Ep 760 What Liberals Aren't Telling You About Socialism
Summary:
In this episode I address troubling new revelations surfacing regarding the scandalous investigation into the Trump team. I also discuss and debunk liberal myths about socialism and address a development in the immigration crisis.
News Picks:
Does socialism work in Scandinavia? No.
Did the FBI get bamboozled by a shady information-laundering operation?
An update on the Mike Flynn case.
Are the Democrats going to lose seats in the upcoming midterms?
As I predicted, President Trump’s executive order on immigration is challenged.
Copyright CRTV. All rights reserved.
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Get ready to hear the truth about America with your host, Dan Bongino.
Alright, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Dano!
Good to go, babe.
Yes.
Too much to talk about.
As always, cannot stay ahead of the news cycle, you turn away from the television for five minutes and you're already lost.
That's why I like to be first in the morning with my podcast out.
All right.
Trump, man, the great disruptor.
I got some sound of him overseas at the NATO conference.
Yeah, man, just doing what Trump does, saying things that should be said that needed to be said and finally saying them out loud.
Also, another bombshell article by John Solomon about what I've been telling you the entire time.
The whole operation against Trump was one big information laundering scheme.
It's like money laundering, except with information.
A bombshell piece will be in the show notes today.
Let's get right to it.
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Okay.
Story numero uno.
Let me just do this Trump thing quick, because I got a ton of stuff to get to.
Joe, cue up that audio.
This is a basically 2 minute and 20 second thing.
We cut it into two because you don't like to play long ones on the show.
This is Trump over at the NATO conference at the table just basically laying the smackdown on, hey, listen, we've provided security guarantees to European countries and NATO and the NATO alliance for a very long time and yet you guys are cutting deals that are not helping.
And instead of, you know, sitting there and glad-handed each other, like politicians have done forever in focus group-tested talking points, here's how Trump handles it.
It's very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia, where you're supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.
So we're protecting Germany, we're protecting France, we're protecting all of these countries.
And then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia, where they're paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia.
So we're supposed to protect you against Russia, but they're paying billions of dollars to Russia, and I think that's very inappropriate.
And the former chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that's supplying the gas.
Ultimately, Germany will have almost 70% of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas.
So you tell me, is that appropriate?
I've been complaining about this from the time I got in.
It should have never been allowed to have happened.
But Germany is totally controlled by Russia.
The people at that table are sitting there like...
Ma!
The meatloaf!
They don't know what to do.
They're waiting for the meatloaf.
They don't know what to do.
They have never been talked to like that ever.
Listen, I get it folks.
The foreign policy establishment is shrieking in horror right now.
Joe, oh these are our friends.
These are our buddies.
They are our friends, okay?
We get it.
They are allies.
That doesn't mean every single decision they make is the right one.
Trump, the great disruptor, which I love, comes out and says, hey, I don't get it.
This is not how this is going to go down.
We're providing these blanket security guarantees against an aggressive now Russia with empire-like desires, and you guys are going out and cutting a gas line deal with them.
What's the deal here?
You know what, the second half is kind of the same as the first.
I just wanted to play that in the beginning to show you that this guy, this is what I told you yesterday.
The guy's a guy from Queens, used to cutting deals in big real estate mega deals in New York City, dealing with horrible bureaucracy, powerful unions, you know, people in the mob in some cases in New York trying to shake down your business.
He's not going to take any crap.
He goes on the international stage and he's not going to play by the tried and true
rules because they've been tried but they're certainly not true. So good for him. Yeah I just
want to play because I got that this morning and I'm like this is Trump. This is definitely...
This is the gift of Donald Trump.
His ability to shake up what we previously thought to be a standard set of diplomatic, structured rules we were supposed to follow.
And by him not following them, maybe he'll shake these people out of their slumber.
It's time for them to step up.
We're going to defend you.
You're going to do the right thing and come back.
And you're going to come back and return the favor to us.
All right.
Bombshell piece this morning that came out last night by John Solomon.
Again, this guy's been doing incredible work over at The Hill.
It'll be in the show notes today.
The show notes today are terrific.
I'm going to get to socialism in a second.
One of my writers at the site, Matt Palumbo, did a great piece about Scandinavian socialism that I will get to in a minute, or so-called socialism.
Solomon's piece, Joe.
There is an email that was uncovered.
This is just, it confirms everything we've been saying about the spying operation on Trump.
That this was a, that the circle of stupid is complete.
It was a big information laundering operation to launder information through multiple channels, multiple people, multiple entities, the State Department, the FBI, John Brennan, the GCHQ.
To launder the same garbage information to lend it an air of authenticity.
Now, Solomon's piece, Joe, he has an email uncovered by Peter Stroke where he's sending this email and he says he's trying to read the dossier, the fake information.
This is important, folks.
The fake information generated by Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, who were hired by Hillary Clinton, right?
They were hired to generate this opposition research on Donald Trump.
The information that they generated, which was nonsense, has never been verified, winds up making its way through multiple channels.
Now, Stroke's reading it on BuzzFeed, and he says in an email, our internal system is blocking the site, talking about BuzzFeed.
Stroke wrote of the document posted on BuzzFeed.
He goes on, I have the PDF via iPhone, but it's 25.6 megabytes, comparing now.
Listen to this, listen to this, this is crazy.
The set is only identical To what McCain had.
It has differences from what was given to us by Corn and Simpson.
Wait, wait, wait, what?
So the information you use from Christopher Steele, this fake dossier that Donald Trump did all this nasty stuff overseas and was cutting deals with the Russians, you now were given to it, it was given to you by multiple people including McCain, David Corn of far-left Mother Jones, and Christopher Simpson from Fusion GPS?
The significance of this, folks, is dramatic.
This may seem like a small thing.
It is not.
Guys, ladies, please, please understand how critical this is.
When you're a federal agent with the power to take away someone's freedom, to take away someone's everything they have, everything they're going to have, put them in jail, confiscate their property, take away their ability to see their kids, take away their job, every single thing they have.
This is an awesome power.
One of the ways they do that is by getting information on you, making sure it meets a certain standard before that information is presented to a court, a FISA court or a federal court, or another federal criminal court, I should say, they're both federal courts, a federal criminal court, and that information has to be vetted.
Why?
It's obvious.
Apparently it's not obvious to liberals.
So we don't go randomly targeting people for no good reason and putting them in jail only to find out later in a court of law that they've been innocent of the charges put before them or not guilty.
Which is the official... I hate when people say, you've proven innocent.
You're not proven innocent.
You're just not guilty.
No one's innocent, right?
You're not guilty.
There's a procedure for that.
In the FISA court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was used to spy on the Trump team, the procedure is a little bit different than it is in the criminal courts at the federal level.
I've explained this to you multiple times, but the procedure to vet the information, to make sure we're not politically targeting people or targeting people who are not guilty of the crimes you're alleging, is called the Woods procedure.
The Woods procedure is a step-by-step, who's gonna look at this information against Joe?
In other words, I have information against Joe that he did this, this, this, this, and this, okay?
It's passed to this guy first, and then it's passed to this guy's SAC, his special agent in charge, and then it's passed to the headquarters guy, and then it's passed to FBI headquarters managers on top of that, and then the information's sent over to the Department of Justice.
Any information starts somewhere near the bottom.
It's passed up and vetted through a chain of people.
This is to ensure, in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, where the person alleged to have committed this spying infraction, that's what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is for, He does not, or she, does not have the ability to show up in court and defend themselves, unlike the criminal court system.
Copy, Joe?
So this Woods procedure is designed to be an extra layer to make sure, because that person has no ability to defend themselves, that that information damn well better be true before it makes its way to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Now, if you listen to my show that I did on Friday, I discussed this Holt Woods procedure and how one of the final people on the DOJ side to okay the information before it makes its way into the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on them was John Carlin.
John Carlin was Bob Mueller's old Chief of Staff.
John Carlin resigns right around election time in that period and he does it kind of quickly.
Well, you know, could have just been that it was, you know, saw the writing on the wall and left.
But isn't it awfully convenient that the guy brought in to investigate the Trump team and keep the attention on the Trump team and away from the failures of the DOJ and the FBI to properly vet the Trump spying operation, which turned out to be a complete debacle.
Isn't it interesting that Mueller's brought on board to do that, to keep the attention on Trump and keep away from people, by the way, he was involved with.
He knows Carlin.
Carlin was his chief of staff.
Now, this Solomon piece is important, folks.
Because it shows you how they used one set of nonsensical information, but how they made it appear by laundering that information that the information was credible.
It appears what they did is, to quote Solomon, they had multiple, quote, emissaries that brought this information to the FBI.
And the information they brought to the FBI, even though it was from the same source, Joe, made it appear that it was authentic and it was genuine because it was coming from so many people.
Right, right.
David Korn at Mother Jones.
Simpson at Fusion GPS, according to the piece.
John McCain's staff.
Let me give you an analogy of the real world so you understand how devastating this is.
Let's say I'm targeting Joe Armacost right now because I'm running against him for a congressional seat in Maryland, whatever it may be.
Joe's my opponent.
On the Democrat side, I'm the Republican.
If I have connections that can get information to the FBI, I know people, right?
I can get a source to make up information about Joe.
Now, if it's just me saying it, it's going to become crystal clear that this was a political attack and the FBI most likely is not going to put their own butts on the line for this investigation.
They're going to discard it and go, hey, we got information that Armacost is an international arms dealer, but it came from Bongino who's running against him.
So, you know, listen, let's take this all with a grain of salt.
Get it?
But let's say what I do is, I then pass the information to Bob, right?
I tell Bob, who knows an FBI agent, hey, go to your FBI agent friend and give this to him.
I then pass the information to Tony.
I say, hey, you got another FBI agent friend?
Go pass this to him, too.
I then give the information to Sam, and I tell Sam to do the exact same thing.
All of a sudden, the FBI is getting all these tips about Joe being an international arms dealer, but what's the catch, Joe?
It's all from the same person!
Right.
Now we can confirm this based on this explosive email yesterday that Stroke is actually acknowledging that the information stream, although from the same original source, was coming from multiple emissaries, giving it a patina of authenticity that was never there.
Folks, this is important.
This is critical.
This is why in law enforcement, and if you read the work of Andy McCarthy at National Review, he has hammered this point home repeatedly over and over.
This is why in law enforcement there is no vicarious credibility.
Let me explain that for a second.
If I relay information to the FBI, but I get the information from Bob, it's not my information!
It doesn't matter if I'm a priest, a Marist brother... I went to Malloy High School, so... It doesn't matter!
If I'm an upstanding member of the community, it is not my information!
It's Bob's!
Right.
Oh, Bob's a local cocaine dealer?
And a fraudster?
In other words, I don't get vicarious credibility because I passed the information and I'm credible.
McCarthy's hammered this home over and over.
What does this have to do with what I'm telling you now?
The FBI, these guys are managers.
These are law enforcement, supposed to be professionals.
What, they don't understand this?
Hey, we got this information from David Corn at Mother Jones.
Well, by the way, he's not credible, but let's just say he was.
This guy's a political guy.
Let's just say he was.
Hey, we got the information from John McCain.
Well, he's credible.
He's a U.S.
Senator.
Hey, we got the information from Chris Simpson at Fusion GPS, who got it from an MI6 former spy, Christopher Steele, and we worked with him before.
He's credible.
It's not their information!
It doesn't matter!
There is no vicarious credibility!
I can't emphasize to you this point enough.
If vicarious credibility was a real thing, all you'd have to do as a political opponent of someone you wanted to take down politically was go find a priest or someone with a sterling reputation somewhere, get them to pass the information to the FBI, and we could open FISA court cases to spy on anyone!
Ladies and gentlemen, this was an information laundering operation at the highest levels.
Are we missing this?
I don't know what that is on account of being dull.
I mean, did you miss that?
Did anybody at the FBI, Joe, think to say, hey, Dave, Chris, excuse me, Glenn Simpson, where did you guys all get this?
They all got it from the same person.
This is so, like, Mr. Rogers, like, I mean, it's basic, like, kindergarten level stuff.
How did they miss this?
This is a really critical piece.
Read it.
It's a short piece.
It's in the show notes today at The Hill.
I want to strongly encourage you to do it.
And also, it ties into my, this is the whole purpose of the Muller Probe.
To keep this thing, all of these Missteps, screw-ups in the DOJ and the FBI.
I believe the Mueller probe, the entire purpose of the Mueller probe now, is to rescue the reputation of the DOJ and FBI.
That's it!
I know some of you were a little confused last week when I said his real goal is not to save the reputation of Hillary Clinton, it's to save the DOJ and the FBI.
I'm not suggesting to you he's not trying to save the reputation of Hillary Clinton.
I don't know that.
He may very well be.
And based on what I've told you before, I find it awfully odd that Mueller's investigating people with significant ties to the Clinton investigation, but investigating them for loose, at best, ties to Trump.
I think it's to keep them quiet about their ties to Hillary.
But I don't believe It's because his first goal is trying to save Hillary.
I believe it's because the Hillary Clinton- Clinton Foundation debacle and these perceived pay-for-play interactions are so devastating to the DOJ and FBI that allowed it to go on that his primary goal, Joe, is to save the reputation of the DOJ and FBI first.
Also, when it came to the Woods procedure and the failure to do even basic vetting of this information.
This is unbelievably troubling stuff.
All right, it's a busy news day, so I got a lot to get to.
I want to move on to just something on Flynn quick, on the Flynn case, and I got another piece of the show notes about that, too.
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Hey, just one more thing about the Mueller probe.
So Mike Flynn, Lieutenant General Flynn, was in court yesterday about a sentencing hearing and a pre-sentence report.
It's not that unusual, a lot of this.
And you know me, if I smell a rat, I'm certain to put it out there.
But there, according to a report, I have an independent journal review, a piece which should be up at the show notes today.
The Flynn team, the legal team, is pushing to wrap this up.
Listen, let's just get this sentencing over.
I believe Flynn was completely submarine.
I mean, this guy was kneecapped.
I've never seen a case of legal law enforcement abuse like this for someone of that stature in our American military in my lifetime.
The case is a disgrace, a debacle.
What they did to Flynn and his reputation is going to be a stain on this country forever.
And history will not, I'm assuring you right now, will not judge Bob Mueller kindly for this abomination of justice, and that's what it was.
As you can tell, I'm a little emotional about it, that this guy served the country for as long as he did and was unquestionably targeted by the Mueller probe despite the evidence of criminality being nailed.
You know, and I get it, the dopey libs are going, ah, well he pled guilty.
Ah, folks, you would too if bankruptcy was staring you in the face due to legal bills and they were threatening your family with legal action as well.
Plead guilty.
Like he had a choice.
Plead guilty.
He had like the sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
I mean, give me a break.
But there's an interesting note on this I'd like to throw out there.
Flynn's team is pushing for this sentencing to be over with.
But what's interesting is the Muller probe, the Muller team, they're kind of like, ah, not so fast.
I got a little bit of a theory on this.
I think the Mueller probe's in a world of trouble when it comes to Flynn, and here's why, Joe.
Those 302s, which are FBI summary documents of an interview.
If I interview Joe for a crime, whatever, money laundering, international arms dealing, and I'm an FBI agent, I have to write up, type up a summary of that.
They're called 302s.
There's a, let's say, information stream out there by credible people, some I've heard from.
That the investigative summaries of the interview with Mike Flynn, where he pled guilty to lying to the FBI, despite the fact that the FBI had sent Jim Comey himself in congressional testimony, there was no evidence of deception.
That's kind of crazy!
Yeah, he lied to the FBI.
Is there evidence of deception?
No.
Wait, come again?
Are we not speaking the same language here?
Whatever.
Because it's just so dumb, this case.
It's hard to believe that people don't see this for the abomination of justice, that it is.
Now, the 302s.
There's some credible reporting out there that the 302s of that interview, Joe, may have been changed.
In other words, let's see, or may have been If not changed, let's say there may have been some pressure, external pressure, exerted upon the agents that interviewed Mike Flynn to insinuate in those 302s that he may have lied when he didn't.
You get where I'm going with this?
Yeah.
This is important.
Yeah.
What does this have to do with Mueller in the sentencing, ladies and gentlemen?
If Mueller agrees to this sentencing, and it happens quickly, and Flynn is sentenced to whatever, I don't know, community service, let's say he gets, God forbid he gets jail time, that would be the biggest disgrace in judicial history, but, say they throw Flynn in the slammer for 30 days, and after he serves all his time, it comes out, That those 302s were in fact altered or pressure was put on people to lie in those 302s?
Oh my gosh!
Are you gonna- Wait, wait!
This guy did jail time?
Or was sentenced to a crime he didn't commit?
I'm thinking the Mueller people may be delaying this for a reason.
The Mueller people may be like, uh, what was that?
Was that New York City?
Hold up, wait a minute.
They may be like, everybody, pump the brakes, pump the brakes.
Of course, Joe, this generation knows nothing about that because they have ABS, anti-lock.
But you remember when we were, pump the brakes was, do not pump the brakes now.
Now you can slam on them if you have an anti-lock braking system.
If you don't, you have to pump the brakes.
We learned that in secret service driving school when I was in there.
Pump the brakes, folks.
We got a guy in jail right now, we're serving community service while it's simultaneously put out there that the document used to convict him may have been altered or pressure may have been put on those people to alter those documents.
Now, I understand the General Flynn's desire to get this over with.
It has been, I mean, can you imagine the nightmare?
His family, he's had to sell his home.
This is, like I said, it's a stain on American history that this has happened to this American patriot.
I understand it, but I'm not so sure the Mueller folks are telling you the whole story.
I'm serious, folks.
I think they know that that Inspector General report from Horowitz may be onto something, and that something may be that the documents they're using to get this guy to plead and then to sentence him May not be 100% authentic.
Oh boy, would that be a problem.
I was telling my wife last night, remember those little goya?
Come on, goya.
Oh boy.
Remember that?
Oh boy.
Wait, we got a dude in jail right now?
And it turns out the documents, there was pressure to alter them?
Oh man.
Not good, folks.
So read the IJ reports in the show notes today.
He apparently wants it sped up.
Mueller is like, hey, bump those brakes.
Listen, I'm not a big Phantom baller, but he ain't stupid.
I think he smells something's up here.
Okay.
Uh, let's see.
We did Trump, the disruptor, the information laundering operation, Flynn and the 302s.
What did we go to?
All right.
I, in an effort to expand the content I'm producing for you, because I really do value my audience, you guys and ladies, so much, I wanted to give you more of a reason to go to the website.
So I started doing original content there, and I have a writer, Matt Palumbo, who's also a researcher and co-writer on the book.
Contract signed?
Oh, thank God.
That's good.
I'll be out.
All right.
We're done.
The book is done.
So, finally.
Turned out to be a bigger operation than we thought.
But Matt puts together some really great stuff.
And he said to me the other day, you know, I listened to your podcast about socialism, democratic socialism, communism.
There's no difference between the three folks.
They're all just on the same path off the cliff.
It doesn't matter.
You're jumping off the cliff either way.
He said, I'd like to do a piece debunking this nonsense about these Scandinavian countries and democratic socialism.
And I said, you know what?
That's a terrific idea.
Denmark, you know, Norway, Sweden, all these countries that Bernie Sanders and others constantly cite as evidence of this socialist utopia.
He goes, I want to debunk that.
It was a great idea, because it's something that's meant a lot to me, and I've hammered it often, especially when I fill in for Levin.
By the way, I'll be in for Mark Levin tonight if you want to listen and call in.
877-381-3811 is the Levin number if you want to call in.
So, a couple takeaways from the piece here.
It's going to be in the show notes.
It's the first one.
It's entitled, Does Socialism Work in Scandinavia?
Part One.
It's going to be a two-parter.
It'll be the first story in the show notes.
Subscribe to my email list.
It'll be there.
But if not, just go to Bongino.com and click on the show notes and you'll see it there.
It starts out, he hits three main points.
One, he makes the point that they are not, in fact, socialist countries.
When you're talking about Denmark, when you're talking about Norway, and you're talking about Sweden, folks, they are not socialist countries in the definition of the word socialism.
Socialism is the government control of the means of production.
Now, Are they on the road to socialism?
In other words, the control mechanism can happen via a number of ways.
The government can come in via hard force and say, Joe, I want to confiscate your business.
I'm going to own it.
You are, in fact, going to work for me.
Or the government can come in And say, Joe, we're going to tax your business at an extremely high rate.
We're going to regulate your business according to these rules.
So although we may not technically own your business, you may not have to turn it over to us, we de facto own it.
We own it in fact.
We may not own it de jure, but we own it in fact, because you're working for us and you're following our rules.
This is a control argument.
I want to be clear about this, because this is how people screw you up when they talk about, oh no, we're not talking about socialism, we're talking about democratic socialism.
Well, socialism, like anything else, just like freedom, is based on... There's a path.
There's like a freedom train.
That's the best way to describe it, to steal a term from this old California radio host.
I forget his name, but he called it the freedom train, right?
If you look at the freedom train in a station, and the freedom train station, Joe, is absolute freedom.
Almost, in essence, anarchy.
There's no government, you're free to do whatever you want.
Good or bad, by the way.
Remember, freedom, some people do great things with it.
Capitalism, entrepreneurship.
Some people go out and murder other people and kidnap and kill.
I mean, that's just a fact.
Now, there is no, these are degrees.
Now, imagine at one end you have the freedom train in the freedom station.
Again, absolute freedom, Joe.
No government, no nothing, no controls.
I think we all realize that's not effective.
You know, Federalist 51, right?
If men were angels, we wouldn't need government.
And if there were angels in government, we wouldn't need controls on government either, right?
Federalist 51 is great for that.
Now, imagine at the other end, as far away from the last stop.
As far away from Freedom Station as you can get on the Freedom Train, you have full-blown communism.
Government control of everything.
Police state tyranny at its worst.
The government owns everything.
All the means of production owns the people.
There's no voting.
There's no nothing.
You speak out of line, they kill you.
You work for the government, you refuse to work, they kill you or they torture you or they kidnap your kids or whatever it may be.
Yeah, this has happened.
There are Systems of government around the world that are farther away from the freedom train than others, and there are some, like North Korea, that are all the way away from the freedom train.
The argument we're making, and the argument the Democrat Socialists are making, is the Democratic Socialists, or so-called Democratic Socialists, want you to believe that they're really a freedom-based operation.
That's why they use the word free!
It's, oh, we're gonna have free school, we're gonna have free healthcare.
What they don't tell you is they're actually moving farther away from the Freedom Station because what they're doing is they're forcing you to work, not for yourself, but for other people.
Because nothing's free.
And this is the problem I have with it.
Is this making sense?
They steal the language of the free marketeers to try and make it seem that their system... Think about it, Joe.
The modifier, Democratic, makes it appear like you're actually voting for this.
But there is no difference between political and economic freedom.
As I said frequently last week, it doesn't matter who you can vote for if whoever you vote for is entitled to take away your stuff, right?
Which dictator do we like this week?
That's right!
Is it Dictator A, Dictator B, or Dictator C?
It doesn't matter, they're all dictators.
There is no significant difference between political and economic freedom, and vice versa.
If you have no economic freedom and you're working for the government, You're taxed and regulated to death.
Does it really matter who the government is at any given point?
No.
They have the power to take your stuff.
It works either way.
The issue with the Scandinavian countries is they want you to believe that this stuff is all free.
So there's some debunking that Matt does in this piece, and I want to hit the three highlights about how these countries and their systems, their success or lack thereof, is always due to them either moving more towards freedom or away.
In other words, when they become more successful, they move towards the freedom station.
When they become less successful, Joe, they moved away from the freedom station.
Is this making sense before I start?
Yeah, yeah.
Because this requires some grey matter activation that liberals aren't capable of.
When Scandinavian countries have been very successful, they've been moving towards the Freedom Station.
As they become less successful, they've been moving away from the Freedom Station.
He does this via three points.
Point number one.
Oh, let's see.
What was point... Oh, here we go.
Sorry, I had to scroll down.
Scandinavia's economic success predates the era of high taxes and big government.
Kevin Williamson hits this in one of his books, too, and he's absolutely right.
Scandinavia's rich today!
But they're rich in spite of their government policies, big government policies, not because of them.
Now, Matt has some great charts on this that I strongly encourage you to look at.
They're really easy to read.
It's a short piece, by the way.
It's not overly wonky.
But here's the quote.
This is the take home.
Remember, your Democrat friends, your liberal friends are going to tell you, oh, you know, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, we need to be more like them.
This Democrat socialism system, look how rich they are.
OK, here's a quote.
This is from an economist, Nima Sanandija, who worked on a book about the myth of Scandinavian socialism, by the way.
In the case of Sweden, Joe, from 1870 through 1936, Sweden was the fastest growing economy
in the world. But after 1975, when the Swedish state began to expand in earnest,
Sweden's economy noticeably slowed, falling from fourth richest in the world to 13th by the mid-90s.
The charts here are devastating.
In other words, folks, Sweden is rich not because of big government moving away from the Freedom Train.
Freedom is rich because they were in the Freedom Train station, and is getting progressively poorer Not poor, but poorer.
There's a difference.
Progressively poorer because they're moving away from the freedom station towards big government control.
That is a critical point.
Because the Democrats, by hijacking the language of freedom, they want you to believe that the thing's happening in the reverse.
You see the point here?
By using terms like free healthcare, free college, democratic socialism, to insinuate that this is some kind of politically free system, that they're moving more towards the freedom station and that's led to this overabundance in these countries and how successful they are and how wonderful they are.
That is categorically false.
The numbers are crystal clear.
The wealth in Sweden was generated while they were generally more of a free market system lodged in the Freedom Train station.
As they moved away, they became progressively poorer, moving down the wealth chart, not up.
The charts are clear as day.
Matt writes, it's not hard to imagine why big government and high taxes have slowed growth.
The top tax rate in Denmark is 60%, while Sweden's is 56%.
But unlike America, where it's only top earners subjected to the top marginal tax rate, the top rate applies to a sizable chunk of workers in Denmark and Sweden.
Okay, point number two.
This is my favorite point ever.
Again, another point Williamson makes in his book, uh, was it The Idiot's Guide to Socialism or something?
But this is a great one and Matt does a really terrific job.
Please read this piece and send it to all of your friends.
I get it.
It's on my website.
Listen, folks, do what you... I mean, I can't help it.
I'm trying to give you guys content.
I'm not trying to hijack clicks or anything.
But this is such a good piece.
Matt did such a great job on it.
Point number two.
So again, point number one, as Scandinavia has grown, its government has become poorer, not richer.
The Scandinavian countries.
Two, Scandinavians are wealthier in low-tax America.
This is one of my favorite points.
Swedes in Sweden are poorer than Swedes in America.
Same for Danes and others.
People from Scandinavian countries who come to the United States are wealthier than natives from Sweden and Denmark.
Here's a great line by the Inimitable!
Incredible!
God rest his soul, Milton Friedman.
Matt says, there's something to be said about the Scandinavian work ethic, and it brings to mind an anecdote.
A Scandinavian economist once said to the late Milton Friedman, in Scandinavia we have no poverty.
Milton Friedman replied, that's interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either.
Folks, in other words, The Scandinavian wealth, not to mention the fact that it grew under free markets, not big government control where it slowed down, but the Scandinavian wealth is largely attributable not to big government, but to an imbued cultural work ethic in these countries like Denmark and Sweden, where people work really hard!
These are really good folks who work really hard.
It shouldn't be surprising to anyone, Joe, that this is important, that despite big government policies in Denmark and Sweden, that people there still work really hard.
And that's why poverty, whether in Sweden amongst Swedes or Swedish folks in the United States, is almost non-existent.
Is this complicated, Joe?
No.
If I'm losing you on the distinction here, let me just rephrase this.
What he's trying to say is, when you put someone with a strong work ethic in a big government, heavy tax, heavy regulatory environment like Sweden, they will generally still succeed.
Because of their work ethic, even though the government is confiscating a large portion of the fruits of their labor.
By comparing those same people in that country to a place like the United States, where you're generally more economically free, it's not a coincidence that Swedes in the United States have a higher standard of living and have greater amounts of wealth.
Why, Joe?
Because they worked hard in both countries and the United States just took less!
Is this making sense?
This is a perfect comparison.
Keeping other things equal.
When you take the Swedish and the work ethic of people in Denmark, and you put it in a country with more economic freedom, They're wealthier than they are in their own countries where the government confiscates large portions of the fruits of their labor.
Again, as you move away from the freedom train and take more and more people's money, more and more of their impetus to work, and you impose more regulations upon them, they'll work less, but they're worth less.
They're not as wealthy.
Talking about economically.
Their wealth is less, but their work ethic still powers them through the day.
That's a terrific point!
Here's just another quote from the piece.
This is by that economist, Sanandaji, again.
Danish Americans today have fully 55% higher living standards than Danes.
Similarly, Swedish Americans have a 53% higher living standard than Swedes in Sweden.
That's the point!
They work hard!
Newsflash!
You take less of their stuff, they'll be wealthier!
Okay, point number three.
Despite high personal taxes, Scandinavia is incredibly business friendly.
Now, this just hammers home that point I'm trying to make again, because your democratic socialist friends may say, well Dan, even though the growth periods where Sweden built up its wealth were largely under a free market entrepreneurial system, they're still relatively prosperous despite big government, therefore big government doesn't really hurt that bad when you think it all through.
Folks, there's a reason, not just the Scandinavian work ethic that matters, but Sweden has a corporate tax rate extremely competitive on the world stage.
So does Denmark.
Denmark taxes corporations at 24.5, Norway 27, Sweden only 22%.
That's only a point above us right now after the Donald Trump Republican tax cuts.
In other words, it's not just their work ethic that's powering them through the obstruction of big government confiscating the fruits of their labor.
It's the fact that there's a bit of a trade-off here, folks.
Although on the personal side, yes, there are very high, nearly confiscatory income tax rates on people's individual income, Joe.
The relatively low, I mean relatively compared to the rest of the world, business tax rates still make the business environment pretty friendly for you to operate a business in Sweden even though your personal wealth is going to take a bit of a hit.
It is that trade-off that has enabled them, despite the Freedom Train moving away from the Freedom Station, it slowed it down a little bit so it's not, you know, on this too far down the path to rescue path, you know, where you start teetering towards communism and full-blown socialism.
It's not the story the liberals are painting.
The mosaic they're putting together for you is not accurate, folks.
Big government in Sweden has been an obstruction.
They've had to alleviate some of the problems caused by big government heavy taxation by making it more business friendly to keep the growth rate going even though the growth rate is not what it was before the explosion in big government in 1975.
These are irrefutable arguments based on facts and historical data.
Listen, interpret them all you want but the facts don't change.
Please read the piece.
It's the first story in the show notes today.
I can't encourage you enough to take a look at it.
It's really important because I only bring it up because this Ocasio-Cortez and, you know, the Bernie Sanders revolution and stuff, if we let this information take hold with our impressionable 16 to 24 year olds, they're going to actually believe a system that's led to the torture, death, killing, and starvation of hundreds of millions of people could be effective here in the United States.
It's nothing but a propaganda operation.
It's really upsetting.
Okay, got a couple more stories to get to.
Last one here.
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Okay.
Two things I want to just, uh...
address.
So, you know, you're not wasting your time here on the show.
I like to go back and not necessarily pat myself on the back.
That would be kind of a jerk move.
But just to assure you that I do my homework and I'm not trying to spin your wheels on stuff.
Joe, what did I say about the separations at the border, the immigration thing and Trump's executive order a couple of weeks ago?
Do you remember the show we did on that where I said to you, listen, I'm not one of these guys where I think Trump's always playing this four dimensional chess game.
But there are times I'm absolutely sure that he is just dunking on the left in the media.
He's dunking on them.
He's dunking.
He's pulling a LeBron James on them.
He is dunking on their heads left and right.
I even said it on Fox last night.
The executive order on separations at the border was unquestionably a dunk on the libs in the media.
Let me just give you a little update on what happened and where I was with it to show you that when I predicted this two weeks ago, I was right.
As if on cue.
I remember.
Yeah.
The Democrats wanted a political issue to hammer Trump with.
They saw that these kids were being separated from their parents who had crossed the border illegally.
By the way, the easiest way to not be separated from your child when crossing the border illegally, Joe, is not to cross the border illegally, which guarantees you will never be separated.
Just a note.
But the Democrats' talking point, because they love to use children as political pawns.
They love it.
Was this is a Trump rule.
Trump is a cruel and unusual human being.
He is purposely ripping these children out of the hands of their parents.
This Trump is an awful guy.
He did it.
He did it.
There is no law stopping him here.
He made this up.
This is a Trump policy.
I told you on the show that was in fact a myth.
Right.
That's not true.
There was a judicial consent decree called the Flores Decree.
The Flores Decree said the government cannot hold children in detention for more than roughly a couple weeks.
After that, the children have to be let out.
The parents who crossed the border illegally, and in many cases committed a crime if they did it multiple times, a potential felony, cannot be let out in many cases because we don't know that they're going to return.
They're in the country illegally.
Matter of fact, if you catch them and release them under the prior catch-and-release, a large swath of them never did return, which is a de facto open border policy.
Is this making sense, Joe?
The Democrats, this is not a new policy.
The Obama administration to, you know, quote, unite children and families who came into the country illegally would just let the people who crossed the border illegally out.
Most of them never returned.
In other words, they just walked into the country and did what they wanted to do.
Adios.
See you later.
I said that this was not a Trump-era policy.
Now, the pressure got to be a bit overwhelming.
So Trump, again, I insist, was a four-dimensional chess maneuver.
And again, I'm not one of these, I don't do golden calf stuff.
He signs an executive order.
Asking the Department of Justice to say, hey, we're going to try to reunite families and we want to challenge this Flores consent decree.
Now try to follow me here, what he was doing, because it was such a slick move.
I want to like high five the guy.
He knows when he signs this executive order, hey, we're going to reunite children and families.
He knows he can't.
You're getting this, right?
He knows he has no power as the executive to rewrite the judicial decree.
He doesn't.
But he signs an executive order asking the DOJ to challenge it, knowing what?
That the libs and the media who insisted for a month that it was Trump who was making this policy up himself, they were now going to have to acknowledge when the inevitable lawsuit came That it wasn't, in fact, Trump.
That this Flores Decree existed way before Trump took office.
Because why?
Someone was gonna sue over it.
Ding, ding, ding!
As if on cue, I have an article by Fox News in the show notes today about what?
A federal judge refusing to change the Flores Decree so that families can be detained together.
Refusing to change it, per Joe, the administration's request.
Whoa!
Wait, what?
Okay, let's follow now.
Rewind.
Rewind the tape.
Get the pencil out.
The older folks know that.
Younger kids, you have no idea what we're talking about.
Democrats' talking point.
Trump's ripping these kids from their parents' arms.
It's his policy.
Trump's response.
It's not our policy.
It's a judicial decree saying that these kids have to be let out, and therefore we'll put them with some responsible person.
But the parents can't be let out.
It's not our fault.
Media.
You're lying.
You did this.
Trump.
Okay.
Okay.
Say hello to my little friend, this executive order.
He puts out an executive order asking, basically asking his department of justice to ask a judge to challenge this consent decree.
The judge comes back, per the administration's request, says, no, no, this law is in effect.
This Flores consent decree does in fact exist.
Now, as I told you, where's the media on this story?
Of course nowhere.
But you should be asking your friends, if there was no law before this, and Trump made up this law ripping kids from their parents, then why is the judge refusing to change the law the media told us didn't exist?
How does that happen?
Joe, you tracking me, brother?
Oh, yes, I am.
There's no law.
Really?
Because a judge just said, as per Donald Trump's administration's request, no, there is a law.
It's called the Florence consent decree.
Where's the media on this?
Where's the chyron on CNN?
Trump asks separation law that predated Trump to be changed and federal judge says no, despite the fact that Democrats told us for a month now that no law exists and Trump made it up.
He won.
Again.
I'm telling you he's dunking on these idiots every single day now.
The polls have turned against the Democrats on immigration.
The polls have turned against them just about everywhere.
Because they keep lying and making stuff up in these fake outrage campaigns where this guy in the White House turns around and again, it's a dunk from the free throw line like Michael Jordan used to do.
He embarrasses these idiots over and over.
Read the Fox News story.
I just, I'm only bringing it up again today, despite the heavy news cycle, because I don't want you to think you're wasting your time here.
I told you two weeks ago, go listen to this show!
I told you two weeks ago this was going to happen.
That somebody was going to sue, that there was going to be some kind of legal court action, and in the court action a judge was going to be forced to recognize that yes, a law existed before Donald Trump that says Trump has to do this!
Oh boy, and today, there we go.
I told you.
This is one of those Nelson Muntz moments.
Trump wins again!
Again, the topic's not funny, folks.
I mean, I don't mean to joke around, but I'm really not trying to make light of it.
I'm trying to make light of the stupidity of the liberal media and how Trump just slams them all the time.
He beats them at their own game.
Did they not think that the lies were going to catch up with them?
Were they somehow, they thought they were going to get Trump to cave and what, make up a story?
He always knew there was a law.
He's not stupid.
Okay.
Sometimes you have to toot your own horn.
Sometimes you do.
Sometimes you do.
Mogul.
I think that's the Secret Service name.
You love that one.
Yeah, I do.
Of all Joe's favorites.
He loves that one.
I do.
He plays that one all the time.
Because you won't do it.
You hate to do that.
Blow your own horn.
It's the president telling you.
It's okay, Dan.
Joe's played that four or five times.
We usually try to switch up the drops because we don't want to bore you with stuff.
You know me.
I'm like, when I get obsessed with one, I'll play it all the time.
Like, the mom wears the meatloaf.
I can't play.
I'd play that three, four times a show if I could.
But Joe, as a good executive producer, kind of knows when I need to wrap it up.
He knows my tendencies to go overboard sometimes.
But you love that Trump one.
I do.
I thought they were great.
All right, two quick news stories you need to hear about before we roll here.
The Janus case, which was the Supreme Court case, which was devastating to the forced Your joining of public sector unions through agency fees.
I described the case last week.
The core of it, the takeaway is this.
Public sector unions, you couldn't be forced to join, but you could be forced to pay these what they called agency fees.
And those agency fees were meant to make non-members pay for collective bargaining.
Now, This guy named Janice sued and he's like, listen man, I don't want to pay.
I don't want anything to do with this public sector union.
The very essence of a public sector union arguing for higher salaries is forced speech on my behalf.
I don't believe government should be spending more money.
They won.
The case is devastating to public sector unions because they support overwhelmingly Democrat politicians and the money train was a substantial one and was really a lifeline for Democrat politicians.
That has now dried up.
Democrats are in a panic.
So, like Democrats typically always do, There is a they're trying to pull an end around two cases.
There's one in.
Here we go.
I have snakes undermining Janice.
That's the note.
Hawaii is trying to do a public funding bill where basically public taxpayer funds would be used to subsidize.
Oh, that sounds great!
Not only now are we paying government employees, but now we're paying for them to collectively bargain for higher tax money salaries, too.
That's a great idea, Hawaii.
You guys are real gems up there.
I'm talking about the government, not the people, of course.
And Vermont wants a Basically a worker reimbursement fund up there.
They're both end-arounds to this.
And the irony of this is that this is going to cost more money for the taxpayers that'll generally result in lower government salaries in the long run.
This is just, it really, this is the kind of stuff which with Democrats would drive me crazy.
You know, we lost on the Obamacare case.
I wish we hadn't, Joe.
But there aren't Republicans out there saying, hey, listen, screw the government.
Everybody mass protest and don't get health care.
Because we generally believe in fidelity to the law, even when it's bad law, and try to change it through constitutional processes, even when it's a crap garbage law like Obamacare.
This is the Democrats.
They lose in court and they keep going and going and going and going.
One more thing.
There's a Democrat talking point out there now about Trump sabotaging Obamacare by these risk adjustment payments.
Ladies and gentlemen, Obamacare is garbage.
It is the worst law in the history of humankind.
It is terrible.
It is destroying our healthcare system.
There was a lawsuit.
There's these payments that are being paid from insurance companies that are struggling because they have a bunch of folks who are sicker on their plans.
These risk adjustment payments are made from those companies to companies that are doing, excuse me, from companies that are doing well, insurance companies, to companies that are struggling.
These risk adjustment payments, they lost a court case.
There was a lawsuit, and the lawsuit was that the formula they were using, Joe, was unfair.
The bottom line is this.
Liberals ran out in front of the cameras and said, Trump's sabotaging Obamacare.
He doesn't want these companies to pay each other pursuant to Obamacare, and they're all going to go out of business.
Therefore, the higher premiums are your fault.
Listen, for as much as I want Obamacare to go away, that is not true.
That is not true.
The Trump team went to court and actually defended these payments.
I don't agree with them.
It's a horrible law.
I just want to be crystal clear.
But don't fall into the trap the Democrats make.
Facts do matter here.
And the payments, by the way, are for past payments.
They've already fixed the formula for 2019.
I just want you to make sure you understand that Democrats will lie.
It's not about me, God forbid, defending Obamacare.
It's a disaster.
And it's not about the Trump team defending Obamacare either.
The point is these payments, while we're stuck with this crap system, the Trump team went to court and said, listen, we got to fix this somehow.
There's going to be mass chaos.
The Democrats are trying to make it out like, oh, Trump himself is withholding these payments.
It is not true.
It is factually incorrect.
But again, don't let facts get in the way of a good dopey liberal argument.
All right, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Please, if you don't mind, subscribe to the podcast.
I know you listen.
A lot of you download.
I appreciate it.
You can subscribe on Spotify, on SoundCloud, iHeart, iTunes helps us a lot.
But if you follow or subscribe on there, it helps us move up the charts.
I really appreciate it.
And please check out the show notes.
Spread that article around about the myths of Scandinavian socialism and debunk a lot of this nonsense your liberal friends try to propagate.
Thanks for tuning in, folks.
I really appreciate it.
I will see you all tomorrow.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
