to the polls and win an election, man.
Now, I want to give one quick analogy.
I want to move on.
I'm sorry, but I was just so fascinated by this podcast and I like to, you know, like you guys, I'm a thinker.
I like to put together various ideas and spontaneously, you know, recombine them into new stuff that I can use on the show.
Well, as soon as you said you don't know why, I knew what you were saying.
Yeah, you don't know why these civil norms, like the napkins are free, that was a great analogy used in a podcast, like, why are napkins free?
I'm like, it's a good question.
Why are napkins free?
Because I saw someone take a napkin, right?
I have no idea.
But these are just, it's not written in the law anywhere, you know, you will all make napkins free.
But I'm thinking about this.
This is the value, this is also, and I don't mean to get off track, I'm sorry, but I just want you to freewheel me a little bit today, because this is really important stuff.
This is what also bothers me about this recent lurch of the left towards socialism.
Because what socialism is, is it disconnects people from free market interchange and interactions.
And it's these interactions among free human beings, whether economically, Joe, work-related, whatever they are, that over time Develop that archaeological bedrock of society as we know it now that leads you to know in a food court that the napkins are free but the food isn't.
Without those norms that aren't written in stone anywhere, everybody's running behind the counter in a food court and stealing the chicken sandwiches from the Chick-fil-A.
I thought this is what we could do!
I didn't know!
Do you understand how the free market, economic liberty, The dangers of socialism and the destruction of the free market are the destruction of civil norms as well, because it promotes an individual silo.
The government will do everything for you.
There's no need for economic relationships.
There's no need for contract law.
Nothing.
The government will do and provide everything for you.
There's no need to associate with your neighbor.
If he has a farm, don't worry.
You don't need to negotiate with him to obtain some food for some labor or some trade you may have, whatever.
Clothing you made.
There's no need for that and those interactions.
Because the government will in turn take that food and redistribute it just like it'll take the clothing you make and give it to other people.
There's no need, Joe, for voluntary interaction.
But it's that voluntary interaction over time and generations that has made the United States this unbelievably prosperous place.
Because we develop over time, through hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of interactions with others, a series of rules and norms that we just understand that we don't need to be told.
Socialist countries don't have that because there aren't those interactions, not anywhere to the degree that happens in a free market.
There aren't.
People are encouraged to stay in silos and suckle off the government for everything.
So you don't have those mounds of civil norms that develop over time which gave us such wealth and prosperity.
And here's my final example.
I'm sorry I'm going to move on because it was such a great show.
One of Kling's points he makes in the podcast is that Big societies, you know, we're very tribal by nature.
We were used to existing throughout the course of human history, Joe, in small tribes, where things like collective ideas work.
You know, if you're in a tribe of 10 or 15 people, you know, ideas like, you know, collectivism and collective labor may work because you can, if your neighbor's not working, you can see it and be like, hey buddy, you know what, you gotta get out on the farm and put in a few hours.
Yeah.
So one of the lines is, you know, we're all free market capitalists when it comes to, like, the country level, but we're all socialists at the family level, right?
The socialist level.
Because we can control it.
And as a parent, a father, you do.
You want to control some degree of what your kids do.
But the point is, as society expands and becomes bigger, Joe, socialism and collective ideas are impossible to implement because I can't keep control of you.
There's 300 million Americans.
I have no idea that if I'm paying taxes that you're actually taking the money to put into your business and then in turn paying taxes yourself into a better collective benefit.
As society expands, it becomes impossible to keep tabs on people, number one.
And number two, So that's number one, right?
Just to be clear.
The downside is that society expands collectively.
It gets impossible for us to monitor our neighbors.
So we don't want to act collectively.
We want to be like, you know what?
You leave me alone.
I'll leave you alone.
But Kling makes the point in the piece, and Roberts as well, that we need society to expand to be more prosperous because we need specialized labor.
So in other words, Joe, we need people to be experts in little things.
Like Joe's an expert in this.
He understands Adobe Audition and the podcasting.
Joe's very specialized in his skill set.
But if you live in a small tribal society of only 15 people, if Joe says, hey guys, all I'm going to do is be an expert in podcasting, sound engineering, and Adobe Audition, I got news for you.
Everybody's going to starve.
Because they're going to be like, no, no, Joe, we need you to farm or we're all going to die.
So do you see the conflict, Joe?
Number one, collectivism doesn't work in big groups.
So big groups would fail a lot without without civil norms.
Copy?
Point number two, though, is we need groups to expand.
We need collective defense.
We need specialization of labor and that's only possible when the group is big enough that Joe can focus on little things while other people focus on other little things so we all don't starve to death.
So there's this constant conflict.
Big groups don't work, but we need to make big groups work.
We make big groups work.
By civil norms and mounds of them over time where we understand we don't need to go to court for every little thing in the United States.
We don't need the food court doesn't take us to court to sue because we took six napkins.
These have developed over time through hundreds of thousands and hundreds of millions of interactions collectively between people where they understand things over time.
And we have a limited government, and all of this, and contract law, and we understand it, and that is the benefit of free markets over socialism.
And I think of this one last example, right?
I'm not gonna say the country, but I traveled a lot in the Secret Service.
And let's just say it was a country that had just found some element of capitalism.
Not all, it was still largely state-controlled, but you can probably figure it out.
Alright.
But I go from one country, it was a multi-country trip.
And I was tired, man, really, like seriously tired.
I'm on the other side of the world.
And I come from a robust, generally free market economy on that side of the world.
And I get in the airport, and you know, you get online, you board the plane, nothing happens.
I travel to the next country.
I'm only there about a week.
I will never forget this as long as I live.
They had just kind of started to taste free markets.
They called the flight number, whatever it was.
Flight 762, ready to board.
Joe, I've never seen anything like it.
No line, no nothing, mass chaos in this airport.
No concern whatsoever for your feelings.
Sir, you just cut me off.
The guy looked at me like I had ten heads, like that's what we do.
I'm not making this up.
I didn't know what to do because I You know, I'm a pretty big dude.
I'm 6'1".
Back then I was probably 200.
I'm 231 now.
And I'm like, what am I going to do?
I'm going to attack someone?
So I just wound up being the last person aboard the plane.
Because I just refused to cut anyone off.
Folks, I'm not making this up.
I think I was, if not the last, I was like the second to last person.
There was no line.
It was total chaos.
And I kept thinking, because I was always fascinated by economics.
There it is!
In the United States, we have, you know, 50 years plus of flight, where people have in a free market, robust economy, flown hundreds of times, they understand the rules, they don't need to be told, everybody lines up, you don't cut the guy in front of you, and the folks in this country, they just had no idea!
Because it was a socialist country with no economy, no interaction, no human interaction.
And the idea was, yes, I'm getting on this plane first.
And if I have to jump in front of you and kneecap your butt, I'm going to do it.
And nobody did anything about it.
It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.
It was complete chaos.
It was a sea of humanity moving towards escape.
Bro, it was the greatest thing ever.
I've learned so much from that experience.
And I've heard from friends who've been back to the country that things have improved markedly.
But again, it's probably because now people there have flown a little bit due to free market interaction, have figured out the napkin rule that you don't cut people off, they don't need to be told it anymore, and order improves and then society grows and people can interact with each other without having to go to court every single time or having to be arrested or having to be told it.
Oh, man.
See, that's what we do different in the show.
We pull things out of everywhere.
All right.
Let me get, I got to move on a little bit here.
I got a lot to get through.
All right.
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Okay.
I wanted to spend a little time on that because, again, the podcast was so great.
It shows you why I'm so furious about leftists who are so ignorant about the effects of socialism and the actual damage it does to human beings, folks.
Remember, people who support socialism aren't engaged in misfeasance.
In other words, misfeasance.
Someone falls on the concrete in front of you and you don't help them up.
It's a bad act, but you didn't do anything.
But you not doing something was the problem.
The problem with socialists is they're engaged in malfeasance, meaning the person tries to get up after they fall and you punch them in the face to keep them down.
That's what socialism is and that's how it destroys civil norms and that's also why I have such a beef with this endless confrontation and harassment and in some cases violent campaign by the left.
Once those civil norms disintegrate and conservatives feel like they can't go out in public anymore, ladies and gentlemen, the country's gone.
We become that airport in that country I was talking about, where it's complete, total chaos.
Ah, let's see, what was the second story?
Oh, here we go.
I wanted to just cover quickly, also I discussed on Friday, the bombshell piece by John Solomon, In the Hill, the repercussions of which are still reverberating through the media, trying to figure out what to make of it.
The Solomon piece, In the Hill, Which speaks about the FBI's behavior during the Trump investigation in the early stages.
There was one particular quote, I know I highlighted it on Friday, but I just want to bring it up again because I got a lot of emails on it, and people are unsure what this CI thing means.
So here's the quote from the piece.
Peter Stroke, remember, who is the number two in the counterintelligence division of the FBI, and was also the lead investigator on the Hillary case, And the Trump case.
He sends an email to the number one in that division, a guy named Bill Preistep.
Preistep's still employed there.
Stroke has been escorted out of the FBI complex last week, but is probably still getting paid.
I'm not sure if he's on administrative leave or not.
Stroke says to Preistep, I suggest we need to exchange our entire lists as we each have potential derogatory CI info, the other dozen.
This is just days after the Trump election.
Now, as I brought up Friday, I don't want to repeat the show, obviously, this is critical.
Days after the election of Donald Trump, they're talking about exchanging derogatory information they have with each other.
Now, as I brought up to you then, and I'll bring up to you again now, How many investigations into Donald Trump are there?
Folks, there's another investigation Solomon writes about in his piece called Operation Dragon.
How many investigations were going on into Donald Trump?
What are we living in, like a third world republic here?
Or a pseudo-republic?
This is important because I had said on Friday, and a couple folks had emailed me, When he says we each have potential derogatory CI info, the other doesn't.
It's clear to me they're talking about separate investigations or separate investigators exchanging information about Trump team members they want to quote scrub.
I believe the CI info is them talking about spies.
Confidential informants.
Now, the reason I'm bringing it up is over the weekend, because I do read your emails.
I'm sorry I don't get to respond to everyone, but I do like to read them.
I love your feedback on the show.
A couple folks, Joe, Joe's like digging into the microphone.
As I can always tell when Joe's interested in something.
Yeah, I'm into this, yeah.
Folks had emailed me, a lot of them with significant law enforcement experience, and they had said...
Dan, I think they're talking about counterintelligence investigation information, not confidential informants.
Maybe, folks, maybe.
In other words, why is this critical?
Why does it matter to you?
Friday, I'd said to you, if they're talking about exchanging derogatory information, Joe, according to their own email, Amongst each other, suggesting there are multiple investigators and potentially multiple investigations working on the Trump team.
And the derogatory information is, quote, CI info, and that CI stands for confidential informant.
If it does, what does that mean, Joe?
Logically, it means that not only are there multiple investigations, there's multiple spies!
That's what!
Now, again, folks had emailed me and said maybe they mean Derogatory counterintelligence information.
That's possible.
Certainly possible.
Now, one person emailed me, you know who you are, I'm not going to mention your name, and said, well, I've seen CIs in emails and bureau paperwork referred to as CHSs, confidential human sources.
I was not in the FBI.
I was in the Secret Service.
I'm just telling you on my experience, and again, I'm not trying to correct anyone or be Captain Know-It-All.
You may be right.
They may be talking about counterintelligence information and not spies.
I suggested to you on the Friday show, and I'm sticking by my breakdown of this, my analysis of it, but again, I respect yours.
That they are CIs, that they're talking about confidential informants, meaning there may have been multiple spies being run at this Trump team, and the evidence at this point certainly backs that up, based on the account of Michael Caputo and Papadopoulos and others who claim that it wasn't only Stephane Halperin who contacted them, but others as well, with a history of working with the FBI or the CIA.
Folks, this is explosive.
There were multiple spies.
Now, the reason I say that I'm sticking towards CI, meaning confidential informant, not counterintelligence information, is in, you know, my experience, I've always heard, always, always heard to them, even the FBI teams I work with, and I worked with a few of them on a couple big cases, and when I was outside of the New York office in the Secret Service, they always talked about them as CIs.
Never anything else.
So that's the reason I brought that up and I appreciate your emails.
But, you know, if we find out later that, again, they were talking about counterintelligence investigation, it doesn't take the edge off the email, Joe.
It still means there were probably multiple investigators and therefore multiple investigations into the Trump team, which is a hairy enough thing.
But if it means CI and it means confidential informant, it means there were likely multiple spies as well, which is just beyond disturbing.
So, critical stuff.
It's just a phenomenal article.
It's in Friday's show notes.
If you haven't read it yet, please check it out.
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Okay.
This was another story over the weekend.
I have this report from Forbes, which is great, because it proves a point I've been making a long time.
And Joe, living still stuck in Maryland, is probably very sensitive to this.
Joe, you remember the millionaire's tax in Maryland?
Yeah, so there's a great story in Forbes about how California, they did an analysis of the behavior of millionaires in California pre and post the 2012 implementation of a massive millionaire tax in California.
Now, the story means a lot to me because, again, debating with liberals, as I said in the beginning, is almost always an emotion-based argument.
It's almost never an argument based on reason and facts.
Facts should not be disputable.
Facts are facts.
That's why they're called facts.
I mean, why is this complicated?
If you study the behavior of millionaires, the influx of millionaires and the outflux of millionaires from your state, you can make reasonable correlations.
There's a difference between correlation and causation.
I get that.
But you can make reasonable inferences from their behavior pre and post the tax hike if you just look at the data.
So the Forbes piece has a really terrific analogy of what happened in 2012, Joe.
After California instituted a new, higher tax rate for people who made $500,000 and up, another basically millionaire's tax in some respects, although obviously $500,000 isn't a million, but it was meant to tax wealthy people in the state.
The influx of people who made that kind of money pre-2012 was positive.
After 2012, the influx was an outflux.
It was negative.
People left.
groundbreaking or surprising.
What is surprising is the left's constant effort to manipulate and change the narrative on these stories because they don't want to accept the fact that tax behavior on people who are producers in society does change and alter behavior.
It's also the reason, by the way, the left craves big federal government in their triage of needs more than big state government.
Why?
I mean, think about it.
Why?
They hate subsidiarity.
Rule at the local level.
Think about it.
It's very simple.
Why?
If you left tax rates to the most local level possible, Palm City, Florida, here where I live, right?
And you don't like the tax rates in Palm City, Florida, which are pretty manageable and good, right?
You can leave!
You move over to the next town.
When the tax rates are federal, or in the case of globalists, global, there's nowhere to escape.
The government gets your money no matter where you go.
So the left loves this stuff.
They don't want the argument ever to turn to tax rates change behavior, and especially relocation and location behavior.
They don't want that.
So every time studies like this come out about liberal states, their high taxes, and people leaving, they run to the defenses right away.
Now, the defense in California is, well, it's because housing costs are high.
Yeah, housing costs are high, by the way, also because of your liberal zoning policies.
But let's not get into that argument.
We saw this in Maryland as well.
You see it over and over.
And I want to talk about Maryland for a second here because it's in the Forbes story that's in the show notes today.
I encourage you to read.
How Martin O'Malley, big lib governor of Maryland, before Larry Hogan, the Republican, got elected over there.
He's up for re-election now.
Martin O'Malley said, we're going to institute this millionaire's tax that's going to take into effect and it's going to tax people who make a million dollars or more.
They expected revenue, tax revenue, from that tax hike, Joe, was about, what, over $100 million, right?
Folks, not only did they not get that $100 million, they lost $100 million!
dollars they lost a hundred million dollars because what happened by the
way they lost a hundred million dollars at the higher tax rate
So many millionaires, a third of them, left the state.
What they got was less money even at the higher tax rate.
That's how many people left.
The tax rate was higher on the millionaires and so many of them left.
They raised a hundred million dollars less than before the tax rate went into effect.
It was that much of a disaster.
Which meant what?
This is what's so infuriating about liberalism, again!
Who had to pick up the tax burden for Maryland's profligate government spending?
The middle class!
The rich paid less, not more!
Guys, ladies, listen to what I'm telling you, please.
I know this is hard for liberals to understand.
The wealthy folks you meant to tax to pay their quote, fair share, paid less money!
Overall, the people who stayed paid more, but the pot of funds available for your redistribution scheme was a hundred million dollars less than if you had done nothing.
Do you understand the difference between misfeasance and malfeasance?
It's not just that they didn't get the money they got before, or it was a break-even scheme.
That would just be misfeasance.
It was economic, financial, Malfeasance!
They told you they were trying to raise more money for their redistribution schemes and social welfare programs.
They destroyed the state's economy by a third of their millionaires, people who were producing jobs and value and tax revenue in the past, leaving.
They raised a hundred million dollars less and you got taxed more.
None of this is open for dispute at all.
None of this.
These are facts.
You can give your opinion on why those people left.
Well, it wasn't the tax rates.
It was that they had a heavy snowstorm in Severna Park.
I don't care what your logic is.
What your logic stream is.
What train of logic you use.
Those are opinions.
The fact is, Maryland lost money, Maryland lost millionaires, Maryland lost wealth, and Maryland lost wealth creators after implementing a tax where people left.
I don't care what hypothesis you draw up about that.
It is irrelevant to the facts on the ground.
The exact same thing is happening right now in California.
The exact same thing.
And of course Californians, who are liberal, and they're liberal politicians, are engaging in the verbal judo again, Joe.
Oh, well, Joe, this isn't necessarily because of the tax rate, it's because of the housing, it's because of, I don't know what, it's because there was a shark attack in Northern California.
They'll make up any reason.
This is what the left does, and you have to be savvy to this, and always, when you're debating them, bring it back to the facts and the data that are irrefutable.
Wait, I don't want to forget.
As you can tell, I'm kind of wired up today and stoked about today's show.
So I'm like, Joe sees me, I'm like taking notes now because I don't want to forget this.
I've been at this a really long time.
I'm not one-upping anyone.
You all are very skilled at this.
But I've been at this debating with the liberal things a very, very long time now.
And having grown up in New York and Maryland, I'm pretty darn good at it.
I know what they're going to say before they even, you know, finish.
The minute they open their mouths, I know where they're going.
They will always engage in the euphemism verbal judo game where they switch the argument, they deflect, they use euphemisms.
Euphemisms like, you know, they're not illegal immigrants, they are undocumented.
I mean, this is what they do.
They play word games.
On this tax argument, they'll do this all the time.
They'll dance around, but this is critical.
They will get as far away from the facts and data that they can.
That is why on the show I used to always talk about this until people got annoyed so I don't bring it up anymore.
Remember the Reagan tax cuts?
And the fact that there's no Clinton surplus?
I bring these two things up all the time.
I used to on the show and listeners who were regular listeners in the early days got annoyed about it.
It's just funny because it's true.
Even conservatives get annoyed about it.
Bring up to a liberal, to show you how far they'll dance away from facts in a word game thing, that the Reagan tax cuts nearly doubled the amount of revenue that came into the federal government.
They will spin this thing six different ways from Sunday.
No, no, no, it wasn't money, it was inflation.
No, no, actually after inflation, it was still significantly more money, even if they're adjusting for inflation and taxes after Reagan cut the tax.
No, it was because of a growing economy.
Dude, you just told me a minute ago tax cuts lead to a decrease in tax revenue in the economy.
I gave you a fact that that's not only not what happened, that tax revenue nearly doubled.
When Reagan came into office, it was 500 billion.
When he left office, it was 900 billion.
You still have yet to dispute that fact.
All you're doing is doing verbal judo.
Well, it's due to a growing... You just said before that tax cuts lead to a decrease in revenue.
I'm telling you the facts say you are lying.
Can you please address that first before you do your verbal judo game?
The same thing with the Clinton surplus.
Clinton had a surplus.
He didn't.
There was no surplus.
Just go to the Treasury's own website.
I used to put that article.
If you look it up, it's really good.
The Myth of the Clinton Surplus.
It's a blog post.
It's years old.
The guy walks through, absolutely falsifies every liberal argument that Clinton ran a surplus everywhere.
He even has a follow-up to it addressing more liberal nonsense.
And liberals will still insist it happened because they can't accept the facts and the data.
The same thing happens with these tax cuts.
Well, California high taxes and a lot of their wealthy people and job producers left.
Whoa, let me tell you.
Here's why I think that really happened.
Time out.
Did it happen?
That's all I want to know.
Did it happen?
Am I telling you the truth?
Because there's a study on it that they did leave.
Yes, it happened.
Okay, thank you.
I'm good.
Right, Joe?
Moving on.
Thank you very much.
The rest is your opinion.
The rest is your opinion.
You're telling me tax cuts don't affect behavior.
I'm telling you people behaved a certain way.
And you know what that behavior was?
They evacuated their butts out of California to liberal states.
That is indisputable.
Whatever you're going to say after this is exclusively your opinion.
That's it.
I'm in facts.
You're in opinion.
Now there's a reason I brought this up.
There's a great piece in the Wall Street Journal, it's a subscription only, but it's about Ivanka Trump, and I think it's a James Freeman piece, it's in the op-ed section today, how Ivanka Trump gave an interview, Joe, and you know how I can't stand fact-checkers, because they're not checking facts, it's almost exclusively opinion they're doing, and they disguise it as fact-checking.
So Donald, excuse me, Ivanka Trump gives this interview, and she's talking about the expanding economy, and in the interview she states a fact, An indisputable, easily fact-checked, Joe, fact.
She says to the interviewer, I think it was Maria Bartiromo, that, hey, the economy's doing well and two million people have left the food stamp rolls.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is an easily verifiable F-A-C-T fact.
Any idiot can go to Google or Bing or any search engine and check it.
That is in fact true.
Fact check!
Ding ding ding ding ding!
True.
Okay?
That's a fact.
Now, why do I bring this up?
Because in the Wall Street Journal piece by Freeman, he hysterically brings up how the Washington Post fact-checker gives her two Pinocchios for that, and says because she made some, and to be fair, she had some opinions in there too, Joe, where she said it was it may be due to this or due to that.
Now, I think it's obviously due to the growing economy, but what does the fact-checker do?
Instead of checking the fact in there, and the only fact she gave was the two million people coming off the food stamp rolls, A fact checker's supposed to check the facts.
They're not opinion checkers.
What do they do?
They give her two Pinocchios saying, well, she's giving her opinion about what those reasons may be.
There's a fact in there!
You guys are fact checkers.
You had one job.
To check facts.
Instead, they give her two Pinocchios despite the fact that the only fact she put out in the piece was in fact a fact and correct.
Don't ever trust these fact-checkers.
They are scams.
The Washington Post, these Pinocchio things, Snopes, it's a big liberal scam.
It's a joke.
Throw these things right out.
Anytime a liberal opens their mouth and goes, well, I checked it on Snopes, or I went to a fact-check.
One final point, like PolitiFact or something, just start laughing immediately.
Go, PolitiFact?
Oh, you thought they were fact-checkers?
Because they don't check facts.
They check opinions.
That's what they did to Ivanka Trump.
They checked her opinion, not the actual fact.
Do you see the scam, Joe?
They avoided the fact and jumped to the opinion in a way to make her out to be a liar.
And if you don't believe me, read the myth of the Clinton surplus piece about it.
You will be entirely educated about how there was never a Clinton surplus.
And then read the PolitiFact piece.
I think he links to it in there.
That tries to, again, confirm that there was a Clinton surplus despite the fact that it is categorically false.
And you'll see why places like PolitiFact are a complete scam.
It's a joke.
All right, folks.
Thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
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All right, folks.
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Thanks again.
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