In this episode I address the surprise presidential trip to Iraq and the hysterical media response to it. I also discuss three troubling oddities in the Gen. Michael Flynn interview with the FBI. Finally, I address the national debt crisis and the government shutdown endgame. News Picks:
President Trump makes a surprise visit to the troops in Iraq.
The Mueller probe is a scam designed to keep the heat on President Trump.
Three oddities in the FBI’s handling of the Gen. Michael Flynn interview.
Rudy Giuliani asks for an investigation of Bob Mueller.
Disturbing video of suspected drug cartel hit men ambushing local police officers.
Are we reaching a breaking point with our national debt?
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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 doing good.
How are you doing, Dan?
Seamlessly moving between accents before the show.
I noticed.
You didn't think I caught that.
I did.
I did not think you caught it.
Yes oh man what a news day yesterday the media jumping all over President Trump who had the and I'm using air quotes here temerity to go visit our troops overseas oh my gosh oh what unbelievable how dare he visit troops in a conflict zone and of course the media had to make a story a negative story out of that so This is one of those rare circumstances, you know I hate personal stories on the show because I don't waste your time, but this will not be a waste of your time because this is one of those rare stories where I have unique expertise and insight into this specific situation, presidential visits to war zones, and I am going to debunk and expose the absolute media heresy and stupidity yesterday and just embarrass them because I like doing that and they're actually good at doing it themselves.
We need some music for this piece.
We do.
We do dramatic music, right?
Like from Braveheart.
[singing Braveheart theme]
Right.
[laughing]
I have the soundtrack to Braveheart.
It's awesome.
You know what, if we could run that in the back, SoundCloud would kick us off, right?
But I don't think, the good thing is my whistling is so bad, it in no way resembles the actual Braveheart sound.
So we have no worries on SoundCloud at this point.
No one will mistake that for actual Braveheart music.
Oh, man.
The show's off the rails already.
We're a minute and 50 seconds in.
That's great.
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Okay.
Uh, jumping right in.
So yesterday, many of you saw president Trump, uh, and really what I think was a terrific move.
I think Joe, you'd agree, uh, went over and gave a nice lift to our, our, um, You know, every time I talk about the troops, I always struggle for adjectives to define what they do for us.
Cause I've, I really just, I mean it.
I'm having spent some time in Afghanistan with president Obama.
Not, I don't want to be dramatic.
It was about a week and a half, two weeks by the time we were done, but seeing what they do live and on the ground, I've always been in awe of the sacrifices they make.
I mean, I mean that with absolute sincerity and from the bottom of my heart.
So it's really nice to have the commander in chief.
I remember being there.
Even, you know, when it was President Obama and that trip, I remember being there and seeing just the looks on their faces.
It matters to them.
And President Trump doing that was a very nice... Excuse me.
Was a very nice gesture and I think perfectly timed right now, right around the holidays, where a lot of these troops are waking up on Christmas morning and sadly have to Skype in with their kids because they can't be there with them.
You know, I always remember that when I get up in Christmas morning with my kids, because I missed a lot of holidays myself as a Secret Service agent.
But the difference is I was, you know, I was in the United States.
I wasn't in a war zone.
So that's a different level of sacrifice.
On the scale of sacrifice, that's a whole lot higher what our troops do.
So he goes yesterday, Trump goes to Iraq, he shows up, the pictures, the story breaks around about 1 p.m.
Eastern time, two o'clock, and the media stories come out right away.
Now, the media narrative yesterday, because the media cannot possibly stop hitting President Trump, no matter what he does, it will always, and by the way, this is not helping the media.
I'm actually, I hate to say this, but it actually somewhat puts a smile on my face a little bit, Joe, because the media, For all of their efforts to try to paint themselves as independent arbiters of facts and journalism, they are not.
Their activists are now exposing themselves on a daily basis as the Democrat activists they are, and destroying any remaining credibility they have left.
Now, I say that puts a bit of a smile on my face, because the good journalists, in the end, the cream is going to rise to the top, and journalism, which we need in this country, we need a free press, Period.
No doubt about it.
The good journalists are eventually going to rise to the top as they see this nonsense for what it is.
But the good journalist show can't rise to the top until the morons in the group, the activists, expose themselves and their credibility is so little that they only speak to an activist crowd and they become worthless in the value chain of journalism.
So we need them to out themselves first and they're doing it every day.
So the story yesterday, instead of just reporting, Straight facts that the president visited a war zone.
He was there with the troops.
He got a just a rousing welcome, thunderous applause.
I mean, you can just watch the video yourself.
Don't take my word for it.
You can go to Dan Scavino's account, who is the social media and messaging guy from the White House.
He has some videos of it that are just tremendous.
Instead of reporting that, the narrative is, well, Trump only went because the criticism of him not going during the Christmas season to visit the troops was withering.
In other words, the media narrative now is, look, this is a media success, Joe, because we shamed him over Christmas into going to visit the troops.
Wrong!
Folks, the tweets that came out from the clown class, Alyssa Milano, you know, radical far-left anti-civil liberties advocate, NBC News.
Yeah, another one.
The clown show, trying to shame the president.
The tweets that came out Came out right before and around Christmas, December 24th, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, saying, hey, listen, President Trump, this guy, this is horrible.
We had this guy, Ryan Hill, on Twitter tweeting, the president's sitting on his A2Ss, not doing anything, when other presidents basically went out and visited the troops and stuff.
That kind of thing was all over Twitter.
So folks, what's the problem with that media narrative?
Just to be clear what they're suggesting.
They're suggesting that their Christmas Eve, December 23rd, and Christmas Day tweets shame the president to leaving the White House and going over to visit the Jews because they shamed him being the first president, you know, quote, not to do it during a Christmas time.
Folks, the problem with that is an obvious one if you're a thinking, sentient being.
Keep in mind, we're not talking to liberals now.
We're talking to our media people.
We're talking to, I said thinking, okay?
Thinking people.
I was a Secret Service agent.
I did an advance in a war zone.
I was the lead advance agent for Barack Obama's 2010, December, I remember it was my birthday.
I was over there for my birthday.
It was December 4th, December 5th.
Right around there, I was doing the advance.
I forget when he landed.
I did that advance.
I found out about that trip weeks prior.
And the advance office knew about that trip weeks prior to that.
What does that say, folks?
That tells you that this trip, scheduled yesterday, for December 26th, was likely planned in probably November.
Meaning way before the media said this, the December 24th, 25th, uh, 23rd, 24th, 25th tweets, the president won't visit a war zone.
He's the first president ever.
He had already said he was going to visit a war zone because they were already planning it.
The media's narrative is he was just responding to criticism.
How was he responding to criticism if he already planned the trip before the criticism?
Folks, this isn't hard to understand for you, but it exposes these media imbeciles for the looney tunes they are.
The media is suggesting we criticize Trump right around the holidays for not visiting troops.
Then he went and visited the troops only because we shamed him.
The problem is the trip was planned before the criticism.
So people like Soledad O'Brien, who was absolutely humiliated, you know, far-left activist, former CNN host, I don't know what she's doing now, but Soledad O'Brien, who tweeted a similar type thing, Brit Hume just humiliated her on Twitter, pointing out to the fact that unless Trump has invented some kind of time machine to respond to criticism by traveling back in the future and reverse engineering a trip, that Soledad O'Brien was, you know, making herself look like a fool, And she did.
She's very good at that on Twitter.
Folks, these trips are planned weeks in advance.
When I did Obama's trip to Afghanistan, I just returned, I think it was from Jakarta, maybe Prague.
I don't know.
I'm not sure.
Honestly, folks, they all blend in.
I don't even remember.
No, it was probably Prague for the Star Treaty.
So I get back, I'm super exhausted, I'm tired, and I got a call from the presidential... Here's how these trips work.
The White House staff advance, especially these high-end trips.
Very, very few people will know about a trip like this.
Because of the security situation being an active war zone or a conflict zone, the security situation is very dangerous.
Very few people are read in on these trips.
Very few.
I mean a handful.
Probably the operations guy in the White House, maybe the, you know, the deputy chief of staff, the chief of staff, and a limited number of staffers.
And on the Secret Service side, it's probably the special agent in charge, the deputy special agent in charge, a GS-15, and the lead advance agent who know about the trip, and then some Wham-O people, White House military office at the high level.
It's very, very limited.
I'd say realistically, probably less than 20 people who are read in on those trips, right?
That makes sense, yeah.
Yeah.
Tighten it up.
Tighten it up.
Keep it tight.
So the way it works is I get the call and this was, again, weeks out from the actual trip to Afghanistan by Obama, just like it happened on this Iraq trip now.
And I was tired because I was getting off a pretty, you know, Heavy time change from Prague and I had taken a couple days off and I got a call from the Presidential Protection Division, the operations section, and they said you need to come in and talk to the DSAC, the Deputy Special Agent in Charge of the President's Detail.
That's the number two guy.
So I go in and I thought I was in trouble for something.
I thought like maybe something happened on my trip, which I, nothing.
You were great.
Nothing happened.
I was like, did I, did something I miss?
You know?
So I go in, I sit down with the, this guy's name was Vic.
I won't say his last name, but he was a nice guy.
And he says, Dan, before I talk to you, I need you to sign this non-disclosure agreement.
And I'm like, damn, what did I do on this trip?
Like the Prague and Jakarta trips had gone great.
I got positive reviews.
I thought that I screwed something up.
So I signed it.
He said, listen, Here's the deal.
I mean, I can talk about it now.
Obviously the trip already happened years ago.
So there's nothing classified about you could Google it online.
He says, uh, president Obama wants to take a trip to Afghanistan.
And I was like, wow.
And I knew right away that like, we want you to do it now.
At the time I had already done.
Multiple foreign advances as a lead advance agent.
That's pretty uncommon.
I'm not trying to pat myself on the back or impress you, but if you're a lead advance agent on the detail, it's a very limited number of people.
To get one foreign advance is a big deal.
To do, you know, I think I had done two at that point.
I did Prague and Indonesia to do a third.
is is a lot um you know it's a lot to do it's uncommon but he said i think you're the guy that can handle it you know where it's on a little bit of short notice with us telling you now but can you go over and you know go to andrews tomorrow and fly out to afghanistan and do this That was a couple weeks before the trip.
Now keep in mind, again, they knew it probably a week or two weeks before that.
All I'm suggesting to you is these things take planning.
I had to go to Afghanistan when I landed on the ground.
I forget what they, the cover they had, but I think I was a DOD.
I was, I was there to, support a department of defense they were telling the troops on the base that it was the secretary of defense or some higher up from the pentagon was coming in and i i was support i think only that the two-star general on the base actually knew it was president obama you get what i'm saying joe you don't want to give up the trip yeah you almost have to have every step wired don't you i mean all the way yes
But obviously they know the troops on the base are bright.
These are, you know, these are smart guys.
They've been there forever.
They know when something's going on.
So they know there's going to be a rally.
So they had to tell them a story.
And I think it was General Campbell.
I'm pretty sure he was the two-star on the base at the time.
He was a big guy.
He was very professional.
Good guy.
But I would sit in the briefings with them and everything was under the guise of that it was some higher up in the Pentagon coming in.
And only on game day when Air Force One landed were people like, Wow, it's the president!
Like, the actual president showed up.
So, just to debunk that story first, that the president was responding to criticism.
You can't respond to criticism on December 23rd and 24th if you plan the trip in November.
You can't, but don't let that get in the way of another stupid media narrative.
Secondly, another dumb story that needs debunking immediately.
CNN, I tweeted this out yesterday, just one of the dumbest, most ridiculous stories I have ever seen.
I tweeted out, this is what happens when you run out of negative anti-Trump stories to report, this kind of stupidity.
There's actually a story on CNN politics, I hate to even give them the clicks, but it's almost worth reading for the stupid.
Did you see this, Joe?
I think.
The troops who brought their MAGA hats, Make America Great Again, the red hats, to the rally for Trump to sign may have been guilty of Hatch Act violations.
In other words, political activity when on duty.
Do you understand how stupid that is?
Seriously, do you understand how nitpicky you have to be?
Now, to be clear on this so you don't think I'm speaking with forked tongues, I did the advance with Barack Obama in Afghanistan.
People brought everything.
People were taking selfies.
People were bringing bumpers, stickers, whatever the president could sign.
Signed my arm.
The troops Listen, he's the president of the United States, okay?
Let's get away from the politics for a minute.
In a war zone, the president shows up, unlike the left.
I thought it was a nice gesture by Barack Obama to support the troops.
I don't agree with the man's politics, but he is the commander-in-chief.
We are a constitutional republic, and I refuse to be a petty imbecile like these people on the left.
Folks, everybody was getting his autograph.
Anybody and anyone who could get it.
Don't tell me this is a hatch act violation.
Let me just ask you a simple question.
Do you want to be the military investigator, Joe, showing up in a hangar full of, you know, 500 to thousands of troops, getting interviews and prosecuting troops for having the commander-in-chief sign their hat on a Hatch Act violation which prohibits federal employees from getting involved in politics in very specific and defined ways?
I mean, is that a stretch or what?
Yeah.
The answer is, it is for you and I.
For the liberal media, no, it's just par for the course.
It's just average, everyday stupid.
Ladies and gentlemen, signing a political... a MAGA hat is not some act of political activism by troops in a conflict zone, in a combat zone.
Give me a break.
Stop being so ridiculous.
They violated the Booby Hatch Act.
That's what we should call it.
And I mean, it was so, the story was so ridiculous.
I had to tweet it out and I hate tweeting out CNN stuff because I don't even want to give them clicks, but it was so dumb.
It required my immediate attention.
All right.
Getting a little hot.
All right.
I got a lot of other stories to get to.
I spent a little bit more time on that than I intended, but given my experience in the arena, I thought it relevant just to expose the media for what they are.
Folks, the Democrats are going to have a serious shutdown problem coming soon.
The shutdown, partial government shutdown, as I said to Joe the other day, the world is not in chaos, folks.
Our lives, for as much as the federal government and politicians and bureaucrats and swamp rats want us to believe it, our lives do not revolve around the comings and goings of the federal government.
They want us to believe that.
But that's just simply not the case.
We don't do that.
Our lives revolve around our kids, our families, and our jobs.
We are, what is it, Dave, I don't know, six or seven on this.
Here's the problem the Democrats are going to have.
President Trump, thankfully so, is standing fast on his request that money be spent on this wall, fence, Structure, barrier, whatever you want to call it.
I don't really care.
I don't play the DC euphemisms game.
I want a barrier that will stop the illegal flow of illegal immigrants into the United States of America.
You're more than welcome to try the legal process.
The illegal process has to be off limits and we need this barrier.
And when you talk to security professionals in the space, Law enforcement and the security, you know, and border folks, immigration folks, they will tell you absolutely that these border walls work.
Now that goes without saying.
How do we know they work?
Because places where border walls have been installed, Joe, El Paso, near San Ysidro and other places, illegal immigration in those specific geographic points where there are walls has gone down dramatically.
We would call that a fact and a data point.
Now liberals have a hard time with that kind of stuff.
I know, I get it.
I'm just asking that you open your minds to a second, you know, the six inch impenetrable fact shield called your skull and digest that walls work because creating a wall and then they'll say, well, you know, we can get a ladder.
You're going to carry a ladder?
On a thousand mile journey?
Is that how that works?
Is there going to be a ladder salesman?
Do you understand that, yes, it creates a deterrent.
The wall creates a deterrent.
You know, we don't install burglary systems in every home across America because we're going to stop burglary all we'd like to, but that's not going to happen.
You create a deterrent.
People are still going to burglarize homes, they're going to find ways around it.
Sure.
But it's a deterrent.
If the burglary rate is whatever, 5% of homes in a certain neighborhood and you can get down to one, installing an anti-theft burglary alarm system, then great, it did its job.
That's what the wall's designed to do.
Here's the problem I see coming up for the Democrats.
The Democrats are about to take over control of the House of Representatives, where funding measures have to originate.
Folks, I'm not sure the Democrats are prepared for what's coming.
This guy, as I said yesterday, the president, President Trump, is very effective at bypassing the DC morass.
The swamp rats, the media, the academics, the elites, the cultural influencers.
He has been very successful at bypassing their gaslighting narratives.
You know, Trump shut down the government because he's an idiot and he doesn't know what he's doing and there's chaos in the White House.
Trump has been very clear from day one.
As I said to you this in the episode a few days ago.
He is very clear.
about making issues black and white, whereas politicians in the past who mistakenly use focus group tested terms always had this confused message about what things were about because the focus group couldn't decide what it was about.
Trump has this unique way of putting his finger on the pulse of the American people and understands full well that this is a black and white scenario.
I shut down the government because I want border security.
That has been the message.
He has cut through all of the nonsense and the fog.
The American people understand that.
What's the problem the Democrats are going to have now?
They're blaming it on Republicans now, Joe.
They're saying, well, you know, Republicans run the House, you run the Senate, you have the presidency, you know, you guys should be able to get this together.
They're not going to be able to say that soon.
The Democrats are preparing to take over the House.
They are going to have to take some ownership over this suit.
And once they take ownership over this shutdown, and, and, number one, they take ownership, but they're going to have to.
They are in charge of the House coming up very soon.
And secondly, The message really starts to sink in and penetrate that this is about border security, security of the United States, a border wall, which Trump has been very successful about painting in black or white terms.
The Democrats are going to have a problem, Joe, because they are now going to own the control of the House that can pass these funding measures.
They're gonna own it.
But secondly, they're gonna own it in light of the fact that Trump has made this about border security.
You really want to be the guy running in two years in 2020 in a district you won by one or two points as a first-term Democrat over a Republican in a potentially Republican-leaning district or a swing district?
Do you really want to be the one to run as the guy or the woman who stood in the way of border security and shut down the government for it?
I don't think so, folks.
This is a losing bargain for the Democrats.
I think President Trump is holding a winning hand, and I think he needs to hold fast on this.
I said this from the start.
It's a fight we cannot lose.
This has been a key signature issue for him, and it's critical, critical that he stick to his guns on this one and not fold.
I think he will.
I'm getting some good vibes, but he needs to stick to his guns on this.
This is a key critical issue.
All right, I got a lot more to get to.
Yesterday's show had three, four stories that I had to skip because I was so into the story about Trump and how we're in a real kind of different battlefield morality right now.
Yeah, you were rolling yesterday, dude.
Yeah, thank you for the feedback.
I got a lot of emails on that show, so I really appreciate it.
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Hey, great piece in the hill.
Please read the show notes.
I've got a lot of really good articles in there.
One, which I'll get to in a moment, At, uh, what is it, American Thinker?
Where people are finally coming around, Joe, to the theory we've been...
Putting out there for months that the Mueller probe's sole purpose right now is to cover up the crimes of, in fact, the Democrats, the Obama administration, and the swamp rats involved in the spying operation on Trump.
So there's a really good piece of the American thinker about this that lays it out pretty good.
I'll get to that in a second.
But there's also another great piece in the hill by a former senior level manager in the FBI, a guy by the name of Kevin Brock.
who points out a couple of things about the Mike Flynn interview.
Three oddities.
I'm going to go into two of them.
Three oddities about the Flynn interview, which, folks, I got to tell you, I mean this, when I first saw the headline, I maybe shouldn't say this, I was kind of like, I've done a lot on, you know, General Flynn, maybe it's time to cover something else.
But, you know, of course, headlines rarely dictate what's inside the story.
I read the story by this gentleman, Kevin Brock, And I was like, damn, this is a really, really good piece.
Really good.
And it covers, I was not an FBI agent, I was a Secret Service agent, so I'm not as familiar, although I'm familiar with the judicial process for getting people in the system, because it's the same for everyone, I'm not familiar with the FBI's paperwork specifically.
They do investigative summaries called 302s in the Secret Service, they were called MRs, there's a different reporting procedure, timelines, and everything.
But this guy, who was a senior manager in the FBI, pointed out these three oddities, and I'm going to go into two of them that are just fascinating and I want to put out there.
Here's number one.
He says, listen, the Mike Flynn interview at the White House by Peter Stroke and Joe Bianca of the FBI.
Of course, it's just days after he, you know, the President Trump takes office and he is the National Security Advisor at the time.
We all know the interview where they go and interview him about the transcript of his call with the Russian ambassador when he was the incoming National Security Advisor.
Many of you are familiar with the story at this point.
This guy who was a manager in the FBI says, you know, there's a real kind of interesting part of this that, you know, people aren't considering here.
And he says, one of them is that there was a 302 generated immediately on it.
Now the 302 in the FBI is just an investigative summary.
I interviewed Joe about a bank robbery.
I go back and I fill out my summary of what Joe said.
And in the FBI, those are called 302s.
Okay.
Well, what's so weird about a 302 being generated immediately?
That doesn't sound odd.
Well, I didn't know this.
He says, I thought it was a counterintelligence investigation, though.
Which it was!
Remember that Asha... I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude.
I can't pronounce her last name.
I don't want to be obnoxious about it because I'm not trying to be a jerk.
So I don't want to say her name wrong.
But she's an analyst at CNN, former FBI agent.
This is one of her big things on Twitter.
This was not a criminal investigation.
I guess she forgets Mike Flynn was prosecuted criminally.
I'm not really sure where she's going with any of that.
But her big thing is this is a counterintelligence investigation.
So she may have an answer for this, and if she does, again, she was in the FBI, she's probably intimately familiar with their administrative procedures.
Again, I was not, I was a Secret Service guy, we had different administrative procedures.
But I'd like her to explain this one away, because she keeps saying, yeah, but they were there under the guise of a counterintelligence investigation.
The author of this piece, Joe, says, and why was it 302 generated?
Because in counter-intelligence investigations, Joe, he says they don't generate 302s because the information on counter-intelligence, counter-terror type investigations is usually classified and is typically transmitted via EC, electronic communication, and not via 302s.
Now again, there may be an answer for this.
That's fine.
I'm willing to accept.
Unlike the left, I'm open to hearing your explanation.
I mean it.
But this, from a former senior level manager at the FBI, putting this out there, who, Joe, is obviously, by the very nature of his former employment, intimately familiar with the paperwork and administrative requirements.
Why would they generate a criminal reporting summary form in a 302 to be used in criminal trials if it was a counterintelligence investigation and not a criminal trial?
I'll tell you why, based on a source I have, why I think that is in a minute.
But he says that's not what they generate in those cases.
They communicate on these electronic communications because the information is typically classified.
He says another point about this.
Oddly enough, they generate a 302 in a, what's supposed to be a CI investigation, but they generate this 302 using criminal investigations.
But he says, what's interesting is there are two different versions of it with different dates, which you know, if you listened last week, there's apparently one in January and there's one generated in August.
And he says the original one is strangely, and this is according to him, he said, this is not common when it comes to 302s.
It's Mark Cho, deliberative material.
What are you deliberating on?
Deliberating on what?
He said that's not common at all in 302s.
That this, the 302 is written in a criminal trial.
Why, Joe?
So when you go to trial, you have an accurate recollection of what the bad guy said, so that what?
You as the FBI agent or me as the FBI agent can testify to what Joe said about the bank robbery.
Proceed.
How am I going to testify accurately if I don't have any notes?
So the 302 is meant to be testimonial, not deliberative.
Deliberative?
What does deliberative mean?
I know what it means, but I mean in context of the 302.
What are you deliberating on?
Either Joe said something about the bank robbery or he didn't.
There's no deliberating on it.
So he says, why is the original 302 marked deliberative material?
It's also marked draft.
Again, this is a senior manager at the FBI, right?
I read this and I'm like, that's a terrific point.
Now, we've hit on some of this before.
Not all of this is new.
But again, I defer to expertise when I see it.
I think the best part of our book, the SpyGate book we put together, is that when we don't know, we sought out experts.
Denise, one of my co-authors on the book, Did some great work on the process the FBI has for actually initiating CI investigations.
Why?
Because me and her don't know that.
She wasn't an FBI agent, neither was I. But we got the word from an insider on how it works.
And I think when you read the book, you're going to be like, wow, something is not right here.
Why was a 302 generated on what was supposed to be a counterintelligence investigation?
The answer, folks, I think is pretty clear on this.
They needed an excuse to interview Mike Flynn.
They had nothing, ladies and gentlemen.
How do we know this?
Because the Washington Post headline, the day before they interviewed Mike Flynn, on January 23rd, I've read this headline to you probably 10, 15 times already.
A senior invest, some senior law enforcement official who leaked to the FBI, from the FBI or the intelligence community.
Some senior official leaked to the Washington Post the day before that the bureau had reviewed Mike Flynn's calls with the Russian ambassador and found nothing illicit.
Ladies and gentlemen, the FBI can interview who it wants.
You're under no obligation to talk to them.
Joe, they don't need to have anything on you.
Now, administratively, they might have to cite some reason to go, but there's no legal prohibition on the FBI interviewing.
You don't want to talk to them, you don't talk to them.
The point is, though, as a matter of common decency and law enforcement morals and ethics, before you go and interview someone, there should be some predicate crime.
That's not what they're saying!
This lady, Asha, who is a former FBI agent and works at CNN, is claiming, no, no, no, they didn't really need a predicate reason on the criminal side because it was a CI investigation.
Then why did you fill out the criminal paperwork?
Why?
If it was a CI investigation, why did you fill out the criminal paperwork?
I'm open to the answer.
Now, I suspect what the answer's going to be is, well, they filled out the criminal paperwork because during the interview, they caught Flynn in what they perceived to be a lie.
Then why did they tell Jim Comey they didn't think he was lying?
That's on the record.
There's nowhere you can go.
There is no exit ramp for you.
Oh, they filled it out, even though it wasn't a criminal investigation, because they sense criminality in an interview by lying.
No!
No, no!
Time out!
Red flag on the field, under the hood for review.
That is not what they said.
They told Jim Comey they didn't think he was being deceptive and they didn't think he was lying.
That's actually in the reports.
So let me get this straight.
Your reason for interviewing him, hint hint, nod nod, because you had nothing.
Remember the Washington Post headline the day before, the FBI found nothing illicit about Flynn's phone calls.
They have nothing.
They are clearly targeting Mike Flynn to put him in jail for something, but they don't have anything.
So their reason is going to be, well, well, we'll just go in there and say it's because of the collusion investigation and it's a counterintelligence investigation.
But then they screw up, Joe, and fill out criminal paperwork on what they say is a CI investigation.
The criminal paperwork on a crime they indicate their own paperwork wasn't committed.
Lying to the FBI where they say he didn't lie.
Does this make any sense?
No.
I mean, this is a beautiful, beautiful piece in the hell.
I'd really like you to read it.
Um, the piece is about three oddities.
I'm only covering two because the first one is about Andy McCabe calling, calling Flynn for the interview rather than, you know, other guys.
And it's, it's just kind of an administrative thing.
So I didn't find that one too overwhelming, but here's the other one.
The 302 summary, which they shouldn't have even filled out if it was a CI investigation, this author writes, is incredible because it's entirely disconnected from the actual collusion narrative!
Hey, do you understand the FBI's own 302?
Summary of what was said.
The questioning has nothing to do with collusion and everything to do with Flynn's phone call to Kislyak, which according to leaks in the Washington Post, the FBI found nothing illicit about.
Folks, if this isn't making sense, it's not supposed to because it doesn't make sense.
How is it that the FBI had no predicate charge to interview Flynn, interviewed him anyway under the guise of a CI investigation, counterintelligence, collusion, asked him nothing about actual collusion, they asked him about his phone call, came out of it with a criminal investigation for false statements that in the criminal paperwork they shouldn't have filled out because it was a CI investigation not requiring it, in the paperwork they indicated he didn't lie.
This is, it's an amazing piece because there is absolutely no off-ramp for them.
Yeah, I know Joe, there's no, there is nowhere for them to go.
Well, we interviewed him because it was a CIA investigation.
Then why'd you fill out criminal paperwork?
Because we thought he committed a crime.
Then how come you wrote in the paperwork he didn't commit a crime?
Why did you even show up?
We showed up because we found something illicit in his phone calls.
That's not what you leaked to the Washington Post.
It says nothing illicit in the phone calls.
There is no off-ramp for them.
Now you see why they have to have Flynn plea out.
Because they don't have anything.
They just don't have anything.
Please, read the piece, spread it around.
Mike Flynn got just completely hosed by the system.
It's really, really shameful what happened.
Shameful.
Okay, let's read and then we'll get to the smaller stuff, because the smaller stuff is interesting too.
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All right, great piece in the American Thinker today about what we've been, I'm just gonna spend a little bit of time, because we've been, I'm not gonna beat this to death, because we've been talking about it for almost a year and a half now, and I think other folks are starting to catch on that the Mueller probe, the sole purpose to the Mueller probe is to hide indiscretions and potential criminality in the Obama White House and among the Democrats.
Now, one of the things I haven't, I think, done a good job at at some points regarding explaining this, is exactly the mechanics of how the Mueller probe can interfere with ongoing investigations into Democrats.
So just remember the overarching bird's eye view thesis I've been operating on for a long time is that Rosenstein and the co-conspirators in the Spygate debacle and the spying scandal on Donald Trump needed a way to cover up their misdeeds.
They had planned the entire time some form of a special counsel and Bob Mueller is the only guy that could sweep this under the rug Because Mueller's deeply connected to all the players in Spy Game.
John Carlin, a DOJ national security director, was his former chief of staff.
You know, Mueller was the FBI director during the Uranium One case.
Rosenstein was the United States attorney who prosecuted Uranium One.
All of these debacles have unique ties to Rod Rosenstein, Andy Weissman, Mueller's pitbull, and Mueller himself.
So Mueller's the perfect guy.
Why, Joe?
Because he has a vested interest in making this all go away.
Right.
Because his name creeps up in a lot of this.
Now, this writer in this American Thinker piece I have in the show notes does a great job of explaining something.
Again, I don't think I've done a great job, Ed.
He says, did you notice how every time we hear some word about Huber, John Huber, the United States Attorney appointed to look into Democrat malfeasance, the Clinton Foundation and others, and every time we sense that Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General, looking into DOJ FISA abuses and all this other stuff, when we sense him closing in, some story comes out About Rosenstein getting in the way, Joe, and saying, listen, you can't do that right now or look into that or interview those people right now because you may interfere with an ongoing investigation.
I have this underline, ongoing.
What's the ongoing investigation?
The Mueller probe!
So that's why I said last night on the Tucker Carlson show with Tammy Bruce as the guest host, I was on at the end.
I did two hits last night for them.
At the end they said, the purpose of the investigation is to just continue to investigate.
It's not, they're not investigating.
The purpose of investigating is a perpetual investigation.
It's like, I'm investigating Joe for jaywalking.
Tomorrow it's mattress tag ripping off.
The next day it's a false statements to the FBI about if he uses hair color or not or something.
I mean, the whole purpose of, you don't use hair color, do you?
Is that your natural color?
Yes, it is, Dan.
Man, this guy's got the most jet black hair you've ever seen.
Looks pretty good there, brother.
Looks like the young Elvis there.
But this is the point.
The whole purpose of the investigation is to keep it ongoing.
The purpose of the investigation is to investigate.
Now, you may say, Dan, that's tautological.
I need a purpose of an investigation is to investigate.
No, no, no, it is not.
The purpose of an investigation, Joseph, is to investigate a crime!
Right!
Not to investigate anyone for any reason!
Listen, I used this analogy last night on the show on Tucker.
I'll use it again.
But it is important you understand this.
I don't expect everyone to know this.
You know, you have jobs.
You all work for a living.
You know, some of you weren't police officers or federal agents.
You cannot walk into a federal agency, Secret Service, FBI, DEA.
You can't.
Well, you can, but you'll be laughed out.
Walk in, knock on the door of the DEA New York field office and say, I want to investigate Joe Armacost.
For what?
I don't know.
Something.
Just investigate him and you'll find something.
You will be laughed out of the office if not investigated yourself.
Does that make sense?
What you have to do is walk in and make an allegation of a crime.
If you have a suspect, great.
Hey, I think Joe Armacost is guilty of felonious moping.
Oh, wow, this is serious.
Joe, we better get our crack investigators in.
I think Joe may be guilty of felonious moping.
All right, you come in.
Well, what evidence do you have?
Hey, he's my neighbor.
I've seen felonious moping firsthand.
Well, we better look into it.
That's not what happened here.
They made an allegation of collusion where no collusion existed for the sole purpose of initiating an investigation whose purpose is just to investigate.
Not to investigate collusion because there is none.
Mueller knows it.
Understand the difference.
The purpose of an investigation is not to investigate, it's to investigate a crime.
If you're going to suggest that the purpose of an investigation is to investigate endlessly, what you're suggesting is we should be a police state.
That random federal agents with the power to take your life, your money, your freedom, put you in jail, should endlessly investigate you when there's been no allegation of a crime.
Welcome to Russia.
Exactly!
This is not how it works.
We investigate in a constitutional republic.
Not a third world republic.
We investigate people because we perceive them to be a valuable witness or somehow connected to criminal behavior.
There's no evidence of that with Trump.
The purpose of this investigation is to keep it ongoing for the reason I just described to you, Joe.
An ongoing investigation is going to be used as an excuse to block any potential looksies The ol' looksy-dipsy-do flipper-oosky into the Hillary Clinton malfeasance, the Clinton Foundation, and the Obama administration FISAgate debacle.
We can't look into that.
There's an ongoing investigation.
That is the purpose.
It's a really good piece.
It summarizes it, I think, better than I have.
Listen, when some people tell a story better, it's worth putting out there.
And I think the writer of the piece does an excellent job, it's in the show notes today, of pointing out exactly this.
The purpose of this investigation is only to investigate.
All right, a couple other news stories that I wanted to get to yesterday.
Ladies and gentlemen, Our debt situation is out of control.
I have a CBS News article.
It's rare that I'll put them up, but it's a good one.
It's written in a non-partisan manner, so it's worth reading.
We are in a catastrophic debt situation.
I have said to you over and over on the economics portions of the show, they've been a little sparse lately because there's so much going on with Spygate.
But the Christmas show, I really, really would like you to listen to about the market and what's going on and why I don't think we need to panic right now.
But one thing we definitely, need to start getting very anxious about, maybe not panic, but get very anxious about, is ladies and gentlemen, our debt is out of control.
We owe the entire amount, 20 trillion dollars, the entire productive capacity of the United States economy in any given year, we owe.
We have never, as the article points out, held this kind of a debt load In a general period of non-global war, we haven't at any point in World War II and other times we ran up debt to pay for and finance a major international conflict.
We have never held this kind of debt load While not being involved in an enormously deep footprint military action like World War II and World War I. We're in conflicts now.
There's no doubt we're in war zones now.
No doubt about that.
But not to the level, extension-wise, of our military where in World War II, World War I. Relatively speaking.
Folks, it is a catastrophic amount of debt.
What's the problem with it?
The problem with it is we're not growing fast enough at this point.
If we can get to four and five percent of growth annually, which is a lofty goal, we may be able to get a lid on this.
But if we don't, here's the problem.
Interest payments on the debt.
Folks, forget about paying the debt down.
Interest payments alone, not principal, are projected by 2023.
We're talking about less than five years away.
Interest payments annually are projected to be $600 billion.
Billion.
Not million.
Billion.
not million, billion. Folks, we're not even paying down the debt at that point.
It is just interest payments alone.
Put that in perspective.
We are talking about almost the entire military budget altogether in interest.
Not principal.
We are not taking this problem seriously, folks.
We are, the people in this audience.
The problem is lawmakers we elected to do something about it are not taking it seriously.
And the problem with this debt situation is at some point, remember what Milton Friedman says, all debts are paid either by the debtor or the creditor.
This is, again, these are tautological things, but they escaped the left and big swamp rat Republicans.
All debts are paid.
We owe $20 trillion.
It is going to be paid by the debtor or the creditor.
Meaning the person who lent us the money is going to pay back that debt.
How?
By lending us money they never got back.
They paid it for us.
That's not a good thing, folks.
Because why?
Then they're never going to lend us money again without an outrageous interest rate payment back.
All debts are paid.
Either you pay back the debt or the person who lent you money pays it by never getting their money back.
They already paid it.
We will have catastrophically high- You think 2.5% interest rates are a big deal now?
How does 15, 20, 25% sound if the country goes bankrupt?
Ouch.
Who's gonna lend us money, Joe, if we don't pay back the people we owe money to now?
We'll have a Greek-Italy type situation.
Say, oh, that can't happen to us.
We're the world's reserve currency.
Ladies and gentlemen, it can happen to us.
Major world economies.
Look at the collapse of Argentina's economy.
They were one of the top five economies in the world.
They had an entire complete collapse of their economy.
Then what happens?
Then the United States will have to print money, leading to hyperinflation.
You'll be walking wheelbarrows full of money in the local, you know, Publix to get a loaf of bread.
We have to start taking this problem seriously.
Now, not to be macabre and, and, and, you know, just, I don't want to do a, I don't want to depress anybody.
There is a way out of this.
If we just, because I understand the jellyfish up on Capitol Hill don't have the nerve to actually do what's necessary.
I get that.
Sadly, I've had to accept that fact.
I wish I hadn't, but there are very few good people up there.
If we just put a lid on spending, we're gonna hold the ceiling on our federal budget at the, what is it, 3.94 trillion roughly we're at now?
If we're just not going to grow the budget anymore, if we can grow the economy and stop growing the budget, and we can grow the economy through these tax cuts, deregulation, and generally controlled government spending for a while, we can grow out of this and make that debt less impactful relative to our national income.
But we can't do that while we're spending money like a bunch of Looney Tunes.
Just cap it for now!
Just cap and do that, I mean there were a number of ideas.
How did he use, Sean used to promote that, that penny plan.
That wasn't a bad idea.
Cut a penny of spending out of it, that's it.
Just put a penny out of it, how hard is that?
It can't even do that.
Alright, two other quick stories I wanted to get to yesterday and I didn't.
Number one is Bill Barr, who has been nominated for the Attorney General spot under Donald Trump, is being attacked for a memo he wrote which assailed the ridiculous notion that the president could be charged with obstruction of justice for administrative decisions like firing Jim Comey.
Folks, the Barr, what you'll call the Barr memo, Barr as a private citizen, Joe, he's now the nominee for Attorney General, but just to be clear, as a private citizen, wrote a memo To DOJ, and he's clear in the memo, Joe, he has no inside knowledge of the Mueller probe or anything like this, he's writing it as a private citizen, wrote this memo, and in the memo he lays out a very well-articulated case, Andy McCarthy has done a great piece on National Review about it, that the president cannot be charged for obstruction of justice for hiring and firing decisions within the executive branch.
In other words, you can't charge a president for obstruction for firing Jim Comey.
Doing his job.
Doing his job, of course, which looks like an even better decision by the day.
He is being assailed on this thing, Bill Barr, because the left is looking for any reason to bottle up anyone looking to get into the Department of Justice that doesn't commit fully to the impeachment of Donald Trump.
That's what this is about.
But here's a quote from the Wall Street Journal about the Barr memo, because you're going to hear about it.
Says Mr. Barr's closely reasoned argument addresses the federal statute that criminalizes witness tampering and destruction of evidence.
He focuses on the part of that law that imposes liability on one who corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record or other object or attempts to do so with the intent to impair the object's use in an official proceeding or otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding.
Mr. Barr focuses in particular on the otherwise clause.
In other words, why did I read that to you?
If you're going to obstruct justice, Joe, as the President of the United States, and you're going to dare charge him with that, it has a very specific meaning, which he just laid out.
None of those things were actually done by Donald Trump.
There was no destruction, mutilation, concealment or altering or a record or object or attempt to do so.
The investigation into Mike Flynn, which was why he, you know, one of the allegations, well, you know, he possibly could have fired Comey to stop the Flynn investigation, that the Flynn investigation continued.
He fired Comey for obvious malfeasance and misfeasance in office.
There was no obstruction mutilation of records.
So just to be clear on that, the obstruction charge has a very specific meaning.
It doesn't mean whatever the Democrats think it means and it certainly doesn't mean administrative decisions made by the President of the United States.
Another story I wanted to focus on because it's important is the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos has been doing some really terrific things.
They rescinded an Obama discipline policy through a guidance letter that was causing havoc in a lot of inner city and lower income schools and some, you know, not just lower income, some middle income area schools as well.
The Obama administration sent out a guidance letter.
To these schools, Joe.
This was really, really nasty to our public school system out there.
Saying, listen, your discipline process for suspending students, disciplining students, no matter how even-handed and unbiased it is on paper, if it leads to Elevated levels of suspensions amongst minority students that we're going to measure it using disparate impact and we're going to consider racially biased.
And basically these guidance letters said, you're going to get in a whole lot of trouble from us and you could open yourself up to lawsuits.
So in other words, it doesn't matter if the procedure on its face shows no signs of bias.
If there are numbers of black students or Hispanic students or others who are other minority students who are suspended at higher rates than white students, you could be sued anyway.
So of course, Joe, what happened?
What happened after that is students, school administrators, who don't want to be sued, of course, and don't want the wrath of the Obama administration coming on them, obviously will become more sensitive to the suspension of black or Hispanic students.
The problem, ladies and gentlemen, is this is like measuring incarceration rates amongst minorities versus people who are white or other racial groups.
It is meaningless.
If you can prove to me an individual case of discrimination, I am all ears.
Discrimination is wrong and evil regardless of the circumstances.
If someone is treated differently because of the color of their skin, culture, heritage, background, race, sex, sexual orientation, whatever it is, it's wrong.
Period.
But if someone's in jail because they committed a crime, it doesn't matter what the color of their skin is.
What about the victim?
Now what happened of course?
Well schools that happen to have elevated rates of suspensions amongst black students, Joe generally stopped suspending them even though there was still incidents amongst minority students where no one's questioning the incident happened, they're just questioning should we suspend them or not now because we'll suffer the wrath of the Obama administration.
Betsy DeVos and the Trump team are getting rid of this guidance letter now.
Here's the irony of this, Joe.
After that decision by the Obama administration, a lot of these inner city schools suffered serious chaos problems as a result of a new procedure which basically allowed other minority students there to learn to be bullied and preyed upon by students in the school with no suspension or anything.
Jason Reilly had a great piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about a father, a black father he spoke to, talking about how he pulled his son out of school.
And Jason says, listen, there's not a lot of interviews that stick out to me over time, but this one did.
Because he asked the father, why are you putting your son in this private school or charter school?
And he's expecting him to say, you know, education, better results.
Not what he said.
He said, because he's not safe there.
This is what you want?
Reilly also points out in this piece.
The highest proportion of students who report being bullied at school are black students.
25%!
Again, do you ever think about the victims in this?
Joe, please understand the point I'm trying to make here.
Just like reporting incarceration rates.
Did the person in jail commit the crime?
Yes or no?
Yes, they were convicted.
Is anybody disputing the conviction?
No.
No, but because they're Hispanic or black, they're in jail at higher... It doesn't matter!
Is the person a criminal or not?
What's the difference?
What about the victims?
Same thing with these school discipline policies.
What if a kid in school is getting his butt kicked every day?
Now you can't suspend the kid doing it, however evil that is, because you don't want elevated suspension rates?
What about the victims?
Does anybody think of that?
More liberal, quote, compassion here, folks.
Causing chaos in inner city schools that demand law and order.
Those parents deserve justice for their kids, too.
And an education.
Alright, folks.
Packed show today.
A lot of information.
Just yesterday's show went a little long on that topic, so we missed a couple of these things.
Please read the show notes.
They're really good.
And if you don't mind, subscribe to the show.
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Thanks again for a great week of listenership, even during the Christmas holiday.
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