In this episode I address the complete collapse of the discredited Russian collusion hoax and the pathetic response by the Democrats. I also address the pending government shutdown, the proposed budget deal, and how President Trump can claim a victory.
News Picks:
The Democrats, and their media pals, are losing their minds as their collusion hoax entirely collapses.
What are the Democrats going to do next now that their collusion hoax is collapsing?
The liberal meat police have arrived.
The national debt is exploding.
The Senate will vote on the ridiculous “Green New Deal.”
The Democrats don’t care about immigration, they care about politically defeating President Trump.
How President Trump can box in the Democrats on the budget deal.
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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?
Could be better, but I'm doing pretty good, Dan.
I'm doing good.
Yeah, Joe's not doing good.
He had a rough incident last night.
Someone close to him, something bad happened, so we're gonna give Joe kind of a pass today on the show, but he's here for you folks.
Out of respect for Joe's privacy, obviously I'm not gonna divulge any further details, but he had a rough night last night.
Thanks, bro.
His commitment to the audience is a good one, and Joe is here, ready to rock and roll.
So Joe, yesterday, another huge news day, the collusion hoax, which we've only been telling you is a hoax for the last year and a half now, or in Dan Bongino, it's like dog years, six months, everything's six months in Dan Bongino terms.
It's collapsing minute by minute, second by second.
The Senate Intel Committee, a leak came out yesterday from NBC News suggesting that the Senate Intel Committee has come up with nothing.
No evidence of this collusion, a hoax, we've been warning you.
So I want to go into a little bit of detail on this and not just that, listen, we all know the Russian collusion fairytale was a hoax.
But I want to give you a little bit more of a layered analysis about why this is such a problem now for the Democrats outside of the simple fact, Joe, that it makes them look like the complete buffoons, conspiracy theorists and looney tunes that they really are.
Right.
I got that and a lot more to get to, including the budget deal and cocaine Mitch strikes again with with the Green New Deal.
So we'll get to that in a minute.
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Yes!
Yes!
Okay, so the whole collusion hoax is entirely collapsing.
Yesterday, a leak from the Senate Intel Committee that's now gone public.
Richard Burr from the Senate Intel Committee, the Republican, has come out.
He has not been a big pro-Trump guy, even though he is a Republican.
Burr has been very milquetoast on this entire thing, has now come out and acknowledged they have found No, quote, direct evidence of a collusion conspiracy between Trump and the Russians.
Again, not news to any of us.
There is never going to be evidence because you can't fabricate evidence about a conspiracy that never happened.
Now, why is this so damaging?
I have some analysis up at Bongino.com, but I also have a piece in the show notes as well today from Byron York at the Washington Examiner, who always seems to provide cogent, topical, timely analysis on these issues.
He's been following this case for a long time.
And listen, York is a very down-the-middle guy.
He doesn't play the partisan games.
I want to read to you quickly from his piece in the Examiner, because it describes the problem, the two-fold problem that Democrats are going to have.
They were all melting down on Twitter yesterday.
That lunatic Seth Abramson, who claims to be some kind of expert on the topic, he wrote some kind of fiction book about the collusion fairy tale.
This guy was melting down yesterday on Twitter.
It was great to watch because they've invested their entire lives in a collusion fairy tale.
That now before their very eyes is being entirely dismantled.
Their professional credibility, their academic credibility, their credibility amongst their peers is all collapsing.
These media types, the Democrats and the Looney Tunes who tried to gaslight you into believing a fake story like this collusion hoax actually happened are now suffering brutally As this thing is eviscerated, evaporates, and is entirely debunked and dismantled before your very eyes.
If you invested time in this show, you are now being vindicated.
If you invested your time in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and lunatics like Seth Abramson, You are now thoroughly and completely humiliated.
You've been embarrassed.
It's horrifying how you've wasted your life.
Do you look in the mirror and realize what you've done?
That you have spent two years of your life foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog or a zombie from 28 days later over something that is a hoax.
It is a complete lie.
You have no one to back you up anymore.
You've never had evidence.
You don't have evidence now.
You don't have the House.
The House committee debunked this thing.
The Senate committee's debunked this thing.
Mueller has yet to prove a scintilla of evidence outside of processed crimes and taxicab confessions that any of this existed at all.
You have wasted your life.
You have wasted two years of your life.
This reminds me of the scene From Rocky 2, when he's trying to do the... Joe, remember Rocky 2?
Have you seen that one?
Remember when Rocky's doing the commercials where he smeels mainly and Rocky has trouble reading?
And the director's a real jerk and Rocky can't read the cue cards because he has trouble reading and he says it makes you smell manly and Rocky says it makes you smeel mainly.
And the director goes, can you read, Rock?
And the director's like, we have wasted our time!
You You have wasted the staff's time!
You have wasted the crew's time!
Please get off the set!
Ladies, get out of the cage with Rocky!
He's in the cage with him in a jungle house.
You remember?
This is the... This is... Sadly, right now, I'm taking the role of the director, even though he's rude to Rocky.
You are in the cage like Rocky.
You have wasted everybody's time.
For two years, you have smealed mainly.
You've smealed.
You've not smelled manly.
You've smealed mainly.
For two years.
You've been eviscerated, humiliated, embarrassed.
You've become a national laughingstock.
Seth Abramson claims to be an academic.
He has been entirely discredited.
The media lunatics who invested in this.
The Democrats.
Adam Sleazy Shifty Schiff.
Completely humiliated.
Eric Swalwell.
Complete losers.
They will have no credibility.
History will smeel mainly to them.
You're not very bright, are you?
I'm completely laughing at these utter morons who invested their lives in this hoax for two years.
I'm sorry, but I needed to vent a little bit.
I really, I mean, I just, I, for two years now, we've been warning you that this is a hoax and yet these people just cannot give it up.
All right, getting back to the York piece here.
Quote from the Washington Examiner.
Even more concerning to some Democrats is that the news from Burr, Richard Burr, came on the heels of stories to the effect that Trump-Russian special counsel Bob Mueller might not even charge Trump associates with conspiracy and might not even allege that the much-discussed Trump-Russia conspiracy even occurred!
Say what?
Yes, Joe.
Many House Democrats have been relying on Mueller to give them a roadmap and cover to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president.
Now they face the question of what to do if Mueller does not give them what they want.
Ladies and gentlemen, I told you about this a long, long time ago.
There was never going to be a collusion conspiracy laid out in evidentiary, traditional, honest fashion.
Because you can't fabricate a conspiracy that didn't happen.
So what the Democrats were hoping and praying for Was enough circumstantial evidence of guilt that they could put together a circumstantial A to B to C case which Mueller would lay out in a report that would indicate somehow by inference that Trump colluded with the Russians.
It's now becoming apparent that nobody has even uncovered any circumstantial evidence that this has happened and all of the circumstantial evidence that collusion happened, Joe, points to what?
The Democrats!
Not the Trump team!
Boom!
Now they're terrified, yes, that Mueller himself is going to debunk this in his own report, not issue a report, or leave the conspiracy part out of it because there is none.
They will then have no pathway to impeachment at all other than hysterics.
Now Joe, again, rants are great, I love them, but outside of the rant, why is this damaging?
Because Joe, this is what they've promised their base.
They have promised donors, activists, volunteers, people working on their presidential campaigns, people working on their re-elect campaigns, moneyed people.
Lobbying interests that are on the far left.
They have promised these people a good, a service item.
That service item is an impeachment process for Trump.
But folks, they're afraid now they're going to be entirely humiliated because that articles of impeachment, they were relying on Mueller to lay that out for them, to lay out the charges.
Joe.
Impeachment is not a criminal process, ladies and gentlemen.
Let's be clear on this.
It is a political process.
Yes, sir.
It requires votes from politicians that act on an impeachment motion in the House and a trial in the Senate overseen by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
But it is not a criminal charge.
It is a political charge to remove the President from office, who can then be charged When he's removed from office.
The president can't be indicted according to the Department of Justice's own guidelines now.
He has to be impeached first.
But this is a political procedure.
This political procedure involves, inherently, politics.
Politics, at some point, is going to require you to produce some evidence of an actual case, which they were relying on Bob Mueller to produce, that is now completely, entirely collapsing.
What's frustrating the Dems even more is that I think they thought people like Richard Burr, who's not the most diehard conservative, you know what I mean, a Republican, on the Senate Intel Committee, were going to play ball with them.
And now even Burr has had to quietly acknowledge that this case does not exist.
Folks, they are in a world of trouble.
So let's put the lead back at the top of the story.
The Democrats are going to have to, at this point, break a core promise to the constituency that is giving them money, volunteering time, and is going to support their presidential campaigns and elsewhere.
That key promise is they were going to impeach Trump.
That they had the goods.
Adam Schiff, the sleazeball Schiff, has been on TV multiple times promising they had the evidence.
They had the evidence.
It's there.
We just can't reveal it yet.
They don't have the evidence.
They have nothing.
They have been debunked repeatedly.
This story is entirely discredited.
It's eviscerated.
It's over.
It's over.
They are going to have the groveling heads in their hands.
They're going to have to go back to their base and admit they lied the whole time.
Let's see if the media holds them to account.
Alright folks, before I move on to the next story, I just want to acknowledge a fallen hero last night, the New York City detective Brian Simonson.
He was shot and killed last night in a friendly fire incident, responding to a robbery in the 102nd Precinct in New York.
We got the word last night from a friend, and then we saw it on the news afterwards, a friend of mine who's still with the NYPD.
I was an NYPD police officer with this guy I got the notification from.
For a moment I thought it may be him because he's a detective too and I just like kind of freaked out so I sent him a really kind of a I mean I didn't intend it to be nasty but almost a nasty text back because you know I said to him it's time it's time for him he's been on the job for so long and it's time for him to retire and my wife and I kind of freaked out a little bit his name is Brian we're like is this we thought for a second like is this him like this is just But this guy Simonson, I just want to tell you quickly about what he did because this is the heroic actions our police officers and detectives and our men and women in blue take every day.
He was at a precinct apparently, the 102 precinct, for some kind of an administrative meeting.
He wasn't even required to stay the entire day for work.
But he did anyway.
And he still responded to this robbery in the T-Mobile store, and now he's dead.
He has two kids, he has a family, and this is the kind of stuff that happens all too often in our country.
With our police officers working for almost no money, very little prestige outside of us and the people in this audience who deeply respect them.
There's no public accolades, and these guys don't get parades every day.
And now he's dead.
God rest his soul.
God bless his family with the strength they need to get through this unbelievably horrible time.
And I want to recognize Detective Simonson for your heroic actions.
It's men and women like you.
You're the best of us.
Tragic story, but we needed to get that out there.
You know, not everybody gets this kind of... They don't get the public recognition they need, our public servants.
All right, always tough to...
Segway from a story like that, but we have some other stuff to get to.
So the budget deal.
This is the big news of the day.
Yesterday was a very big news day.
The potential budget deal, I should say.
It hasn't been signed yet.
It may be by the time this airs.
The potential budget deal was a big story along with the collusion hoax being dismantled yesterday.
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to give you the good and the bad and of course because I owe it to you, you invest time in me and I invest time in you and I always appreciate that.
I want to give you my opinion on what we're looking at.
So just to give you a little quick background, February 15th, this Friday, is a deadline where the government would shut down partially again if a budget deal isn't reached.
There was a temporary CR signed a couple of weeks ago which reopened the government.
I want to give you some kind of top-line ideas about what's going on right now, and I'm going to try to be as... I'm trying, listen, everybody's biased, but I'm really trying to give you the most objective analysis of this I can.
Let me just start out with what the deal is, Joe.
The deal is going to be roughly $1.375 billion for a border fence, the steel slats design which President Trump has proposed.
It's also going to include no caps on the detention beds.
In other words, no caps on our ability to detain illegal immigrants in the country, which the Democrats had thrown in the deal, a wrench in the deal, to kind of screw it up at the last minute.
The Democrats have pulled back on that.
So the Democrats have pulled back on one of their demands, and Trump obviously is going to pull back on one of his demands, which, Joe, was for $5.7 billion.
This is for $1.375 billion.
That 1.375 billion, Joe, is going to cover 55 miles of new border fencing, which will do a good job, but they need 230 miles.
So clearly, both sides had to give here.
So just to be clear, 55 miles of new fencing at a cost of 1.3 billion, 375 billion, no caps on the detention beds.
Now, this is not a good deal.
We have to be candid and I owe it to you to tell you that.
And by the way, President Trump has said the same thing.
So it's not that this is any kind of an incongruent message with what President Trump is getting out there.
It's not a good deal.
He's already said as much in the cabinet room yesterday during a televised Q&A he did with the press.
He's not happy with the deal.
But folks, at this point, I ask you, what option does he have?
I'm not, you know, someone sent me an email yesterday.
You know, I enjoy your feedback, good and bad.
I do.
I read it and I do not pretend to have any kind of a thick skin and I'm glad I don't.
Thick skin means none of your feedback matters to me.
It does.
And someone said, how are you going to cover for Trump on that?
What do you mean cover?
Trump's not covering for himself.
What are you talking about?
Trump came out yesterday in the cabinet room and said, this is not a good deal.
Of which I'm echoing, this is not a good deal.
I hate the full stop stuff, but period.
Full stop.
What part of that?
There's nothing to cover.
It's not a good deal.
There's excessive spending.
We wanted 5.7 billion.
We're not going to get it.
But let me give you a little bit of a deeper analysis other than a, hey, why are you covering for Trump?
I'm not covering for anyone.
When have I ever covered for anyone?
I'm pretty confident President Trump respects me, the show, and our analysis because we don't attempt to cover for anybody.
Right, right.
He doesn't like yes-men.
He's constantly celebrating the commentary of people like Andy McCarthy and others who disagree with him all the time.
It's not a good deal.
He said as much.
But I'm asking you this from a practical, down-to-earth perspective.
What do you want him to do?
Now, the options are not to sign the deal.
The problem, folks, Is the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi currently own and dominate the House of Representatives?
They are in the majority.
There are simply not enough Republican votes.
Now, you may say, okay, Dan, but last time you argued that he shouldn't sign that deal either.
Yes!
And we won that.
Now you're probably like, wait, now I'm all confused.
So you argued that he shouldn't sign the first deal.
Yes!
Because the first deal brought to him was clearly, clearly a slap in his face.
What does he do?
He refuses to sign it.
We have this three-week government shutdown, the longest in U.S.
history.
And we won.
Oh, come on, Dan, you just cover it up.
Really?
Am I?
I encourage you to go to my Twitter feed and look at a Paul Bedard article from Washington Secrets I covered today.
It's really good.
You know what I've got to remember?
I'll put that in the show notes today.
Quick note here, show notes, Bedard.
President Trump's approval rating, the highest it's ever been.
And not only that, Joe, it's the biggest shift he's seen during his presidency.
In other words, his highest gain.
Right, right.
And it is now double that of Congress.
Tell me again.
Everybody pause.
Because seriously, I love my audience to death, and I love your feedback.
And 99% of it is really positive, but sometimes I get negative feedback, and that's fine.
But I'm asking you to take a breath, put the show on pause for a second, and analyze what I just said.
He had to shut it down the first time because he had to take a stand to show what he was for and what the Democrats were against.
He was for border security and this amount of money he needed?
The Democrats went on the record and said, we have the votes, we will never vote for that, and you're never going to get it while we're in charge.
Now a fool does the same thing twice.
He doesn't have the votes!
Now he's got them on the record.
They're at 21% approval, while he's at 44+, depending on what poll you look at.
He's had the biggest shift in his presidency in approval, from 37% to 44%, and he's got the Democrats now on the record opposing the 230 miles of border security we need.
Please explain to me again how we lost.
Sounds like he's building up that political capital, Dano.
That we've spoken about, Joe, for now the five years we've been doing this show.
Right.
Ladies and gentlemen, politics is full of gray areas.
Like ethics, it's not always black and white.
It involves a political bank account you make deposits in and you withdraw from.
Forget power.
Elected office means squat, as Ralph Northam and Justin Fairfax are finding out now in Virginia.
They have no political capital to do anything.
They're trying to simply stay alive in office.
Your political bank account, where you make deposits, approval ratings, legislative successes, good PR, good soundbites, and political withdrawals, bad soundbites, horrible public approval ratings, bad soundbites, bad media, I said that twice, those are political withdrawals where your bank account diminishes.
Trump's political bank account is going up and Congress's is going down.
What do you want him to do now?
He's got them on the record.
He doesn't have the votes.
There's no votes.
He didn't have the votes before, but it was enormous political success getting the Democrats on the record about what they are against.
Please tell me this makes sense, folks.
I don't know if it's because I, you know, maybe that I've, I don't know, I've run a couple times.
You kind of You look at it through a different lens.
You know, Joe, I haven't said this in a while, but you're familiar with it.
There's an old adage that says there's two kinds of people in the world that view things differently than everybody else.
The super rich and the super political.
And it's true.
The super rich, money means nothing to them because it doesn't.
It's not an exchange of value because everything they value they have, so they don't You know, there's nothing to really value.
You want to dodge Viper?
You just send your buddy to go out and buy your credit card.
And they're super political.
They view everything from a different lens.
I'll be candid.
That's me.
I'm a very political guy.
I love politics.
I've loved it since I'm a kid.
I've been deeply embedded in it.
I've run for office.
I comment on it.
I'm an activist at heart.
I still give speeches.
I do commentary on cable on Fox about it.
I view this stuff differently.
This is not a loss.
This is the best we're going to do right now, while still doing significant damage to the Democrats' public approval, getting them on the record for an untenable position in 2020.
They wouldn't even secure the 230 miles of border our own experts said we needed.
While making the congressional representatives, after a shutdown, look like complete idiots for having to come back and cave on a border security measure that Nancy Pelosi, Joe, quote, said not $1.
Really?
Because I just told you the deal's $1.375 billion.
So Nancy Pelosi was off by a factor of $1.375 billion.
How did we lose this?
Folks, the analysis has to go deeper than this surface level patina here.
Scratch the patina, go deeper.
I'm not, again, I'm not trying to get into, you know, any kind of four-dimensional chess.
Some of this may have just been the result of fortuitous circumstances by Trump.
I don't know, I can't get in his head.
But suggesting this was somehow a loss, It's not a loss.
It's a bad deal.
He's on the record saying that.
I just told you that on my own show.
It's the only deal.
It's the only deal right now.
It gets them on the record.
Their approval rating is in the tank.
Let's build what we can build now.
And other notes on this.
Mick Mulvaney went on Chris Wallace's show on Fox News Sunday.
The acting chief of staff for Trump, Joe.
And Mulvaney said they found $900 million in funds they can move around to allocate to the wall.
So now we're up to roughly $2.2 billion.
Again, it's not the $5.7 billion.
I'm acknowledging that.
That part did not succeed.
But forget that data point for a second and let's get to the bigger picture.
So now we're halfway there with this 900 million.
But keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, we do not have the votes right now.
There simply are not enough votes to get past everything we need.
Even a president, Joe and I, and I know many of you, have enormous respect for, God rest his soul, Ronald Reagan, of course.
Greatest president of my lifetime.
And a gifted politician and dealmaker himself said, if we can get 80%, we take 80%.
We'll come back for the other 20 later.
Folks, we have to take what we can take right now.
It's a bad deal.
But it is the only deal.
Now, I want to address something.
You know what, let me get this out.
I'm going to read this spot quick by a great company, and I want to get to another angle some of you may have caught last night on Fox News.
This is superb analysis.
Hat tip, Mark Thiessen, who's a Republican who writes for the Washington Post.
Thiessen has a spectacular way to come out of this in the long game.
That's gonna put Nancy Pelosi seriously in a bad, awful position.
I'm gonna get to that in a second.
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All right.
Mark Thiessen last night was on Fox.
He does some commentary for the Washington Post.
And listen, it's very rare that I hear commentary where I have to perk up because, you know, a lot of commentary is good, but sometimes I do a lot of homework and I don't like getting beaten to the punch and sequester.
And this idea of leveraging the sequester was one of those ideas so good, I turned up that I had to take notes.
So Thiessen has a piece in the Washington Post and he suggests this, Joe.
The Budget Control Act, signed under the Barack Obama administration in 2011, imposes automatic spending caps.
Automatic, meaning they will happen if Congress doesn't act.
Automatic spending caps on government spending.
You remember that?
The sequester?
I don't remember it as clearly as I should.
That's what I'm trying to think of right now.
I'm trying to remember it.
Well, just the specifics of it.
Obama was under incredible pressure, given the debt ceiling, to do something about the debt situation he had created through the nine trillion in debt he accumulated during his presidency.
So what they came out with was this Budget Control Act, which would cut defense spending, which was supposed to be a jab at the Republicans, and domestic spending at somewhat similar rates if Congress did not do something about the debt and deficit.
The Budget Control Act was passed.
It would impose what they would call sequester, or putting caps on spending.
The Republicans in the House and the Democrats, the Swamp Committee over there, on both sides, what they decided to do, Joe, was to bump up the caps.
In other words, let's not cap spending for two years.
Now, they did it again.
Those caps, and they did it again and again, and those caps are going to, the bumps on the caps, are going to expire in December.
Meaning, Cap spending is going to happen even if they do nothing.
Right.
So Thiessen's analysis was terrific.
His suggestion is roll with this now.
Take what we can get now, Joe.
Take this 1.375 and the no caps on detention beds, right?
Okay.
It's the best deal.
It's the only thing there's going to be votes for right now.
Take what we can get, take the money, build those 55 miles of the wall, get the 900 million other dollars you can get, do what you can to build the rest of the 230 mile wall and refurbish what we have.
And then in December, this December, when those budget caps and those spending caps reappear, President Trump should enforce those caps, say he's not going to sign anything else, Joe, and what would we get?
We would get out of that 71 billion in cuts on the defense side, which listen, we would have to make do with, but we would get 55 billion in domestic spending cuts as well.
Get Thiessen's point here.
Thiessen's point is, and it's a good one, we don't have The leverage now.
We have won the short-term game here.
Trump's approval ratings are up.
The shutdown's got the Democrats on the record in a politically untenable situation.
They're now against border security and they're for government chaos because they seem to be enjoying this government shutdown.
Trump's approval is up.
We are now winning this race.
This race matters.
The best deal we're going to get now to avoid another shutdown is this deal.
Take this deal and let the Democrats know and let everybody know that you are not going to sign a deal that would surpass those budget caps in December so the Democrats again are going to have to eat crow because for their Savings, Joe, of $5.7 billion on the border wall they could have given Trump, they're gonna lose $55 billion in domestic initiatives.
Ooh.
Let them go explain that to their constituents.
Do you understand the crow they're gonna have to eat on this?
It was very, very good.
Very well done piece.
So just you're tracking where I'm going with it.
If they do nothing in Congress, spending will be cut automatically.
They will have to bump up the spending caps and Trump should say, I'm not signing it.
He has leverage.
Yeah.
He should use it.
Yeah.
Very slick.
Very slick.
And like I said, I'm only angry at Mark because I didn't think of it first.
It was a brilliant point.
Good point.
Okay.
Cocaine Mitch at it again.
It's not my nickname.
It was Don Blankenship, a Senate candidate.
West Virginia didn't like Mitch McConnell.
He nicknamed him Cocaine Mitch.
Listen, I'm not a huge McConnell fan.
That's not a big secret.
Sometimes he does things for the conservative movement that are not very good and do net damage, but when McConnell does something right, it doesn't do us any good to engage in a Republican-on-Republican circular firing squad.
So what happened yesterday with McConnell, and I always say about that nickname, Cocaine Mitch, never has a nickname backfired in the history of politics like that one, because it was right after that that he pushed through Kavanaugh and got Gorsuch approved, and it just made him look like some kind of rebel, when I think we all know that's not McConnell's reputation.
But McConnell, what did he do?
Yesterday he goes out on Capitol Hill, gets in front of the microphones, and gives just a really kind of funny You know, I should have gotten this.
Shame on me for not giving you the sound this morning, Joe.
I should have pulled this.
Because the way he says it's hysterical.
But Connell comes out in front of Mike, Joe, he's like... So there's been a lot of attention on this Green New Deal.
And I think in Louis... Excuse me.
To accommodate the Democrats, we're going to put a vote on the floor about this Green New Deal.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is just terrific.
This was a great idea.
But there it is.
Paula threw up an article there.
Here's McConnell.
This is a brilliant chess movie or what?
Listen, everybody knows the Green New Deal is a cataclysmic political disaster for the Democrats.
It has been an embarrassment.
I've addressed it over the past few days, how they put out a series of FAQs on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's own website.
I put the link to the cash version.
The FAQs were absurd.
They addressed paying people unwilling to work, flatulent gassy cows, how they couldn't control gas emissions from cows.
The document was a complete absurdity.
They had a lie about it, including a professor who went on Tucker Carlson Show and lied that it was in fact their document when it was.
He said it was some Republican hoax.
It has been a humiliating slap in the face for the Democrats who are now being forced, many of the reasonable ones who are in swingy districts, to run from this thing.
Now, the Senate candidates for president, on the Democrat side, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Gillibrand, some of them haven't announced but will, they will run for president.
Some of them have openly come out and supported this thing, but now they're going to go on the record with an actual vote.
And they're going to be forced, because McConnell's put them in a corner, to vote on this debacle.
Folks, voting on this debacle, although I just told you political capital is not related all the time to the position, votes actually matter.
Because once you go on the record, it starts to frighten who, Joe?
It starts to frighten lobbyists and other people who lobby the government and donate to political campaigns and otherwise.
Do you think people in the airline industry, the farm industry, the beef industry, the automobile industry, how do you think they're going to take to a bunch of presidential candidates, Booker, Klobuchar, Sanders, Harris, and others, going on the record and voting in the affirmative for a bill That effectively wipes out their entire industries, the capital they've invested, the jobs they produce, and the efficiencies they produce in our economy.
How damaging on a scale of 1 to 10 is that going to be?
I would reckon it'll be about a 7.5.
Yeah, how much is that?
This is going to be disastrous and good for McConnell for taking a step forward And engaging in this political gamesmanship with them and getting them on the record.
They're going to have nowhere to go.
Think about it, folks, right?
A lot of you have seen, most of you have seen political commercials.
You're bombarded with them and you will be soon coming up for 2020.
Can you imagine what this is going to look like when Kamala Harris and others who have to vote on this thing?
Now, keep in mind, What's the position, the quandary they're in right now, Joe?
Again, let's scratch past the patina and get to the deeper analysis.
It's one thing for them to go on the record publicly to appease their donors and volunteers and say, yeah, yeah, this thing is nice and I support it.
Klobuchar has been a little more hesitant.
What does that do, Joe?
It keeps the money flowing and the volunteers happy.
Oh, look, Kamala Harris said it's great.
It's an entirely different thing to take a vote.
Now, getting back to where I was going with this, you see those campaign commercials.
How many times have you seen fact-check articles and other things appear in the corner of a political ad that shows someone voting yes or no for a disastrous piece of legislation?
All the time!
I'll never forget being up in Maryland.
Joe knows Andy Harris.
He's a Republican congressman.
He does a pretty good job up there.
And Andy Harris had voted for the fair tax, which is a really great piece of legislation by the way.
But in the fair tax is a national sales tax.
Now the national, not to get off topic here, but the national sales tax is in lieu of the income tax.
But of course, they didn't put that in the attack ad.
So they put in the attack ad, Joe, I'll never forget this ad, because it was powerful even though it was a lie.
It said, Andy Harris is voting for a national sales tax.
Look at how he voted.
It said, you know, HR number Andy Harris.
Yes, like yay, right?
That was a powerful ad, so much so I remember it to this day, even though the ad was a lie.
Andy Harris wasn't voting for a national sales tax.
He was voting for it in lieu of an income tax, which is a far more efficient way to tax.
He's a conservative Republican.
Yeah.
Can you imagine, Joe?
Can you imagine the attack ads for Harris?
Sanders, Warren, and others, when they're going to have to take a yay vote on this, now you may say, well, they could just vote no.
How are they going to vote no?
They're all on the record already making public statements that they supported this thing.
So your choices are this.
Appeal to your primary voters and win the Democrat nomination by going on the record and voting for this disaster and then getting annihilated in the general election with attack ads that will never stop showing you voted to eliminate gassy cows, air travel, and cars.
Or come out publicly, which they already did, say you support this, and then vote no and look like Joe, a total hypocrite, while also forfeiting away those donor dollars and volunteer time from people who were expecting you to support this thing.
What the heck is that?
That was a cow.
Where do you find this stuff?
It sounded like a rabid dog or something.
I have no idea.
Joe has taken over complete control of the audio production soundbites portion of the show.
I have no idea where he gets a lot of this stuff from.
That was good.
Now, another factor.
So just let me just, again, I like to sum up where we were.
We'll move on.
Taking this vote is going to get Democrats running for president on the record, where they are in this Green New Deal.
They are going to have to vote yes because they've already come out and supported it.
They didn't think McConnell was going to put it on the floor.
Now that he's put it on the floor for a vote, they have no choice other than to open themselves up to general election attack ads by showing their voting record on the most disastrous economic bill in modern U.S.
history outside of Obamacare, the Green New Deal.
Again, not a huge fan of Mitch, but this was a strong, strong move.
And one more thing on this, folks.
This is going to turn a lot of the swamp rat inside baseball Democrats against Ocasio-Cortez.
Who are now going to be angry at her and Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Senator, for putting this thing out there and forcing them all on the record.
Yes, sir.
Even Howard Schultz, the independent candidate, former CEO of Starbucks, who said he's going to run for president, has called the Green New Deal not realistic.
I told you folks, this thing is going to be a complete disaster.
Okay, moving on, I got a couple more stories I want to get to.
I have an article from The Hill in the show notes today I'd like you to check out.
It's a really good one.
Proving my point again.
That these low-tax states are attracting like a magnet people to them while high-tax states are suffering.
Now, listen, this is an argument me living in Florida and Joe who's still up in Maryland where I used to live, it's where I met Joe.
It's an argument we brought up before and it's not a complicated one.
Everybody knows people are leaving for Texas and Florida to escape the high-tax bad business environments in a lot of these states.
But ladies and gentlemen, the data, the Hill is not a Right-wing website by any stretch, but the piece is interesting because it doesn't only talk about gross numbers of people, in other words the actual numbers of people leaving, it talks about percentage change in population too, and the data is conclusive.
So who are the losers?
Well, the losers are New York and California again.
California people are leaving in droves.
Now, the net population of California is not decreasing because the illegal population of California is moving up, and obviously they do manage to attract some people back in.
But large numbers of people have been fleeing California and New York.
Who are the winners?
Texas and Florida are leading the way in the gross number of people headed in, but Joe, more importantly, leading the way in percentage population change, not just the actual numbers of people.
Okay.
Idaho, Utah, and Arizona.
Again, three states largely dominated by Republican conservative politicians, And also business-friendly states.
Now, none of this is a mystery, folks.
The mystery I want to bring up this show is why do some of the people who leave New York and California then go to these states, understanding many of them are leaving for the poor economic conditions and high taxes, and then vote for the same thing when they get down to states like Texas and Florida, where I live?
I'm just humbly asking the liberals that listen to this show.
I know you're out there.
I read your emails.
I see your commentary on Twitter.
I know you're angry and everything.
But I'm asking you just a common-sense question.
If you are fleeing a series of policies you've deemed devastating enough that you have to pick up your home, your kids, and your family, and move to another state to escape them, why do you then go to that state and try to vote in some of the same nonsense?
Why?
You don't only see that state-to-state, Joe.
You see it intra-state as well.
I'll give you an example from the state Joe lives in.
When I ran in Maryland, in Western Maryland, Montgomery County is one of the most liberal counties in Maryland.
It's a D.C.
suburb packed with government workers and a lot of liberals.
Montgomery County abuts Frederick County to the north.
Frederick County used to be a blood-red conservative county.
Frederick County is now changing.
Southern Frederick County, which is up against the Montgomery County line, is now largely Democrats.
Why?
Because even within this state, people were fleeing Montgomery County up into a redder Republican Frederick County, and then were voting in some of the same things they tried to escape in Montgomery County.
Why are you doing this?
This is not even common sense on your part.
It's common sense on our part.
We know.
What are you doing?
Sounds like insanity to me.
It's like the definition of insanity, right?
Doing the same stupid things over and over again, expecting a different result.
Yes, sir.
Please stop.
There's multiple reasons I'm down here in Florida, but I'm not going to lie to you.
The lack of a state income tax is pretty darn good.
I got a raise right away.
Because we work from home.
Ugh, man.
California.
Even California's acknowledging it.
Did you see the story yesterday?
California, their high-speed rail.
The new governor of California, Gavin Newsom, a far-left progressive liberal, had to pull the plug on their high-speed rail project.
It's the same high-speed rail Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to put across the entire United States, ladies and gentlemen.
They couldn't even make high-speed rail work between San Francisco and L.A.
and far-left California between two population centers.
You want to make this crisscross the entire United States?
You're escaping California because of stupidity like this.
Stop voting the stupid in elsewhere.
Okay, a couple of last things I want to get to.
There's a funny story out there.
Funny and kind of tragic at the same time.
Funny because they're such snowflakes, but tragic because it's ironic that the media seem to miss the irony of their own story.
So you may have heard the story, Joe, Bloomingdale's had a shirt on their rack, a t-shirt.
Yeah.
It was a yellow t-shirt that read across the front, fake news.
So apparently some reporter walking through a Bloomingdale saw this and was deeply offended.
I mean, that's the funny part that there's such snowflakes.
I mean, you know, I've argued repeatedly that the reason I always stay semi-optimistic about the future of the country and the conservative movement and good Republicans out there is, Joe, we're hard.
We're hard people.
We've developed calluses over the years from constantly, constantly being called the worst of humanity and having to debate.
Remember, Democrats and Liberals don't debate on ideas, they debate on emotion.
Well, you know, we got health care as a right.
Okay, that's great.
That sounds terrific, health care as a right.
But a right creates an obligation for someone else.
That's what a right is.
So if you're going to declare health care a right, that creates an obligation on a doctor, a nurse, and an administrator in a hospital to provide you a service for free.
To work for you for nothing, whether you want to pay for it or not.
See, it's us engaging in substance while liberals have engaged in emotion over the years, which have made us hard.
I know I said at the beginning of the show I have a thin skin to criticism, and I do, which is good, but I'm hard on the facts and debate side.
I have to do my homework.
I'm on Fox constantly debating the liberals the best they have.
They throw at us on cable news.
I have to be prepared, and so do you.
That's why many of you listen to the show.
So the Snowflake crowd, which is deeply offended by this fake news shirt, they are not the future.
They don't have any ability to engage in any kind of substantive back and forth.
And I think over time, truth actually matters, especially with the wide dissemination of information through the internet era.
Where it's not just Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather anymore telling the American people what to believe.
We will win in the long run.
Sorry, I don't mean to get off track.
Back to the fake news story.
So the Snowflake reporter tweets to Bloomingdale's, you know, this is offensive, I can't believe you put this out there.
And then Pamela Wood, another one out there, another Snowflake, chimes in, another reporter.
And Bloomingdale's, by the way, in another Snowflake move.
I won't be shopping in there anymore.
I never shopped in there anyway.
My wife's probably like, oh my god.
Right, Paul?
Paul is like, don't say it, Sheila.
But Bloomingdale's panics and says, you know, we'll remove this shirt.
Give me a break with the snowflake stuff.
But the point of this, the irony of the whole thing, that these media folks, Joe, apparently missed.
Think this through, right?
They believe in free speech and open media, and they're actively using their social media profiles to bully a free market enterprise, Bloomingdale's, into pulling down his shirt, which defends them.
But they don't see the irony there, and it's why I told you, I have no faith these media lunatics in the long run, they will discredit.
Just sit back and watch the ride, folks.
The media will discredit themselves all on their own.
You don't need to help them advance the football.
You don't need to give them a vitamin B12 shot of discrediting energy.
They will do it all on their own.
Let me circle back to the beginning of the show.
They did it on the collusion hoax, knowing there was no evidence.
They've done it by reporting fake news repeatedly about the Trump team.
The media will discredit itself.
Just sit back and watch the run.
You need to get that fake news shirt down.
Really?
This is what we're doing?
You're so deeply offended, but do you know how many shirts out there I see?
Che Guevara shirts, Impeach Trump shirt.
There was a guy in my gym about six months ago.
Inside joke.
About three months ago, walking around.
It's a conservative gym, by the way, packed full of conservatives, with an Impeach Trump shirt on.
Now, Joe, if you were to walk around with a MAGA hat in a liberal gym in Manhattan, you're taking your life into your own hands.
Yes, you are.
There it is.
Right?
Ah, there it is.
You are taking it.
You have to get like a light dumbbell to defend yourself.
You may have to throw it at someone.
This guy walked around the gym, this liberal kid, with this impeach Trump shirt.
You know what happened to him, Joe?
Take a guess.
Uh, nothing?
Nothing happened to him, yes!
You cheated because I told you this story before.
But you wouldn't even need to cheat.
Nothing happened.
He worked out.
Nobody cared.
Nor did I. I don't know if he was like peacocking his shirt like we were all supposed to.
Nobody cared.
Knock yourself out, buddy.
Work out.
Nobody cared.
I'm telling you, not one person batted an eyelash.
A couple people probably snickered and laughed.
But they're not at him!
They just moved on!
But the snowflakes can't take it!
This is why in the long run we will always win this fight.
Truth has to matter.
You know, there's a great book my wife and I both read called The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.
It was a bestseller for like five years or something.
So really, I'm not into self-help books at all, believe me.
But it really is a transformative book from a Harvard psychiatrist who has extensive experience interviewing troubled people and came to a number of conclusions about people who are pathological liars and narcissists and how sooner or later, you know, you're going to have to accept the truth.
And there's a point in his book where he discusses the fact that human civilization seems to be defying the laws of physics.
I'll make this quick, I don't want to bore you, but it's an interesting point, Joe.
How everything in nature, as you notice over time, has this tendency towards entropy or disorder.
You put oil globules in water, they don't order themselves, they disperse randomly.
You blow a dandelion into the air.
They don't go single file.
They chaotically blow wherever the wind is throwing them.
You see that scene from Jurassic Park where the scientist puts the drop of water on the female scientist's hand and says, isn't it amazing how it never runs in the same direction twice?
Due to the hairs on your hand and the sweat.
Everything moves towards chaos.
But as Peck points out in his book, except humanity, Humanity over time has gone from Neanderthal, to savagery, to semi-chaos, to some at least sense of order and dignity where the large majority of people across the globe become more prosperous, less hungry, more knowledgeable.
Everything that's happened to humankind, I believe it's because we've been touched by the hand of God, As moved from savagery towards order, in the exact opposite way nature intends for everyone else.
You let your bushes grow.
Do they grow in a straight line?
No, they grow chaotically.
I say that because truth matters.
And we, the conservative movement, the liberty lovers out there, we are on the right side of this.
The media's not.
They've been called out for lies, dishonesty, propaganda, snowflakery.
The lack of truth-telling over and over.
Their approval ratings are in the tank.
We're on the right side of this.
Smile a little bit.
We will win this in the long run.
All right, one last story I just want to bring up quickly.
Interesting polling data out there about this Medicare for All.
Why am I bringing this up?
Because, again, harking back to the Green New Deal vote, McConnell's going to call on the floor, which is going to put these presidential Senate candidates on the record and in a very, very damaging position in the general election against Trump, Joe.
Not in the primary.
There is another issue out there that is going to do significant damage to the Democrats.
This medicare-for-all issue is creating another quandary for them.
A dilemma.
The dilemma is this, Joe.
This medicare-for-all and the accompanying taxes and the wiping out of private insurance actually polls okay on the democrat side.
Not great, but okay.
Slim majorities.
Now, Joe, if you want to win a Democrat primary to be the nominee for president, do you think you want to be on the positive side of that issue or the negative side?
Obviously you want to be on the positive side, which even though Medicare for All is only a slim majority of Democrats, it's still a majority.
What's the problem, Joe?
How do you think this issue polls amongst the general electorate, Democrats and Republicans and Independents?
If I told you, Joe, it pulled horribly, do you think that would be a winner winner chicken dinner moment?
Yes!
It would!
Yeah, okay.
I caught you off guard there.
It pulls horrendously!
It pulls horribly!
When people find out that Medicare for All is going to involve a near doubling of their tax rates and the wiping out of their own personal insurance plan, they freak out!
The polls are in the 10 to 20 percent!
So, just like the Green New Deal vote, the Democrats are in a classic dilemma.
If I don't vote for the Green New Deal, I'll lose my primary.
And if I lose my primary, I'll never get to run in the general.
But if I do vote for the Green New Deal, I'm on the record for a policy where I'm going to get smoked in the general.
But I never would have gotten there from the first place.
The exact same dilemma.
is being posed by medicare for all and that's why uh sanders and a lot of these others president warren and others are on the record supporting this but they know it's a lie because in the general they are going to have to run from this thing because it is an apocalyptic electoral disaster big big storm clouds on the horizon for the democrats running for president folks all right thanks again for tuning in folks i really appreciate it today was another stacked show Please subscribe to my email list.
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