Summary:In this episode I address the growing levels of panic among the international players in the scheme to take down the Trump team. I also address the unbelievable costs of illegal immigration and the back-door efforts of the anti-Second Amendment crowd to take away your gun rights. News Picks:
Here’s an interesting piece covering my viral speech about the Spygate debacle.
The deep state panic is real. They’re terrified of declassification and exposure of their schemes.
Illegal aliens cost taxpayers $100 billion annually.
Make no mistake, the Manafort stories were strategically leaked.
Democrats plot to destroy President Trump’s 2020 re-election chances.
Beto O’Rourke is probably going to run for president. The Obama world loves him.
As I told you in a previous podcast, the Florida anti-Second Amendment crowd is using the midterm election as a means to impact your Second Amendment Rights.
The high cost of “free” college.
About those middle-class tax cuts.
Copyright CRTV. All rights reserved.
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Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
Alright, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm just waiting to see what you're going to start off with.
I know, you were asking me that before the show because there's so much going on.
Um, as expected yesterday, the Manafort, uh, WikiLeaks story is, uh, Julian Assange meeting with Manafort at the embassy story is slowly unraveling, uh, the Guardian unwinding it.
But as I told you yesterday, there's always a reason for this stuff.
So I'm going to get into some of that today too.
And, uh, what's really going on right now, hence the John Brennan, former CIA director under the Obama administration freak out.
Um, also just a one, um, Quick note of congratulations to the audience.
I love you all so much.
Jesse Kelly is back on Twitter.
Iraq war veteran.
Ran for Congress.
You know, he's an edgy tweeter, so let's say, on Twitter.
But Twitter, I guess, realizing that conservative backlash was going to be severe on this, and was severe, has reinstated his account.
Having said that, they still have not retweeted other conservatives who they've deleted off the platform.
So we're going to keep the heat on, and here's my suggestion for you.
Yesterday I suggested that we look into Twitter being reclassified as a publisher and not a platform.
Listen to yesterday's show and I'll give you more details on that.
But today, I want to suggest also that you sell any stock you have on Twitter.
I sold mine, so I don't speak with forked tongue.
You may have it in your portfolio somewhere.
You may not even know you have it.
Sell it.
Sell it.
Listen, I'm not a financial advisor, folks, but I would not buy stock in a company that criticizes conservatives.
Do your thing.
Again, if it's in your financial interest for the future and it's your nest egg, I understand.
You think it's a good investment.
But I'm just telling you as a matter of personal dislike on my part for a company that targets me, I dumped mine.
Get rid of that stock.
Forget it.
I mean, it's a nightmare.
Yeah.
Why would you be involved with a company that deliberately targets conservatives or is trying to?
So that's what I might... There you go.
I'm going to have to check in with corporate first there, Dan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know.
See if you're having your portfolio there.
Yeah.
Hold on.
I got to put my fan on.
It's getting hot in here already.
My wife was dying this morning.
It was like 50 degrees in Florida.
Now that we've got the new Northeast cold out of us, she's not used to it anymore.
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Okay, folks.
So here's the deal.
Here's what's going on.
There's been a freakout right now.
And this is where the Manafort leaks are coming from.
We talked about this yesterday.
Two stories were leaked yesterday about Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager.
The first story was this Guardian story that he allegedly met with Julian Assange at the Equatorian embassy.
Now, I explained on yesterday's show what I think is going on there.
I think the real scandal is we're being played by people connected to the Russian government who are somehow meeting with Assange through lobbyists and they're trying to cover that up because these same lobbyists are connected to Democrats.
I'll get to that in a second.
But there's a freakout going on because I think what's happening here... There was another leak, by the way, that Manafort's lawyers had spoken to Trump's lawyers team, which is perfectly legal.
There's nothing illegal about it.
The reason this is happening is Manafort is just telling them the truth.
And the truth is completely uncomfortable for them.
The truth does not involve Trump-Russia collusion.
Folks, I think we're being played.
I want you to pay close attention to this.
Now, I put an article up today at the Show Notes that covers my speech that I gave that's gone viral on YouTube.
It's one of the first articles up there.
It's from the American Spectator by a guy named Frank Hawkins.
He covered my speech.
I'd like you to listen to the speech.
It's now up to, I think, 700,000 downloads on YouTube.
It's gone nuclear pretty quickly.
But I explained to you what happened here and the gist of this is why we're in a bit of a freakout and why Manafort has become the subject of this whole thing.
I promise I'll tie this up for you, okay?
Ladies and gentlemen, there's a figure that surfaces in this Spygate saga over and over and over again who is deeply connected into the Russian government and knows people, influential people within the Russian government and was an ally of Putin for a very long time.
His name is Oleg Deripaska.
Deripaska's name comes up in almost every facet of this entire saga.
Deripaska had a business relationship with Paul Manafort for a very long time.
As a matter of fact, if you go back to a 2007 article by Glenn Simpson in the Wall Street Journal, let me read you the title so you can Google it yourself.
I'm not going to put it in the show notes because it's subscriber only.
But the title of the article is, gotta score, it's a very long one, How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington by Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacobius from 2007.
If you read that piece, it's fascinating because it describes in there an effort by the ex-Soviets, by Russians, to influence the United States government.
Who makes a cameo appearance in that show?
Paul Manafort and Oleg Deripaska.
What do I think they're hiding here?
Folks, I think the Democrats fully understand at this point that they are playing right into Russian hands.
The Russian operation to sow discord in the United States is not a partisan one.
Folks, the Russians don't care if the Democrats or the Republicans win.
The Russians care that the United States loses.
I want to be crystal clear on this, and the metaphor stuff's going to make sense in a second, but I got to backtrack because I think people are losing what's going on here.
The Russians are not our friends.
This is obvious.
Everybody gets that.
The Democrats don't want you to believe that Trump is a Russian ally.
He is not a Russian ally.
The Russians can't stand the American president, whether it was Hillary or Donald Trump.
The Russians see us as a foe, as in only a foe.
They don't see us as anything else.
They are not an ally of Trump.
The Democrats... Now, by the way, the Republicans capitulate on that idea.
Sensible conservatives, libertarians, and republicans understand they have differences on how we should handle it, but no sensible person out there thinks Russia is our friend on this international stage.
They are not.
Now, I said sensible, so that doesn't include Capitol Hill Democrats, who want you to believe that Russia is a friend to Donald Trump.
They are not, they are trying to show discord.
Now this key player keeps appearing in this case, Deripaska, this Russian connected deeply to Putin, this we know, in a number of different places.
And I'm going to ask you the question, let me give you the headline up front.
Is the Russian government working through people like Deripaska and others to play both sides?
Are we being played by the Russians right now?
Let's make some connections here for you.
So Deripaska, who we know is connected to Vladimir Putin, right?
Who we know is a Russian, we know is influential.
Deripaska is connected to Julian Assange.
How?
He's connected to Assange through a lobbyist.
A lobbyist by the name of Adam Waldman, I covered yesterday, who visited Julian Assange in this Ecuadorian embassy more than anyone else.
That is a lobbyist who has a significant business relationship with Deripaska.
I'm not suggesting Deripaska visited Assange.
I'm telling you the lobbyist that's working with him and a lawyer who works with Deripaska visited Assange, right?
Deripaska's also obviously connected to Waldman through Assange.
Waldman, this lawyer working with Deripaska, is also communicating with a Democrat, Mark Warner, on the Senate Intel Committee.
Theraposca is also working with the FBI.
Because we know the FBI, or I should say to be precise, was approached by the FBI for information about Donald Trump before the election.
Deripaskas also, at an economic forum, coincidentally at the same time as a guy by the name of Sergei Millian, who is alleged to be source D for the FBI, source D for Christopher Steele, excuse me, in the dossier.
Source D is the source that gives up the perverted sexual stuff in the dossier.
There are reports that Sergei Millian was the source who gave that information up about the Trump team.
Right around the time some of that stuff surfaces, Deripaska's at a conference with Millian.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm asking you if it's possible, just possible, that the Russian government is feeding information to a lobbyist, Waldman, who's feeding it to a Democrat on the Senate, Mark Warner, we know, we have their texts, who's feeding information or getting information from the Ecuadorian embassy in Julian Assange, Who's also giving information that they heard or passing information on to a source that gets back to the dossier.
Who is also connected, by the way, to the guy who wrote the dossier in Christopher Steele.
Why?
Because the lobbyist working with Deripaska, Adam Waldman, is also working with Christopher Steele.
Why do we know that?
Because we have the text between Waldman, the lawyer for Deripaska, and Mark Warner, the Democrat, where Waldman starts talking about setting up a meeting with Christopher Steele.
So we have this... Think about what I'm saying, Joe, if it doesn't make sense to me, because this is critical here.
You have a connected Russian, deeply connected to people inside the Russian machinery, the Russian apparatus.
This guy Deripaska, who shows up in a 2007 piece, right?
2007, not 2017.
Wall Street Journal piece written by who?
Glenn Simpson!
The guy who hires Christopher Steele at the behest of Hillary Clinton, right?
Hillary Clinton's team hires Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS to generate negative information on Trump.
They go out and hire Christopher Steele.
Christopher Steele produces the dossier.
The dossier has information in it about these sexually perverted things that comes from a guy, allegedly, that's at a conference the same time this Russian, Ropasko, who shows up everywhere, is at the conference too.
The story written in 2007 by Glenn Simpson mentions who?
Deripaska!
And his business deals with Manafort and mentions how Deripaska is one of those Russians trying to influence policy in the United States.
He's telling us in 2007 exactly what happened.
The Glenn Simpson 2007 piece about Russians trying to influence policy in the United States is the whole movie script already written out in advance!
Now, the ombudsman here, as you're speaking, as you're walking us along, I can follow it.
But I hope I don't sound too stupid here.
There's so many contacts, what a tangled web we weave.
When you leave it, when we leave what you're talking about, I almost can't recall it.
I think of it this way.
Does that make sense?
See sometimes, Joe and I are working on videos, so don't worry.
Think of it this way, let me visualize this for you folks.
If you looked at a pyramid and at the top you had Oleg Deripaska, who is, let's just be absolutely crystal clear, is connected to Vladimir Putin.
This is not in dispute, right?
They are associates of each other.
This guy Deripaska, there's a fork in the road going here, a fork in the road going there, but they all seem to lead back to him.
So we know this whole case is based on a dossier, right?
A dossier that Trump did this, that Trump was working with the Russians, that Trump did these perverted things in a hotel room.
All of those allegations can somehow be tied, connection-wise, to people connected to Deripaska.
What I'm trying to suggest to you is, were the Russians feeding information through multiple channels, using the American court system and the FBI to sow massive political discord in the United States, and we're still playing into it this day?
It explains the Manafort leaks yesterday.
It explains why Manafort doesn't know anything about Russian collusion, folks, because it didn't happen.
So in order to keep the Manafort story hot and the heat on Donald Trump, these leaks start coming out again.
Oh, Manafort leaked.
Manafort met with Julian Assange at the embassy.
Where did they get that from, The Guardian?
Did that come from Russian sources?
Where did that come from?
Well, Manafort's suing now because he's saying the meeting didn't happen.
Folks, are we getting played the whole time?
All I'm trying to tell you is when you look back to all these streams of negative information that are designed to disrupt the United States government, negative information about everybody, they all seem to have a common thread and someone connected to the Russian government and we're using it, is the point.
Instead of questioning where the information came from.
If someone was trying to break up the Dan Bongino show, hey, Joe Armacost is stealing quarters from your quarter jar in the kitchen.
Don't you want to know where the information came from?
If it was a Russian competitor, I'd be very suspicious of that information.
Because I don't have a quarter jar in the kitchen.
But it's like nobody questioned that.
Adam Waldman, lobbyist, working for a Russian, is also connected to the British guy, providing negative information on the Trump team.
The same lobbyist is also appearing at the Ecuadorian embassy with Julian Assange, who says they have Democrat emails.
He's also at this economic conference, the same time this source gives up information on a Trump team about these perverted things that happened in a hotel.
I want to know, and you should ask this question too, and I'll leave it at this.
Is Deripaska... Is he patient zero?
That's where I'm going with this whole thing.
Alright.
Is he paragraph one?
Alright.
Is Deripaska working with people in the Russian government to start this whole thing knowing politically inclined people like John Brennan, Obama, and Hillary Clinton's team would eat it up right away?
Understanding the whole time, patient zero, May have been a disinformation campaign, but the disinformation campaign benefited them politically so they ran with it.
Now does it make sense?
Deripaska is a common denominator here.
The common denominator?
Everything.
He's connected to all of the major players in this and all the way back in 2007, Glenn Simpson already wrote a piece about Deripaska's trying to influence U.S.
policy.
Simpson already knows this.
Was Glenn Simpson selling this information from Deripaska already knowing that it was a disinformation campaign?
Simpson understanding the whole time that the Hillary Clinton team didn't care if the information was bogus, that they were just going to scoop it up anyway, even if it fed into the Russian desire to put a major political schism in the country.
Folks, I get this part is complicated, but it explains everything about Manafort today.
How the Mueller team, to cover all of this up, Hillary's use of Russian disinformation, and the Obama administration's use of Russian disinformation, cleaned and laundered through the British, whether they knew it or not.
Is this an effort by the Mueller team to hide all of that?
That this is a Russian collusion scandal?
With the Obama administration?
That's why the... Oh, Manafort met with Julian Assange, too.
Did he?
Did he really?
It's just an effort to keep your attention off Waldman's meetings with Julian Assange.
Were the Russians... Did they... Did they play us for idiots the whole time?
Folks, this goes back a long, long way.
This goes back to 2015, where I think the Russians understood that there was a deep schism within the United States intel community that was targeting people on US, targeting US citizens.
I think the Russians understood they could use that and understood that the Obama administration was eager to use negative intelligence, whether it was real or not, to target their political enemies.
How do I know this?
There's an interesting piece in the American Spectator about an effort as far back as 2015 to target Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.
Let me read to you a snippet from the piece.
It's going to make you remember what we're talking about.
Please.
This is an important show.
Yeah.
We're talking about patient zero being a Russian who is at the center of a lot of this effort by the Russian government to put negative information into the US political system where instead of a, a, um, Non-partisan intelligence actors saying, hey, this is just the Russians messing with us.
The Obama administration said, oh, give us more, give us more, give us more, even though they knew it was BS because they knew it would hit their political opponents.
And what I'm suggesting to you is the Russians may have got wind of the Obama administration's willingness to put standard intelligence practices aside for political means as far back as 2015.
Why?
From this American Spectator piece.
It's in the show notes.
This is a must read.
British spies ran on the ground floor of Obamacare, long before even the first Republican primary.
They had been passing conjecture disguised as, quote, intelligence to John Brennan about the Trump campaign.
In fact, Brennan was spying on Mike Flynn before he even joined the campaign, as reported by the UK Guardian.
British intelligence first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious interactions, listen to this, this is 2015, between figures connected to Trump, they're talking about Mike Flynn, Joe, and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said.
The intelligence was passed on to the US as part of, quote, routine exchanges of information, they added.
The key Trump figure referred to here is Mike Flynn.
Folks, I am deeply sorry if this is complicated, but this is absolutely critical you understand this in light of the Manafort thing.
Manafort knows all the players in this.
Manafort is a subject of Glenn Simpson's ire as far back as 2007 for his efforts to lobby on behalf of Ukrainians and his business deals with Deripaska and some Russians.
They figure this is an in here.
Manafort's an in to connect all of this mess about Soviet influence, of ex-Soviet influence in the United States.
Manafort's the in to connect this all to Trump despite the fact that Trump has nothing to do with it.
They fired Manafort.
They need Manafort to be at the Ecuadorian embassy to rope him into this whole collusion email scheme.
They need him there.
Someone's leaking this, strategically, right around the time the Mueller thing is wrapping up, to rope the Trump team back in to an email conspiracy that the Trump team has nothing to do with.
Someone's leaking this.
May I suggest to you that the genesis of this stuff may be Russians using somehow friendlies to get this information into the United States media knowing they're suckers for the Democrat Party to sow discord.
What does that have to do with the passage I just read?
Folks, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn.
The Russians can't stand him.
Why?
Lieutenant General Flynn, when he was working at the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, in the Obama administration, was an outspoken and vocal opponent of the Iran deal.
He understood the Iran deal was going to do damage.
The Obama administration needed the Iran deal.
It's a long story, but the Obama administration wanted to rebalance power away from the Saudis, their new rapprochement with the Israelis, and back towards the Shia arc with Iran at the head of it.
Why?
We can speculate for days.
But the Obama administration wanted to empower Iran at the expense of the Saudis and others.
The Iran deal was going to be the economic center of that.
It was going to give Iran back money and power and take them off the sanctions list.
Flynn was an outspoken opponent of this.
Flynn becomes a target back as far as 2015.
2015. He becomes a target and the UK according to the Guardian's article is
passing information about Flynn and a dinner he had where this Russian woman
woman showed up.
The allegations in the report are that a spy passed on information about the dinner and some suspicious activity between Flynn and this Russian woman.
The allegations are that a spy connected to the British and connected to the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency, passed this information on.
Who's that spy?
Stefan Halper.
The same exact spy, Central Intelligence Agency asset, who shows up emailing George Papadopoulos later on trying to get Papadopoulos to admit that he knows about Russian emails.
Folks.
Do you see what's going on here?
As far back as 2015, people associated with U.S.
intelligence are trying to rope in a lieutenant general, a heroic patriot in the United States, Mike Flynn, into a Russian whatever scandal.
At that point, they probably didn't call it collusion.
They just probably called it inappropriate conversations or whatever with Russians.
And the same players are involved as far back as 2015.
The template's already written.
Use the Russians, who have some kind of person at this dinner, this Russian woman.
Use the Russians.
Use the Russians to communicate somehow with Mike Flynn, however innocuous these conversations were, and Flynn insists to this day that the dinner conversation with the woman was innocent.
Use those conversations to make an insinuation that Flynn somehow is having inappropriate dealings with the Russians.
But how does the information get back to us?
Again, through people connected to the United Kingdom's intelligence services, and the same name, Stefan Halper, appears in that story.
The Obama administration needed the Russians.
They were their allies on the Iran deal.
The more I read about this, the more grossed out I am by this story.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Also in the story, as far back as 2015, John Brennan Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Barack Obama.
Yeah.
The founder of the corrupt feast.
Yeah.
John Brennan is having these director-level meetings with people.
They're getting intelligence from UK officials.
What are they getting intelligence on?
A dinner Mike Flynn was at?
Did just a Russian happen to be there?
Did you notice how these key Russians keep appearing around people who were Obama administration enemies, and later the Trump team, and in Flynn's case, someone who later appeared in the Trump team?
These Russians keep appearing around them, and it's used later on as evidence of some kind of collusive activity?
These Russians keep appearing everywhere!
But the information somehow keeps getting back to the Central Intelligence Agency, which should say to you in our intelligence outfits that folks, this is some kind of a setup.
Now, also, does it make sense why Lieutenant General Flynn became a target of Obama during the transition?
Remember this story.
This is important.
Obama has a meeting with President-elect Trump in the White House.
There's one specific person.
Out of all the conversations they could have, Joe, one specific person's name comes up.
Obama says to Trump, hey, don't hire this guy.
He's real trouble.
Who's the guy?
Mike Flynn!
Mike Flynn!
Because he knows.
Mike Flynn knows everything.
Flynn's the DIA director.
He has access to this stuff.
Flynn probably realizes he was the subject of some activity targeting him by his own government.
So Obama begs Trump not to hire Flynn.
Trump does hire Flynn.
Hires him as the National Security Advisor.
What happens just days after he's hired?
Sally Yates, known Obama bootlicker and butt kisser, shows up at the White House, she's the Deputy Attorney General at the time, and says, hey, President Trump, we got a problem.
Somehow we have this recording and transcript of Mike Flynn talking to the Russian Ambassador Kislyak.
Wow!
How do you have that?
Oh yeah, we unmasked him.
Oh, you did?
You basically wiretapped your National Security Advisor?
That's interesting.
When he was in the transition process, that's fascinating how that happened.
So we have this transcript Of Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador, and it doesn't exactly marry up with what he told FBI agents in an interview, so he could be the subject of a bribery trap.
A blackmail trap.
Excuse me.
Which is nonsense.
Total, complete, utter nonsense.
That's a fabricated, nonsensical story.
How is he going to be the subject of a blackmail trap if the Trump administration and Flynn already knew what he said?
May have had forgotten some of the details, but the details were irrelevant towards blackmail.
It was already going to be Trump administration policy anyway.
And what happens?
They dismiss Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn is later arrested and charged and prosecuted on charges of lying to the FBI
despite the fact that the FBI themselves say they don't believe he was being dishonest.
Folks, listen to me.
This is a setup from as far back as 2015.
Now, by the way, another thing, I'm sorry, but now does the multiple dossier story make sense now?
Victoria Nuland and others in the Obama administration were testifying, people from the State Department and others, and in that testimony it came out that the Trump dossier was not the only one.
So I've said to you over and over that this is a big scandal because although the Trump team was targeted because they won the Republican primary and became the nominee, this is not just about Trump.
This effort by the United States to use any interaction with Russians by their political enemies as evidence of nonsense collusion charges goes back all the way to the 2015 targeting of Mike Flynn at a dinner where some Russian woman shows up.
And that information, unbelievably, is used against Flynn despite the fact there's no evidence he did anything wrong!
And the same spies keep showing up and they're connected to our guys.
While Brennan is meeting with the United Kingdom.
Now also.
Read the spectator piece as well.
Does it explain the panic about the declassification?
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Folks.
The declassification of the FISA documents where they indicate, apparently in these FISA documents, used to spy on Carter Page.
How they got the information they got, right?
That's going to be in there.
The British are freaking out in the United Kingdom because they say it's going to expose sources and methods.
Forget the methods, that's not what they're worried about.
What they're worried about is they can no longer plausibly deny things.
None of the names in that document are going to be new.
When it's exposed.
Downer.
Halper.
It's only the fact that the British are no longer going to be able to say they weren't an intermediary, a third party, that was cleaning information from other sources to give it back to the United States, used to spy on Obama's political enemies.
That's why they're panicking!
It's no more difficult than that to understand.
The British now, because it hasn't been declassified, can say, uh, I don't know.
Remember what, Patriot Games?
That Jack Ryan movie with Harrison Ford?
Plausible deniability.
In other words, can I deny this plausibly?
The British can because the documents haven't been unredacted yet.
There's still blackouts in them.
Once the documents become public and it was sworn to in a U.S.
court and we're all reading the U.K.' 's involvement in this, the British are no longer going to be able to say they did not try to impact an American election by couriering information into the U.S.
intelligence system from, quotes, other parties.
The real scandal here, folks, to bring this all the way back to how I started, Is the Russians played us all.
And when I say us all, I don't mean the listening audience.
I mean the Five Eyes intelligence outlets.
The Russians played all of them for suckers.
They used disinformation from Russian sources.
I suspect one of them at some point Based on, may have come from people connected to Putin, based on what I've already told you.
The Russians fed disinformation to friendly intelligence outlets, the United Kingdom, Hillary Clinton's people, Fusion GPS, which was subsequently used to target American citizens to create a political schism in the United States that the Democrats knew about, and instead of saying, hey, this is the Russians messing with us, they said, yeah, we know they're messing with us, but let's use it anyway because it makes Trump look bad.
You dig?
Yep.
Yeah, sir.
This is bad news, man.
Yeah.
All right, I gotta get to this.
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All right.
Sorry, I'm just obsessed with this stuff because it just makes so much sense now to me.
That the Russians played us for suckers, the Obama administration knew we were being played for suckers, the Obama administration figuring that they were going to win anyway and they could go back and make this stuff all go away later.
Use this Russian disinformation campaign as far back probably as 2015.
Used it to attack the Trump team and these key Russians like Deripaska keep appearing connected to key players in this entire thing.
Just incredible.
All right.
I got a lot more to get to today.
One just quick note here.
Folks, when I was a Secret Service agent, I was in a hotel room during the John Kerry, President Bush election for President Bush's re-election campaign.
And I was sitting in this hotel room and I'm watching the DNC, the Democrat National Convention.
And a guy gets up on stage and gives one of the most incredible political speeches I've ever heard.
Um, I didn't agree with the policies in it.
Uh, it was very, it was aspirational.
It wasn't even very policy oriented, but I sat in my hotel room.
I'll never forget this.
I was doing counter surveillance with the secret service, which is cool because I didn't have to wear suits.
I could wear like regular down clothes, kind of like an undercover thing.
And I'm listening to this speech and I'm saying, this guy's big trouble.
Now I'm not in the prediction game anymore.
I'm going to try to get out of that.
We were like two for three in the last few, but two out of three is bad in contrast to the meatloaf song, right?
Isn't that two out of three ain't bad?
No, two out of three is bad.
You got to be right all the time.
So I'm going to get out of the prediction game, but I am going to say this, that guy I saw in that hotel room, I called my wife immediately.
She remembers his phone call.
I was sitting in the Shelbourne hotel in Manhattan on the seventh floor.
Remember where I was?
And I said to her, this guy's big trouble.
This guy is going to win something big one day, whether it's the presidency or he's going to become a significant political leader in the future.
That person was Barack Obama.
He was Senator Barack Obama at the time, but I heard that speech and I knew right away that he had managed to tap into something.
Folks, be very careful.
There's another Barack Obama out there right now who speaks in similar hopey-changey type of talk.
Listen, he doesn't stand for anything.
He's an inch deep and two feet wide.
Frankly, just like Obama was with his policies.
They were.
The policies were shallow and not well thought out.
But the speeches were aspirational and were powerful.
And for us to deny that is like the Democrats denying that the Trump effect was real.
It doesn't do us any good.
That other person out there right now is Beto O'Rourke.
Folks, keep your antenna up.
I have a story up at the show notes today from the Hill.
It looks like Beto is testing the waters for a 2020 presidential run.
I'm telling you right now, mark this episode.
This guy is real trouble.
Real trouble.
He's a far leftist or his policies are empty, but he has managed to tap into something on the Democrat side aspirationally that Obama did as well.
Dan, I can hear our listeners right now.
They're telling me he lost, dude.
What are you talking about?
He did.
He did lose in Texas, but his performance in Texas show compared to where other Democrats have historically performed in statewide races over the last few, Is remarkable.
And for us to deny that does us no good.
He should have lost that race by 10 points against Ted Cruz.
And he didn't.
What'd he lose, by 4?
Eh, something like that.
That race was unusually close.
Unusually close.
I'm just giving you a heads up.
Be very careful.
Beto is big, big trouble for the Republicans.
Alright.
Um, I have some, um...
Some interesting pieces up in the show notes today.
Our resident debunker-in-chief, Matt Palumbo, was kind enough to put together a piece about the actual cost of illegal immigration in the United States.
I'm getting so fed up and tired of far-left talking points on illegal immigration, folks.
Listen, immigration, when done correctly, in a labor-sensitive market, done according to the principles of law and order, legal immigration can and typically is a net economic positive benefit for the country in the long term.
When it's done in the right way, legally, controlled, sensitive to labor markets, it is usually an economic net benefit.
Illegal immigration is an economic burden on our country.
I don't care who tells you otherwise.
Now I'm going to give you the numbers to back this up because I am so tired of hearing from leftists About how legal immigration benefits us when done the right way.
Illegal immigration does not.
Here are the actual costs.
Matt has the piece up.
The numbers are in the show notes for you to spread around if you so wish.
Illegal immigrants pay taxes, Joe.
Because you hear this number a lot as Matt points out.
They go, well, illegal immigrants pay $12 billion in taxes annually.
Oh, great.
Well, that's a huge number.
Interesting.
Yeah, only interesting compared to the actual numbers that would have been paid if these were actual taxpaying citizens in those jobs.
Illegals pay at a rate, at a lower rate, than tax-paying citizens.
Matter of fact, Matt points out, at such a lower rate, that if we were to calculate the rate illegal immigrants pay taxes for the entire country, they pay at such a lower rate, that the United States government would raise $240 billion in taxes versus $3 trillion.
So the fact that illegal immigrants pay some form of taxes, whether they're sales taxes or otherwise, does not mean that it is a net economic benefit, because even if you're a far-left liberal that believes the government should control the money outlets, the money they're bringing in is far less.
Jody, you see why this is?
Yeah.
If you're illegally working in the United States, you're not paying federal income taxes.
Hell no.
Because you're here illegally.
You're either working off the books, You're working somehow under a stolen social security number.
You're likely avoiding the income tax load.
You're also in many cases, but not all, but most cases you're bringing in a lesser set of skills.
You're seeking out labor markets and you're working for a lower wage than Americans would have worked for, which would have meant higher income tax revenue in addition to the fact that you're off the books anyway in a large part of these cases, right?
So they're paying at a lower rate than if American citizens would have been in those jobs.
The education costs for the children of illegal immigrants that come into the country, depending on the estimate you use, $44 to $59 billion in education costs.
So we're talking about massive losses in tax revenue because they're not paying taxes.
A lot of this is going off the books or it's being done under stolen social security numbers.
A lot of it's being done because you'll work for wages lesser than an American citizen would have worked for.
Finally, the healthcare costs.
A lot of the leftist activists will point out the fact that, well, Joe, you know, you're not eligible for a lot of federal Medicaid benefits and things like that if you're in the country illegally.
Okay, fair enough.
But ladies and gentlemen, when you show up in an American emergency room, you know, it is one of our more humane policies.
I don't disagree with the policy, but when you show up in an emergency room, we're not going to let you die.
That costs money.
If you are here illegally in the country, you are costing the United States government, by one of Matt's estimates, he has it in a piece and you can see how he calculated it, $18.5 billion in healthcare costs.
You are here illegally.
There are real costs associated with this.
Matt estimates the total cost of illegal immigration every year at $100 billion.
hundred billion dollars illegal immigration
stop telling us this is a net economic gain to the united states
[END]
It is not.
The numbers belie that.
Medical costs.
Education costs.
This is costing us money.
And it's not being reimbursed by the tax load that illegal immigrants are bearing through sales taxes and otherwise because they're not paying taxes in many cases.
Stop with the nonsense.
This article is important, especially now.
Okay, a couple other things I had out there.
Take screenshots of stuff so I can get you the accurate information.
Matt did another piece.
There's another myth floating around out there now that the Democrats are getting back, working their way, weaseling their way back into power, which they did in this last election.
Yeah, well, I shouldn't say it, but they won, and I don't want to be like liberals are to us, and they didn't steal the damn thing.
But they ran on a bunch of garbage.
Yeah.
Is probably the best way to say it.
So the Nancy Pelosi is about to take back the Speaker's gavel, take over control of the House.
And one of the things they're going to argue for now is a tax hike.
They want the Trump tax cuts to go away.
And one of the myths I've heard out there being propagated by the liberal media, again, the activists in the media, is that, oh, these tax cuts didn't benefit the middle class.
They screwed over the middle class.
No, no, you're lying.
You're making that up.
Yeah, you're darn right.
You're just making that up.
I have the numbers for you in this piece by Matt Palumbo.
All right, before I get to that, let me just do this last read.
Just be patient with this and I will get to that.
I'll get to the numbers so you can debunk myths generated by your liberal friends.
All right.
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Alright, so again, the Democrats are getting back in power right now, doing their thing, and they want to raise your taxes.
They're going to tell you that the tax cut planned by Trump did not benefit the middle class.
Folks, Matt put up another piece at the website debunking this nonsense.
I took a screenshot, and I'm going to read to you the numbers right now so you can debunk this nonsense.
The Trump's tax cuts composed of both corporate tax reform, which cut the rate from 35 to 21 percent, and across-the-board cuts to individual tax brackets.
Here is the percentage point decline for each bracket.
Folks, if you are wealthy in this country, if you are in the 37 percent tax bracket, it was 39.6, it's now 37.
This is the highest tax bracket for the highest earners, right?
Your taxes went down 1.6 percent, your tax rate.
Okay, so Joe, keep these numbers in your head, folks.
This isn't hard.
If you are one of the wealthiest earners in our country, your tax rate went down from 39.6 to 37, so it went down 1.6 percentage points.
If you are in the second highest tax bracket, you're well off, but you may not be rich.
Your taxes went down from 33 to 32 percent.
So you got a 1 percent tax rate.
You may say, alright, damn, well the rich got over more.
They got 1.6 percentage points.
And the a little bit less than rich got 1 percentage point.
Oh, oh, but now we're getting into the middle class tax brackets, Joe.
Oh, look at these numbers.
Aren't they convenient?
The middle class got a tax cut from 28% tax rate to a 24% tax rate, a 4%, 4 percentage point cut.
4, 1.6.
4, 1.6.
Joe, what's greater?
4 or 1.6?
Take a second to think about that.
Can you handle it?
4 percentage point cut. 4, 1.6. 4, 1.6. Joe what's greater?
4 or 1.6?
Take a second to think about that. Can you handle it? What's greater?
4 percent!
Four percent is greater!
So do you understand the liberals are just making this up?
Oh, the rich got over on this.
No, the middle class got a bigger percentage point tax cut than the wealthy did.
Four, 1.6.
Four, 1.6.
I don't know if like there's some kind of song we have to invent.
By the way, we got to get to your tune.
That was funny.
So we got to play that song.
It's so good.
But for 1.6, how many times do I get to say this?
You know that sometimes when you, when, when these companies remember back in the fifties and sixties, there was always a jingle.
Use our product.
It's wonderful today.
It was these goofy little jingles and you couldn't get the stupid songs out of your head forever.
You all know what I'm talking about, right?
You remember some of those?
I hated them.
Yeah, everybody hated them.
But you never forgot them, right?
Invent a jingle for yourself to remember that the wealthy got a 1.6 percentage point tax rate cut and a middle class... That was a Chicago song, 1.6 to 4.
Is that a song?
25 or 6 to 4, that was the name of the song.
But it sounded close.
Yeah.
Was it?
What was that other one?
8-6-7-5-3-0-9.
Who would remember that number outside of the song?
The way you code it in your brain is different.
I don't mean to get off.
But that's right.
It's 4% for the middle class.
Now, you may say, okay, there are even poorer folks because it's broken down into quintiles.
20%.
The top 20%, the 20% below that, 20%.
So you may say, okay Dan, so the middle class got four points off their tax rate.
What did the people who were a little less well off than the middle class get?
Clearly the rich got over on them with their 1.6 percentage point cut.
Well, if you're in the tax bracket below that, you were paying 25%, you're now paying 22%, which is, hold on.
That is a decrease of three percentage points, which by my simple math is almost double the 1.6 percentage points that the evil rich, the Democrats call, as they call you, the evil rich cut off.
I'm not crazy, right?
Like this math actually works out.
Now, the last thing you're, and all these charts are in the piece, so please check it out, Bongino.com.
You may say, well, clearly, The bottom 20% of earners, the poorest Americans by the tax code, clearly got screwed over.
The rich got 1.6 percentage points off.
Just about every other tax bracket got off more than that.
In some cases, the middle class specifically got double with a four percentage point decrease in their tax rate.
Clearly, because the Democrats are right, the poor got screwed over by this.
Okay, let's go to the numbers again.
If you are in the lowest tax bracket, you were paying 15%.
I'm sorry, the second lowest.
You were paying 15%.
You are now paying 12%, a decrease of 3 points, again.
So folks, you have...
The second lowest quintile gets 3% off.
On top of that, 3% off.
The middle class, maybe upper middle class, gets 4% off.
Wealthy, but not the highest tax bracket, gets 1% off.
And the wealthy, based on the tax bracket, 1.6%.
Do you understand they're just making this stuff up?
This is why we have the debunk this section on our website.
Because they're just, this is a complete, utter, total fabrication.
They're making this whole entire thing up.
The majority of the benefit went to people who were not in the top two tax brackets.
The majority of the benefit went to the middle class and below.
That's just a fact.
I get it.
Facts are hard.
I understand you media types, too, who like to engage in liberal propaganda, who put this stuff out there that the middle class somehow got screwed over by this tax cut package.
This is going to come up.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have the numbers.
Keep the piece on your phone.
There's a handy chart.
Matt put some little big red numbers in there.
You can read it yourself.
It is just a complete fabrication and is made up.
and it's tiresome. All right, Matt was nice enough to do another piece too. I wanted to
get to this the other day, but I didn't have any time.
About so-called free college.
Yeah, free college is always a good one. I love how things are free. The left is just free,
like the money fair.
Oh, it's free!
Yeah, free.
Nobody paid for anything anyway.
I love when they talk about free.
Oh, someone volunteered their time?
What do you mean free college?
The teachers aren't getting paid?
They're volunteering their time?
The architect who built the building did it voluntarily?
The janitors?
The administrative staff?
No, no, they're getting paid.
Oh, so it's not free.
So somebody's paying for it because they're paying the teachers, right?
So Matt did a piece debunking this idea of free college.
It's a really good one because it points out the myths about the Scandinavian examples.
You know, the left and Bernie Sanders and these types, Joe, they're like, Oh, free college.
Look in Denmark and other countries, look what happens.
They get free college and everybody scores.
It's so great.
It's so wonderful.
Matt has a couple of great takeaways from this.
Number one, debt, student debt for free college.
Is comparable to student debt for paid university educations here in the United States.
Wait, wait, wait.
How's that?
You're like, this can't pot.
Now, even I get it.
Even some smart conservatives who are maybe like, well, that doesn't make any sense.
How is it that if the taxpayers are paying for college in some of these Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Norway, and others, How is it that the students are still taking debt to pay if their tax dollars are already paying for it?
Matt's a genius.
This is great, Joe.
Listen to this.
I was very impressed.
Good job, Matt Palumbo.
He says, and it's in the piece in the show notes, right?
So Sanders would probably be just as shocked as I was to learn that there is student debt in Scandinavia despite their lack of university tuition.
Not only that, there's a lot of debt.
Because, Joe, while tuition is free, room and board are not.
So paradoxically, this is great, offering free tuition seems to have incentivized students to be more likely to rack up debt by moving out early to go to college to take advantage of the free thing.
But the room and board is not free.
While it's becoming more common for American students to save money by living at home and attending a two-year community college, there's less incentive to do so with, quote, free tuition.
Genius observation!
If the tuition's free, hey mom, I'm moving out!
Ah!
The meatloaf!
I'm outta here!
I'm gone!
The tuition's free!
But the room and board isn't.
Here are the numbers.
How much debt they wind up accumulating where college is, quote, free.
Because there's no market incentive to get a bargain in your education, like American students who go, hey, you know what?
I'm not going to waste two years.
I'll go to community college first, stay home, save some money, and then I'll go on to Harvard or Princeton or whatever, Penn State, where I went for graduate school or City University.
Matt writes, in 2015, Swedes who borrowed to attend college had an average of $17,266 in debt.
In Norway, the average student debt graduated with $280,000 in their currency.
That denominates to $32,000 in U.S.
dollars in debt.
For contrast, the American student debt for someone graduating in America's class of 2015, where we got the data from, was approximately $30,000.
So in Norway, where education is, quote, free, their average debt is $2,000 more in the United States where it's not, quote, free.
Hey, kids, you may want to think about that, you know, when you sit there and buy into the leftist hype about free college.
Nothing's free.
Somebody's paying.
You may say, oh, well, the solution then, Joe, is to have the government pick up room and board, too!
Yeah!
So we can pay not 50 and 60% of our income to taxes.
We can pay 70, 85%.
In that case, you'll be working for the government full time.
Good luck with that.
Have fun.
Hey, one final story.
I'm sorry, but I'm cleaning up a lot of stuff that I wanted to get to earlier in the week.
That's really important because I've been so tied up with this Manafort thing.
And again, just in the beginning, I want you to understand that whole beginning we were talking about is critical.
How the Russians are the genesis of all of this stuff.
And the Obama administration scooped it up and used it knowing it was a disinformation campaign to attack Trump.
The Mueller probe is trying to break all of those ties to the Obama administration and still keep the attention on Trump.
It's clear as day right now.
It's important we get that out there.
Folks, I'd warned you about our debt and our economic situation, that it was perilous.
I've said this multiple times, that this is really, we're in a very dangerous time, that our national debt, we owe a lot of money.
But in order to finance the functioning of our government as liberals and rhino-conservatives want it, we have to borrow massive amounts of money.
Why do we have to borrow massive amounts of money?
We have to do so because we don't have enough tax dollars to finance right now all of these expenditures.
Our defense budget, our entitlement program, social security, Medicaid, Medicare, discretionary spending, we don't have enough money.
This is clear.
If Joe's spending $100,000 a year and he only makes $50,000, he's got to borrow $50,000.
Sooner or later, people who are lending Joe money are going to ask for their money back.
I had said to you we are about to hit a debt apocalypse sometime in the future and it's going to hit us quick.
Where at some point, someone says, we're not lending you clowns money anymore.
You can't get your act together.
I'm not talking about us clowns, I'm talking about the Hill.
These idiots up on Capitol Hill spending us off a fiscal cliff.
Now, those people are both us, we buy U.S.
bonds, U.S.
treasuries, and foreign governments, which have lent the United States government a lot of money.
I'd said to you that when this materializes, it's going to materialize, Joe, in the form of higher interest rates.
Folks, there's some warning signs out there.
Let me read for you from a piece in Reuters.
They're talking about bond auctions.
In other words, asking foreign governments for money.
They're auctioning bonds.
Hey, come in!
Buy our money!
Buy our bonds!
Lend us money!
Some bond auctions since late October had the weakest foreign participation rates in nearly a decade.
A Reuters analysis of U.S.
Treasury sales shows.
At the same time, auction sizes are rising fast with bond issuance this quarter projected to set a record of $83 billion after deducting mature debt.
This analyst, this economist at Deutsche Bank said, we do worry about where demand for treasury is going to come from given the ongoing significant increase in supply.
Ladies and gentlemen, what does that mean?
People aren't buying our bonds anymore at the rate they were a decade ago.
Now, is it apocalyptic now?
No.
But when this hits, it's going to hit fast.
And how is this going to show up in the form of interest rates?
When foreign governments and even U.S.
citizens stop lending the government money because they're convinced they're not going to get it back, the United States government is going to have to offer what?
Very high interest rates to compensate people for the risk?
All right, we'll give you 10% rather than the 5% or whatever for the bonds.
Then what goes up?
Mortgage loans, car loans, things that are indexed to the interest rates in the United States, the Federal Reserve.
Folks, we're going to be in big, big trouble.
You want to pay 16-17% for a mortgage like you did in the 80s?
We got to get a hold of this now.
When people stop lending us money, the only way to get them to do it is by offering higher interest rates.
The government's going to have to pay off that interest over time.
And that interest on top of the debt we have now is absolutely catastrophic.
I warned you, but I've been meaning to talk about this story all week.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
I hope it wasn't too confusing in the beginning, but it's a critical key.
How all of this leads back to people connected to Putin and these guys sucked the whole thing up the whole time.
Just incredible.
That's why they're trying to rope Manafort in again, to tie this thing all to Trump.
It's disgusting.
All right.
I appreciate you tuning in.
Please subscribe to the show.
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It means a lot.
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