In this episode I address the swamp’s latest effort to undermine and destroy the Trump presidency through the “Iron Triangle.” I also cover the real scandal behind the Trump “collusion” narrative and why the White House May be holding back. News Picks:
I’m getting tired of the stupid “Republicans Pounce” narratives.
The Axios “scoop” about how President Trump spends his time is a flop.
Border town residents fear cartel retaliation for reporting immigration crimes.
Andy McCarthy’s new piece is a stunning indictment of the Mueller witch hunt.
It’s Trump versus everyone else. The Swamp returns.
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, Daniel.
Doing well, man.
Thanks.
Is Monday ever fine?
No.
Monday is never fine.
Because you and I, I mean, listen, it's the start of a work week, which is always a little rough for people, but you and I have the entire weekend of news to catch up on.
So it's hard for me to triage the stories to find out what I, you know, I can't get into your heads and find out what the most important things you all need on Monday is.
So I have to kind of make judgment calls.
Always worries me that I'm going to miss something.
So I got a lot to get to.
Let's get right to it.
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All right.
One, let's just start with the Super Bowl yesterday.
Democrats have to politicize everything, which is funny, Joe, because the NFL, you know, the NFL was their biggest fan.
They loved the NFL when Colin Kaepernick was kneeling and basically crapping on the country wearing, remember that, Joe?
Wearing the socks with police officers depicted as pigs.
Colin Kaepernick was the left's biggest fan.
They loved the NFL when they kept him on board.
Now, because the Patriots We won the Super Bowl and we're competing in the Super Bowl.
The Daily Beast, the ridiculous far-left tabloid site, put out a piece before the Super Bowl started yesterday, Joe, that, and I quote, the Patriots are the preferred team of white nationalists.
Oh man, come on!
Yeah, yeah.
No, not come on.
So yeah, that really happened.
This shows you they politicize everything.
Do you understand the fight we're in, folks?
They will politicize everything.
I've said to you before, the reason people like me, Joe, and a lot of patriots out there support Donald Trump is not because he's without sin or he's perfect or we should beatify him as a saint.
That's not the case.
We support Trump because we're in a situation of battlefield morality right now.
It's important you understand this.
I can't bring this home enough to you.
Battlefield morality.
In other words, when you're sitting there in a trench, in some kind of an ideological war footing, and I don't usually typically like war analogies because it's a unique thing, and people who've been there, not including me, understand that.
I only know that because I've spoken to many of them, and one of them in particular changed my life.
But it's important in this situation because it's the only analogy powerful enough, which I think will sink into people, that in this battlefield mentality, when you're looking at your battle buddy next to you, Or if you're in some dangerous situation, you don't ask him what his Twitter behavior is, how he treated his ex-girlfriend.
You're worried about staying alive.
And the problem is the Democrats, right Joe, have fostered upon us, have hoisted onto our backs a situation where everything is political.
They've destroyed football.
Bathroom usage has become political.
Everything.
The very existence as a Catholic and a Christian in this country has become political.
When you are in that situation where you feel an existential threat to who you are and what you believe in in your country, you get the battle buddies on your side that you know are going to fight.
And Trump is clearly a fighter.
It explains 99% of the support for him and why people like me support him too.
I wish the Democrats would get that.
They politicize everything.
Hey, just a quick side note before I move on to thanks to everyone who watched our video clip on Twitter.
We're not going live yet or putting our entire show video on YouTube yet, but it'll be there soon.
But if you follow me on Twitter and Facebook, I'm the verified account, the checkmark account there, you'll see that we're putting some video clips up from the show.
And I got a lot of comments on you, Producer Joe.
Oh, did you?
People finally get, yes, yes, people are sending me emails.
So happy to finally see Producer Joe.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And a lot of comments about how I was eating the mic last time.
So it's because we're used to audio only and I get on top of the mic a lot.
So forgive me for that.
All right.
But moving on, they politicize everything.
Everything.
So, in the interest of openness and honesty, folks, with you, because this show matters to me, and my credibility to you is everything, there's a couple things I want to address before I move on.
I've got a lot of great stories for you today, so don't go anywhere.
First, I got an email this morning from a guy.
Understandably, he said, you know, Dan, you said on Fox & Friends this morning that you watched some clips from the Super Bowl, and I did.
I saw the fourth quarter of my wife, some of the halftime show, and portions of the beginning of the show until we flipped off to the puppy ball.
And he brought up a great point, and I want to address it so we're crystal clear on everything.
And, you know, listen, I appreciate your feedback, folks.
The difference between this show and other shows is Joe and I read it, and it matters.
I don't pretend to have some kind of a thick skin.
If I feel like I let my audience down, it matters to me.
And he said, Dan, you said conservatives never forget.
Which we do, and they don't, Joe.
Target and other things like that.
When you insult conservatives and you go after them, especially the NFL, they never forget.
I have not watched an NFL game in three years.
Why did I tune in yesterday for portions of it?
I did, folks, because I felt some obligation given the cultural significance of the game.
It's not just the game.
I didn't watch the playoffs.
I didn't watch the game the whole season.
But it's more of a cultural event, and I... Candidly, folks, and I understand if you may be upset, and I appreciate your feedback.
Either way.
I feel like there'd be a vacuum in the show today if I didn't at least have some idea of what happened.
And I'm sorry, I don't mean that in any way to sound hypocritical.
I'm done with the NFL.
Paula, you're out, Sy.
My wife knows me better than anyone.
Paula, are we done with the NFL?
Thank you.
We are.
I'm sorry.
It's over.
I was a huge Raiders fan.
I loved the Ravens when I was in Maryland.
I used to listen to the games on WBAL.
But being in this space and commenting, there are people who are expecting at least something on it, and I just want to be sure I didn't miss something there.
So forgive me, I get that some of you were bothered by that, and I totally understand.
But again, I don't regret it.
I think I had to do that for a reason.
But I am done.
I mean, I don't watch the NFL anymore.
They burned me.
And I said, until they come out with a conclusive statement rebuking attacks on police officers, everything else, the kneeling, and they institute a policy where you're going to stand for that national anthem, I am done.
But I understand your problem with me tuning into portions of it yesterday, and it matters.
But secondly, I had talked about this Northam case.
Let me just get into it first.
The governor of Virginia, who may not be the governor of Virginia by the time today is over, Monday.
I didn't bother Joe about this this weekend, although I frequently talk to him about issues and commentary with the show, and I didn't talk to my wife about it a lot either, because I didn't want to ruin it.
It was my youngest birthday party this weekend.
I had a daddy-daughter dance, and I did have some other things going on.
I have a life.
But some of you are a bit disappointed that the Northam photo, he is the governor of Virginia, there was a photo that surfaced in his yearbook of two individuals, one dressed in a just, I mean, I don't even know how to describe the horror of seeing someone in a Ku Klux Klan outfit in a picture taken in 1984.
As if it was, I mean, when the Ku Klux Klan was at peak popularity in the South, it's a terror organization.
You understand what I'm saying?
How did you not understand this when it was happening?
But in 1984, there are red lines in society we don't cross.
Now, you get where I'm going with this?
You might as well dress up as the devil incarnate.
There's no more reviled organization in the United States right now than any remnants of this disgusting filth left.
So to put yourself in a photo there, or anyone, And to put it in a yearbook is obviously a red line that should never be crossed in a civilized society.
This picture surfaced, and I had brought up because I was honest, in an interview on Friday on the Tucker Carlson Show, which by the way was about a different topic.
I wasn't on to discuss the governor of Virginia.
In an interview on the Tucker Carlson Show, I was asked at the end of Tucker's show, hey, what's your take on Northam?
And I was honest.
I said, listen, I was sent this picture by a guy, and I appreciate the guy sending, he knows who he is, in October of 2018, but could not verify it.
And by the way, the amount of emails I got on this was overwhelming.
And I kid you not, 99% were supportive, saying, listen, I understand, you couldn't verify it, you didn't run with it.
And I couldn't.
And a lot of Monday morning quarterbacks came in and said, well, you know, you could have drove down to the campus, picked up the yearbook.
Folks, in October of 2018, put yourself in my position.
What's going on?
I have a three-person crew back then.
Including me.
It's my wife and Joe, right?
That's really it.
Yeah.
But what else happened in October of 2018, Joe?
There was this little book that literally came out a week before I get this email.
I have three jobs at the time.
NRA TV.
My book is in full-blown, it's going crazy, and we're being sent tips and everything.
Our email box is overwhelming.
We're getting close to 200-300 emails a day on SpyGate and other stuff as well.
And additionally, I'm doing my show, and I'm a dad to two young girls.
And a husband.
Folks, this is not, you know, the Washington Post.
The Washington Post isn't the Washington Post, which is kind of funny.
But I don't have a staff to- when I can't verify something, and I couldn't, I just did not have the time to do it the right way, I don't run with the story.
And you know, I'm sorry, I have no regrets at all, none.
I don't, I don't know what, Joe, when we get nailed on something on the show, like remember we had, I was, I made the mistake, I predicted the Blasey Ford wouldn't show up.
I was devastated when I was wrong in that prediction.
And what did we do?
We came out of the show, we gave a heartfelt apology because I feel like I owe you my best analysis and my analysis was wrong on that.
But we have, on Spygate, We have been on it and on other stuff as well, by the way.
We have been on it from day one.
If you're listening to this show, you are three, four months ahead of the news cycle.
I can't run out everything.
I didn't have the crew to do it.
It's as simple as that.
I have absolutely no regrets.
None.
Why couldn't you drive out?
Because I had three... I was working 15, 16 hour days.
We get... Do you understand how many tips we get every day?
And folks, if you send me a tip and you don't get a follow-up, please send... It doesn't have to go through me.
I am not concerned on my site with clickbait or breaking stories so that everybody will rush to... I'm not!
I am not concerned.
I'm concerned with the truth.
If someone else breaks a big story you sent to me and didn't get the results you needed, that is great.
I will talk about that till kingdom come.
I wish I would have gotten Chuck Ross's scoop at the Daily Caller about Stefan Halper, but I didn't.
But I applaud Chuck Ross.
He did great work.
I did not have the capabilities.
Now, we've expanded our staff a bit.
We have some ability now, limited, but some ability to run stuff out.
But if you don't get the results for me, you follow up with somebody else.
Please, I appreciate that you all email me.
That's why I leave my email out there.
But I am not a repository for every single political tip that comes in ever that I can run it out exhaustively.
I just don't have the ability to do that.
I was focused almost exclusively on what I feel to be the biggest scandal of our time, Spygate.
And even there, Joe...
Sorry to be long-winded about this, but it's important.
Even there, there are scoops we had long ago that we didn't run with and we passed off to other people.
And to the female, right Joe?
To the female reporter, you know who you are, who we sent one of the biggest tips in the entire Spygate case, a name that had been previously unsurfaced.
You know who you are.
I let that person run with it because it wasn't important to me to be the one there on the face of it.
What was important is it got out the right way.
That's what's important.
So again, I'm sorry, but if you're looking for an apology here, I have no regrets at all.
I will verify what I can verify and run with what I can run with when I'm ready to do it.
And when I'm not, I'm not.
I would rather miss a thousand big scoops and let other outlets pick them up.
Then be wrong on one of them and have the show's credibility in the can forever.
And if that bothers you, that's fine.
The show is free.
I love my audience to death and it's precisely why I refrain from running.
Do you know how many other stuff is sitting in my mailbox out there?
We get three to four hundred emails a day sometimes.
I just wanted to address that.
Now onto the core of this.
Listen, with Northam, the pictures are disgusting.
And by the way, nobody can verify yet that it's him in the photo.
Is it him?
Is it not?
I don't know.
I have no idea.
Nobody knows.
Until someone comes forward and can conclusively prove it's him, nobody knows that.
Having said that, the fact that this appeared on his page is done.
It's donezo.
He's finished.
Guy's done.
He's finished.
This is 1984.
Again, it doesn't matter when it was.
Somebody on his page is in a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
That's the story.
The period.
That's it.
He cannot go, he must resign.
He has no political capital left at all.
I've explained to you political capital repeatedly.
It's like a bank account.
The way the political capital bank account works is you make deposits, endorsements, good legislative proposals, policy procedures, positive approval numbers in your polls, and those are like deposits in that political bank account.
As the balance in that political bank account goes up, you can do things.
You can move the public position.
You can move legislation.
As the political bank account drops down and down and down, you lose the ability to influence the population and move an agenda you want.
Do you understand that Northam's political bank account, Northam right now, is zero?
It's zero.
He has no support from anyone.
He has to resign.
This is a red line in America.
We just, I'm sorry, but cannot be crossed.
You can't have a Ku Klux Klan picture.
I mean, is this hard for reasonable people to understand?
He has to go.
But having said that, because that's his common sense analysis right there, secondly, We cannot let the Democrats off the hook here.
Folks, do not eliminate the possibility that this photo was leaked by Democrats.
Now, why did this come out now?
The answer, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty obvious.
It came out because Northam was becoming a political liability.
Why?
He was a political liability because he spoke the truth about what late-term abortion really is.
It is the killing, the termination of the life of a fully formed infant child.
And Northam was one of the first Democrat politicians to go on a major market radio station, WTOP, in the nation's power center.
I know the station well.
I lived in Maryland.
It is the most powerful station in that area.
Joe knows it well too, being in that radio business.
Their ad rates are absurd because their audience is enormous.
It's a monster.
He went on the station, it's a monster, and talked about a monstrous procedure.
The termination of a young life.
And he spoke about it honestly.
He had to go.
Because the Democrats have tried to make a distinction for a long time between, quote, reproductive health and the termination of life.
They have tried to reframe the argument away from what it is, Joe, abortion.
It is the termination of a human life.
I know why you took Joe off, Pauly.
Paula just took Joe off the scene because she sees me staring at him.
That video, I can totally get it in my wife's head.
She sees me looking at him up on the screen up there.
Folks, this is the termination of a human life.
Abortion, right?
The Democrats have tried to reframe this consistently to a reproductive health argument.
Northam brought it right back, Joe, to what it is.
We'll keep the infant comfortable while a decision is made.
A decision is made?
What decision is there to be made?
Keep them comfortable?
What, are you going to pat them on the back while you're deciding whether to terminate them or not?
This was a liability.
Northam had it go.
Don't discount the fact that this thing was released because I'm telling you, multiple people had this thing.
Don't discount the fact that it was leaked, potentially by Democrats, in an effort to get Northam out, to get this guy out of office, because the abortion issue for them is a sacrament!
Don't discount that.
People had this.
I'm not so sure, ladies and gentlemen.
They may have hid it for a long time, and my guess is some Democrats understood it was going to come out anyway.
Some Democrats probably understood that if it was gonna come out, this is the time to do it.
Let's just take a bath with this guy.
He's heard us on the abortion comments.
He's heard us elsewhere.
It's time to get rid of two controversies at one time.
Think!
Think this through!
I don't know, maybe it's that I've run for office and I've seen how these idiots work.
That I have no faith left in these people at all.
What I mean by that is that I'm sure people had this before.
And they needed to get rid of this guy.
Having said that, we cannot let the left off the hook on this.
Whenever an abortion comment is made, On anyone on the conservative or Republican side of the fence, right?
Think of the Murdoch campaign for Senate in Indiana, the Aiken campaign in Missouri.
What happens, Joe?
Every single Republican in the country must be put on the record from now to the end of time.
Do you agree with Aiken's comments?
Do you agree with Murdoch's comments?
Every time.
This will go on and on and on.
We cannot let the Democrats off the hook.
We should demand the same standards of journalism, with the dreaded air quotes, from the media.
The media wants to question people about abortion?
Well, when someone makes a comment like this, like Northam justifying infanticide, then I want them on the record too.
Every Democrat should be asked from now through the end of the 2020 campaign for president, every single one, where do you stand on Governor, or former Governor, probably soon to be former Governor Northam, he has to resign, where do you stand on his comments on what effectively was infanticide?
The death of a fully born infant.
Where do you stand on that?
Everyone who shows up at town halls, everyone who shows up at a meeting for the next runs for Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency in 2020 should demand an answer from every Democrat candidate on this.
Please.
It's only fair.
The comments were disgusting, and the efforts to get this guy out of there, Northam, so they can clean the slate on the abortion topic?
No, no, no good.
Secondly, one more thing.
It's kind of not related to Northam, but related to getting the Democrats on the record.
It is an imperative.
It is key that we also get the Democrats on the record about what's going on in Venezuela right now.
This is an ongoing human tragedy.
Millions of people are showing up in the streets to get rid of the socialist despot, Nicolas Maduro.
A tyrant and a savage.
Socialism has failed in front of the faces of a new generation of people.
Joe, you and I, both in our adult teen years, and you're a little older than me, both watched the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union in front of our faces and fully understood the damage this system causes.
The destitution, the depravity, the starvation, the economic destruction.
We watched it.
It was clear to us.
Socialism became a sick, tragic joke on humankind after the Soviet Union collapsed, and only idiots believed in it.
After that.
Now, because socialism, unlike, say, fascism, has its apologists out there, the Bernie Sanders of the world, and this new generation of Democrats as well, led by Ocasio-Cortez, Rep.
Cortez, and others.
Socialism has managed to escape the historical stain of death and destruction that fascism has.
Frankly, I don't understand why.
No, me either.
Because the Democrats are obsessed with government power.
But, I mean, really, fascism is no different.
Socialism may have economic organizing principles where the government controls the means of production, but its effect on people's lives and the death and destruction is absolutely no different.
None.
Watching it now, this new generation of people is going to live through what Joe and I and my wife lived through.
Watching in live time the destruction of an entire country due to socialism.
Every Democrat, just like Northam's comments about abortion, needs to be on the record, every one of them, about what's going on in Venezuela right now.
You either stand up and speak out against socialism and the death and destruction it causes, right now, firmly, and on the record, or you will be considered an accomplice to the death and destruction it brings about.
Because you did not have the guts, the nerve, or the cojones to stand up when it mattered.
It's disgusting.
Every Democrat on the record.
And I'm not just talking about the presidential candidates.
I'm talking about congressmen, city council people, everyone at a town hall.
Everyone should post on their Facebook page, should tweet to them.
You want an on-the-record comment.
Where do you stand on Venezuela, socialism, and the destruction this thing causes?
I want a yes or a no.
Is socialism the disaster it appears to be in Venezuela right now or not?
Get them on the record.
Because when the left-leaning media thought capitalism failed, you know the housing market show and the recession brought about by the housing crisis, which was not a failure of capitalism, it was a failure of government trying to intervene in capitalism.
But of course the left-leaning media, this is the death of capitalism as we know.
We even had rhino Republicans, like people on the Bush team, and Bush himself at one point, we had to interfere in capitalism to save capitalism.
That wasn't capitalism!
But now that we've seen the unquestioned death of hard socialism in Venezuela, the torture, the depravity, Maduro's death squads going into poor villages, rustling people out of their homes, torturing them and killing them.
Read the op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today by Mary Anastasia O'Grady.
Read the op-ed about what his death squads are doing.
Get them all on the record, just like with the abortion commons.
Do not give them a pass.
All right, I got a lot more to get to, folks.
There was a... I had a eureka moment this weekend.
A eureka moment about this Trump Tower meeting.
The Trump Tower meeting that, of course, it broke on Friday, we covered last week, the Don Jr.
Trump Tower meeting, where it was alleged that Don Jr.
had called his father, President Trump, or Candidate Trump at the time, about this Trump Tower meeting with these two Russians, which Joe, as you know, is used as the bedrock of the Democrat conspiracy theory that Trump colluded with the Russians.
Well, of course it came out that Don Jr.
did not call his father after the meeting.
These blocked numbers were to business associates and other people debunking another far-left conspiracy theory.
But I had a eureka moment about this Trump Tower thing this weekend that I've got to pass on to you.
I think it's going to explain a lot.
Don't go anywhere.
Let's get to this read.
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Okay, so this Veselnitskaya thing is a trip.
I'm sitting here, and I'm reading and reading, and I'm going through this New York Times piece from that suspicious July 2017 period.
And they, remember July of 2017?
All this stuff breaks at the same time.
Papadopoulos, George Papadopoulos, is arrested at the airport.
Bob Mueller gets notification.
That the Peter Stroke text will be released.
There's a lot going on in July of 2017.
The House Special Counsel calls for a... The House, excuse me, GOP calls for a second Special Counsel investigation.
Paul Manafort and Don Jr.
are interviewed about the Trump Tower meeting.
Paul Manafort is an early morning raid at his house.
July 2017, I'll make the case to you by summing all this up for you regular listeners.
You've heard this before, but it's worth repeating here.
July 2017 is when the Civil War breaks out here.
When Mueller realizes his investigation is probably a sham, the House GOP realizes this is deeper than it really is, than it seems, because they have now the texts.
They've seen the texts from Peter Stroke, the investigator, who has done nothing but act in a biased manner towards Trump.
But also at that time, The New York Times, and I want to hat tip a source, again showing you when we can follow up, we do, but we can't on everything.
There's one source I've been working with who's really good, and he sent me this piece again.
He's like, read this again.
And in there, in this July piece where they talk about this Trump Tower meeting, it seems the New York Times got a leak from someone in the FBI looking to paint this Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr.
and these two Russians as evidence of the conspiracy.
The problem is, ladies and gentlemen, this is a setup, and now it's completely obvious what's going on, okay?
So let me just paint this picture to you.
In a New York Times piece, right, where they discuss Don Jr.
meeting with these two Russians at Trump Tower, they say at one point, a spokesman for the White House's legal advisors over there, Says that the Russian lawyer that showed up to meet with Don Trump Jr., Joe, employs a PI whose firm, Fusion GPS, produced an intelligence dossier that contained unproven allegations against the President of the United States, President Trump.
Or at the time, candidate Trump.
All right, you're like, all right, Dan, so what's the point?
You read that last week.
Oh, something clicked to me, Joe.
I had automatically assumed last week, because it came from the White House, that that private investigator working with the Russian lawyer who shows up was Christopher Steele.
Hmm.
So track me, folks.
I believe it was a setup.
I believe those Russians were sent to meet with Don Jr.
at Trump Tower exclusively to set him up and frame him for what was later to become the Russian collusion narrative.
I'm absolutely sure of it now.
The New York Times reports in July of 2017 that the Russian lawyer that shows up According to the White House.
Remember, Joe, Trump knows all this.
He's seen the declassified data.
Trump, do not sell this guy short.
He knows exactly what he's doing right now.
That a spokesman for the White House legal office says that, hey, this Russian lawyer that shows up basically employs an investigator working with the company hired by Hillary.
In other words, indicating that this is a setup.
I believe this thing she was talking about, Steele.
I don't think they are.
I think they're talking about someone else, Joe.
I think there's a strong likelihood, based on some of the reporting I've read out there and put together, and some sourcing here, that the private investigator Veselnitskaya is working with is a guy named Ed Baumgartner.
Now, you may be saying, I don't get any of this.
You just told us, you know, Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, they put together the dossier, and then the same company they're working for, uh, hires this Russian lawyer who shows up to meet with Trump Tower.
Now you're saying it may be another, but listen, here's some reporting.
Paul Sperry's done some terrific work over at the New York Post.
Let me read to you a quote from an old piece here.
This is an older, and this was the Eureka moment where I'm thinking, is it Steele?
Is, is the lawyer that shows up to meet with Trump, uh, with Don Jr., is it Steele?
And I don't think it is.
I think it's this guy Baumgartner.
Here, from the piece.
Follow me.
Joe, again, stop me if this doesn't make sense, but this is important.
But it turns out, this is from the New York Post's very piece, but it turns out that the primary subcontractor worked not for Steele, they're talking about this guy Baumgartner, but for Simpson at Fusion GPS and he contributed key materials in the investigation of Donald Trump underwritten by the Clinton campaign.
His name is Ed Baumgartner, a British national who speaks fluent Russian and runs a PR shop out of London and who spent 2016 tweeting his forceful opposition to Trump's candidacy.
While Baumgartner was working on the dossier, he was also working for Simpson on another case to smear an anti-Putin whistleblower in an effort to help Putin-tied company Previzon defend itself against U.S.
charges of money laundering.
Who else was working on that Previzon case for Fusion GPS?
Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer that shows up to meet with Donald Trump.
Now, I get some of you may be confused.
Why would the FBI and others out there, if the real source for the dossier, Joe, is not Christopher Steele, the Former MI5, MI6 agent in the UK, the Intel guy from the United Kingdom that was hired by Fusion GPS.
If Christopher Steele isn't the real source from the dossier, for the dossiers we've been led to believe, and Baumgartner is, why are they hiding this?
And does the White House know this?
Because notice, when the White House guy says, hey, that Russian lawyer that showed up was working with some PI.
Notice they don't name him?
Joe, if the FBI was looking to attribute information to a source, do you think you'd want a source who was credible, or do you think you'd want a source you'd never worked with before?
I think credible comes out on top there, Dan.
Okay!
Thank you, Armacost.
Thank you very much for providing sophisticated investigative analysis.
I'm just messing.
Joe's the best.
Ladies and gentlemen, the way information works and you verify information if you're using a source, I know I did this stuff, is you have to do one of two things.
If you get information that your neighbor's a drug dealer, right, and you want to bring it to the cops, your information has to be verified for the police officers or the federal agents.
Or there's another prong to be able to use that information.
The other prong of that test is you can have a reputation for having Uh, brought in in the past reputable information they can document.
You see where I'm going with this?
In other words, hey, Dan Bongino walked into the Secret Service office and said his neighbor was dealing drugs.
Oh, really?
Or the local police office.
Well, has Dan worked with us before?
No.
Okay, what do you have to do next, Joe?
Then they have to go verify.
Right.
Because I've never worked with them before.
But if I've brought in 15 or 20 solid, uh, advanceable tips they can advance on, and they turned out to be true, in court they can use that, that I have a record of working with them in the past as a reputable source.
Mm-hmm.
Folks, see where I'm going with this?
This was an important moment this weekend.
Now it makes sense.
That steel was not the source of the information, the dossier at all, but his face was put on it.
It was probably Baumgartner's information, but because the information was spurious from Baumgartner and they couldn't verify it, they had to go with the other prong.
What's the other prong?
It had to come from the guy they worked for before.
Listen to what I'm telling you.
When you get this information, two ways.
You either verify it independently, which they couldn't because the dossier is junk.
You get it, Joe?
Or, secondly, they can verify air quotes the information by showing it came from a reputable source they'd worked from in the past.
They had neither of those!
Baumgartner is not a guy with some long documented intelligence source history with the FBI that they could use.
So what happened?
Instead of attributing the dossier to him, they let Steele put his name on it, who had worked with the FBI in the past on the soccer corruption case, the FIFA case, and all of a sudden it was lent an air of legitimacy.
Joe, please tell me you're tracking me here.
This is a hugely important point.
Hanging right with you.
Yep.
Now it makes sense.
This was, again, a setup the whole time.
And I only bring this up, not to keep hammering the Spygate thing, but because this Trump Tower story that's now falling apart, this is the Democrats' whole case.
These two Russians met with Don Jr.
at Trump Tower.
Look, they were colluding.
They were sent there, clearly, by people with a political motive and a political agenda.
Let me read to you from another line, from the Daily Caller.
The other guy who shows up, the other Russian, the intelligence-connected guy, Rinat Akhmetyan, here's a quote from him in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
I knew Clinton.
I knew some people who worked on her campaign.
This is the other Russian that showed up.
Are we missing this?
So let me sum this up because I want to move on.
I got other stuff to get to.
The Trump Tower thing is their entire story.
Not because they believe it was the start of any kind of Russian collusion.
That's not what happened.
The Trump Tower story is important to them with Don Jr., ladies and gentlemen.
Because it is evidence, direct evidence, that they tried to set the Trump family up and they need to flip the script and spin the narrative to a collusion story to hide the fact that this thing was a setup.
The lawyer that shows up, the White House already knows this, is working with a private investigator who put together the fake dossier.
The private investigator, according to reports that are already out there, is likely Baumgartner, who produced this dossier or evidence in it And the reports indicate that Baumgartner may be the source of this stuff.
The problem is Baumgartner doesn't have Steele's reputation.
They needed to put a face on this, friendly to the FISA court, so they slapped Steele's face on it.
Because he's a former intel guy who'd worked with the FBI before.
It makes perfect sense.
And any other Russian that shows up for this meeting admits on the record he knows Clinton and her campaign staff.
Why isn't anybody asking these questions?
You know the answer because they don't want the answers.
That's why.
It was a setup.
Was Baumgartner the source of the dossier or not?
And if he was, why did the FBI disingenuously claim it was Christopher Steele's information?
The answer is obvious.
They needed his face to put on it to make this thing sound like it was semi-legitimate when it was a steaming pile of garbage.
That's why.
Oh, it's just disgusting.
I'm sitting here this week and I'm reading that New York Times piece about how Vessel in the Sky and the White House had a PI.
She worked with a PI.
And I'm thinking, why didn't they name him?
And it made perfect sense.
They're probably not naming him because the White House has this information, probably knows the Steele story.
It's a total farce.
It wasn't Steele.
It was probably this Baumgartner guy.
And he had no credibility with the Bureau at all.
They slapped a new face on it.
Again, the movie script, you know, redo.
Ugh, frustrating.
All right, here we go.
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Okay, a couple more stories that I think are important.
There's another pseudo scandal, Joe, breaking out.
Axios, you know, broke a story.
I'll put that in air quotes there.
I have it in the show notes today.
I strongly encourage you to read it about how the president spends his time in the Oval Office.
The story, the lead in the story is this.
You know, the president spends most of his time in executive time.
In other words, what they're trying to say is that the president's lazy and doesn't like a structured schedule.
Now, I feel a unique ability to comment on this given my, you know, nearly five years working inside the White House for two presidential administrations and how they work.
And I want to explain to you to refute to your liberal friends why this story is bogus.
Again, the gist of it from Axios is that the president spends most of his time unstructured in the White House under what they're calling executive time.
Liberals are using this to say, look, he's lazy.
He doesn't want to do anything.
He spends his time watching TV.
This is what they do.
Folks, that is not what's happening right now.
Now, the Axios story is not wrong.
I'm not trying to impugn this.
The story indicates it on his line-by-line schedule, which, when you're a Secret Service agent or a staffer, you'll get every day.
We make them into minis.
We shrink them.
We take, like, an 8-by-11 piece of paper, and we shrink them, and we stick them in our pocket.
It indicates where the president's going to be the whole day.
Meeting in the Situation Room, meetings in the Oval, and it'll typically lay out specifically what's going to happen.
The way this president's schedule is done is significant blocks of time they leave open as executive time and they don't describe the specifics of what happened.
But what I find odd about the piece is while it looks to, at some points, try to parrot the liberal narrative that the president's being lazy, it includes later on in the piece, Joe, that a lot of this executive time is in fact spent in meetings and phone calls.
Now, the key question you need to ask, right, right, isn't it weird Joe?
It's like, the president's not doing anything all day, and then later on it talks about how the president's doing something all day.
It says he gets up early, he's on the phone, he's shaking the trees, and then he meets with people and they just don't describe sometimes who's in the meetings.
Now you, you, as an entrepreneurial listener and potentially viewer of a clip here on the show now, What you should be asking yourself, because you don't have Trump derangement syndrome, and you're reasonable, is why would the President of the United States and his staff choose to do things differently and not line out in his line-by-line schedule the specifics of every single meeting and everything he does?
Well, Joe, what's happened in this administration that's been different than other administrations we've seen in modern presidential history?
That would be the tweeting, Dan.
Well, not just the tweeting, Joe, but leaks!
The leaks!
That would be leaks, Dan.
That would be leaks!
Yes!
They have leaked!
People on the inside, career swamp rats, what I'm going to get into in a second, among the Iron Triangle and a great piece I have up in the show notes about an American greatness, it's really good, about the Iron Triangle.
What has happened here is clearly people are threatened by the Trump presidency and is willingness to do things differently.
His willingness to call out the intelligence community and others.
His willingness to... Man, Joe, you're not wrong by the way, don't... The tweeting thing is different.
You're not wrong about that at all.
His willingness to use his social media account to advance his portion of a narrative and use his bully pulpit where he deems it appropriate.
That is different.
But that's a challenge to the swamp.
Now, when I say a challenge to the swamp, I don't mean that in just a, you know, toss-it-off kind of rhetorical attack way.
There are legitimate things that are happening with this president.
There are careers at stake.
There's money at stake.
People who had vested themselves, Joe, in policy outcomes, who were counting on regulatory capture, joining agencies, you know, for the sole purpose of leaving that agency later to join a lobby firm to influence that agency after they resign.
Promises that were made to parents and people about jobs, lifetime sinecures there, and positions that would be turned over to people.
This is all at stake.
They have leaked incessantly.
People pretending to be close to this president, using their positions to damage him.
This is real.
Now what does this have to do with the schedule?
The president and his team have chosen to leave the details off because they can't govern with constant leaks from the inside about every single thing he's doing all the time.
Now, there have been leaks in the White House before, that's not new.
But never, never, and no serious person would question this.
No true Scotsman.
But I hate no true Scotsman, but you know what I mean for those of you who understand it.
But in this case, it's true.
No serious person would argue that the volume of leaks coming out of the White House now and the damage are unparalleled.
There is no parallel.
There's nothing like this.
And the president and his staff, until they can weed out the leaks, or a significant portion of them, have chosen to unstructure his schedule and leave key details out so the president can effectively act as the executive of the country without having to worry every two seconds about someone leaking who he's talking to and getting a head start on it.
I totally understand.
And ladies and gentlemen, I still know people who work in the White House.
The president is not lazy, as I think the article means at some point, to impugn the president with that label.
That is not the case.
At all.
He is very engaged.
Listen, I don't do golden calf stuff.
There's no reason for me to tell you this.
No one asked me to tell you this.
But that's just not the facts.
You want to take the word from a guy who still talks to people on the inside?
Or people who claim to know people on the inside?
It's not what's happening.
Anyone telling you the president sits around all day, you know, watching TV, doing nothing, or not telling... I'm just telling you it's not the truth.
It's factually incorrect.
But that's what the article... Read it.
I mean, check it out.
It seems to imply.
All right.
I wanted to get to this last story because it's something I've discussed on the show frequently.
I have a lot of books I really enjoy.
Some I bring up a lot.
Black Swan, which used to drive Joe crazy, one of my favorite books.
Not because he doesn't like the book, but because I bring it up all the time.
What else?
Capitalism and Freedom, Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell, Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman.
These are all life-changing books.
When you read them, they'll just change the way you look at everything.
But one of the books I read that, I know Andrew Wilkow from the Wilkow Majority, he has a show on SiriusXM Patriot, and he's a good friend of mine.
Wilkow loves this book too, and Wilkow's a great guy.
He likes to deep think about this stuff, he really does.
It's a book called The Revolt Against the Masses by Fred Siegel.
It's a very, very, very good book.
Siegel exposes the history of far leftism and socialism and how Joe, it is actually in, It is an anti-egalitarian movement.
There's nothing about socialism or liberalism that's in any way meant to help out the middle class.
Man, it's always been an elitist, snobbish system meant to empower people at the expense of the working class.
Now you may say, wow, that's crazy.
Liberals are constantly out there touting how they're in it for the little guy.
No, no, no.
Not only are they not in it for the little guy, they're there to destroy the middle guy.
And when you read Revolt Against the Masses, you'll see, that's the title of the book implies exactly what he's saying, that this is exactly what liberals are.
They're elitist snobs who can't stand you.
I mean, these comments, Joe, think about it.
From that loser Rick Wilson, this failed former Republican strategist who claimed that, what did he say, that Trump voters have no teeth or anything like that?
I mean, this guy, of all the anti-Trump lewds, this guy is like, he reminds me of, what was the guy in the Howard Searcher?
You know, hero of the stupid or whatever.
This is Rick Wilson.
But his, you know, you all have no teeth.
And in Hillary's deplorable comment, this is it.
These are closet liberals.
Wilson, Hillary, these other people.
These aren't real.
These aren't conservatives.
These aren't people who are aligned with the Constitutional Republic.
They are aligned against the masses.
They think you're all too stupid to make your own decisions for yourself.
The power center, however, of that movement, as described by Siegel in his book, and covered in this American Greatness piece that I have up in the show notes today, the power center has always been what he calls the Iron Triangle, Joe.
Now, I know you've heard me talk about this before, but given that he brought it up today, I want to talk about it in terms of a current news event that's going on, and how the Iron Triangle is aligned against you, and I just want you to understand, ladies and gentlemen, We are in this by ourselves.
Do not wait to be rescued.
As a good friend of mine once said, a very powerful person in the conservative movement, she told me once, we are the leaders we've been waiting for.
No one on a white horse is going to come in and rescue us here.
There's not going to be any clash of the titans, Perseus moment.
None of this is going to happen.
We are the ones that have to change things.
This Iron Triangle is aligned against us.
The Iron Triangle are members of Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and interest groups, including the media, because the media is a left-wing interest group.
Large portions of them.
Folks, they are aligned exclusively against you.
And the Iron Triangle piece in American Greatness is discussed in terms of what happened with foreign policy last week.
President Trump Got elected President of the United States.
He's the Commander-in-Chief and has been speaking out forcefully about the need to start to pull back from some of these foreign engagements where we haven't seen any results in a long time.
Listen, ladies and gentlemen, I respect my audience.
That's why I read your emails.
That's why I started in the beginning addressing, you know, most people just would let this stuff go.
When I get emails that are contradictory to a stated belief I have, I talk about them on the show because this is a back and forth.
That's what I love about this show.
You have input.
You email me, I read the emails.
Some people object to my stance, and I believe President Trump is right.
It is time for us, in some of these engagements in the Middle East and elsewhere, for us to start to reevaluate them or pull back.
As Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, says in Skin in the Game, you know, it's easy to send others over there, but when it's your kids and your daughter and your son, I say daughter first because I have daughters.
I don't have any sons.
It's not so easy then.
So President Trump, Joe, just to be clear, has talked about, you know, bringing some of our boys and our men and women back home from these engagements where we haven't seen tangible results.
And what happened, Joe?
The Iron Triangle went absolutely crazy.
Even Mitch McConnell and some other Republican senators put out this statement, you know, rebuking President Trump for hasty withdrawals.
President Trump was elected.
He is the commander-in-chief.
He does not answer to Mitch McConnell.
McConnell doesn't answer to Trump either.
We have three independent branches of government.
They are to act in their own defined roles.
The legislative branch is not there to act as the commander-in-chief.
President Trump is entitled to an opinion.
He was voted on by the people.
They don't like it.
They don't have to vote him back in again.
The fact that he has an informed opinion about what's going on in Afghanistan and Syria,
and the fact that Republican senators had to jump out to this rebuke about a hasty
withdrawal and sign on to this letter, is a disgrace.
The Iron Triangle.
It never stops.
These people all are vested in a lot of this stuff.
They are vested in a lot of these decisions.
They are hoping for jobs afterwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a war of attrition now.
I bring this up because I was at my... I had a long weekend.
I had my daughter's birthday party, so we went to a local...
Jim kind of place where they can, you know, bounce around and there's like a laser room and stuff.
And it was a lot of fun.
And I sat there, we had a packed house, which was nice.
My daughter was seven and we had a blast, but I'm a lot of people there knew who I was.
So, you know, at one point, um, a couple of women approached me and they wanted to talk about current events and You know, I what am I gonna do?
I don't want to you know, I don't I don't like I don't like you know I'm not gonna gaffe people off even though it was my kid's birthday I spent about 20 minutes chatting with them and the woman at the end said to me What is gonna happen is any of this ever gonna be fixed and I said to her what I'll tell you now This is a war of attrition folks None of this is gonna be easy It is going to- Donald Trump is only two years in, in a battle against Congress, his own party, the federal bureaucracy, people invested in these decisions, interest groups, and people whose very livelihood is dependent on the status quo.
It is going to take President Trump a long time.
It is not- in two years, none of this was going to permanently change.
I don't want you to be disappointed, ladies and gentlemen.
I believe the man is doing the best job he can.
It hasn't been without stumbles the first two years, there's no question.
There's no need to lionize or golden calf anyone either.
But I believe this is the best man for the job right now.
We need to stick with them.
We don't have anyone else.
You cannot rely on these rhinos in Congress.
The federal bureaucracy, although, and I'm talking about the, I'm not talking about the law enforcement guys and women out there in our military or courts.
I'm talking about the bureaucrats whose jobs depend on the continuance of federal programs that in a cost-benefit analysis would fail tomorrow.
That are invested in policy decisions they made a long time ago for foreign interventions that no matter what metric we can't meet, they still stick to the status quo.
Their entire careers and reputations are vested in us.
To get those people flushed out, ladies and gentlemen, is going to require more than two years.
It is going to require action but patience.
It is going to require re-election of President Trump.
It is going to require us staying on the Trump administration for good personnel decisions.
It's going to require us to get some of these members of Congress who refuse to back an America First agenda out of office in primaries.
This was never going to be an easy fight.
We have the media against us.
Academia, interest groups, the entertainment community.
It's a tough fight, but it's a winnable one.
And it's a worthy one.
And it matters.
So I said to the woman and a couple of her friends, who seemed, they really did, they seemed dejected.
That this fight is not going to be easy.
You have to stay in there and stay energized.
There's going to be setbacks.
There's going to be policy things that don't go our way, legislative decisions that don't go our way, courts and judges that are going to rule in an unconstitutional manner against the Trump team.
We can't give up.
Donald Trump now has 16 appointments waiting on the Ninth Circuit.
On the 99th, this could tip the balance.
It will still be a majority Democrat appointees, but it could tip the balance in these three judge pools that are picked.
It's going to take time.
Remember, the Democrats never ever give up.
They never give up.
You don't have to like them, and I certainly can't stand their ideology, but you've got to almost respect the fact that they never give up in their agenda.
Not that we should emulate their troubling and disturbing ideology, but the tactics are right.
You lose an election, you scrap you, you scrape yourself off, you get up, and you just go back to the fight the next day.
This matters.
This Iron Triangle is real.
These interest groups talk to Congress.
They get committee hearings.
At a committee hearing, they talk about how, you know, the polar ice caps are melting.
We're all gonna die.
Next thing you know, the interest groups are set to press release.
The media runs with it.
Next thing you know, we're all terrified of global warming despite the fact that it's minus 47 in Chicago, whatever, last week.
That's the way the Iron Triangle works.
We have to fight back with our Iron Triangle.
Conservative activist groups, social media, and freedom caucus type politicians who will advance our cause.
That's how we fight back.
The social media is the great equalizer.
It's our ability to get our ideas out there.
It's why I'm putting video clips up now.
People need to see this stuff.
Not just my content, but others.
There are a lot of great podcasters out there who do terrific work.
A lot of really good people.
But that's how we fight back.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate all your attention today to this, and again, I'm just a guy.
I don't pretend to be some kind of, what is it, Federalist 51 of Men Were Angels?
I'm not, I'm not an angel.
Not everything we do works out seamlessly.
I wish we had a bigger staff than we do, but I do the best with what I can.
We put a lot of work and a lot of hard work for two years of our life into this spy gig.
Joe knows, I've been calling him on the weekends the entire time.
But we're shaking trees, working with sources, but, you know, not everything works out as well as it could all the time.
But I'm candidly telling you on that front, I have absolutely no regrets.
None.
So I appreciate your attention in that and, you know, continue to email me.
I'll do the best I can.
But if you don't get the results you need, please email.
It's not about us being first.
Joe and I don't need that.
We need to be right.
I need to maintain my credibility with you.
It matters.
It matters to me.
Will always matter to me.
You matter to me.
That's why I cherish your feedback, even when some of it isn't glowing.
And I thank you for your continued loyalty to the show.
And thanks for all the positive emails too.
I think a lot of you understand, understood exactly why I did what I did.
So again, I kid you not, when I tell you 99% of them were positive, but there are, you know, there are some people who respectfully disagreed and that's fine.
I appreciate that too.
So thanks a lot.
Please subscribe to the show.
On iTunes, it is free.
It's the subscriptions that drive us up.
There's no charge for that at all.
Just go to the podcast app on your iPhone, click subscribe.
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That's what drives us up the charts.
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I'd love to keep it that way.
So thanks for doing that.
I really appreciate it.
And folks, I will see you all tomorrow.
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