In this episode I address the immigration crisis and the Democrats’ continued use of absurd talking points. I also address the failure of the GOP congressional committees to address the DOJ and FBI malfeasance. Finally, I address the liberal assault on law and order in our big cities. News Picks:
The House GOP ended the probe into FBI and DOJ bias against Trump.
This American hero would still be alive today if we had better border security.
Are we closing in on a trade deal with China?
What’s behind this mystery case in the Mueller probe that is working its way through the courts?
Is this Obamacare regulation killing people?
Did you catch the radical Left’s latest effort to stop you from purchasing a firearm?
This Women’s March was canceled because the participants were “overwhelmingly white.”
Our national spending is entirely out of control.
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Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Good morning, Mr. Bongino.
Yes, it is a New Year's Eve, so it will be a new year tomorrow.
I mean, kind of an artificial...
Yeah, it's a new year!
Is it really?
Alright, great.
Excellent.
I was never a big New Year's guy, to be honest with you.
I'm not a big party guy.
Yeah, I know why you're not, because Joe has to get up at like 2 o'clock in the morning.
Not for long.
Yeah, not for long.
He did formally to do his other job.
So that was kind of rough.
Folks, one quick request for you.
If you are listening to us on YouTube, we're having a real problem on YouTube with people stealing our content.
It's turned into a real problem for us for a number of reasons.
It makes it very difficult to finance and pay for the show if other people are stealing our stuff.
If you are listening on a channel, That is not YouTube.com slash Dan Bongino, straight through.
Dan Bongino.
No underscores, no periods, no nothing.
That is not our channel.
There's some guy, Lam or something, who's been posting our stuff.
You're listening on that channel.
It's not our channel.
I humbly request that you not do that, and please listen on our channel.
It's the only way we can finance the show and provide accurate metrics to sponsors.
You know, we want to keep the show obviously free, because I think it works better for us.
We don't want a paywall.
So I don't want to have to do that on subscription, because it would be, you know, we'd limit our audience.
I don't want to do that.
The message is important.
So please, it's YouTube.com.
Dan Bongino.
I would really appreciate it if you would transfer over to our channel if you are listening anywhere else.
So thank you very much.
Alright, a lot to talk about today.
Joe, Elizabeth Warren, first one out of the chute, announces today she's doing an exploratory run for the presidency in 2020.
I am absolutely surprised, Dan.
Stunned, right?
I know.
Floored.
I saw this this morning right before we got on the air, so I wanted to throw it out there.
You know, I'll say this though.
I am desperately trying to get out of the political prognostication business because it's useless.
I mean, no one knows the future.
You don't know what's going to happen.
And I'll just say this.
Yeah, the Pocahontas thing is going to do some serious damage to her.
That whole genetic testing fiasco where she was one one trillion Indian or whatever, American Indian, whatever it was, it was bad.
I mean, I think our team started to acknowledge it now, but you just never know what's going to happen.
You don't.
I mean, it's Elizabeth Warren.
It could make a move and we don't want to do what the left did to us by laughing off Donald Trump.
That was a huge mistake.
Joe and I took him seriously.
I mean, we accurately predicted most of the states he was going to win.
So I'm just on a on a quick short note just happened this morning.
Elizabeth Warren, I believe is now going to be what our second declared candidate, John Delaney, who I ran against.
People will die.
I didn't even know we still had that one.
That was perfect.
But John Delaney, Congressman from Maryland Congressional District 6, Wyatt actually run against, is the first declared candidate.
So we'll see what happens.
So moving on, quick note on that.
Just another story as well before I get to the core.
I got a number of really important news stories to get out to you.
Folks, I can't say this enough to you because this immigration debate is now heating up with the tragic, heartbreaking, Loss of officer Ronil Singh in California.
Uh, you may have seen the photos of him and his, his beautiful wife, his beautiful child, his, his dog right before Christmas.
He was killed by an illegal immigrant.
Ronil Singh was a legal immigrant to this country.
As I said in the show last week, he was everything that is right about America came here from Fiji, applied his entrepreneurial efforts, his love for this country, his heart, his soul, and his mind towards being a dedicated public servant with the police department.
Did the right thing, came into the country legally, and was taken from us by this alleged shooter, this animal who was in the country illegally.
Yes, animal.
Animal.
That bothers you, snowflakes?
I give exactly zero shits about that.
I don't care.
At all.
Not even a little bit.
Email me, call me, don't care.
Your complaints are falling on deaf ears.
That's exactly what this savage was.
This illegal immigrant who took it, who did it the wrong way, took this guy from us.
And now, during this extended debate, national debate about immigration, I'm hearing this constantly and it's driving me crazy.
This idea that walls don't work.
I addressed it a little bit on Friday, but I just want to hit it again today because President Trump brought up an interesting little tidbit of knowledge you all need to know on his Twitter account this weekend.
He said, well, if walls don't work, you know, basically why did President Obama build the wall around his house?
Ladies and gentlemen, walls do work.
Walls are old.
They'll say walls are old technology.
That'll be the liberal talking point.
Yeah, folks, so is the wheel, okay?
The wheel is old technology.
So is the inclined plane.
So is the pulley.
These are old technologies, too.
The reason we still use old technologies in many cases is they work.
Bingo.
I don't believe anybody has found an effective surrogate for the basic technology of the wheel.
I mean, inclined planes, they work in screws, in ramps, you have pulleys that work, and we use these systems because they work.
Walls work because they provide a physical obstruction towards someone easily Walking across or traversing an area.
It's not a complicated concept to figure out.
Now, their comeback is, well, you know, if you build a 20-foot wall, we'll bring a 21-foot ladder.
Okay, fine!
Then you have to go find the 21-foot ladder, you have to carry it with you the entire time, or you have to find a way to store a 20-foot ladder, a 21-foot ladder, at each and every border crossing you intend to cross.
It creates enough of an obstruction for us, and it is worth it at that point.
To mitigate the threat of you crossing easily.
Whenever your friends say walls don't work, then say, well, why does Obama have a wall around his house?
Well, you know, he has a wall around his house because it'll stop people from walking onto his property.
Exactly!
That's the same point we're trying to make about walls at the U.S.
border.
This is not hard to understand, folks.
The left wants to turn a conversation about the margin into a conversation making it black and white.
You know, in other words, when wintertime comes around, we don't argue in our homes about heat or no heat.
I've used this example often.
You talk about it on the margin.
How much heat do we put on the house?
Is it 70?
71?
Are you super cold?
Do you like it at 72?
No one says heat or no heat.
The question is the degree to which we're going to put the heat on.
The same questions about being on the margin, these arguments, are about technologies to stop people from crossing.
The effective response to that, walls don't work as well, what other, for the money, what other technology would work better?
And the answer is none.
Oh, drones.
What are drones gonna do?
Now you get to see people crossing across the border?
I don't get, what's a drone gonna do?
For the money, walls are old technology that works.
I don't want to spend a lot of time on that.
It's just been very frustrating this morning dealing with a lot of this nonsense for people.
I got a little disappointing news for you.
What is it?
Anne Arundel County is now a sanctuary county.
Oh, no way.
Joe, I lived in Anne Arundel County with Joe.
Joe lives there now.
They had a Republican there, the county executive.
Anne Arundel County, by the way, is in Maryland.
Steve Hsu.
Yeah, Steve Hsu, who was voted out of office despite doing a pretty decent job.
And a Democrat, what is it, Stuart Pittman, just got in there.
And now, of course, they're back to sanctuary counties, which will serve as a magnet for people in the country illegally.
Can you believe it?
You know, remember, everything, these are not black or white questions.
Oh, my gosh.
Oh man, I'm watching TV now on Fox and they had John Kelly on, the chief of staff.
It's about his departure.
He's leaving.
And right behind him was my old buddy, Colin Johnson, the secret service agent we talked about on the show who passed pancreatic cancer.
We used to call him the ultimate male.
He's about 6'4", 300 pounds of muscle.
And right in the video, the video of Kelly, Colin was standing right behind him.
Man, that's tough to watch.
I'll bet the people don't even know.
Yeah, I mean, we wouldn't know the videos of John Kelly, but gosh, God rest his soul.
He was a good man, Colin.
That's tough to just see that.
Sorry, I just caught my eye, folks.
Okay, I got a lot to get to.
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Okay, I've been getting a lot of emails this weekend about this story.
I have it up at FoxNews.com.
It's up in the show notes today.
Please subscribe to my email list.
I'll send them right to you.
That the Oversight Judiciary Committee, currently led by Republicans, which will change in just a matter of days when the Democrats take over the House, Oversight Judiciary led by Trey Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte, that they are effectively, Joe, shutting down the investigation into the DOJ, into the Hillary email scandal, and the abuses of the FISA process for Trump, and basically it's ending with a big Almost nothing burger right now, folks.
And people are very upset, right?
I got this story from no less than probably a hundred people saying, what's going on?
Now, here's what happened.
So you understand the story, what the ramifications are, what I think is really going on and why I think it should matter to you.
Number one, what happened?
Gowdy and Goodlatte in their committees, again now run by Republicans, soon to be run by Democrats.
We're looking into this, the Hillary email scandal, the fact that the DOJ didn't seem to pursue it as vigorously as they pursued Donald Trump.
They were also looking into a number of abnormalities, shall we call them, Joe, to be kind, and the abuse of the FISA courts to target the Donald Trump team.
You would have thought that this thing would have ended with some results, some recommendations for further judicial action against people, but no, it resulted in a letter.
A letter, yes, we got a letter out of this, and the letter is a recommendation for a special counsel to look into this stuff.
Folks, listen, I sense your frustration.
I, I get it.
And I am with you on this a hundred percent.
I have nothing.
I'm not knocking.
I don't want to pile on any more Gowdy and good lad.
I mean, the DOJ and everyone seems to be entire in the DOJ and the FBI and the people involved in this scandal seem to be entirely dug in like ticks and refusing to let this stuff get out.
Um, I don't know what I just, you understand.
I don't know what else to say anymore.
I don't know what else to say.
We have entirely lost control of our government.
I wrote a note last night.
I was thinking about this.
I was up, uh, you know, rarely at night anymore.
Do I stew on topics at night?
Because I find myself waking up in the morning, just incredibly disgruntled and, and really, really pissed to be candid.
But last night I stayed up last night thinking about this and I was up later than I intended.
And I kept stewing thinking what's the best way to sum this up.
And I thought, do something.
Gosh, somebody just do something.
Please do something.
And we're getting nothing.
And people are losing faith in the system.
You are seeing right now, globally, right now what is a collapse of the former international order.
You are seeing people around the globe, whether it's the yellow jackets and In France, whether it's the Brexit debate in the UK, you are seeing around the world a formerly, what they saw to be a victorious, whatever you want to call, new international order of democracy and international institutions collapse.
What am I saying, folks?
People have lost faith in the ability of common sense people within government and bureaucrats to govern, and this entire Spygate debacle and the complete lack of action are contributing to that in the United States.
Folks, I don't have any good news for you in this one.
I don't want to leave you in the end of the new year with any bad news, but I don't want to smoke you up and BS you either.
That's not the purpose of this show.
I don't have any good news for you.
The fact that this look by these congressional committees, by Republicans, into all this Department of Justice and FBI malfeasance has ended with nothing more than a letter recommending a special counsel despite everything that happened.
We know what happened.
We know Hillary was given a pass on the email scandal despite obvious evidence of potential criminal malfeasance.
The fact that Hillary Clinton on her own emails asked people to wipe classified markings The fact that she set up a server in clear violation of government rules.
We know with the Trump case that government assets were used to spy on the Trump team.
We know they were lied to in the FISA court using a dossier that was a clear political document.
We understand this.
And the fact that nothing is happening is forcing people to lose faith.
I don't have a good answer for you, but I had suggested to you a while ago, and I will say again.
I think the road we're on, and I say this with deep regret, I think the road we're on with this stuff, and people just don't want to do something about this, is we're on the road to some form of soft secession here.
You are going to see people in states that are majority Republican, conservative, constitutionalist, people who believe in the fair application of justice across both sides of the political spectrum, which hasn't happened in this case, Joe.
Hillary was clearly given a pass.
Donald Trump was clearly targeted.
I think what you are going to see going forward, if this doesn't change and turn course rapidly, and I don't think the bureaucrats in D.C.
understand really how bad this is.
I'm genuinely not sure they do.
You are going to see some form of soft secession in these states where these states dominated by conservative thinkers who believe in law and order understand that law and order doesn't apply to them anymore and they are going to start voting people into office that are more and more in line with a traditional system of federalism where the states are going to be in charge and the states are going to do what they want and you're going to see some form of a soft secession here where they're just going to start to ignore federal dictates.
They're just going to ignore them.
I wrote this in my second book.
I don't see any other way.
I don't say this with any... Listen, I love this country.
I love the idea of the United States.
The problem is the states are not united anymore, and we're seeing this in the form of silos within New York and California, dominating media and public opinion, social media, and using social pressure to do what?
To force their ideology upon others.
Whether that ideology is the weaponization of government, the use of government to target political enemies, in the case of Trump, giving a pass to their political friends and Hillary Clinton, these population centers that dominate the media, academia, cultural elites, so they can leverage their social pressure in New York, in DC, in California, what they want to do is they want to weaponize that power, whether it's through social pressure or government, to attack their political enemies.
It's not about winning anymore, folks, with the left.
It's not.
It's about punishing.
There's a difference.
So I want to segue this topic this so just to kind of wrap this one up this first topic about nothing really happening with this house report at all other than a letter put out over a you know a holiday weekend requesting a second special counsel despite this stuff so basically the house investigations ended with a big nothing.
Despite the fact that we have obvious examples here.
People are going to lose faith.
I don't know how to explain this away.
They are going to lose faith in our republic and the justice system.
You're seeing it again in other ways as well.
Kevin Williamson, Joe, has a really good piece at National Review.
Please, it's in the show notes.
I humbly ask that you check it out.
It's very good.
It's about exactly this topic.
How siloed population centers in Chicago, New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and places in California.
How these siloed population centers who have become accustomed in these big cities.
To hegemonic political rule.
Super, super, super majorities.
How these population centers, Joe, where they live, it's their way or the highway.
But that's not the way a republic works.
But it is the way the republic is starting to work now.
And the Republicans up in the Congress who did almost nothing releasing this report on the Hillary email scandal and the DOJ thing are afraid of these population centers and are afraid to do anything.
These people in these population centers and in New York City who have voted in super majorities in California are accustomed to getting their way.
There's nothing stopping them from bankrupting their citizens, taxing them to death, implementing Anti-school choice initiatives, abortion on demand, attacking your gun rights.
There's nothing stopping them at all because they live in these silos and when they don't get what they want through the political process, we saw at least in the case of the Fox News story I just told you about, about the Oversight Committee, what do they do?
They weaponize the government and then they use social pressure and media pressure to shut down anyone within the government looking at the weaponized government.
But they do this because, ladies and gentlemen, they don't see anything wrong with it.
And if they do see something wrong with it, they ignore it because there's no penalty for them.
We're seeing it again in this story by Williamson, which is fascinating, Joe.
It's about the Second Amendment and a renewed push by anti-civil liberties, anti-Second Amendment activists to get credit card companies to basically stop financing gun transactions, firearm transactions.
Now, remember what I just told you.
And if this doesn't make sense, Joe, stop it.
What I'm suggesting here is the population centers, where they rule, they rule hegemonically.
There is no serious political challenge to liberalism, far-left radicalism, and socialism in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or Washington DC.
None.
Baltimore, where Joe is, there's no Republicans elected in Baltimore.
None.
Zero.
Baltimore City, that is.
There's Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
None.
From that, that was not always the case, ladies and gentlemen.
New York City had a Republican mayor not that long ago, and Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg had run as a Republican at one point.
New York State had a three-term Republican governor in George Pataki.
California was once the Republican capital of the United States decades ago.
All of this has changed, and not only has it changed, it has changed full tilt over to the side where the Democrats own the system.
The people then they govern, who become far-left radicals themselves, are now used to this, again, hegemonic abuse of power.
Where there is no serious political resistance and the media does nothing to call the people in power out.
They have now transferred that into the national system in trying to impose their New York, California, Chicago will on everyone else, including Wisconsin, Idaho, Florida, and every place else.
But they can't, Joe, because what's stopping them?
In national elections, New York voters who vote in New York City and are used to hegemonic political power can't vote in Florida.
So Florida, with its 29 electoral votes in a presidential election, can determine or flip an election.
So can Ohio.
And that drives the people in these cities who are used to, again, hegemonic political power.
Where they dominate the political conversation and any, any opposition to them is crushed either through social pressure, political pressure, or a combination of the two.
They can't accept it that Florida, Texas, and Ohio think differently than they do.
So they have to find ways, if they can't win, which they cannot, if they can't win a national election because they can't impose their cultural and political values on Florida, they have to find other ways to exert pressure.
So Williamson's piece is about this pressure exerted on these credit card companies now to not approve firearm transactions in certain cases, basically to stop you from buying a gun unless you buy it in cash.
This is unreal, folks.
This is a pattern.
A pattern with the left.
And I took a note here.
They're using now these boycotts and this social pressure through social media which they've leveraged to give themselves voices larger than they are individually.
They're using these boycotts, social pressure on credit card companies and financial institutions to enact a political agenda they cannot get passed by voting because they cannot accept the fact that Florida thinks differently than New York.
Because they're not used to that.
They're not used to hearing opposing political ideas like they were even a couple decades ago from a Republican governor or a Republican mayor in New York City.
All they hear now is leftism, far leftism, radical leftism, socialism, and really extreme socialism upwards of, you know, in some cases outright communism in some cases.
Although there's not much difference between the two.
Although the left would like you to think there is.
They're not getting those opposing political voices.
They haven't heard them.
So they're not, when they hear them and they hear them in national stories about, you know, Florida has a stand your ground law, whatever it is, they can't stand it.
So they need to impose their political will on you too.
So this is what happens.
This is the result.
And it is precisely because of these silos they live in a political power.
And it's what people in the Congress who refuse to do something, do something, do Do it!
We know what happened here.
We know the FISA court was abused.
We know Mrs. Clinton was involved in the trafficking of classified information.
None of this is in dispute.
You need to do something.
But they're afraid to do something, Joe.
They're afraid because they don't want to risk political and media backlash of being on the right side of history.
Because a lot of them, frankly, are just gutless.
We have voted people into office that do not have the nerve to do what needs to be done to keep the Constitutional Republic and some fidelity to our Constitution in place and intact.
They just don't have the guts to do it.
It is grossly disappointing.
They don't have the guts to do it.
Folks, You understand that the Constitution is a wonderful governing document, the finest in the history of humankind.
Ours, our Constitution, obviously.
But it can only survive if there's some form of loyalty to it or belief in it.
Absent that, it's just a piece of paper.
When people lose faith that laws aren't being enforced in an impartial, blind matter, and they feel that the law is being used as a weapon, rather than as a means for law and order, blind to the physical, political, whatever traits of the person involved in the case, it brews the seeds of mistrust.
And once those seeds are planted in water, there's no turning back.
These never-ending attacks on your firearm rights, on your free speech rights on college campuses, where they use, again, social pressure, humiliation, to silence conservative voices on college campuses.
You know, the endless boycotts of conservative voices in the media space.
The never-ending attacks on conservative politicians, the use of racist, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic labels on people who are nothing of the sort.
This can't continue forever.
They are brewing this soft secession where people are just going to say enough and are going to start voting people into office who run on issues like, listen, we're just done with this.
We're done.
In our state, we're going to do what works for our state.
Now, you may say that's not going to happen here.
It's already happening in Europe.
Where they practiced an extreme form of where we're going now.
The French have had enough.
There was a near revolt in Paris over a gas tax that would have crippled middle class drivers.
The UK, people are tired.
They want a way from the European Union to Brexit.
And they can't even figure out a path out now.
There's a lot of chaos.
I don't want to be hyperbolic about it, but there is a lot of chaos going on with the world right now.
The Germans are getting tired through the euro of subsidizing failed states that can't get in control of their fisc.
The Greeks a while back were considering going back to the drachma.
And then all of a sudden it was a flight of euros out of the country.
No one wants to go back to that.
It would result in near national bankruptcy.
Do you understand the collapse of this world order, this older world order, is already happening right now on a global scale precisely because people have lost faith in the institutions they thought were governing.
Thought were governing.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mean to leave this out.
The unrestricted flow, Joe, of migrants from all over the world into European countries that are not prepared right now to handle hundreds of thousands of people with an entirely separate culture into the country all at one time.
They were not prepared for it.
You're already seeing political revolts.
Why would you think that can't happen here?
Now what stops it from happening here, and this is important, Is we do have a vibrant middle class.
My AP History teacher and Archbishop Malloy used to say this all the time.
It's what generally stops these soft secessions from happening is that people have a lot to lose.
A middle class homeowner with a home, with a job, with his kids in a school.
You know even though things can get bad at times and they understand that yes the government's shutting down an investigation into Hillary's malfeasance prematurely and doing almost nothing about it yeah that's bad and yes the fact that you know liberals are are coming to attack our gun rights they won't let us buy a trying to get us to stop buying firearms with your credit card they know this is bad but it's not enough for them to vote people into office that may cost them in the short term.
Folks, but we're getting to that point where Europe is that now.
Where I'm telling you we're on a path that goes one way and it's off a cliff.
And I say that with fear.
Not with any anticipation at all.
Eager anticipation.
It's the exact opposite.
I say that with fear because I love this country.
I grew up in New York and Maryland in the Northeast.
There are a lot of even moderate Democrats up there who are tired of the nonsense.
That's why Maryland has a Republican governor, again.
But I'm telling you these population centers are imposing their will on the rest of the country and this can only happen so long before you see a European-style revolt here.
We saw some semblance of it in the Tea Party Revolution as far back as 2010.
This can't continue forever, folks.
It can't.
All right, I'll give them a two for today because it is the new year.
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Okay.
Speaking of which, Talking about these silos in, again, California, New York, and Illinois, and Washington, D.C.
These siloed people, accustomed to almost monarchical, liberal rule, trying to impose their will on everyone else, take away our gun rights, shutting down investigations, pressuring Republicans through the media into letting Democrat malfeasance continue.
They're also attacking our police departments and successful policing strategies, which have led to a historic drop in crime in the United States over the past few decades.
I read a really fascinating piece in the Wall Street Journal this weekend.
It was about George Kelling and Joe Wilson, who back in 1982 posited the broken windows theory of policing.
Folks, this was a revolutionary theory of policing at the time, which I lived through as a police officer in New York City.
I mean, literally, not figuratively, lived through the transition and saw how it worked.
I want to explain this to you because the journal was a profile piece based on The anniversary of this revolutionary broken windows theory was a fascinating piece.
I'm going to sum up to you why it matters though.
It again speaks to this liberal idea that somehow we live in a world full of emotion, devoid of fact and reason, and we live in a world full of perfectible human beings.
We don't.
We live in a world full of sinners, sadly, that need to be contained.
Thomas Sowell describes this beautifully in his book, Conflict of Visions, one of the best books you'll ever read.
It's a slow read, I'll warn you, but when you get through it, it is illuminating, to say the least.
The premise of his book is that these two visions basically can't exist at the same time.
This liberal vision of the world where human beings are somehow perfectible, and if we just had the right government policies into place, we would have this We wouldn't have this need for healthcare, but we wouldn't have this need for rich and poor.
We can level out economic inequality, but it's only going to be done through really smart people, Joe, and really smart people with generous goodwill who, not working for the private sector, have no other incentive other than to help people.
And then there's the other vision, which is the real one, the conservative vision, the constitutional vision, that human beings are by default sinners.
That are motivated by self, sometimes by greed, lust, rage, anger.
It doesn't mean we're evil people.
It just means that these inclinations are magnified by government because government empowers you and disconnects you from the consequences of your actions.
When you're in government, you can level policies on other people which don't affect you one bit.
You have the John Kerry's of the world voting for tax hikes who then parked their yachts in Rhode Island rather than Massachusetts to avoid the tax hikes they just enacted.
So you understand, Joe, how these two visions can't coexist at the same time?
Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah.
One vision to government, government will perfect society.
The other vision, government's the problem.
We have to limit government just like we have to limit the behavior of individuals who insist on infringing on the civil rights of others.
We have laws against killing other people for a reason.
Attacking them or stealing their property.
Your civil liberties are to be respected as big R rights granted by God, but so are others.
The minute you cross that plane and take others, you have to be limited as well.
That conflict divisions exist, but the left sees society as perfectible and sees any failure in human beings, criminality, whatever it is, Joe, not as a failure of an evil person prone to sin, but as a failure of societal order.
That if we just would order society differently, we could fix all these problems.
No!
That is not the way it is.
And broken windows policing was an offshoot of that.
That if you allow a society full of people prone to sin to accept minor instances of chaos, Joe, it will exponentially explode into societal chaos if you allow it to continue.
Folks, this was a radical theory at the time in 1982 in policing.
Believe it or not.
Now, the K I just described in an unnecessarily philosophical way, in the broken windows policing theory, is basically this.
You know, when you allow turnstile jumpers and public intoxication and public urination, in other words, Joe, nuisance crimes in a community under the guise of, well, we don't want to waste police resources, Joe, because there are serious things happening, murders, rapes, burglaries.
And if we have a cop tied up with a summons for public urination, he's not responding to a burglary.
In other words, you allow one window to break in a community.
All of a sudden, years later, you find out all the windows of the community are broken because there's a perception of public chaos.
Just like by walking around your community and seeing people in the street, urinating in the street, drinking in public, public intoxication.
You see the squeegee guys.
It leads to a perception of one broken window, which leads to the perception of chaos.
Therefore, when your window breaks, there's no reason to fix it because the neighbor's not fixing his broken window either.
Next thing you know, you have a community full of broken windows.
Got it.
You get it?
When I joined the police department, this is a fascinating article, But again, it speaks to this entire theme of the show today, which is this hegemonic sense of chaos liberals in these population centers want embodied everywhere else.
You know, weaponize government.
No firearms for anyone.
The government will be the only one to have these firearms.
You know, chaos in the street.
You're not even going to be allowed to defend yourself.
Old policing goes out the window.
The gist of the story is liberals like Bill de Blasio, the socialist mayor of New York City, are now starting to dial back some of these broken windows style of policing and saying, well, Joe, you know, we got to leave the people alone who urinate in the street or the squeegee people and all these other folks because it's really not a big deal and we need to focus on bigger crimes.
Give him room to destroy, my friend.
Remember that?
Baltimore.
Yes!
See, only you and I would know that at our Maryland listeners.
That was Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
That was her, right?
Yeah!
Rawlings-Blake.
That was the mayor of Baltimore during the riots up there saying, hey, she said you got to give them room to destroy.
It's this idea like how people just need to vent.
Folks, once one window breaks, they all break.
The community collapses in a sense of chaos and liberals are attacking this right now.
Now, when I lived through this as a cop, just to put a little personal story on this, because this matters.
Yeah.
When I entered the police department as a cadet in 1995, Jack Maple, who was the first deputy commissioner, was working under, they were working on this CompStat program.
And this CompStat program was short for computer statistics.
And it was a revolutionary idea at the time that they were going to bring commanding officers into police headquarters, one police plaza.
And what they did is they put them in front of a, basically a computer PowerPoint said, hey, Brother, CEO of this precinct, commanding officer, I see there's a bunch of public urination complaints at the corner of Sutter Avenue and Pitkin or whatever it is.
What are you doing about it?
Folks, the idea was a revolution.
I'm telling you, I lived through it.
Commanding officers were showing up because I was a cadet at the time in the 114 precinct and I was in, it was the borough, it was the command center.
So we saw all the commanding officers for Queens North.
Which was a portion of the Queens North, a portion of the borough.
They would come in in a panic, Joe.
Because in the past they've been told, let it go.
That's the only focus on the murders and the burglars.
So they would come into these briefings and Maple and these other people involved in the police management at the time who had transferred to broken window style policing.
We are now going to enforce nuisance crimes, right?
They bring these commanding officers in and they were in a panic.
They didn't know what to say.
Well, what do you want me to do?
You want me to dedicate 10 cops to locking people up for public urination?
I'll have no cops on the street.
Joe, you know what the answer was?
You're damn right I do.
There you go.
Yeah.
I'm telling you this was a... Folks, listen to me.
I was there.
This was hugely controversial.
Even some cops on the street were like, This is dumb, man.
Some loved it.
Some thought it was a great idea.
But some were like, this is stupid.
We should be focusing on robbers.
Burglars.
Rapists.
Ladies and gentlemen, where did those critics of Broken Windows go wrong?
The guy who was urinating in the street jumping the turnstile?
Who was the squeegee guy in some cases, or the guy who was intoxicated in public, was the burglar, and the robber, and the rapist, the assaulter, or the murderer.
In many cases, it was the same guy.
So what happened?
I was in the 75 precinct when I became a cop.
It was the busiest precinct in New York City, crime-wise.
It was crime-ridden.
It was really, when I got there, it was a mess.
It's improved a lot since.
This was hugely controversial.
When I first got there, even the 7-5 precinct, this was two years later.
So broken windows is fully being implemented in New York.
The desk officer, they swapped them over from sergeants to lieutenants at the time.
If you brought in someone for smoking a joint, They would laugh you out of the precinct.
Officer!
Did you just lock this guy up for smoking a joint?
This is the 7-5 precinct.
We had 30 homicides last year.
You don't bring this guy in.
Forget your rent out there industry.
And they'd let him go right there.
They'd be like, you, whatever your name is, Joe, handcuffs off this guy.
Get out of here.
And then as time wore on, in the two years I was there, It slowly started to change and you had these task force units in the precinct, Brooklyn North task force units come in, locking people up for nuisance crimes and even some of the cops on the beat with, what are these guys doing coming in here locking up people for smoking a joint?
But the crime rate came down and down and down and the broken windows folks were right.
The guy getting ready to rape or rob someone on the public transportation system in New York or do some, you know, tag up some trains, do some graffiti on the trains, whatever it is.
That's the same guy who jumps the turnstile, folks.
He's not paying with his MetroCard or tokens at the time, maging myself.
He just jumped the darn turnstile because he knew he was going to get away with it.
Now he gets locked up for jumping a turnstile.
He's off the street for 24 hours and that rape or robbery he's going to commit never happens.
Why do you think the crime rate in New York City plunged?
And the police officers and the COs would show up at these CompStat meetings and after a while they became hip to it that you're darn right I better do something about this because Maple and these other senior leaders in the New York City Police Management and One Police Plaza under the Giuliani years were gonna ask him, hey, buddy, You've had, you know, public nuisance reports about loud music at this location.
Now keep in mind, this is the CEO of the 7-5 Precinct, thinking to himself, Joe, the first couple times this happened, loud music.
Brother, you realize we've had 35 rapes in the last six months in our precinct, you're worried about loud music?
And the answer was, you're damn right we're worried about loud music.
Folks, it worked.
And the article is tremendous because Kelling and Joe Q. Wilson were the proponents of this broken windows policing.
And I'm telling you, it was revolutionary at the time.
And in the piece, they bring up a fascinating point.
The reason it was controversial, Joe, but it worked.
The reasons are obvious, right?
Again, I can't tell you something.
The guy who jumps the turnstile is the thief, is the murderer.
So he's off the streets now before he does it.
That's why the crime rate plunged.
And even better, Joe, once you get him for urinating in the street or jumping a turnstile, Then what do they have to do?
They have to do a public safety frisk.
Because you gotta bring him into jail, so you gotta frisk him.
Then what do you find?
You find a guy had an illegal gun on him.
He had a pound of crack or whatever it is.
He's got a kilo of cocaine in his jacket.
Alright, I'm exaggerating a bit.
But you get the point.
And then what does he do, Joe?
Hey, where'd you get the bag of crack from?
Hey, I got it from the dealer on the corner.
What's his name?
Then they go and get the dealer on the corner too.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm excited talking about it because I remember living through it and I can't explain to you enough how revolutionary a police theory this was at the time.
Even the commanding officers on the ground, despite the initial CompStat stuff and the fear of having to answer these questions, still would throw you out of the precinct for nuisance crimes.
Get out of here!
Get this guy public!
What are you, an idiot?
Urinating in public.
And then they had to gradually accept it, and the crime rate is now a fraction of what it was, and the liberals want to turn this back.
They're trying to dial this back now, because again, like Joe said, it's the whole room to destroy thing.
Oh, you know what?
So the guy jumped the turnstile.
He had a bad week.
Society failed him.
You know, capitalists failed him.
Republicans failed him.
It's not his fault.
Let him go.
No, it is his fault.
Everybody had a rough background, me and Joe included.
We all got scars.
That doesn't absolve you of the personal responsibility to do the right thing and take care of your fellow man.
Zero, I put zero credence into that.
One more thing on this before I move on.
Yeah, I know, I love it.
I took the notes and Joe's like giving me the thumbs up.
You can't give me the okay sign like that though.
Because remember, that's like the 4chan scam.
Supposedly you're a white power guy now.
Remember old stupid 4chan?
I know, you didn't know?
You can't say okay anymore.
That's why when I say okay Joe, I go like this.
I build a zero with two hands.
Because these people are so, the media is so dumb.
Google that, I'm not making this up.
If you make the okay sign now, apparently according to the new liberal media, it got suckered, but it's a prank on 4chan.
They were told that that means white power and these idiots believed it.
They're so stupid.
So knowing how dumb they are though, I'm seriously hesitant to do anything.
Whenever someone says okay, I'm like, I'll mouth it out.
Okay.
I'm taking you seriously here, dude.
I'm serious.
Google it.
The media is so dumb.
They got played by a 4chan scam and they still run with it.
But on this note, on the broken windows, Kelling, who's interviewed in the piece or some portions of his interview in the piece written down, said this should not have been a controversial idea, but it was because even in people, Joe, this is pretty cool, who lived in super safe communities.
Joe lives in a pretty safe area of Maryland, generally speaking.
It's not crime ridden by any stretch.
I live in a really safe area, Martin County.
We have a pretty good sheriff down here who takes absolutely no junk from anybody.
You drive into Martin County looking to commit a crime, you're probably not going to get out of it this Sheriff that here is like super tough, right?
Martin County has a reputation for being really hard on crime.
He said it was controversial, not in crime ridden areas, but in safe areas.
Now I can see you're a little confused and I was too.
I read that.
I was like, what does he mean by this?
Yeah.
The reason this theory first in 1982 of broken windows, the reason it didn't, Take right away.
It took almost a decade, like I told you, the 90s when I got in the police department for it really to catch on is because people in middle-class communities saw it as being a little ridiculous too because they didn't have any experience with what public nuisance crimes were like.
In other words, Joe, it was de facto policing the whole time.
In other words, I sense, I can see you as the audience ombudsman and understandably, even I was a little confused by this, but it was brilliant.
So the point Kelling's trying to make is we advocated this broken windows theory of policing.
Don't let nuisance crimes happen.
It wasn't controversial in crime ridden areas.
It was controversial in non-crime ridden areas because people in those areas, if you're happy all the time, you don't know what happiness is.
In other words, that was de facto policing anyway.
They didn't even see it as a strategy.
They saw it as dopey.
Well, what do you mean?
People peeing in the streets and drinking in public.
Why would we waste police assets on that?
Why would they waste police assets?
Because people in almost zero crime areas never saw it as a nuisance because they never saw it at all.
Right, right, right.
You get it, Joe?
Yeah.
It's like, why waste money on something that never happens?
Because it does happen, it's just not happening in Martin County, okay?
So he had a tough time selling this to sheriffs and police departments Who comprise basically the overwhelming areas, most of the United States is relatively low crime.
You know that, I know most of our listeners, you understand that, right?
The large swaths of the United States, when you compare it to trends in big cities, are very low crime areas.
I mean, crime thankfully in my neighborhood, Knock on Wood, is almost non-existent.
I mean, I've been here four years, I couldn't even tell you, maybe there was a burglary in a neighborhood one time?
Not mine.
But do you see what I'm saying?
The police departments are like, this is dumb!
Why are you going to waste assets on jumping turnstiles in Martin County?
This is stupid, bro.
This is dumb.
But they'd been doing it the whole time.
Matter of fact, they'd been doing it so effectively, Joe, that if you got caught... I keep using the public urination example because it comes up a lot in broken windows.
If you even Google it, you'll see it.
Because if you got caught in public doing your business, there was no question in Martin County you were going to jail.
Zero.
They'd already been doing it.
They didn't get it.
Again, it's like if you're happy all the time, you don't understand what happiness is because you've never seen sadness.
You're just like, that's not happiness.
That's just is.
That's just is is.
They didn't get it!
But it wasn't controversial.
In these high-crime areas.
Because in these high-crime areas, when they went out, Kelling and Wilson, and they did these surveys, Joe.
I mean, high-crime areas like the 75 precinct, where I was a cop.
This is how they came up with the theory.
They were asked, what matters to you most?
What bothers you most about your neighborhood?
What would you think they would expect?
Oh, burglaries, the robbers on the street, people carrying illegal firearms, people breaking into my house.
Folks, that's not the answer they got.
The answer they overwhelmingly got in very high crime areas, New York City, Los Angeles, elsewhere, other places, was nuisance crimes.
Hey, these people with the loud music, these people, you know, smoking joints in the street, in front of my house, public littering, people throwing garbage out their windows onto the street.
Sounds like San Francisco.
Sounds like San Francisco?
What's the complaint about San Francisco?
People defecating in the streets, sleeping on the sidewalks.
Ladies and gentlemen, it was the nuisance crimes.
So it took, and folks, who are the people in the political power centers?
They are not people in low-income, high-crime areas.
So you see why it was controversial?
Because people in almost no-crime areas with money and political power and influence saw it as a waste of money.
People in low-crime areas with sadly very little political influence, some with not a lot of money to influence the process at all, they were the ones who thought it was a big deal.
Fascinating, fascinating piece.
I loved every bit of it.
I'm sorry I can't put it in the show notes.
It's a subscriber-only art, but that really sums up the piece for you.
You can Google it.
It's in the weekend edition of Wall Street Journal on Saturdays.
Put Broken Windows, Kelling, Wall Street Journal.
Probably come right up.
But it really was an amazing piece.
And I remember, I'm telling you, I saw it myself.
I remember chasing down a guy in the 3-2 precinct in Harlem, getting in a foot pursuit over smoking a joint.
It's in my first book.
I tell the story in Life Inside the Bubble.
And getting berated by the desk sergeant at the time.
What are you doing rookie?
We don't get it.
We don't lock up people for joints in Harlem.
Are you crazy?
I'll never forget.
I was humiliated in front of everyone.
I thought I was doing policing.
Humiliated.
You get in that muster room and I'm gonna have a talk with you.
That was after he yelled at me for five minutes.
Then we go into the muster room and in the muster he yelled at me for another five minutes.
Finger in my face.
Guy was tall.
I'm 6'1".
This guy was like 6'5".
You don't look up people you're gonna get somebody killed you understand cops are racing to this foot pursuit over this marijuana this joint this guy had I mean I got berated and then when I left it was a totally different scenario when I left the 75 even a few years later they had these task force guys coming in sweeping up squeegee guys Turnstile jumpers, there were prost John missions we'd call them, prostitution John rings, where they'd come in, you know, you know how that works, you'd have a cop, they'd get a female cop, they'd have her dress up, you know, you know the deal.
And she'd get solicited by some knuckleheads in a high prostitution area.
And man, you'd have that paddy wagon pull up full of 30-40 Johns in there.
And after a while, what happened?
They'd learn, don't go back to the 7-5 to pick up prostitutes because they're cops.
And they, I'm telling you, they stopped showing up after a while.
I mean, you know, you'd get incidents here and there.
One more quick story.
That's the way we used to catch the, you know, a lot of times you'd see a man and woman in a car late at night at like two o'clock in the morning and you're not doing anything wrong, but you know, you want to check on them.
So I'd knock on the window.
Again, I was not, I'm a libertarian at heart.
Even as a cop, I had no interest in, and you know exerting my power over people but you know it's two o'clock in the morning you want to make sure everything's okay so a couple times you'd walk up you'd take your flashlight you'd knock on the window and now of course they were um distracted let's say yes and you know you get that look you'd shine the flashlight you'd ask them to roll down the window be like um hey uh uh daddy-o what are you guys doing be like ah you know he's my girlfriend and all right um step out of the car a minute
Joe, what do you think that's the first question you'd ask for?
Now, if you know, you're 99% sure this is a prostitution incident right here.
What do you think you ask the guy if it's his girlfriend?
Let me ask you an even simpler question.
If it is legitimately your girlfriend, do you know her name?
The woman that lives with you?
You do?
Okay, very good.
So that's the first thing I'd ask.
I would say, oh, it's your girlfriend in there.
All right, great.
What's her name?
Antoinette.
Oh, it is?
Okay, cool.
Stand by one second.
Ma'am, come on out.
And I'd see him trying to mumble the name to her.
I'd be like, ma'am, you have ID?
Of course it was not.
It was Mary or whatever.
Joan.
I had no idea what the name was.
And I'd be like, listen, brother, it's time to go.
You know, you need to get out of here.
And that was it.
But that's just a little personal story.
What's her name?
Sheesh, man, how long you guys been dating?
Man, we just met.
How long?
Yeah, five minutes ago.
Oh, it was crazy.
All right.
Oh, yeah, here's a good one.
I wanted to put this one in there today.
This is an important one.
I have two good stories I'll wrap up with today.
One by the Daily Signal in the show notes, one by Legal Insurrection, by Fuzzy Slippers at Legal Insurrection, the greatest pen name ever.
One about the Women's March, Joe.
Ah!
Women's March being cancelled in an area of California because the participants are Overwhelmingly white!
Folks, this is what happens.
Oh, by the way, they are, and here's another quote from the cancellation, that the march was lacking representation from several perspectives.
Folks, this is what happens when identity politics is your identity.
Do you understand that the only purpose to this march is the belief that race is your perspective?
So, as Kristina Haas-Sommers said in a brilliant tweet, So just to be clear, the Women's March in California, it was cancelled, was supposed to be fighting racism by categorizing everyone exclusively by race.
There you go!
That makes a ton of sense.
We are fighting these races.
By the way, are you black?
No.
Then therefore you are not worthy of our- the very definition of racism.
You're not worthy of having a conversation with.
Understand in identity politics, race is your only perspective.
Now of course, me and Joe as conservatives and Christians first, and believer in big R god-given rights, understand that the melanin component of your skin is absolutely irrelevant towards how either I or Joe will ever ever judge you, ever in your life.
Don't mean nothing, baby.
Don't mean nothing to me.
It may mean a lot to the liberals, don't mean a damn thing to me.
What matters to me is your character, your love of God, country, family,
freedom, liberty, whatever you fight for.
That's all that matters to me.
But not to the left.
Understand, the left are the real racists now.
You are to be categorized exclusively by race.
That is the only perspective that matters.
And race is your perspective.
It doesn't matter if you grew up poor and struggled out of poverty in a low-income area.
It doesn't mean if you've been a victim of a crime, your perspective on crime or rape or assault or burglary being a victim of it matters.
Meanwhile, that's the one I want to hear most.
People who've been victims of it.
If you're a reformed drug dealer or drug user who has a perspective on how to rescue yourself from the handcuffs of drug use and abuse in your lifetime, none of that matters.
Your perspective is exclusively your race and your race only.
This is the intellectual vacuum the idiots on the left live with.
Every single time.
Under the guise of quote, fighting racism.
It's a scam.
It's that the melanin component of your skin may, fairly enough, may have a lot to do with how idiots judge you.
And I say idiots because the only one judging you by the color of your skin are people who are frankly morons.
It's, again, the definition of racism.
But the melanin component of your skin has nothing to do with the characteristics in your soul, mind, and body that matter to anybody else with a sound mind or body themselves.
And until we move past that, And get towards a society that actually judges people by their character.
We are going to be lost.
And as the left, I've said this to you repeatedly.
Identity politics is the left's identity.
It is their only identity.
It is all that matters to them.
And it is cannibalistic by nature.
Because when you categorize people by race, you need to find endless classes of new victims.
And those new victims that you have to find By creating a victim mentality, you have to be victimized!
That's what makes them victims in your eyes.
And when you engage in identity politics, it's only a matter of time before people you had previously championed in the past as an identity group, women, whatever it may be, start to be seen as the victimizers too.
You're already seeing it in this California case.
How this march was what?
They were victims of the march because too many white women were involved?
Unbelievable.
Hey, one last thing, and I'll let you roll.
Check out this article in the Daily Signal today.
I'm going to get into a little bit on tomorrow's show about these five, you know, really, I don't want to get into it today because it's going to be the new year, but five ways we're in a real financial pinch right now.
We're talking about the debt situation.
Check it out in today's show notes.
I'll discuss it a little bit on tomorrow's show.
It's a really good piece, short and sweet, but it talks about some of these real serious financial problems we're having now as a country, and we need to know about it.
We can't fix them if we don't understand them.
Hey, I hope you like today's show.
I always appreciate your feedback.
Go to my website.
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There's a contact button on the website.
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We really appreciate it.
Thanks a lot for tuning in, folks.
Have a really Unbelievably happy and healthy New Year's Eve.
Stay safe on the roads tonight.
It can be a little dangerous tonight.
And I will see you all tomorrow.
Thanks for everything.
It's been a really, really tremendous year.
Thank you.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
