In this episode I address the real story behind the Democrat’s shutdown tactics. There’s more here than they’re letting on. I also discuss the explosive new claims made by Devin Nunes in his latest Fox News interview. Finally, I address the dangers presented by the rapid rise of China.News Picks:This top FBI lawyer believed Hillary Clinton should’ve been charged.
Did the Russians really “hack” the DNC? Read this piece for troubling details.
Discredited, conspiracy-theory-promoting congressman Adam Schiff wants to investigate another media hoax.
Trump is playing hardball, and the Democrats are hoping for a “read my lips” moment.
Devin Nunes dismisses the Buzzfeed story and sets the record straight.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a knack for saying outrageous, indefensible things.
The now infamous April, 2007 Wall Street Journal piece by Simpson.
Copyright Dan Bongino All Rights Reserved.
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Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm doing well from freezing Maryland.
Yes, I'm doing well.
No, you're not.
You're freezing number one.
We had a train wreck, technical disaster before the show.
So don't lie to the audience.
Joe is doing terrible right now, but he's faking it really good.
But now we're doing okay.
We cleaned up that mess.
We had a technical disaster before the show.
All right, folks, let me get right to it.
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All right, ladies and gentlemen, first story quick.
What's going on with the shutdown, Joe?
This is the moment.
Roger Kimball has a great piece in the New York Post today.
I have it in the show notes at Bongino.com.
If you subscribe to my email list, I will email you these articles every day.
There are a couple of takeaways from this piece you need to understand.
Number one, this is no longer about immigration or the border wall.
Make no mistake.
This is about one thing and one thing only right now, Joe.
This is about breaking President Trump.
This is a red line in the sand.
The Democrats need to break him.
They need to break his public momentum going forward with this now that he's put an offer on the table.
They need to break him and break his public support.
They need him to do one thing.
And you know what they need him to do, Joe?
They need him to say three words, or in Joe Biden math, four words.
And what are those four words they need him to say?
Read.
My.
Lips.
Oh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You see where I'm going with this?
Read the Kimball piece in the post.
It's excellent.
The Democrats understood in the George H.W.
Bush presidency that his read my lips commitment Read my lips.
No new taxes.
The Democrats understood, because they're devious, that if they could get George H.W.
to break that one promise, that solemn promise he made, read my lips, no new taxes, that they could hammer him with it.
Hammer him with it with oppo research later on.
And what happened?
They wound up making him a one-term president.
George H.W.
Bush, God rest the man's soul.
That's what they did.
They understood that promise mattered.
They understand that another promise matters to Trump now.
Three new words, Joe, that they need that promise.
What are those three new words?
Build that wall!
Build that wall!
Yes!
Those three words need to disappear like an Alka-Seltzer tablet in water and the Democrats know that.
They will not cave on this wall right now when they are trying to break Trump.
That's what this is about.
This is not about immigration anymore.
It is about breaking Trump and breaking his connection to his base.
And every Democrat out there understands that right now.
Now, we cannot separate from the President.
You need to call the White House, call the Capitol Hill switchboard.
You need to let them know you are behind the President on this fully, and that you understand what this fight is really about.
The only thing that's going to break the Democrats right now is public pressure.
They are waiting for a crisis to blame it on Donald Trump, to get him to cave on the build-the-wall promise, and then they're going to use it against him in 2020.
Make absolutely no mistake.
Let me throw a third thing in there this is about, Joe, which was already brought up before.
Forgive me for repeating myself, but it's important here.
The reason, Nate, this is not about immigration number one, it's about breaking that promise number two, is because number three is critical.
They need to build public pressure for impeachment and they can't build public pressure for impeachment while Donald Trump's popularity hovers in the mid 40s.
It's not possible.
They need to fracture your relationship with Donald Trump so that his base, his base starts to dissolve away.
Just disappears like water into steam on a stove.
They need to make sure they break that connection.
That they crack him into 37-35% approval.
Then they will move to impeach.
This is not about any longer immigration or a wall.
It is about a broken promise.
A broken promise that they're hoping Trump breaks.
That they can then use to fracture his support with the base.
That they will then use to move toward impeachment or at a minimum, Joe, a massive political victory in 2020.
Make no mistake.
All right, I have a really stacked show today, folks, so I want to get right to this information.
Let me just talk briefly again about the Covington kids, these Christian school children who were at the pro-life rally in Washington, D.C., who were confronted by the Native American gentleman, Nathan Phillips.
The story went viral.
Many of you saw it.
This Native American gentleman confronts them, walks towards them, starts hitting a drum in their faces.
One of the kids just sits there.
He just smiles, and the media lost their minds, indicting these kids.
Now the school had to be canceled today in Covington, back in Kentucky, apparently, because there are safety problems.
There have been threats.
The story is ridiculous.
Here's the real story there.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's over.
It's over with the media.
You are on your own in your search for truth right now.
Please understand that.
You!
Listen!
You in the car!
You cooking!
You watching your kids!
You with the earbuds in your ear jargon listening to my show!
You in the gym!
It is over!
It's over!
There is no more media!
It is over!
This is not even tabloid journalism right now, this is full-time activism, Joe.
You are on your own in the search for truth.
I said it on Hannity last night, I will say it again to you now on my show.
You are on your own.
Relying on the media any longer in your search for truth, facts, and data.
Data points on which you can make a decision about everyday events in your life and how to interpret them.
Relying on the media is a fool's errand.
Well, what do we do, Dan?
I don't know.
I don't have good answers for you.
I can tell you you'll get the honest truth at a lot of conservative outlets that actually care about the truth, liberty, freedom, and the integrity of the business, but relying on ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, relying on these outlets right now for facts and data to interpret the events in the real world as a fool's errand and you were setting yourself up for failure.
This new standard right now, ladies and gentlemen in the media, if true, if true, this could be devastating, is not journalism.
It's not journalism.
The whole idea of journalism is to report the truth, not report a series of anecdotes and then state with an asterisk and a caveat, if true, oh.
It's over, Joe.
It's over.
The media journalism is dead.
Bury it.
I'm warning you now.
You have been exposed to a litany of fake news stories, major bombshells that turned out to be phony dud firecrackers.
Over and over.
The Deutsche Bank story with Donald Trump's bank records.
The WikiLeaks story with Don Trump Jr.
The Mike Flynn story that he was ordered to contact the Russians when Trump was a candidate.
All false.
Should we go on?
The Nikki Haley drapes story.
She put $50,000 drapes in her house.
It wasn't even her, it happened in the Obama administration.
The McClatchy story about Cohen in Prague.
The BuzzFeed story.
The Covington kids story.
Do not rely on the media for your interpretation of truth.
This is a warning.
It is to preserve you the humiliation of tweeting or Facebooking something out that is absolutely false and having to embarrass yourself hours later by retracting the story and apologizing.
This happened to conservatives too.
It is over.
Journalism is dead.
The new journalism standard is if true, which you should immediately follow, but if credible, they're not credible.
Let me suggest you remember my friend Nikita.
His famous quote, we shall bury you from within.
They're doing a darn good job, Joe.
You see where I'm going with this, don't you?
Of course, because you know what's next in the show.
I don't usually do this.
I usually space out the reads in the show, but I have some really devastating information here I want to get out.
Devin Nunes just unleashed last night on Fox News in an interview with Ed Henry, and it was I don't know if he slipped or if he said it on purpose, but everything we've been talking about on this show, Joe, for the longest time, came out last night in a Devin Nunes interview, and finally some vindication.
I'm going to play that clip in a minute.
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Okay, let's get right to this.
Joe, do you have that new Nest Clip?
Let me set this up.
Devin Nunes appears last night on Ed Henry's, Ed Henry was filling in for Martha McCallum at 7 p.m.
Eastern Time on Fox News.
They were talking about the Michael Cohen BuzzFeed story that was debunked by the special counsel, the gist of it that Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, was instructed by Donald Trump to lie under oath to Congress, which would have been a crime.
The BuzzFeed story was a farce from anybody, anybody paying attention, Joe, from the start.
Why Donald Trump would order Michael Cohen to commit a crime lying to Congress about a non-crime about a Trump Tower project in Moscow that never happened made no sense.
And remember, why the scoop of the decade that Trump ordered Cohen to commit a crime allegedly, the scoop of the decade would be given to a crappy reporter at BuzzFeed with a checkered past, should have sent up red flags for everyone.
But of course the media ran with the story because they hate Trump.
So Nunes was on to comment about it, Joe, but Nunes goes off track a little bit.
I don't know if Devin Nunes, who is a Republican congressman from California who has done an absolutely marvelous job unearthing all the deep dark secrets of the Spygate scandal, I don't know if Nunes Joe feels a little liberated now, now that the Democrats are in charge and he's no longer the chairman of the committee, but he's the ranking member now.
I don't know if He feels this sense of liberation, or if he feels, Joe, that it's just time to get this information out.
But he says something in response to a question from Ed Henry about Michael Cohen, and I want to play the cut now.
Watch what he does.
He immediately changes direction from Cohen and he starts talking about the Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr., Don Trump Jr., Manafort, Jared and these two Russians that show up.
This meeting is the key to the Democrats' whole version of the collusion events that these Russians showed up to give Don Jr.
malicious information on Hillary.
They didn't.
They showed up to talk about Magnitsky and Russian adoption.
But the two Russians who show up, folks, this is important to meet with Don Trump Jr.
Are connected to the Clinton space.
I can't say this enough.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who shows up, is working with Fusion GPS, the company hired by Clinton to produce the filthy dossier, is already working with them.
They brief her before and after the meeting.
This meeting's a setup.
It's a setup.
It's a setup.
It's a scam.
It's a setup.
The other Russian who shows up, Rinat Akhmetchen, with some alleged intel connections to Russian intel, Akhmetshin's lawyer is the husband of an old, former, high-ranking Bill Clinton administration official.
He admits to knowing Clinton staffers, the other Russian intel-connected guy that shows up.
And in the translator, of course, is connections to the State Department where Hillary worked.
I have said to you from the start, this meeting was a setup.
The whole Spygate story is a setup.
Clearly, someone connected with the Clinton space is pushing Russians to contact the Trump team to advance a narrative that Trump is colluding with the Russians.
But no one has yet admitted this who's seen the information.
Joe, Nunes has seen the information.
Nunes has seen everything.
I don't know how credible he is, he already was, he did lie to Congress as you just said.
But something also important to note about the so-called Trump Tower meeting.
This is the meeting that actually Fusion GPS met with the people before and after that
meeting.
Fusion GPS, once again, was a Clinton campaign paid for operations out there.
involved in the setup of the Trump Tower meeting so if they want to bring Cohen
in and talk to him that's great we'll participate but likely if the truth if
you really want to get to the truth behind the Trump Tower meeting fusion
GPS and the Clinton campaign are all over it probably behind it.
Did you hear that? Did you hear what he admitted there at the end? He finally
says that he believes Hillary Clinton's team was behind the setup at Trump Tower.
Folks, we've been saying this forever.
Read my book.
Read Spygate.
Please read it.
Folks, in the book, it's clear as day.
We lay out the most detailed case yet that this Trump Tower meeting was a setup from the start.
The Trump team was framed.
And Nunes last night just comes out with that.
I can't believe more people didn't catch on to this.
Joe, we've only been saying this for what now?
Seven months?
Probably more than that.
Eight months?
Nine?
I don't even remember when episode 628 was anymore, when we first came across this idea that this whole operation was a setup.
That all of these people who keep intersecting with the Trump orbit, alleged to have ties to Russia, really have ties to Democrats, the administration, and intel sources working on behalf of U.S.
intel and with U.S.
intel to set up the Trump team.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's clear as day.
Now, more than ever, the book is critical.
Please read it.
I can't emphasize this enough.
We lay this scam out.
I believe there are going to be two.
Joe, I have down here in my notes, Nunes gives up the cookies.
There are two big reveals coming.
With the declassification of the FISA warrant, the declassification of the FBI emails, and other things.
There are two huge reveals coming.
Reveal number one is what Nunes just said.
That the Clinton operation likely had significant input into the meeting, into Trump Tower.
In other words, it was a setup.
Nunes even says it in the cut, Joe.
Fusion GPS, hired by Hillary, briefed the Russian lawyer both before and after the Trump Tower meeting.
You think that's a big coincidence?
The same company working to set up the Trump team with fake information?
Number one, the Clinton setup will at some point be revealed.
That this whole collusion scam was really a big frame job.
Second, I believe what's coming soon is the extensive coordination with foreign intel and senior leaders of our intel and law enforcement community in the FBI.
I believe the level of detail, Joe, and the interconnected webs and how intimately involved higher-ups in our IC and law enforcement community were with foreign intelligence sources using them to gather information on the Trump team knowing, Joe, they couldn't do it at home.
Why?
Because we have this thing called the Constitution.
We're unmasking and the searching of the database for the Trump team, the NSA database, what I always refer to as Plan A, wasn't getting them where they needed to be on this fake Russian collusion narrative.
What did they do?
They just went to foreign intel partners and they asked them to do the dirty work for them.
It's now clear this was a setup.
That Nunes cut is absolutely devastating.
Nunes knows the whole story.
Okay, I want to get to something else.
That's why I did the reads in the front of the show, because I want to be able to roll with this show, because Jeff Carlson has another piece out in the Epoch Times I have in the show notes today that I strongly encourage you to read.
It's kind of an addendum to yesterday's article I had in there, but it's fantastic.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't believe this was a setup, read this piece.
I'm going to explain it and translate for you, and it's going to hammer you in the head like a Louisville slugger to your side.
You're going to be like, how did I miss this?
This was a setup from the start.
It was an operation by the Clintons, the Obamas, and the compliant people in the law enforcement and IC community to start a fake narrative that had nothing to it at all, that Trump colluded with the Russians.
There's a reason they went with that narrative.
And the reason they went with that narrative, Joe, is that movie script had already been written.
Yep.
Think about it, Joe.
Yeah.
Why not?
If the story is going to be fake, if I'm going to make up a story, follow me, folks, about Joe Armacost as a presidential candidate colluding with someone to win an election, why pick the Russian show?
Why not pick the Chinese?
Why not?
You know what?
Why not pick the Vietnamese?
Why not pick North Korea?
Why not pick another, you know, a dastardly enemy of the United States, a country, why not pick the Iranians?
Well, we know why Obama wouldn't pick the Iranians, but I'm talking about why, right?
I'm talking about why, why other folks would, why, why did they pick the Russians?
Folks, because the Russian narrative had already been written about Soviet and ex-Soviet and Russian influence in the United States.
Oh?
Oh, you doubt me?
You doubt me?
Big mistake.
Don't doubt me on this.
Let me read this title to you again.
April 17, 2007.
Article in the Wall Street Journal.
Listen to me, it's subscriber only.
But I put the article in the show notes today all the way at the end.
You don't, if you can read it, great.
If you have a subscription, great.
If not, I just want you to, you'll get to the title in like one paragraph and it'll stop.
I just want you to screen cap the title because this article is critical for you to read.
It is a 2007 piece about the Russian collusion narrative that was already written, written by who, Joe?
Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS and Mary Jacoby, his wife.
Now, Simpson was with the Wall Street Journal back then.
But he already had the movie script written!
Title, How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington.
The article is about ex-Soviets and Russians attempting to influence Washington lawmakers.
The movie script had already been written, ladies and gentlemen.
The same players are in this 2007 piece who appear in the Russian collusion narrative.
Manafort.
Deripaska.
Uh, what's his, uh, Demetrio Furtash!
People all in my SpyGate book, print this article out, read the book, and compare the two!
This story is already written.
Joe, do you understand where I'm going with this?
They didn't say Trump colluded with China because they already had a movie script written on Russia.
Why start a new movie script?
It reminds me of Red Dawn.
Remember the original Red Dawn?
Wolverines!
Remember that?
Everybody loved that movie.
They did a remake, which was the worst thing in human history, but the original with Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell is really good.
Red Dawn.
And who's in the original Red Dawn, Joe?
The Russians!
The Russians invade America.
They did a remake!
The remake was awful.
They made it the North Koreans because the Chinese objected.
It was originally the Chinese and they made it the North Koreans.
They learned their lesson on that one.
They did!
This is the remake!
Here you go!
That's a great line.
Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS saw what happened with the Red Dawn remake, right Joe?
He's like, no, let's just stick with the Russians.
Let's not do Trump colluded with the North Koreans.
I already have this movie written.
Joe, why mess with greatness?
I wrote this 2007 article.
Now, You may think I'm lost here.
You may say, well Dan, you were talking about Jeff Carlson's piece at the Epoch Times.
Now you're talking about this Wall Street Journal piece.
Oh no!
Oh, I'm not lost at all.
I'm not lost one bit.
I'm going to read to you a line in the Wall Street Journal piece.
Remember, this is Red Dawn.
This is the original Red Dawn, okay?
2007 article by Glenn Simpson about Russian collusion.
Here's a line, a paragraph from that piece.
Leonid Ryman, a powerful member of Russia's cabinet and a close ally of Putin, uses a Washington public relations consultant.
Mr. Ryman is under federal investigation in the U.S.
over money laundering and is locked in a high-stakes battle with Moscow conglomerate Alpha.
For control of a Russian telecommunications empire.
Alpha has paid Barbara Griffith and Rogers, an influential lobbying firm co-founded by Mississippi Governor Haley Barber, nearly two million in lobbying fees.
Let me translate that for you.
High-ranking Russians, according to the 2007... Wolverines!
High-ranking Russians show, back in this 2007 piece, Associated with a Russian conglomerate that Glenn Simpson appears to believe is involved in some shady activity called Alpha.
This Russian conglomerate is paying lobbyists in the United States millions in fees to influence US lawmakers.
You tracking Joe?
Connected Russians, who are connected to this company Alpha, are lobbying people in the United States.
That's the gist of the story.
That's the gist of the entire 2007 original Red Dawn story with Glenn Simpson.
That ex-Soviets and Russians are paying U.S.
lawmakers and U.S.
people a lot of money to influence U.S.
policy.
In other words, what we would call now, Joe...
Collusion!
Collusion's not a crime, by the way!
Or else Haley Barber and all of these other people would have been arrested!
Conspiracy's a crime!
Collusion's not a crime!
The collusion story... This is one paragraph in the piece about Alpha.
There are paragraphs about Oleg Deripaska, Paul Manafort, all of the players in the dossier scheme.
The players in the collusion scheme.
The collusion story had already been written!
Keep that Alpha thing in mind.
This Russian company, Alpha, is involved in this, according to this 2007 piece, the payment of lobbying fees trying to influence people in the U.S.
In other words, again, what they would call collusion.
Now let me read to you this piece yesterday that came out by Jeff Carlson, who's been doing tremendous work in the Epoch Times.
This is in the show notes as well at Bongino.com.
Please subscribe to my email list.
I'll send it right to you.
Close door testimony by former top FBI lawyer James Baker revealed that Michael Sussman, a lawyer and partner at Perkins Coie, gave Baker information alleging a Russian bank, Alpha, was communicating with a server in Trump Tower, an allegation later proven false.
Folks, This is, this is the remake.
It's the Red Dawn remake with the same Russians.
We now know, James, let me translate that for you.
So establishing connection number one, the 2007 piece written by Glenn Simpson, whose company puts together the dossier in association with Christopher Steele.
They already have this movie script about Russians trying to influence US policy.
Collusion.
Hillary Clinton hires Fusion GPS using a law firm, Perkins Coie, a lead lawyer at that law firm, Michael Sussman, who knows James Baker, one of the head lawyers and general counsel at the FBI.
They work together in the criminal division.
Perkins Coie hires Fusion GPS, who wrote the original Red Dawn.
Fusion GPS recycles the same Red Dawn story about Alpha Bank and Alpha Conglomerate trying to influence US people and what do they do?
They erase the old people and they put in Trump Tower.
There's story now that now we know Baker, who pipelined it to the top of the FBI, got from Sussman at Perkins Coie, the law firm who hires Fusion GPS on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
Why, Joe?
Because again, Hillary Clinton does not want to hire Fusion GPS directly.
She wants to avoid the appearance that she's hiring someone to write a movie script.
Right, right, right, right.
So they hire Perkins Cooey for Joe, legal services, dreaded air quotes there.
Perkins Cooey hires Fusion, and then Perkins Cooey works as an information launderer middleman.
They get information from Fusion, they pipeline it to the FBI.
They get information from Fusion, they pipeline it to the media.
Look at the end of the piece by Jeff Carlson and the Epoch Times, how October 31st, 2016, all these stories break at the same time.
New York Times, I think it was Slate, Politico, all these stories break at the same time about this massive Russian collusion scandal.
And look at this, the Russians are communicating with Trump Tower through an Alpha Bank server in Trump Tower.
Through an Alpha Bank back channel.
The same alpha that appears in the 2007 piece?
They already had the movie written.
We now know that Baker, Baker knows, Baker knows Sussman.
They worked together in the criminal division.
Sussman's at this law firm now that's basically a Democrat, basically working for Democrats.
To hire Fusion GPS.
But Baker gets another critical piece of information.
Baker gets another critical piece of information from Sussman at Perkins Coie.
He gets the information that the Russians hacked the DNC because it's Sussman, Joe, at the law firm, that's coordinating the investigation into the hack.
I'm using that term loosely here because that's still never been proven.
The lawyer gets the information from CrowdStrike, a company they hire to look into this.
Follow me here, folks.
A company they hire to look in.
The DNC hires to look into this alleged hack.
Sussman.
Funnels that information to the FBI through Jim Baker, who acknowledges in his testimony to Representative Congressman Jim Jordan, acknowledges that it's highly unusual for a lead lawyer in the FBI to be receiving this information from outside counsel not vetted through the rank-and-file chain of command in the Bureau.
Baker acknowledges this is highly unusual.
Yeah.
We have two critical pieces of information now.
The Red Dawn movie about the Russian invasion was not going to happen with Trump, so they had no evidence.
In order to set up a couple of things, Joe, number one, that the Russians were a primary threat right now, they are a threat, but primary threat number one, not China, not Iran, that the Russians were the number one threat.
They had a light of fire.
They had a light of fuse.
How did they do that, Joe?
They hacked the DNC to try to take over our elections.
Get them!
They had to establish the Russians were our primary threat again.
Why did they have to do that, Joe?
Because the story and the movie script they had written involved the Russians, not the North Koreans.
They had to make sure the Russians were the primary bad guys.
But they only could work with the Russians because that's the story Glenn Simpson already had.
Alpha Bank, all these players.
If you're going to buy information, you want to buy information where you at least have some air of credibility to it.
And Simpson's 2007 story in the Wall Street Journal is largely accurate about the Russians trying to influence US policy.
What's the problem, Joe?
It's not accurate about Donald Trump!
It has nothing to do with Trump!
But they have to make it about Trump.
So established through the hacking of the DNC that the Russians are the number one threat now.
They tried to stop our election.
They tried to infiltrate our election.
Donald Trump is not a legitimate president.
And what's part two, Joe?
And he's working with them.
The problem is he's not working with them.
He's not working with them.
I'm talking about on criminal stuff.
It's not illegal to conduct business in Russia.
There's no illegality here.
So that's when the story tidbit number two comes in.
The Alpha Bank connection.
Folks, they've already, this is, it's so obvious what's going on here.
They need this connection to the Trump team that looks like a surreptitious backchannel.
The Trump team's communicating with the Russians about this election thing they're working on.
They have the dossier on one hand that they're paying Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, to gin up that alleges that Michael Cohen went to Prague and alleged his transfer of information.
But they also need to set up some form of like electronic communication and electronic backchannel.
Why, Joe?
Just because it sounds bad.
So what do they do?
They go back to the 2007 movie script about this awful alpha bank.
They find out that there was some kind of a...
Alpha Bank communication with a server in Trump Tower.
They all run with the story, these media idiots, right around the same time until they find out later that it had nothing to do with Trump Tower.
It was simply a set of spam marketing emails sent to people to a third party who may have been in Trump Tower at the time and nothing to do with a backchannel communication to Russia.
But that script had already been written.
So the plan is obvious.
Re-establish the Russians as a primary threat.
Second, re-establish that the Russians may have interfered with our election.
Third, re-establish that that interference with your election got Donald Trump elected because he was part of it.
This story is obviously nonsense.
But Sussman, who's a lawyer at Perkins Coie, knows he can bypass the nonsense detectors at the FBI by going right to the top, and he goes to Jim Comey's right-hand guy, James Baker, the general counsel at the FBI, who acknowledges this is highly unusual.
Here's another quote from the Epoch Times piece.
Baker's initial meeting with Sussman, this is the Perkins Coie lawyer, took place on September 19, 2016.
The timing is particularly notable as Steele had just produced a series of three new memos dated September 14, 2016.
One of these memos directly referenced Alpha Bank, misspelled in Steele's memo as Alpha with a PH.
You see what's happening, folks?
Steele's then dealing with a group of reporters and so is Sussman.
They're writing these phony dossiers about Alpha, leaking the information to reporters so that they can run back to the FBI, Sussman and others, using those FBI Using those reporters' stories about Alpha Bank.
Oh, look, you see what I told you about Alpha Bank and the Trump Tower communication back channel?
It must be true.
Reporters are writing about it.
They must have sources.
It was all the same source.
Fusion and Christopher Steele.
It was just circular reporting.
You see what they did, Joe?
That's a lot of hocus pocus going on there, man.
Big time hocus pocus.
Big time.
And Sussman knows Baker.
They worked together in DOJ in the criminal division.
These people all know each other.
This swamp is very real.
So just to backtrack a bit because I want to get to another story and I want to just make sure you understand what happened here.
This was a setup from the start.
The Trump Tower meeting was clearly a setup with deep connections to the Clinton sphere and the Clinton space.
I believe those Russians were sent there to set up Don Trump Jr.
and the Trump team because they planned on using a Russian narrative later, a collusion narrative, to make sure the Trump team went down right before the election or if elected is impeached.
Why did they need a collusion narrative?
Because Joe, they already had the movie script.
Simpson already wrote this story.
It's crystal clear.
The story's already there.
Read the article in the Wall Street Journal.
All the players were already there.
Why recreate a new story?
But to make sure they could tie Trump to a Russian collusion story that had been written in 2007 before Trump was even in politics, they had to create a connection to Trump.
So Sussman, Perkins, Cooey, and CrowdStrike start this Democrats hack the DNC thing.
Christopher Steele writes a dossier while they hack the DNC and then Trump and Michael Cohen help coordinate it by going to Prague and getting the emails.
They then tie them to Russia through this Alphabank backchannel of servers in Trump Tower.
That Alphabank in Russia that already appeared in the 2007 articles communicating with someone in Trump Tower.
This is the backchannel they're using to exchange this information.
It was not true!
The story's been entirely debunked.
It was nothing but a bunch of spam emails to a server that had nothing to do with the people at Trump Tower.
They had to create the connection to Trump.
They had to delete out some of the players in the past and insert new players now.
Delete Haley Barber from the 2007 piece?
Insert the Trump team.
It served two purposes.
He colluded with Russia.
Russia's our new enemy.
That's number one.
Make Trump look bad.
But secondly, make it look like the election was illegitimate.
Conveniently, at the same time, one of Hillary Clinton's higher-up staffers, Joe, tweets out what?
Tweets out that this is damning evidence, talking about the Alpha Bank story communicating with Trump Tower.
Right around the same time, Sussman's alleged to be leaking to the media about the Alpha Bank story and the components of the dossier.
Also around the same time, Christopher Steele is about to be fired from the FBI for leaking to the media himself.
Now do you understand why I brought up the it's over story first before I got to this about the media?
Ladies and gentlemen, it's not just that the media, not all, The reporters at Fox, I know personally, do a great job.
I'm talking about the hacks at CNN, MSNBC, Slate, Fox, and all these... Fox with a V. All these other people who have worked at these outlets to endlessly promote this Russian collusion conspiracy theory, which was a crime.
It was a crime on behalf of people in the Clinton team, who at this point, I believe, as clear as day, were involved in the setup of a Trump team to frame them for a collusion scandal they made up.
They were the ones dealing with the Russians to set up the Trump team.
And who was a key player in this?
The media.
The media was a key player in this.
The media was an accomplice in this.
The media was used by Christopher Steele, willingly used, these were not innocent victims.
Willingly, yeah.
Used by people at Perkins Coie, used by people at Fusion GPS, to advance stories they had to suspect were false, to then use those stories to go back to the FBI and say, look, the stories must be true, the media is reporting on.
It was a farce.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's over.
Relying on the media.
It's not that they are engaged in misfeasance.
They are engaged right now in open malfeasance.
They are intentionally lying to you to advance and propagandize, advance false narratives and propagandize you.
They are gaslighting you.
They are lying and repeating lies over and over and repeating them confidently and trying to isolate you from the truth.
The real scandal is the Democrats and the IC and the FBI's collusion with people connected to Russian entities and foreign intel who are friendlies to set up the Trump team.
That's the scandal.
And Nunes let the cookies out last night, and the media has played a key role in that.
Alright, I've got a couple more things to get to, but this is just a devastating, devastating series of developments over the past few days.
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Okay.
Just quickly a story on China I saw in the Wall Street Journal today and I'm going to sum it up for you in a fast nugget because I want to get to some just a quick Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez against my bitter judgment quote that in the realm of absurdity ranks like an 11 on a 1 to 10 scale.
But before I get to that piece in the journal today about why China's emergence as a Fascinating piece, Joe.
on the world stage was so dangerous to us right now and why the emergence of post-World War II Japan
and Germany as manufacturing and economic powerhouses was not as dangerous, was not dangerous to us
matter of fact at all, it was good for the global economy.
Fascinating piece, Joe.
I'm gonna sum it up quickly.
Post-World War II, Joe, there was a kind of a, let's call it the old order.
The old order was this.
The dollar was the world's reserve currency, meaning, you know, post Bretton Woods, we had a lot of convertibility to dollars.
If you wanted to do international transactions in a lot of commodities, oil and other types of commodities, they were denominated in U.S.
dollars.
That simply means, Joe, that we kind of get a free loan all around the world because if you want to do business in certain things, you got to use dollars.
Right.
Which means you have to get dollars.
Which means if you're doing business in Japanese yen, you've got to exchange them for what, Joe?
Dollars!
Which makes the dollar, which basically keeps interest rates low in the United States because it essentially, every time a dollar transaction happens all over the world when the dollar's the reserve currency, it creates a demand for dollars.
It gives us almost essentially low-interest loans all around the world.
A benefit we have because the dollar has that near-exclusive role right now as the world's reserve currency.
Because of what I just told you, a lot of these transactions are done in dollars and are not done in other currencies.
The Chinese and the Russians are trying to change that, of course, because they don't like that we get low-interest loans.
Pursuant to that demand for dollars, Joe, what did it enable us to do?
It enabled the United States, because people all over the world wanted dollars, to keep our interest rates really low, but it enabled us to print a lot of money as well, without the fear of rampant inflation, because those dollars were being hoovered up around the world.
I'm not suggesting this is good or bad.
I'm just telling you what happened.
Old world order.
We defeat the Japanese and the Germans in World War II.
We rebuild their countries.
The United States becomes the dollar, the dollar becomes the reserve currency.
Interest rates stay low because everybody needs dollars.
There's a lot of demand for them.
That creates basically an advantage for foreign countries whose products become cheaper with respect to the dollar because demand for dollars is high.
So demand for dollars stays high, foreign currencies become cheaper.
What does that do?
It makes their products cheaper.
So what does that enable us to do?
It enables the United States to buy a lot of foreign products.
Hence a lot of these trade deficits.
These trade deficits though, Joe, we buy a lot of, you may have to listen to this twice, we buy a lot of foreign products because their currency is cheap relative to ours.
There's not as much demand for their currency.
So what do we do?
We send dollars overseas to places like Japan.
Remember, you know, the big made in Japan craze.
We send dollars overseas to Germany who were rebuilding after, had a powerful manufacturing renaissance after World War II.
Those dollars can't be spent in Germany and Japan, Joe.
They gotta come on back, baby!
Yeah!
They have to come home!
So what does the United States do?
The United States borrows back that money and it enables us to run basically big deficits in the United States and keep interest rates low.
How about that?
In exchange for that, again, I'm not suggesting this is... I'm not making a moral judgment on it.
I'm just giving you the pure economic timeline of it.
In exchange for buying massive amounts of their products and them lending us back our own money, which we're buying cheaply from them, we engage in this global security arrangement.
We rebuild Germany, we assist in a nuclear umbrella with Japan and other countries and friendlies, and we become the de facto world policeman, a position I don't agree with.
But that was what's happened, which enabled us, this largesse of the United States being the dollar, the reserve currency for around the world, It enabled us to run massive deficits because we're buying a lot of people's stuff super cheap and they're lending the money back to us to finance this global police force.
This old order was the way things were before the emergence of China.
What was the problem with China, Joe?
China had a big beef with us.
China was not a free market like Japan and Germany.
China decided to enter the world market under some, air quotes, reformed communism.
It's a socialist country.
China didn't want to play fair.
China wants to hollow out people's manufacturing bases, steal their technology, and engage in global adventurism with its military.
This is not what happened with the Japanese and the Germans after World War II.
This agreement's been fit.
In other words, the Chinese may be lending us back the money, but they're doing it more to control our economy and our old interest rates and to build out their own military on the super cheap.
Right, right.
By building their own manufacturing base.
You get it, Joe?
It's a fascinating story.
The article, unfortunately, subscription only in the Wall Street Journal, but it's a good one.
But that's it in essence, that the old world order, excuse me, I don't mean that conspiratorial kind of way, was never going to work with the Chinese because unlike the Japanese and the Germans, they're not interested in playing friendly with us.
We're shuttling U.S.
dollars overseas to a country building out its own manufacturing base to build a military and to steal our industrial secrets.
Interesting.
All right, let me get to this last story.
It's important.
Joe, you have that cut of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
She is at this rally yesterday.
Rally, I shouldn't say.
It's an event for an MLK event.
But she's on stage and she's asked the question about the economy and the role of billionaires and money.
And her answer is so absurd.
I'm going to focus on two quick parts.
I hate playing plugs of this, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Do we live in a moral world that allows for billionaires?
Is that a moral outcome in and of itself?
to be combative. So play that cut by AOC.
No.
Do we live in a moral world that allows for billionaires?
Is that a moral outcome in and of itself?
No, it's not. It's not.
And it's not, and I think it's important to say that.
I don't think that necessarily means that all billionaires are immoral.
It is not to say that someone like Bill Gates, for example, or Warren Buffet are immoral people.
I do not believe that.
But I believe... Or that he kicks his dog or something like that.
Right, yeah.
I'm not saying that.
But I do think a system that allows billionaires to exist when There are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don't have access to public health is wrong.
And I think it's wrong that a vast majority of the country does not make a living wage.
I think it's wrong that you can work a hundred hours and not feed your kids.
I think it's wrong that corporations like Walmart and Amazon can get paid Okay, two things there that jump out to us.
by the government essentially experience a wealth transfer from the public for
paying people less than a minimum wage.
Okay two things there that jump out to us. First is the most ridiculous one of
all of course that you know billionaires are awful for the economy.
I don't know what she wants.
A rule that billionaires aren't allowed.
I'm not really sure where she gets that from.
I don't think she understands the role of capital in an economy.
I don't think she gets what... She may be envious and jealous of them, which she appears, but she clearly doesn't understand the economics of how billionaires and capital work, Joe.
What do you think billionaires do with their money?
Well, they hide it under their mattress.
They do?
Really?
Billions of dollars?
How does that work?
Even if they did do that, by the way, that still isn't a bad thing for you.
If they burn their money, the money you have would be worth more.
They don't understand basic economics.
What billionaires do is they put their money back in the financial system.
They keep it in banks.
I'm not sure she knows that.
And those banks then take that money and loan it out to people who then use that money to build their own businesses and hopefully become billionaires later.
Again, this is simple econ 101 stuff.
I know she doesn't get that.
I know she's jealous and envious of people who are successful.
That's fine.
I'm not sure what she really knows about economics.
She seems to just be off on a tangent.
But the second part of that, Joe, Is one of the dumbest lines I've ever heard in my life.
That billionaires are a bad thing because people in Alabama have ringworm?
Does Miss Cortez know what ringworm is?
Does she think ringworm is an actual, like, intestinal worm?
Ladies and gentlemen, ringworm is a tinea corporis.
It's a body fungus, similar to athlete's foot.
Or downstairs or whatever you call it.
It's a body fungus.
It is not a life-threatening condition.
It is certainly not a global health crisis.
So her logic for defeating capitalism is that a couple of dudes on a wrestling mat or a Brazilian jiu-jitsu class got it ringworm?
Just put some Lamisil on it!
Go get the Lamisil!
Just get the Lamisil!
Or what is it?
The Clotramin?
Folks, listen.
Newsflash.
I've had ringworm.
Like five times.
You know why?
The old days when we used to grapple in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes and they didn't clean the mats, they do now.
Back in the day, everybody got ringworm.
You just put this, it's a red patch, it itches, you scratch it for a day or two, you put the Lotrimin on it, and it goes away!
It is certainly not a life-threatening condition worthy of upending the entire world system of economic freedom, or United States capitalism, or destroying the wealth of billionaires over ringworm!
Ladies and gentlemen, I swear she thinks this is intestinal worms!
She... Joe!
She wants to bankrupt the United States over a body fungus!
She wants the body... Tenacorporus is the cause of all of it!
Tenacorp... I'm pretty sure that's the scientific name for ringworm.
Ladies and gentlemen...
If you've had ringworm, post a picture of your ringworm, and please, post a proof of life picture the next day.
I want you to go with it, pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal, or print out a page from Breitbart or something with the date on it.
And if you've had ringworm, the next day, please Post it, send it to me at dbangino on Twitter, put me in it, hashtag it ringworm, I'm not dead, and I want you to show us a proof of life picture the next day that the body fungus known as ringworm has not killed you.
It is very easy to get rid of.
Folks, please, for all the The liberals out there who believe that Ringworm is a global health crisis threatening to destroy capitalism and everything else, please reach out to me.
I'll work some kind of an endorsement deal with like a Lotrimin type company or whatever those products are and we can I can send you a jar for free.
Leave the money makers and the capital forming process and economics alone over fungus.
Fungus can be easily destroyed.
I think like gentian violet can work if you're super cheap too.
Like if you put that kills fungus too.
That was the old remedy.
That was the old one, yeah.
Oh my gosh.
See all the kids running around with purple whatevers?
Yeah, you know?
Yes, I'm not a doctor by the way, so don't try that without talking to your doctor.
But I read that once.
Please do not destroy the United States economy over body fungus.
My gosh.
I know I've been trying to ignore it, I know, but I just can't, ladies and gentlemen.
The stuff that comes out of Representative Cortez's mouth is so ridiculous, it has to be combatted at every turn.
There are people out there who are going to believe that there is a mass epidemic of body fungus killing people all over the United States, especially in Alabama, which she mentions.
All right.
Folks, we're going to get out of here.
Sorry, the show ran a little late today for us.
We had a couple of technical issues in the beginning.
We got past them.
Still working on some stuff.
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