Ep. 882 Don’t Fall for the Latest Anti-Trump “Bombshell”
In this episode I debunk the latest media “bombshell” on the collusion hoax. I also address the latest tragedy in the illegal immigration crisis and the status of the government shutdown. Finally, I address President Trump’s most important accomplishment.
News Picks:
The Democrats don’t want to open the government up.
The repeatedly debunked Michael Cohen/Prague story has resurfaced again.
More reasons to doubt the new Michael Cohen reporting.
A left-wing billionaire assisted in an online disinformation campaign meant to influence an election. But you won’t hear much about it in the liberal media outlets.
Poll says Republicans overwhelmingly support President Trump in the shutdown.
The remaking of the federal courts is the Trump administration’s greatest success.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm doing well because here...
It's Friday!
I know, you love Friday.
Yes, Joe gets very excited on Friday.
It's also a big day for me, just a little personal note for you all who've been with me from the start or even the new listeners who really enjoy the show.
Um, nothing is going to change for you.
Don't worry.
You will still be able to hear the show on the accounts you have now, but, uh, we will be leaving CRTV is our last show with CRTV.
Uh, we had a business relationship with them.
It's not nothing personal or good folks over there.
I've enjoyed my time.
Don't read into it.
Um, but we will, uh, we are with, uh, A different company now, but it won't change anything.
Don't worry.
The way you're listening now is the way you'll be listening to the show on Monday.
Also, it is my last show with NRA TV today.
Also great people over there.
I had a great time doing the show where we stand with Dan Bongino.
I did not renew on a contract offer, which I appreciate, but I will be announcing where I'm going and why I did not renew soon.
Joe knows I can't do it yet, unfortunately, but Yeah, it'll be a lot of fun.
So a lot of great things ahead.
I appreciate all your interest and all your emails.
I didn't want you to think I forgot about that.
All right.
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Okay.
A lot of emails yesterday about the latest media bombshell.
And when I use the word bombshell, I have to use again, the dreaded horrible air quotes.
Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyers, cell phone pinged in Prague.
Oh, the sky is falling.
The chicken little people came out again yesterday.
All the conspiracy theorists out there.
Seth Abramson and the other, you know, Trump collusion conspiracy hoaxers.
They just lost it yesterday.
I got all these emails.
Dan, are you going to comment on this?
Uh, yes.
Matt Palumbo was nice enough at my website Bongino.com to put together a piece, which is in my show notes today, which will summarize what I'm going to talk about.
But ladies and gentlemen, everybody get off the ledge.
This is, uh, no need to panic.
I'm going to explain to you what I think is going on.
So first let's explain what happened, what I think is wrong with the story, and then what I think is really going on and why this story was launched now.
Number one, what happened?
Many of you are familiar with Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, President Trump's former personal attorney.
One of the allegations in the dossier used to spy on the Trump team, because they had nothing else, was that Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, went to Prague to meet with a Russian official, a higher-up Russian official, and that this Russian official and him coordinated a way to hide payments, payments made to Europeans to hack Hillary in the DNC's emails.
Basically, the whole collusion conspiracy was the middleman, Michael Cohen, who was in Prague arranging it.
Make sense, Joe?
Many of you know this.
I've mentioned it before on the show, but we do have some new listeners.
So just so you understand, the debunked dossier, which was used to spy on Trump, has a key tenet in it.
And the tenet is that Michael Cohen was the middleman in arranging this hacking and all of this work with the Russians to influence the campaign.
There you go.
That's the setup.
It's as easy as that.
Okay.
What came out yesterday?
Well, despite repeated denials by Michael Cohen, who of note is cooperating with the special counsel, who has no reason to deny it anymore, Michael Cohen, if he had golden information to get out of jail, Joe, do you think he'd use it?
Uh, let me see.
Let's just, let's get the short answer.
Yes.
I would say yes.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
So Michael Cohen, despite repeated denials, despite zero evidence on his passport, zero travel records, no hotel records or anything like that, it came out yesterday in McClatchy.
The same two reporters, by the way, that back in April reported this similar story with fewer details, that there was evidence Michael Cohen was in Prague.
The same reporters, this guy Stone and another guy, Put out a story saying their sources are telling them that Michael Cohen's cell phone pinged in Prague and therefore there's evidence he was in Prague.
Okay, that's point number two.
I'll get to point number three, what I think is really happening in a second.
But first let's dig into the details of this so you understand why I'm not worried about this.
And folks, let me be crystal clear on this.
Unlike the conspiracy theorist crowd on the left, the Seth Abramsons of the world, um, that, you know, the meathead from, uh, the Archie Bunker, Rob Reiner, the Looney Tunes, Hollywood people who have no idea of actually what went on in this case.
I wrote a book on this.
I don't, I'm not patting myself on the back trying to impress anybody, but me, Matt, and Denise, who wrote the book, studied this for a year and a half in intimate detail.
If evidence presents itself that any of the assertions in my book or anything on our podcast is wrong, Joe and I will happily correct it and say, you know what, if Michael Cohen, if he admits he was in Prague, okay!
And he committed a crime?
How about it?
Prosecute him and anyone else involved.
There you go.
I am open to new evidence.
The problem is, there is no new evidence.
Now, you may say, Dan, there is.
Come on, we have this McClatchy report that Michael Cohen's phone, cell phone, pinged in Prague.
Okay, multiple, multiple problems with this report.
Number one, hat tip William Jacobson, illegal insurrection, for pointing this out.
He says, let's focus on the lead-in, where the McClatchy reporters are getting this information.
Quote, four people with knowledge of the matter said.
You're like, wow!
Four separate sources, Joe, are claiming Michael Cohen's cell phone pinged in Prague?
That must be credible, it's four separate sources.
Jacobson says, it's clear that this is at best a misleading statement.
The four people in question have no personal knowledge.
Here's a quote from the McClatchy report itself about their four sources, folks.
Four people spoke at McClatchy on condition of anonymity.
Oh gosh, here we go again, Joe.
Back again!
Due to the sensitivity of information shared by their foreign intelligence connections.
Each obtained their information independently from foreign intelligence connections.
So Jacobson goes on to say, understand what this means.
None of the four have actual personal knowledge.
They had communications with foreign intelligence connections.
These connections may not even have personal knowledge.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is an anonymous source basing information on a foreign intelligence source which isn't even claiming personal knowledge of the event themselves.
Listen, I'm not trying to dance around this.
Let's go do the do's and the don'ts, right?
Here's the pros and the cons.
The pros, why this could be true.
An anonymous source is claiming from another foreign intelligence source, who's not claiming any personal knowledge of this themselves, that they know Michael Cohen's phone pinged in Prague.
That's the only evidence we have at all that Michael Cohen was in Prague, and at this dossier, portions of it may be true.
On the no side, on the no side, the con side, that you're being con, and that this is in fact a nonsense story.
Cohen has, Michael Cohen, and his attorney, or former attorney, now PR guy, Lanny Davis, has repeatedly, on the record, and under oath, denied that he was in Prague.
You may say, well, Michael Cohen's been convicted of lying.
He's not credible.
Correct!
The problem is, Michael Cohen has been convicted of lying for underose statements he made, but Joe, Michael Cohen has never, excuse me, pled guilty to lying.
Michael Cohen has never pled guilty or been charged with lying about his underose statements about Prague!
That's right.
By Bob Mueller himself!
That's right.
Folks, The Mueller team, back in April, when these very same McClatchy reporters put out a story saying there was evidence Michael Cohen was in Prague.
That was the genesis and gist of that story back then.
Now they're getting specific that it's cell phone pinging, right?
I want to be very clear on this.
When that story came out in April, Bob Mueller's team themselves, in a rare public statement, said, be very careful about what you're hearing in the media.
Folks, in some limited circles, okay?
We haven't said this in a while, Joe.
They would call that a...
Clue!
A clue!
They would call that a clue!
Clue like the Clusias I have in my backyard.
This is a clue that this information is bogus.
He's denied it under oath and he has never been charged by the Mueller team with lying about it despite being charged with the Trump Tower project in Moscow that never came through.
He's been charged with lying under oath.
Why not charge him with lying under oath?
For that, if Mueller had any evidence, it's true!
Folks, do you think they don't have his cell phone records?
I know, I know, I know, it's hysterical!
How many times is Seth Abramson and the conspiracy theory crowd going to get played by this same story?
Secondly, on the con side.
So remember, on the pro side, all we have are these anonymous sources.
Con side.
Denied it.
Mueller's not charging with lying about the denials, despite him cooperating with Mueller.
Third, his passport shows no evidence of him being in Prague at that time.
How do you think he slipped in the country?
What was it, uh, remember like, um...
Was it that Batman movie, the Dark Knight movie, where he goes over to China and he slips out of the country in like a cargo plane with some like beacon that he floats in.
I mean, is that how you think Michael?
You think Michael Cohen's Bruce, Bruce Wayne, that he has like the bat plane, the bat raptor and the bat beacon.
And he, you know, he's in a bat suit and he jumps out a window and a cargo plane hooks him and flies him back to the United States.
Folks, do you believe this?
Listen to me.
You know, I'm not a big fan of personal stories.
I've been to Prague.
I coordinated a lengthy advance there when Barack Obama went there to sign this START treaty with Dmitry Medvedev.
I was there!
For a good lengthy period of time, relatively speaking.
I worked with their security forces.
These guys in Prague, the guys and the women we worked with over there, were top-notch.
These were not second-raters.
These were not scrubs.
These were top-notch security pros.
I'm telling you that.
Do you think Michael Cohen slipped into the country like Bruce Wayne and out on a cargo plane with the bat hook and nobody knew?
I can hear Gene Hackman in The French Connection.
Have you ever been pinged in Prague?
I love that movie, by the way.
Isn't Gene Hackman like the best actor ever?
In The Firm, man.
I watched The Firm.
He's in The Firm.
Gene Hackman's just amazing.
Oh man, yeah.
Is he Popeye Doyle?
Yeah!
Yeah, it was a great movie, man.
So you're good at pop culture.
I'm terrible at it.
But yeah, this is a nonsense story.
It makes no sense that he managed to enter a country without any detection at all.
You have to suspend disbelief like you're watching Bird Box on Netflix or something.
Gosh, it's crazy.
All right.
Fourth.
The Senate testimony he provided was under oath.
I've already said that.
He has provided under oath testimony to the Senate, Michael Cohen that is, that he was not in fact in Prague.
I don't want to repeat this.
That's number four.
Number five.
We have a Washington Post reporter, investigative reporter named Greg Miller.
Greg Miller is not a pro-Trump guy.
I mean, listen, he's an investigative reporter.
I'm not knocking the guy personally, but I think it's clear that Miller is an investigative guy who's not looking to give Trump any leeway here.
In other words, he's not a conservative guy.
He's not looking to give anybody a pass.
Miller has been looking into this allegation of Bob Michael Cohen being in Prague, according to the dossier, seemingly in perpetuity.
Miller is, there would be no bigger story for Miller at the Washington Post than for him to be able to break the fact that Michael Cohen was in fact in Prague.
But Miller recently gave a talk that was publicized on C-SPAN 2 at a bookstore, this investigative reporter.
And he talks about their efforts to show that Michael Cohen may in fact have been in Prague to coordinate this whole collusion, fiasco, and scandal.
And this is what Greg Miller of the Washington Post had to say about their efforts to show Cohen was in Prague.
Given what we know about Trump, it certainly wouldn't be outside the realm of the possible that this happened, but we've seen no evidence.
And it's not for lack of trying.
I mean, there's other material in the dossier.
We literally spent weeks and months trying to run down.
There's an assertion in there that Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, went to Prague to settle payments that were needed at the end of the campaign.
We sent reporters through every hotel in Prague, through all over the place, just to try to figure out if he was ever there, and came away empty.
And we've talked to sources at the FBI and the CIA and elsewhere.
They don't believe that ever happened.
Folks!
Do you understand the left is getting played?
Now, to this guy's credit, who's not a Trump guy, he's even acknowledging, listen, I am a reporter first.
There's just no evidence of this allegation in the dossier that Cohen was in Prague.
I mean, what's fair is fair.
The guy's being honest.
And he makes two key critical points on the con side.
Remember, the only pro side we have is an anonymous source indicating there was a cell phone ping.
And I'll get to what I think's going on in a minute.
I didn't forget that.
On the con side, the denial, no passport records, underwrote testimony, Mueller hasn't charged him.
Now we have a Washington Post reporter making two more credible, anti-Cohen Prague points here.
Number one, Joe, there's no hotel records.
No!
Now, that doesn't mean definitively he wasn't in Prague, but it would certainly mean he would have to have come in and out on the same day.
Where else would he have stayed?
Is there a flight?
Did he land at some FBO over there?
Did he land in a jet?
What did he do?
How did he get there?
There's no passport records, no customs records, no hotel records.
But he says something else there too.
His own sources.
In the FBI and CIA, who, Joe, you can assume reasonably that Miller's a Washington Post guy, that if he has FBI and CIA sources leaking to the Washington Post, they're probably, Joe, is it a safe assumption to say those sources are probably not looking to make Trump look good?
Yeah, I would think so.
Safe bet, correct?
Yeah.
Even his own sources, the FBI and CIA sources for the Washington Post guy himself are saying, listen, this is probably not true.
How many times are leftists going to get played by this, folks?
Now, part three of this.
So we laid out the story, what I think in the second part, the cons to it, the pros and the cons, or the pro and the many cons.
And now I want to tell you what I think is really going on, which is part three, bullet three of this.
Folks, I believe this is the foreign intelligence cabal that was desperate to take down the Trump candidacy.
Now we know this happened.
I've, uh, if you're a regular listener to the show, this is old news.
We know British intelligence was passing information to the Obama administration about the Trump team.
You know what?
Let me just do this one last time or not.
Well, I probably will wind up doing it again.
CNN headline.
April 14, 2017.
Story by Jim Sciutto, Pamela Brown and Eric Bradner.
British intelligence passed Trump associates communications with Russians on to US counterparts.
Okay.
I read that, that headline a lot because we all know at this point, CNN has never retracted the story that foreign intelligence operations, including what's believed to be some Baltic state operations as well.
We're passing information about the Trump team, uh, to the Obama administration.
Now in the book and in my book, I had to keep plugging it, but we did a lot of work on it.
Denise uncovered an interesting angle here about why the British may have been so intimately involved in this plot to take down Trump.
She found some interesting stuff in there.
We also believe there were other foreign intelligence outlets as well that were passing information about the Trump team.
Because remember, whereas the Central Intelligence Agency is not supposed to be spying on United States citizens, The others out there, others, foreign intelligence counterparts, the Australians, the British and others, they have no such, at least for us, they have no such obligation like we have to preclude them from spying on our folks.
Now there's five eyes arrangements, I don't want to oversimplify, but I'm just saying there's no better way to circumvent gathering intelligence on your own political enemies in the United States, Joe, than by using foreign intelligence partners to do it.
So what's going on here?
This is a cover your mmm CYA moment.
It rhymes with class.
It's pretty clear to me at this point that foreign intelligence folks who were involved in the plot to take down Trump are now in a bit of a quandary here.
Everybody knows they were involved here.
The bureau people and the intelligence people who were working with him and on the receiving end of this intelligence are now starting to believe they may have been misled.
Everybody needs an out on this.
Everybody.
So what better out for a lot of our intelligence folks here than to say, oh, look, you know, we relied on these foreign intelligence people and what better out on these foreign intelligence people than to say, than to leak anonymous stories that, hey, there was this cell phone record of Cohen being there.
Was Cohen's cell phone cloned?
I don't know.
Was it, as I said in my speech at the Breakers, was it a different Michael Cohen and there's some confusion on who exactly this was?
I'm not sure.
Michael Cohen just happens to be a very common name.
I'm telling you this, I strongly, strongly dispute the fact that Michael Cohen was in Prague, and I strongly dispute the fact he was meeting with this Russian official to exchange payments for this collusion thing.
Strongly, in the strongest possible way, I believe this is a nonsense story.
And I believe these foreign intel people are leaking this story to gullible reporters at McClatchy, who are, by the way, the only ones that are running with this.
The Washington Post isn't running with the story.
They are not running with this.
McClatchy are the only folks who are out there actively promoting this as genuine.
People may be reporting on the reporting.
But they're not reporting this as fact.
McClatchy's out there on an island on their own.
And I believe they're doing this because these foreign intel people that either know they were duped and had the wrong guy, or who still believe this may be true and it may have been some kind of cloned phone, but they're still holding to it, are trying to cover and provide a reason why they did this.
Joe, does this make sense?
Yeah, yeah.
Can I say it again?
I don't like being repetitive on the show.
No, you're cool.
Everybody now knows the collusion story is a hoax.
All the players involved.
That's the big overarching point to take away.
They're looking for a reason now as the Mueller investigation is starting to close up.
They are looking for a reason now to justify after Mueller's report comes out.
And Mueller's report is not going to be laudatory.
It's going to be nasty.
And it's going to be designed to damage Trump politically.
But Mueller's report will have no evidence of Russian collusion.
Because there is none.
It didn't happen.
All of these folks who were involved in the spying on Trump, basing it on the premise that this collusion was real, Joe, are going to need an excuse as to why they did it.
I believe this foreign intelligence, this cell phone ping, is going to be what they're going to hang their hat on.
Now, Whether this cell phone ping is a clone phone, or if it's a case of mistaken identity, the intel agencies that relied upon this ping to do this scandalous spying on the Trump team are gonna say, hey look, we got hoes too.
And in order to get the story out, because they're embarrassed to go on the record, hence the anonymous sources, they had to find a couple suckers, reporters, who would be willing to run with this story. They can't
find suckers, shockingly, at the Post or the Times who would be more than eager if this was a credible
story. So they go back to the well to these McClatchy guys who have been eager to get this story
out to try to save their reputation.
Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But Joe, even the Mueller team, which I've told you
is a hack witch hunt investigation. Even the Mueller team, the Washington Post and the New
York Times are skeptical of this information.
Hence the April statement by the Mueller team after the original McClatchy story came out about this saying, hey, everybody be careful with this.
Even Mueller doesn't want to hang his hat on this.
This story is more of a dumb show.
It is.
You're absolutely right.
The opposite of a bombshell.
And they picked these two sucker reporters to get it out there, knowing that Twitter's fear and social media would pick up on it.
And whatever intelligence partner relied on this kind of stuff, they're going to say, oh, it was the ping.
The ping.
Not knowing that the ping is either mistaken identity or the ping is a clone phone.
It is not Cohen.
Oh, one more piece of information on the con side.
By the way, I have a great piece by Chuck Ross, too, with The Daily Caller, which addresses a lot of these points in the show notes today as well.
Please read the show notes, the Matt Palumbo piece and Chuck Ross's piece.
They're very good.
Folks, Cohen has an alibi that's airtight.
The dates they claim he was in Prague, he was out on the West Coast visiting his son.
He has travel records.
Folks, it's a nonsense story.
You have to be a hardcore X-Files-like conspiracy theorist to believe in this stuff.
Don't.
It is a CYA.
They're gonna say, well, you know, we spied on him, but look, we relied on this cell phone ping, so we thought the dossier was true.
That's not how any of this works.
You have to do some verification that he was there.
Not anonymously source foreign intel information that could have been based on a cloned phone or a simple case of mistaken identity.
That's not verification.
That's lazy police and intel work.
That make sense, Joe?
Did I sum that up?
Yeah.
Beautiful.
It's alright.
I got a lot of emails yesterday about that.
This is a C-Y-A.
This is gonna be their new, oh, we screwed up, but look!
Look, it's the ping!
Ding-a-ling!
The ping!
Yeah.
I know.
Don't say it.
I know what he's in his head.
I can already see Joe, Joe formulating a witty response.
All right.
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Okay.
Oh, let's see.
Moving on.
On a sad note, tough segue, but on a very sad note, I'm sure, Joe, you saw this story.
You know, a real American patriot and hero was taken from us yesterday.
This police officer, hero, this patriotic, legal immigrant to this country, Officer Ronel Singe, who died in California.
He was a police officer from Fiji.
He was shot during a traffic stop, 1 a.m.
in the morning, pulling over a suspect that he suspected of a DUI.
He pulls over the suspect and he calls out over the radio, shots fired, I've been hit.
He was tragically taken from us.
This officer is saying, you have to see the pictures of him and his beautiful family on Christmas, just hours before he was killed.
Folks, he was a legal immigrant to this country.
He's the type of American, American, that we want in this country, that we need in this country.
Reminds me, you know, people like my wife and other legal immigrants who come here with the strong desire to put their right hand over their heart and pledge allegiance to our country and our values and entrepreneurship and hard work and patriotism and love of your neighbor, love of your country.
You know, being a former cop myself, whenever we lose a man or a woman in blue, it's always particularly devastating because I remember what that was like.
When I worked in the 75 precinct, ironically, my last day of work, tragically ironically, I went into, you have to, when you leave the police department at NYPD, you only have to get back a couple things.
You have to get back your patrol helmet, you have to get back your firearm and your patrol guide.
You can go get your firearm again later once you pay for it.
But I remember going back in and hearing the night before that we had lost one of ours and the black bunting was on the front of the precinct.
Another tragic loss of life in our own precinct.
I knew the guy.
I knew him personally and he wasn't there anymore.
It's gone.
Never take another breath of oxygen.
Never see his kids again.
Never see his mom again.
Never see his family again.
Never enjoy another good movie, never enjoy another good meal, gone.
An empty seat at a table for his family forever.
Nothing but memories left.
This officer, Singh, out in California, is a memory now for his family because of a guy in this country, illegally, who killed him.
Folks, I was hesitant to tweet about this yesterday because of course you always subject yourself to charges that you're making politics out of this, but this isn't politics.
This is, this is a life that was taken from us by a person who unquestionably should not have been in this country and a life taken from us by a person who unquestionably should have been in this country.
This guy was a legal immigrant to this country who chose of all jobs to never going to get rich off it.
Listen, police officer salaries are not great.
I know, I worked for one.
He chose a rather middle-class salary as a way to support his community, to go out there and put himself between that round.
And he died.
And he was killed.
A legal immigrant and an American hero.
You know, it's just not appropriate at the time to introduce any politics into this stuff because it's what the left does to us.
But folks, it would be equally inappropriate to not talk about this because it is in context of the current political environment over immigration.
I have never seen a story in my life that so clearly sums up the fight we're in right now.
There are people around the world who admire and love this country, who would love nothing more than to apply their skills, their hard work, and their love of neighbor, friend, family, and God, to come here and bring those assets to the United States.
Those are the people we desperately need, Officer Singh.
But this savage, this animal, who took the exact opposite path, Flipped up both middle fingers at the same time to our system and said, I'll come and go as I please.
And when I do come and go as I please, I will, I will do what I, when I want, when I want to do it.
And I have no inhibitions on my behavior at all, including inhibitions against killing one of yours.
When I say one of yours, I mean one of ours, because this animal is not one of ours.
He's a savage.
Never has there been so clearly a case that needs to be discussed amongst common sense Americans of both sides.
Not meant to demonize anyone, but just meant as a clarion call of what this immigration debate is currently about.
Stop conflating to our liberals out there, and I say liberals, and our Democrat friends, because liberals are not our friends.
They are at war with us, at an ideological war with us.
There are Democrats who are persuadable.
I'm begging you, as a fellow American, a person who believes in this country, and a person who believes in you, I have Democrat neighbors who are very reasonable people, we just have disagreements on issues.
Stop conflating immigration with illegal immigration.
We have never been a country that treats legal immigrants to this country badly, ever.
Matter of fact, they bring, like Officer Singh and my wife, tremendous, tremendous skills and character to this country.
It is the people who have disregarded the rule of law that have absolutely no business being here whatsoever.
And because of people like that, we lost an asset to this country that will never take another breath with his family.
I ask all the people who support open borders, illegal immigration, unfettered immigration with no constraints.
I ask you humbly and respectfully, even though I disagree with you and want to say something different right now.
Just look at the picture.
Just go on Twitter and put in his name.
Look at this guy.
Look at a picture.
Look at his family.
Look at his Christmas picture taken hours before his untimely death.
We need more of those people.
And now we have less because of an illegal immigrant who was the exact opposite of this American hero.
Disgraceful, folks.
Absolutely.
100% disgraceful.
A genuine American tragedy.
Sad.
I get myself together here.
It's just, you know, you look at these pictures and I always think of that black bun thing the day I left the NYPD for the Secret Service.
I remember thinking to myself, gosh, this has got to be one of the worst days.
I was so happy to be a Secret Service agent and so unbelievably taken aback that one of our own had died.
You know, these are fathers and brothers and husbands and I mean, you know, it's crazy.
Just one last thing on this, folks.
I don't mean, you know, it's Friday and I'm not trying to put everybody in a bad mood, but this is the stuff we have to talk about responsibly on the show.
One of the things I couldn't get out of my head, Joe, yesterday was I thought I saw a picture with him and a dog, Officer Singh, his hero.
And I love dogs and I like to take care of my mother-in-law's dogs.
They come over a lot.
And you know what I couldn't get out of my head show?
The dog will never understand this.
Listen, I'm not in any way minimizing, obviously we lost this hero, his family's devastated, but I'm just trying to be real with you.
Like little things that went through my head after I'd gone through all the empty, I always think of the empty seat at the Thanksgiving table, you know, the wife and the family and how, I mean, little things, but when it's real for you, when you were a cop and you remember losing, you know, friends and coworkers, I just kept thinking like the dog.
This is what was in my head for some reason.
I couldn't get it out.
The dog will never understand.
Like the dog has lost his master, his owner, his buddy.
And you can't explain that to a dog.
Like the dog is just, I don't know.
I don't know why that's what was in my head.
And I'm just trying to give you an authentic account of, of, you know, I'm obviously not that eloquent today about this.
You know what I can't throw?
What's that?
If immigration reform just saved one American citizen's life, wouldn't it be worth it?
Especially a guy like that.
And you know, I say to people all the time discussing the illegal immigration topic that you can say all you want that most people who come here illegally will not go on to commit other crimes.
Although they did break the law coming here.
That's statistically accurate.
But what you can never argue is what Joe just said.
That 100% of people who come here illegally should not be here.
And Kate Steinle and people like Officer Singh would be alive if we'd actually enforced our immigration policy at the border.
Because 100% of people here illegally should not be in the country.
And did break the law by coming here illegally.
Alright.
I got a couple other things.
A quick shutdown update.
On a bit of a lighter note.
So, folks, I don't see any quick end to this.
Both sides have obviously hardened.
The latest update on it, I have a story in the show notes today from the Washington Examiner.
Trump has offered a compromise on the $5.7 billion.
So moving around some funds, let me be precise, the $5.7 billion for the wall.
Apparently there's a compromise, a Trump compromise on the moving around of some funds.
I don't have a major issue with that as long as he holds fast on getting the wall started and getting started at a reasonable amount of funding.
Really, I don't have any objection to that because there are ways to move around funds and get this thing moving.
He's already been working on a contract for 115 miles of that, which is very good.
What's the problem?
The Democrats didn't even offer a counter.
The Democrats basically flipped him off and said, we're going home.
How you negotiate or compromise, whatever, with people not interested in compromise beyond me.
So I will say what I've said for the last three days, shut it down.
They expect Trump to fold and acquiesce on these big major points?
Nope, no thanks.
Not gonna happen.
Stand fast, President Trump.
You are doing the right thing.
Do not waver.
You are doing the right thing.
You have set forth a black and white principle, what you're fighting for.
If you fold now, it'll look like you didn't believe in it in the first place.
Don't do it.
You're doing the right thing.
I have another article that's shown out today.
It's the last story in a poll.
The overwhelming number of Republican voters support this president, what he's doing right now.
This is not the time to fold.
Both dug in.
President Trump's now threatening to close the southern border if that's what we need to do.
And that's what we need to do.
Another update on the story.
I discussed yesterday the ridiculosity and absurdity.
I just made that word up, of course.
I like it.
It's so ridiculous that it's a ridiculosity.
The CNN report, which was A new low for CNN, which is tough because they constantly break through the basement floor of media lows seemingly daily.
But their report that troops that had showed up at the Iraqi hangar to greet President Trump enthusiastically, who brought their own MAGA hats, their own.
They didn't buy them off the president.
He doesn't sell MAGA hats on these trips, but brought their own to be signed by the president.
CNN published a ridiculous report, advanced by a bunch of Obama bootlickers and former staffers on Twitter, that these military personnel brought their MAGA hats to be signed should be investigated for hatch act violations that prohibit political activities while in uniform.
Possibly in the history of fake news, dopey media stories, Joe, I rank this one Maybe top two or three.
It could be number one, but I want to leave that spot open because every day something new happens.
Yeah.
To clarify the rules, the Air Force basically humiliated CNN and all the imbeciles that went on their network to advance this.
We're going to go prosecute these men.
Let's get them in handcuffs, folks.
Are you kidding?
Dumbest story ever.
So this is from the Daily Caller.
Amber Athew does great work over there.
Her fake news story I have on my show notes too.
Her top fake news stories of 2018, which is really good.
We actually cited it at bugito.com too.
It says, U.S.
Air Forces Europe made a clear statement Thursday that troops at Ramstein Air Base, it was in Germany by the way, sorry.
Not in Iraq.
Rammstein is obviously in Germany.
Did not break any rules by bringing their own hats for the President to sign.
Let me just read to you the quote because this is just so ridiculous.
He did go to Iraq to the President, obviously.
There is no rule against airmen bringing personal items to be signed by the President, the Air Force said, noting that while troops held the hats to be signed, they never wore them while in uniform.
You know, I only report this because I brought this up the other day.
I don't mean to dumb you down and kill neurons during the show, but it is, we're at this point of such, like the fake, fake news is so fake now that humiliating them every day has become kind of a national pastime.
This was an outrageous story.
It was a dumb story made to take a shot at Donald Trump.
And as I told you, which was confirmed by the way, so you know, I'm not spinning your wheels ever, which I don't do.
What did I say during yesterday's show, Joe, about my trip to Afghanistan?
People were bringing everything for the President to sign!
Everything!
Yesterday, last night on the news, they showed video.
The President!
He was the President of Afghanistan!
I'm not sure if that was my trip or the other trip, but I'm telling you, I was there!
President Obama, and good for President Obama!
I'm not knocking him at all!
It was very nice of him to sign stuff for the troops.
I'm not knocking him!
But what's the principle?
Are the principles here that the president signing presidential memorabilia or other things is somehow a prosecutable act amongst our troops?
If that's your principle, why wasn't it prosecutable under Obama?
Because that's not your principle.
You just hate Trump and you're a liar.
So again, it's not whataboutism to say what about the troops under the Obama trips to Afghanistan that had stuff signed.
I say what about because that is not a president.
That's a dumb idea that our fighting men and women overseas shouldn't get a presidential autograph.
A valuable historical item.
I don't mean money wise, but valuable to them and their families.
What are you kidding me?
Are you an idiot?
What a dumb story.
And now CNN with a thorough, strong, and unequivocal rebuke by the Air Force showing what fools these anti-Trump idiots are.
But I tweeted out yesterday.
And I mean, I meant this.
This, Joe, this, this helps President Trump.
You may be like, how does this help President Trump?
He's under constant attack by the media.
No, no, no.
You're reading this all wrong.
This, a story like this is so ridiculous and absurd.
It entirely discredits the left-wing activists in the media, which is good because it highlights the people who play by the rules and do actual journalism.
Nobody takes CNN seriously anymore.
But when you have mainstream reporters who are maybe liberal but try to play it fair and knock stuff like this, like, guys, this is just stupid.
It actually shows conservatives that there can be some people out there in journalism who put their politics aside.
So it completely discredits the Looney Tune activists and highlights people in media.
And point number two is it solidifies the base, the Trump base, in this battlefield morality, which I talked about earlier in the week, that this is a real fight here for survival.
The media is against us.
They are not in this for journalism.
Their sole purpose is to discredit and attack conservatives.
So it solidifies the base's support around Trump while also highlighting the liberal media activists for who they are.
This is not a bad thing.
I sent that tweet, by the way, yesterday in a shop I was at.
I'm getting my Raptor customized, my Ford Raptor.
So folks, I can't do it yet because I'm waiting on a trip, but I'm expecting hopefully by the end of next month, it'll be done.
Wait till you see.
I'll take some pictures.
I'll put them on Instagram.
You're going to love it.
This is going to be pretty BA.
Bad.
Yeah, you're gonna love it.
The guy showed me some stuff.
He said, you want to do this with the bumper and put a little vinyl here and a little highlight here and some lights there and maybe we'll hook up the rims on.
I was like, yeah!
Yeah!
I said I need some manly stuff.
Some bars to like crush stuff and everything.
Like give me the manliest bumper, like a black matte finish crash bar.
He's like, why do you go off-roading?
No, I drive it to the gym every day.
The car has almost no miles on it.
That's my off-roading is I hit a curb once coming out of the parking lot in powerhouse gym.
That's how much, but I love manly stuff.
I like guns and I like trucks.
That's my thing.
And I want this truck to look like a tank.
So I'm going to get it done.
I was in the shop yesterday checking out some stuff.
I'll put some pictures up on my Instagram.
I'm at DBonGino.
So go check that out.
Follow me on Instagram and you can see what the car's going to look like.
It's going to be cool.
The truck, I mean.
I'll show you first, Joe.
You're going to love it.
OK, we did the shutdown, the Air Force, the heroic officer we lost.
Oh, here we go.
This is important.
Folks, Trump's legacy at this point, I'm hoping he's not a one-term president, I don't think he will be, I think he has a pretty decent shot at re-election, but if he were, God forbid at this point, to be a one-term president, who knows what would happen if he lost.
One of his legacies is going to be a remaking of the federal courts.
Now, I've discussed the importance of this before.
But I wanted to give you some numbers to put in context the success President Trump has had, because there's still a large swath of never-Trumpers out there, Joe, that regardless of President Trump's success on the economy, regulatory reform, and the federal bench, they still are resolute that this President Trump, this guy, is not fit for office, which is absurd.
He's made some very, very good decisions which have advanced the conservative football down the field significantly.
But I like numbers, and I realized today while I was reading this article in the Washington Examiner, which I'll have in the show notes, about his remaking of the federal bench, that I never really put it in context to you how important what President Trump is doing on the courts really is.
Numbers matter.
Facts and data matter, right?
First, why is it important?
Well, all the obvious reasons.
Dan Horowitz wrote a book on this, and Mark Levin has an excellent book, Men in Black.
They talk about how the left, when they can't win elections, what do they do, folks?
They go to the courts.
Why?
Well, it's very simple math.
When the left can't win elections because they can't convince people en masse to vote their high-tax, big-government, pro-abortion, anti-school-choice stuff into office, what do they do?
The left never gives up.
You have to almost admire their tenacity.
They never give up.
What do they do?
They go to court appointments.
When they get liberals appointed on the courts, they sue.
They get a liberal judge acting as a politician.
And now what happens?
Instead of having to convince 90,000 people in a congressional race or, you know, hundreds of a hundred million plus in a presidential race that their policies are good when they are in fact pernicious and dangerous, who do they have to convince, Joe?
One judge.
That's it.
So what they want to do is they've always wanted to stack the federal bench with politicians acting as judges and get them to advance the political football they can't advance electorate because their policies suck.
It's very simple why the left is in love with the bench, the federal bench.
Well, what's a good way to stop that?
A good way to stop that is, one, would be to limit the influence of the courts through stopping these ridiculous national injunctions, where a case is decided at a district court, and a federal judge says, well, we're going to put a national injunction.
This decision's in effect everywhere.
Effectively stopping the Trump team.
This has to stop.
This has to stop ASAP.
The national injunctions, and John Roberts said the Chief Justice needs to get on this.
This issuing of national injunctions for every single case that involves President Trump is absolutely absurd and is entirely destroying the reputation of the court.
But the second thing, obviously, is appointing judges on the bench who understand the limitations of their own power.
Let's put this in context now.
President Trump is already confirmed, so you understand, because the math won't make sense if you don't have this number in your head.
President Trump has already had confirmed 85 federal judges.
Keep that number 85 in your head, because there's a line in the end about a quarter, and it won't make sense if you don't have that number in your head beforehand.
So he's already had confirmed 85 judges.
What does that mean in context?
According to the Washington Examiner piece, which again is in the show notes, as of this writing, there are 118 vacancies at the district court level and 12 vacancies at the appellate court level for a total of 130.
Of those, 65 are currently pending nominations.
To put this in context, Joe, there are 865 judges on the Supreme Court, U.S.
Court of Appeals, and U.S.
District Courts.
That's the total.
865.
If all the current vacancies get filled, then Trump will have appointed roughly a quarter of them.
Now you see why I threw that number in before.
Because think about it.
Supreme Court, Appellate Courts, District Courts.
We have 865 total judges.
Trump has already had 85 confirmed.
There are 130 vacancies.
If Mitch McConnell in the Senate, after this new Senate where we have now a three vote buffer, we now have 53 Republican senators after the new class of the Senate is sworn in.
Three, because Mike Pence will be a tiebreaker.
We can lose Collins and Murkowski, who are effectively fake Republicans anyway.
Right.
Most of the time.
Collins did a good job on Kavanaugh, so I gotta be fair there.
We also figured there's always gonna be one type of flake guy, Jeff Flake, who fooled Flake out.
I mean, never was there a more appropriately named U.S.
Senator than Jeff Flake.
But now we're rid of him, thankfully.
So they can lose three.
Mitch McConnell needs to prioritize now because now we have the gist of the Peace Show is now that there's a Democrat House, there is very little chance that any significant Trump agenda item is going to get pushed through because it's going to be blocked by the Democrat House.
It's not Trump's fault.
The Democrats just hate Trump.
The Democrat House, required to pass any legislation, is not going to pass anything that benefits Trump.
That's just a fact.
But what they cannot do, because they have no role in Senate confirmations at all, the House, is they cannot block confirmations of judges.
So if you get these 130...
Vacancies filled.
You combine it with the 85 we've had already, out of the 865, that's roughly a quarter of the federal bench appointed by Donald J. Trump, who has done a terrific job getting conservative judges who understand the limitations of their power appointed to the bench.
I bring this up because this has to be, this has to be priority number one.
Has to be right now.
Not that we shouldn't try.
I'm not suggesting we shouldn't try for additional tax cuts, spending restraints.
He has the veto power.
He's not powerless, the president.
He has the power of the veto power.
He has executive orders as long as they're lawfully applied.
We don't want to do what Obama did.
But the federal judiciary could be almost remade by President Trump in one term.
We had a historic number of vacancies when he came into office.
We can now fill them.
And stop the liberal run, sprint to the courts, the Supreme Court, the appeals courts, and the district courts every time they lose an election.
This is a game-changing moment.
Okay, last story of the day because this has received very limited coverage.
CNN, although I think they may have covered it, the intensity of the coverage has been extremely light.
And it's not surprising.
I mean, CNN and other liberal outlets are not apt to publish stories that make Democrats look bad.
So we're going to talk about it here because it's important.
Folks, did you hear what's going on or what went on in Alabama?
You know, we've heard all this about Russian disinformation campaigns and the abusive social media tactics of fake news on Facebook and other places to influence elections, right?
Now, you may be saying, oh yeah, yeah, we heard that in context of what?
The Trump campaign allegedly trying to do it, which is nonsense.
It's garbage.
That is fake news.
But this story is not fake news.
Because the guy involved He was involved with LinkedIn.
He's a left-wing billionaire.
Has now admitted to being involved in an influence campaign in the Alabama Senate race between Doug Jones and Roy Moore.
I have a story in the show notes about it today.
If you've missed it, this is an incredible story.
Six-figure sums of money paid to promote disinformation in the Alabama Senate race meant to link the Republican Roy Moore to Russian bots.
It was fake.
It was fake news.
Financed by a left-wing billionaire.
Now, to be fair, I'm just telling you, we stick to facts here.
This left-wing billionaire associated with LinkedIn is apologizing for it now and is saying he's open to an investigation.
That doesn't make any of this right and he gets to get no pass.
There will be no mercy here.
If this is what we're talking about, influence peddling and money spent in elections for fake news and disinformation campaigns, then that is exactly what needs to be investigated.
But the allegations are serious.
That there were fake news, social media accounts promoting Roy Moore, the Republican's link to the Russian bot campaign.
It was made up.
It was all made up.
And it was done in an effort, because information's been leaked about what they were doing, Joe.
It was done in an effort to suppress Republican turnout.
They had a goal of suppressing Republican turnout in the Alabama Senate race, which the Democrat eventually won, Doug Jones.
They had a goal.
They even had a metric.
They wanted to suppress turnout by five points, five percentage points.
Ladies and gentlemen, can you imagine if this was a story about the Trump team?
Secret document uncovered.
Trump paid a six-figure sum to suppress Democratic turnout in key Democratic areas.
Ladies and gentlemen, it would be the scandal of the century.
But because it involves a left-wing billionaire and a Democrat, Doug Jones, who won the race.
Now, there's no suggestion Jones was involved in this, personally.
This would be a mega story, but because it's a Democrat, it's not.
The coverage has been light and sparse.
What is that?
Oh, I'm hearing that.
Is that the media coverage?
No, that's not the media coverage.
Joe's right.
That, in fact, is a flock or a pack or whatever you call a group of a thousand crickets at night making a sound at night in dead silence.
That's what you'll hear.
That was good.
We need that effect more often.
That is, in fact, the media coverage on this.
Which has been sparse at best.
Should be a front page news story if election tampering coverage was based on principle.
But it's not.
Election, air quotes, tampering coverage is based on attacking Donald Trump.
And if the story doesn't attack Donald Trump, it's not fit to print.
Remember, democracy dies in the darkness, right?
The Washington Post's new motto.
According to the New York Times, all the news that's fit to print.
Well, apparently, if it makes the Democrats look bad, it isn't.
The coverage has been light.
Light, at best.
What a scam.
All right, folks.
Thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
I will be on Mark Levins tonight, filling in on the radio.
So if you want to give us a call, you want to talk to me live, make sure you do that.
And again, today is my last day.
I'm an NRA TV that shows on my last one, 5.30 PM.
Free at NRA TV dot com.
I will be announcing my future plans, hopefully very soon.
It'll be clear why I left, but thank you again for it was a good run with the folks at CRTV.
I want to thank them as well, but that won't change anything for you all.
Don't worry, but you could still subscribe at our same account.
On iTunes.
Listen on iTunes.
You can listen on our website, Bongino.com.
Please also follow us at iHeart.
It is those subscriptions where you subscribe to the show.
It's free.
It's all free.
That drive us up the charts and help other people find the show.
We really appreciate if you do that.
Thanks a lot, folks.
I will see you all on Monday.
Good day, sir!
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