Why Can’t the Anti-Trumpers Get Their Stories Straight? (Ep 922)
In this episode I address the constantly changing stories by the anti-Trump schemers and why they all vindicate President Trump. I also address the hypocritical campaign of Bernie Sanders, who remains a one-percenter. Finally, I address a massive error by the CBO that should be headline news. News Picks:Bernie Sanders is a total fraud. He lives like the 1% he decries.
Lunatic liberals demand that a pro-police flag be taken down in Connecticut.
The CBO really blew it on Obamacare. Why should we trust them?
Why can’t Andrew McCabe keep his story straight?
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?
It's Friday!
I'm doing well, baby.
Dude, let me ask you a question.
So, you know, we haven't been all over this Smollett case because, you know, it's just so stupid, the whole thing.
This guy, he's in a world of trouble, this Jussie Smollett, who by all appearances now appears to have faked this attack on him.
But Joe, I found out yesterday, I was scrolling through Twitter, that apparently Jussie Smollett Paid the guys to attack him, you know, in this hoax attack.
Paid them in a personal check!
Now Joe, listen, you're not a brain surgeon, I'm not a rocket scientist, or as I used to joke, a rocket surgeon.
You know, we're reasonably smart guys, but who pays a guy at a personal check to attack him?
Joe, listen, here's a pro tip for you.
Not that you would do this because you would be arrested.
If you were going to pay someone to engage in a Joe Armacost hoax attack, Joe's going out.
Do you still have that white car?
That cool looking white thing you used to drive?
Do you still have that car?
Same thing in silver.
It's a cool looking game.
If you're walking out to your car and you paid two guys to attack you to put out on Twitter to gain something.
Joe, do not pay them in a personal check.
What kind of knucklehead does this?
[laughter]
Personal check.
Who the hell does that?
I'm like, my gosh, uh, you know, uh, there, I mean, there's levels of stupid folks.
That is like a catastrophic level of stupid right there.
Personal check.
Dude, again, pro tip, just go get some cash.
Go get a gold bar.
Get something.
Bitcoin.
Sheesh, pay him in a purse.
If it wasn't for stupid people like that, cops would have a much harder job.
Please, I'm gonna check.
Oh, all right, let me move on.
All right, I got a lot to get through today.
I got some interesting new stuff.
Jeff Carlson, another great piece of the Epic Times.
You don't want to miss it.
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All right.
So, um, Carlson's got a great piece up.
You know, I admire his work a lot at Epic Times.
And there's a couple of takeaways, uh, on the, you know, this McCabe thing is big this week.
We gotta hammer this.
We have to, because as I told you during this entire week of shows, the...
Storyline of the week, Joe, has been collusion is dead.
They are moving on now to obstruction of justice on Trump because it's all they have for an impeachment.
And McCabe is going to be their lead witness.
So the media is now conditioning you, gaslighting you onto the new narrative.
And the new narrative is in fact that, that Trump tried to obstruct justice.
But Carlson has a really great piece where he points out some real trouble with McCabe and how McCabe's story keeps getting worse and worse and worse.
The problem McCabe is having now, Andrew McCabe, is he's given all these interviews, whether it's to MSNBC, CNN, NPR, where our name ironically comes up in that one, my name.
He claims to not know who I am and then goes and takes a shot at me afterwards.
How do you take a shot at me?
You don't know who I am.
The problem is, as he's given all these interviews, McCabe, he keeps stumbling over his own story.
But one of the things interesting, and remember we're all talking about these eight days in May.
These eight days in May where Jim Comey is fired on May 9th of 2017.
Where May 11th McCabe goes up to the hill to testify and then May 16th and the dates following where it's alleged Rosenstein and McCabe are meeting to talk about plotting a basically an attempted coup via the 25th amendment and plotting to wire themselves up or one of them up in the White House to get the president on tape as evidence that the Comey firing was in fact motivated by an attempt to obstruct the Russia case.
But here's something I picked out.
Carlson notes an interesting date here that we've mentioned before, but as I was reading the piece, I put two and two together.
Joe, it's on May 16th of 2017.
That the alleged wire conversation happened.
So pay attention here.
This is important.
May 16, 2017.
It's alleged now that Rod Rosenstein says to Andy McCabe, hey, what do you want me to wear a wire with the president?
In other words, record the president of the United States to get evidence on an obstruction charge?
Rosenstein doesn't deny it, Joe.
But Rosenstein says, well, he was joking.
It was a joke.
He wasn't serious.
McCabe insists he is serious.
Who do we believe?
Joe, they're both snakes at this point.
Honestly, I don't know.
I wouldn't bet my house on either one of their credibilities because they don't have it.
But something else happens on that day, Joe.
Oh yeah.
Later on that same day, Rod Rosenstein escorts a certain figure over to the White House for a meeting with Donald Trump about the now-open FBI director position that had been open since the 9th, which was a few days earlier, May 9th, when Trump fired Jim Comey.
Rosenstein escorts Bob Muller over there.
Oh!
This is, yes, yeah, you know, shame on me for not telling you this earlier because I'm starting to put together now, this isn't in Jeff's piece, this is kind of me taking off from there and running with it, but the piece is in the show notes.
If you click on the menu at our website bungino.com, the podcast app, the show notes are attached to the show.
Now it's starting to make sense what probably happens here, Joe.
McCabe doesn't trust Rosenstein, right?
Rosenstein, who's the Deputy Attorney General at the time, but is running the case because Sessions has recused himself.
He's effectively the boss of the whole Russia farcical collusion nonsense probe, right?
They don't trust each other.
So, McCabe... Rosenstein's starting to worry about McCabe.
McCabe's He's a clear animus towards Trump, but he's not worried.
Don't get me wrong here.
Don't read this the wrong way.
Rosenstein's not worried about McCabe hating Trump and wanting a wire in the White House and all this other stuff.
Rosenstein's worried about that because Rosenstein thinks that if McCabe doesn't handle this the right way, it's going to elicit a lot of attention to the FBI and it's going to bring heat on what they already did.
Does that make sense?
If it doesn't, stop me here, Joe.
Paula, you too out there.
In other words, he's not Rosenstein's not mad at McCabe or doesn't trust him because he's worried he's targeting Trump.
They already targeted Trump.
The Pfizer stuff already happened.
It's already over.
They've already spied on him.
They've already tried to foster this stupid collusion narrative.
Rosenstein's worried, I guess the best way to say it Joe, Rosenstein's worried that McCabe's being sloppy.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, is he worried about McCabe botching the deal?
Yeah, right.
He's botching the deal!
But Rosenstein's knee deep in the deal too.
He signed the FISA warrant.
He signed the, later on he goes on to sign the scope memo, expanding the scope of Mueller's later investigation.
What I think happens here, it's making all kinds of sense now, is Rosenstein knows that Mueller is likely going to be the special counsel.
How do we know that?
Because Mueller's appointed the next day.
So Rosenstein knows he is going to select Mueller as the special counsel.
He knows that.
Joe, do you really think in a few hours the next day in the morning he wakes up and goes, oh, Bob Mueller would be a good guy?
So put two and two together.
What happens here?
Rosenstein's worried about McCabe being a loose cannon.
That he's sloppy.
He's losing it.
He's going to expose the whole thing.
He's a co-conspirator and he's worried about McCabe ratting him out.
He needs a special counsel to shut McCabe down.
He's already decided it's Mueller.
He probably has a conversation with Mueller the day before he appoints him on the 16th that says, listen, I'm going to propose this to Trump, that you could be appointed the FBI director, but that's really not going to happen.
There's no chance that's going to happen.
So I'll tell you what, under the guise of this meeting, I'll escort you into the White House and I want you to see how crazy this guy is talking about the president.
I don't believe that.
I'm trying to get in the head of Rosenstein and now it makes sense.
Why would Rosenstein, follow me Armacost, why would Rosenstein, knowing he's going to appoint Mueller as a special counsel the next day and can't possibly be the FBI director, right?
You can't fill those two roles.
Why would Rosenstein escort Mueller to the White House for a meeting about being the FBI director knowing it's never going to happen?
Right.
Because Rosenstein wants Mueller to see for himself.
What he thinks is wrong with Donald Trump.
Oh!
Now I say this with no, this is finally, I say this with no air of pretension.
I don't mean this in any kind of egomaniacal way at all.
So please understand.
I've spoken to the president.
We're not best buds.
I don't want to overly dramatize her, but he is folks that he's a perfectly lucid.
He's exactly like you would expect in a business guy.
He gets right to the point and he says what's on his mind.
I have seen no evidence, but, I mean no evidence of anything other than an effective business guy.
He reminds me of when I was doing some um secret service work and we deal with high-tech companies uh you know because the president would come in and out visit a lot of these companies you deal with the CEO he reminds me every CEO I ever met.
He's there bang bang bang to the point you know AB business all business right?
Right.
But Rosenstein Joe doesn't see it that way.
Rosenstein sees Trump as the mad hatter And he wants Mueller to see it for himself so now this whole thing makes sense.
Hey, come with me to the White House.
See this for yourself before I appoint you for special counsel the next day.
Now the dates make all the sense in the world.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!
That very next day, he appoints Mueller.
Does that make sense, Armacost?
Yeah, that does make sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm cool.
He brings him in there.
Of course he's not going to be appointed the FBI director.
He's the only guy who can clean up the whole mess who's intimately related to all the players in the scheme.
So two takeaways from point one here.
So one sub A, one sub B. Number one, Rosenstein's worried about McCabe, not because he's protecting Trump, but because McCabe is clumsy.
He's losing it.
He's not keeping his marbles together.
McCabe even admits it himself.
He says, we were under a lot of stress at this time.
Can I make one simple point about that too?
Yeah, man.
Before I get to point B. You know, when I was a Secret Service agent overseas, the one thing That would ruin your reputation quicker than anything else.
And you military guys out there and cops, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Was having a reputation for what we called, you know, dropping code.
We also called it, um, Let's say hitting the bed, if you get what I'm saying.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
It's a family-friendly show, so kids don't ask you.
But dropping code or being known as an agent who panicked under stress was a career killer.
Nobody wanted to be around you because the Secret Service was non-stop stress all the time.
So just on this one sub-A point here, that Rosenstein's worried because McCabe is panicking and dropping code, McCabe is weak!
I'm sorry folks, I've knocked this guy all week because he's so pathetic and he's such a liar, but one final knock if you'll allow me, is that this guy is weak!
So we threatened to try to take the president out of office in a bureaucratic coup and to wire up Rod Rosenstein because I was under stress?
Let me tell you something.
Armacost is under stress every day when Paul has busted his chops about getting a cutout.
Joe, we need to cut, right?
Paul is inside like, will you please stop talking about this stuff?
I can't.
This is part of my life.
This is the show.
You guys got to know everything, warts and all.
Joe's like, I'm under stress.
I got to travel to Vietnam today on a 30 plus hours of flying.
Listen, that's no excuse.
I got to put a show on for you and the show has to produce the goods or you won't listen and then nothing works.
Stress shmess!
I'm sorry but life is stress!
McCabe, so McCabe engaged in a bureaucratic coup because he was under stress?
Oh my gosh!
So again the takeaway is McCabe is a code dropper and Rosenstein was worried that he was going to be the rat in this whole thing.
So he has to get him under control.
Secondly, clearly he brings Mueller to the White House to give Mueller a flavor for his version of events, Rosenstein.
And he went, oh, look at Trump.
We're going to go meet him.
He's crazy.
But this is clearly what's going on as evidenced by him appointing him the next day.
OK.
Now that's the Carlson piece addresses some of that, but not at that angle.
This he hits and he takes on directly.
And this is a great, great, great point.
Hat tip, Big Jeff at Epic Times.
Let's get the lead out first.
How can Trump obstruct an investigation he was not aware of?
Joe, I'm sorry.
I have to, when we got to knock my, I gotta be self-deprecating.
I gotta be self-deprecating.
But how did I not bring this point up earlier in the week?
If Trump is gonna now... Right?
How did we miss this?
It got by me too, to tell you the truth.
It got by you too, didn't it?
And you see the articles I put out there?
Yeah!
How the heck can Trump obstruct an investigation he was not aware was going on?
Okay, you're like, Dan, what are you talking about?
So remember, the Dems are moving now and their media goon friends from collusion to obstruction.
But let me read to you Jim Baker, the FBI, one of the head attorneys at the top of the FBI, right-hand man to Jim Comey, intimately familiar with this small group of people attacking the Trump team through the Spygate scandal.
This is Baker's testimony under oath to Congressman John Ratcliffe.
Well, let me just read Carlson's first, the lead up.
He says, but then again, there's a problem.
Trump was never told he may be the subject of a criminal investigation, a fact even Baker admitted to during his testimony.
Here's Congressman Ratcliffe, good guy.
So, do you know if at any point in time did Jim Comey, his FBI director, ever tell President Trump that President Trump was under criminal investigation?
Baker.
I think, my understanding and belief, is that he was never told.
That in fact he was told the opposite.
That he was not under investigation.
How did we miss this?
I'm like, I'm reading Jeff's piece and I'm kicking myself in the butt going, because I had this, I had the testimony, I have the screenshots of it, and the fact that I didn't tell you this is infuriating to me.
I'm disappointed I let you down.
How could Trump obstruct an investigation he wasn't even told existed?
Joe Armacost is guilty of obstructing an investigation of the bank robbery.
Did Joe know he was under investigation for bank robbery?
He had no idea!
So how could he obstruct an investigation?
Yeah.
This is a brilliant point.
This is hot dip Jeff Carlson.
If there were two or three huge takeaways from this week.
Great job.
One would be, Andy McCabe still has not proved that there was any evidence to open the case outside the dossier.
No predicate.
He still has not said anything about predicate crimes.
Matter of fact, he made it worse yesterday by indicating in an interview, Joe, that all of the information we know they used to target the Trump team had already been made public.
In other words, we know everything.
According to McCabe, According to how they started the investigation, the FBI, he was the, he was one of the lead guys in charge of, and there's nothing, he's now admitting it.
One of the other takeaways would be, McCabe told Rubio, under oath, two days after Comey was fired, that there was quote, no effort to obstruct his investigation.
The FBI invest, by President Trump.
That's takeaway number two, devastating.
But this has got to be takeaway number three.
Jim Baker, upper echelon lawyer in the FBI, under oath tells Congressman Ratcliffe, a solid Republican, that Trump was told he wasn't even under investigation!
How could he obstruct an investigation he was told didn't even exist?
Now, there's some follow-up later.
To be fair to the liberal lunatics, because I want to prepare you for point-counterpoint.
The liberal lunatics will say, well, he was going to obstruct investigations into other people.
No, no, no, no.
Let me read again from yesterday's show.
Important.
The president himself, according to Jim Comey, the president went on to say that if there were some satellite associates of his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out.
How in... is that evidence of obstruction?
On an investigation with other people.
You see where I'm going with this, Joe?
It seems weird a little bit.
A little bit, Pee Wee.
A little bit.
Just a tiny little bit.
He's not obstructing an investigation into himself because he was told he wasn't under investigation.
Oh, well, he was clearly trying to obstruct investigations into his other people.
That's not what Jim Comey said!
Comey said he actually asked him to find out if there was any misdeeds or malfeasance with his quote satellites.
Oh my gosh, are you liberals this stupid?
Do you have any evidence of anything ever?
I mean outside of like I think therefore I am like the fact you know when Descartes tried to distill down how he could prove he existed I think therefore I must be.
You're not even thinking therefore you must not be.
I'm not so good.
Descartes got that all wrong.
Well I think therefore I don't know you think therefore you are because you're not thinking.
You've got nothing.
You've got no collusion.
You've got no predicate.
You've got no obstruction against Trump case.
You've got no obstruction on Trump against other people.
You've got nothing!
You're just making this whole thing up!
Now, I'm gonna hit one final point from Jeff's piece on this, which is, again, stellar!
We've kind of addressed this a little bit before, but he puts it together in kind of a different way, and it's nice and neat.
So takeaway number one was the wire talk and how McCabe and Rosenstein don't trust each other and how Mueller was going to be, unquestionably, Mueller was going to be the special counsel and was brought in to probably interview Trump.
Hey, look at this guy.
Takeaway number two, Trump didn't even know there was an investigation and he was told the opposite.
How could he obstruct it?
Takeaway number three, Joe, the liberals will tell you in a counterpoint.
You know, but clearly by May of 2017, while all of this is happening, Joe, clearly there must be some other evidence out there that maybe Andy McCabe is unaware of.
Because remember, McCabe's already said, Joe, in an interview this week, no, no, everything's already out there.
Right.
So the liberals will say, because I know how liberals are, because they're frauds, and they're fakes, and they're phonies, and they love to lie and make stuff up.
They'll say, well, Andy McCabe wasn't the investigator in the case.
Peter Stroke from the FBI was.
So clearly he knew something.
Oh, did he?
Because here's a quote from Jeff Carlson's epic Times piece.
Text from Peter Stroke, the lead investigator, in May of 2017 to his girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
You and I both know the odds are nothing.
If I thought it was likely, I'd be there.
No question.
I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern.
There's no big there there.
This is the lead investigator in the case telling his girlfriend, another FBI employee, via text while talking about this collusion probe that the odds are, quote, nothing.
There's no there there.
But this, again, this won't stop liberals.
No, no, they'll say maybe he's just trying to impress his girlfriend and she's got the goods.
Okay, here's Lisa Page with the goods.
Paige, who was asked about this text during her July 2018 testimony, said, So I think this represents that even as far as May of 2017, we still couldn't answer the question.
In other words, the girlfriend, Lisa Paige, the FBI lawyer to Stroke, the lead investigator, is acknowledging that, no, no, we just didn't know anything.
Oh my gosh.
Joe, this case, this, this, this stupid never ends.
It just goes on and on and on.
It is the, the, it's like, it's, it's like my friend Brian.
Other friend, Brian.
Not my cop friend, Brian.
This guy, Brian, I knew in Maryland.
He ran for office.
He has this company, Smith Island Cakes.
And Joe, you know the Smith Island Cake, right?
It's like seven layers of cake and fudge or something.
They're really good.
The official cake of Maryland, yeah.
Yeah, the official cake of Maryland, right?
The Smith Island fudge cake, right?
This is like a Smith Island seven-layer cake of stupid.
It's like dumb piled upon top of stupid, piled on top of moronic.
On top of it, I can't even get my word because this is so dumb.
I'm getting dumber talking about it.
Care for a piece of cake?
No, I'm dumb enough already.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
I've reached peak stupid.
I'm good.
My stupid tank is full.
I mean, you're that guy in the gas station.
You know the guy in the gas station where the automatic shutoff kicks in, he's still trying, and the gas starts coming back out.
The stupid's coming out backwards now.
You're starting a gasoline fire of stupid.
Oh man, folks, it's unbelievable.
Yeah.
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Okay.
A couple of news stories I wanted to get to.
Speaking of firearms, this is actually an interesting segue.
I didn't plan it this way, but A lot of news stories, you know, Fridays where I catch up on the news of the week that I may have missed out of when there's big breaking bombshells like the McCabe book story and all his stumbles this week.
There's interesting pieces in yesterday's show notes, actually.
If you go to yesterday's show, you'll see it in there.
It's a piece of the Daily Signal by John Stossel, who does really great work, about a bunch of bogus gun research that's being called out, even by liberal outlets lately, folks.
I say this because you're going to see a renewed push in the 2020 presidential with the Democrats on stage for outright gun confiscation, Joe.
We've seen a far-left Lurch lately with the Democrat Party.
I heard Elizabeth Warren yesterday is now calling for reparations.
This is just incredible.
We're now at full-blown government health care, massive amounts of government spending, the Green New Deal, gun confiscation.
So you're going to hear a lot of this.
Now you're going to see some of this research put out there and John Stossel does a good job of calling it out as nonsense.
The first piece of information, Joe, NPR, of all places.
Yeah, NPR.
I didn't say that wrong.
Obviously a left-leaning outlet.
It did a piece of debunking that's described in the Daily Signal piece, where there was a study going around that showed that there were 235 school shootings over this recent time period, they documented.
And a lot of people like you and I, we covered this a bit before, but it's important to address it again in context of this article, Joe.
Remember we addressed this, we were like, 235?
Like, folks, listen, any of these is so tragic.
I mean, we all remember them.
Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, which isn't that far from me.
I mean, we remember all of these.
These are, for all the wrong reasons, tattooed on our brains.
But when I heard that number, 235, I thought, really?
Did I miss?
What happened here?
Well, NPR, of all places, debunked this and could only confirm, Joe, 11 of these.
Now, listen, that doesn't take away the tragedy of these 11, obviously.
No.
But the point is, folks, if we're trying to address a problem, which this unquestionably is, with actual facts and data, the facts and data have to be right!
Now what happened here?
A lot of these 235 claimed school shootings were reports from schools that there was a shooting somewhere near a school, there was a hunter in the woods somewhere, they heard around, some kid off a campus got caught with a BB gun.
These are not school shooting incidents.
Not as we would typically think about them.
Secondly, so that's important, if there are not, if that number gets thrown out there folks, be ready to respond.
These are all tragic, no question, but there were not 235 school shootings.
NPR can only confirm 11.
Again, unquestionably tragic, but that's not an accurate number, 235.
Another one in this interesting piece in the Daily Signal.
Since 1966, there was a researcher who claimed there were 90 public mass shootings.
Again, Joe, San Bernardino.
We know about the, when you see, Fort Hood.
These are things that for all the wrong reasons are tattooed on our brains.
We remember these.
Joe, you remember Fort Hood, San Bernardino.
Paris.
Now this guy claims since 1966 there have been 90 public mass shootings in the United States and that that makes us one of the highest countries in the world for these mass shootings.
What's the problem here?
The countries he's making the comparison to don't even keep this kind of data.
In other words, how is he making a comparison between an apple and an apple when he doesn't have another apple?
He doesn't have the data.
This is from the piece.
John Lott, when his research center checked the data using Lankford's own definition of a mass shooting, four or more people killed, the center found 3,000 shootings around the world.
Lankford claimed there were only 202.
So in other words, Joe, not only is he grossly overestimating the number of quote mass shootings in the United States.
Yeah.
He is underestimating, by a factor of over 10, the number of mass shootings around the world.
You get what I'm saying?
This is what bothers me about liberalism, folks.
Instead of speaking about an unquestioned problem, we can all agree about it, no doubt about that, in serious terms, using facts and data so we can handle it and understand the scale of it, what does the left do when they're researchers?
They lie about it!
Well look, there were only 202 of these around the world and there have been 90, no there were 3,000 around the world and your 90 number in the United States isn't accurate either.
It says, the piece goes on, it turns out that not only did the U.S.
not have the most frequent mass shootings, it was number 62 on the list.
Lower than places like Norway, Finland, and Switzerland.
Folks, let's get our arms around the real data so we can grasp the scope of the problem.
Let's not lie to each other.
But liberals are good at that.
Every day I wake up with a new liberal argument I've got to debunk.
You know, I love doing it.
I get joy out of it completely.
All right, one more story here I want to get to before I get to my... We're ending off on a high note today, Joe.
You know I love the Bernie Sanders stuff, so I've got some really good Bernie Sanders stuff.
But the liberals will cite to you, this should be a huge story, it's a story about the CBO.
Liberals love to cite the CBO.
They love to do that and there's a story out there, it's in the show notes today, the Washington Examiner.
About just how bad the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, has been at estimating the effects of Obamacare.
This should be a story in wide dissemination and it has been sidelined.
You're going to hear nothing about it outside.
I think Phil Wegman wrote the piece in the Examiner.
The CBO, Joe, their original estimate on Obamacare, pay attention to these numbers, you want to see how off they are, because your liberal friends recite the CBO all the time, estimated that the individual mandate, in other words, the tax penalty in Obamacare, if you refuse to buy the insurance, the Obamacare insurance, now Trump wiped that out, that doesn't exist anymore, but it did.
The individual mandate, it was estimated To increase the number of insured by 14 million people.
Follow me because this gets a little confusing but it's important.
It's critically important because it speaks to the utter failure of government and bureaucrats to almost ever get anything right ever and how it leads to serious policy ramifications for us and negative ones.
Obama, Joe, needed Needed that number to be high.
In other words, he needed to be able to go to the American people and say, look, this individual mandate telling people that you'd have to buy Obamacare, they're going to be penalized.
It'll be strong enough that it'll cause 14 million people to buy insurance.
And Obama's take, Joe, was that was a good thing.
You tracking?
Yeah.
He needed that number high so he could say, look, all these people will buy insurance.
As a result, it'll stabilize the markets.
Now, The Republicans benefited from this too.
Yeah, believe it or not.
Because when Trump and the Republicans wanted to institute the tax cut, what did they wipe clean, Joe?
The individual mandate.
They got rid of it.
So, inadvertently, the CBO, which does a terrible job, their number of 14 million people, they couldn't backtrack on that number.
So the Republicans said, well if we wipe clean this individual mandate and get rid of it, well clearly then the government's gonna save a lot of money which we can use to cut taxes.
Why, Joe?
Because according to your own numbers, baby, 14 million people aren't gonna buy Obamacare and therefore the government doesn't have to pay them subsidies to buy it!
Yeah, baby, yeah!
They did in Austin Peay!
The Republicans did a dipsy-doo flip-a-roo.
Oh!
It was a brilliant move.
They said, well, CBO guys, you use this for Obama so we can run around the country saying, look how successful Obamacare is going to be.
We're going to have 14 million people who are now going to buy insurance that wouldn't have otherwise.
That number sticks.
You can't run from it.
So Republicans used that 13 million number in the scoring and said, well now we're going to save money because we don't have to subsidize these people who aren't going to buy this crap insurance.
And they used that money, Joe, to do what?
To cut those people's taxes.
So it was a win-win.
Now you don't get a tax penalty for not buying Obamacare and you get a tax cut so you get to spend some more of your own money.
There's the background.
The CBO estimate of 13 to 14 million people.
Well folks, the individual mandate was in fact wiped out, so now we know.
Now we know, now that there is no more individual mandate, Joe, if the CBO was right, that it was going to cause 14 million people to drop or buy insurance.
Well, what was the actual number, Joe?
So they predicted 14 million people would drop, okay?
If the individual mandate wasn't in effect.
The individual mandate is not in effect.
What do you think?
How many people dropped?
10 million?
8 million?
Maybe, you know, they were close.
Maybe, you know, 12 million?
How does this sound for you?
2.5 million people.
They were only off by a factor of six.
No big deal, folks.
They said 14 million people would drop and 2.5 million did.
Why is this a big story?
And Wegman says that kind of in his piece, like, how is this not getting more traction?
It's a big story.
Because they fudged the numbers to sell you this Obamacare crap.
Now you could say, well, the Republicans fudged the numbers too to get tax cuts.
I don't care!
It was more freedom for me.
It was money in my pocket, and now I don't have to buy crap insurance.
I don't care if they fudged the numbers or not.
What I do care about number fudging, Joe, is when you force me to do something using government power against my will, like buying crap insurance based on numbers that are not even remotely accurate.
Is the CBO ever right on anything ever?
Nah, a bunch of number fudgers.
Right?
I was a little worried there.
A little worried where you were going.
I was worried halfway through it!
Yeah, I mean, they weren't even close to 14 million prediction, ladies and gentlemen.
It's not even in the ballpark.
It's not in the stadium.
It's not in the parking lot.
It's not even on the highway close to the stadium anywhere.
I can't lie.
Dude, yeah.
CBO.
We love the CBO.
They're great.
They're so great.
They were only off by a factor of six.
Don't worry, they were only off by 11 and a half million people.
No big deal, folks.
It was just a rounding error.
A rounding error of 11 and a half million out of a 14 million prediction.
What the heck?
Read the piece in the Examiner.
It's worth your time.
It's very good.
All right.
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All right.
Ending the week on a high note, our buddy Bernie's back!
Bernie!
Feel the Bern, kids.
Feel the Bern.
Just protect your wallet in the meantime, because Bernie's unquestionably dipping his hand into yours.
You know, what's that Capital One?
Where's your wallet?
And that should be Bernie's model.
Bernie should be the Capital One.
Where's your wallet?
I need to get my hand in there.
So we had a lot of fun with Bernie during the last election cycle where our most viral show at the time, well it's funny our audience back then pales in comparison to what it is now Joe, but back then it was a big deal.
Remember that show got like 40,000 downloads overnight?
We were like oh my gosh this is the greatest thing ever!
That's like an hour now for some of our good shows.
But we did a show about Bernie where we exposed him for the fraud he is, how he's hopping around the country on these charter flights when he was campaigning, how the menu on the charter was incredible.
I mean, this is a guy that's supposed to be a socialist, you know?
A man of the people, Joe.
He's not a bourgeois.
This guy's a member of the working class.
And remember the show about, what was it, glazed in dives or whatever it was?
You hadn't seen a menu on this guy's flight.
Herb crusted and dives or lamb bones or whatever the heck.
I don't even know.
I don't eat that crap.
I eat, you know, steak and chicken fingers.
I mean, seriously, I do.
Not that we can't afford.
I just, that's what I eat.
It's what I like.
I'm sorry.
But yeah, Bernie eats high class.
What was the other one?
Crusted key lime pie with tootie rolls or whatever.
I don't even know what the heck was in it.
But Bernie was living the high life.
So we shredded him for being a phony and a fraud and the show went nuclear for us at the time.
And the reason we do that though is for, it's substantial folks.
It's not just to joke around.
It's number one because tactically speaking, I'm an activist at heart and this matters to me.
And one of the key tools in our arsenal against the left Is mockery.
And I'm sorry, I know that doesn't sound great, but it's true.
Legitimate mockery, using hypocrisy as a foil, their own hypocrisy, is a devastating weapon to use against them.
They're trying to take our money, Joe.
They're trying to take our freedom.
They're trying to take our healthcare.
Well, we're gonna fight back.
And if it makes you all look silly in the process, too bad, not sad.
I don't care.
Now, we don't have that problem as conservatives.
We don't.
We live our own principles.
We want people to spend their own money on themselves and their family because we know that money's better spent that way.
We know what we turn over to the government, some we have to.
Military, courts, the constitutional functions of government, we don't object to that.
But we do object to your endless entitlement programs, your social welfare programs, and you taking money out of our pockets to give it to people, at times, in the words of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's own website, people unwilling to work.
We don't stand for that.
We want people to work and be prosperous.
Now, there's no hypocrisy there.
I want to spend more of my own money, and I want you to do it, too.
I like school choice for my kids.
I want school choice for your kids, too.
I want to pick my own health care.
I want you to pick your health care, too.
The Democrats, these hypocritical, phony fraud far-leftists, do not do that.
They are total frauds.
They want more of your money as they hammer the 1%, as they live like the 1%.
They rant against school choice while they send their kids to elite schools.
They rant against your, you know, being able to pick your own health care while they have these nice gold-plated plans from Congress.
It's a joke.
It's a farce.
And I'm tired of it.
And Bernie is the captain of the frauds.
And listen, Bernie bros, whatever, bring it.
Bring it on social media, your emails.
I love it.
I relish it.
I will start reading your emails on the show.
We'll have to do that Dana Lash thing where she reads hate mail on the show and it's a sponsored segment and she uses the hate mail bag to buy ammo for the range or something.
That was the greatest idea ever.
I don't care.
You guys are supporting a total fraud.
Article up at Bongino.com today.
Really good one up in the show notes.
Let's go through some of the bullet points on how Bernie Sanders is the biggest fraud in politics.
Bernie Sanders, who rails against the 1%, owns three homes.
Three!
He has a 2016 home he bought, or he bought in 2016.
He spent $575K off on a lake in Vermont.
He had a little lake house.
Now, Joe, I make decent money.
I don't have a lake house.
Yeah, I have no problem with Bernie's lake house.
I have a problem with the fact that Bernie has a lake house and rails against people who have lake houses.
That's kind of the problem.
Joe, do you have a lake house?
No, no.
I don't have a lake house.
Maybe you can check out on Airbnb.
Maybe Bernie's renting his up in Vermont.
You may want to check that out.
I don't have the address.
I wouldn't put it out.
I don't dox people anyway.
But maybe if you get friendly with Bernie, he'll throw you a bone, let you hang out at his lake house.
So he has three homes.
He has a row home in D.C.
Gosh, I can't even imagine how expensive that is.
If you've been to D.C.
lately, those row homes aren't, you know, right, Joe?
You know the market well.
Oh, yeah.
Those are pretty expensive.
You could have bought one 30 years ago at a deal.
Not anymore.
So he's got a nice little row home in D.C.
Yeah, Bernie.
Nice job there, Bernie.
He's got another home, apparently, in Burlington, Vermont.
So he has three homes.
Now, what I find fascinating is people are still getting snookered by this fraud.
This complete clown.
He tweets out yesterday, Bernie.
He really tweeted this.
He tweets out, how many yachts do these billionaires need?
I don't know.
As many as you need homes?
Out of three?
I don't know.
I'm not a billionaire.
I don't own a yacht.
I don't even like boats.
I don't even have like a 10-footer to put on the water.
I don't.
I don't need any yachts.
The point is, I don't care how many yachts billionaires need.
As long as someone's building yachts and getting paid for them in a yacht business, it's good for the economy.
I don't care.
But they probably need about as many yachts as Bernie Sanders needs homes.
Joe, how many homes can you live in at one time?
Have we cloned anybody yet?
No, not as far as I know, right?
So Bernie can live in one home at a time, right?
So he only needs one, right?
Mm-hmm, yeah.
So let me ask you, why does he have three?
Go!
Why does he have three, Joe?
Why does he have three homes?
I guess because he can, you know?
I don't know why.
Because he can!
Yes!
Well done, Arvakaas!
Why does Bernie buy three homes?
Because he can!
Because it's a free country!
Exactly!
It's the best answer you've ever given on this show!
Thank you!
I have a really nasty joke.
I'm not going to say I don't ever use jokes on the show because it's a kid-friendly show, but one of my cousins, a great guy, he's a firefighter, I think he's retired now, but he used to tell me a joke that ended in, because they can.
And I'll have to tell you that one off the air, Joe, but it was the greatest joke.
It's the greatest joke ever.
Why does Bernie buy three homes?
Because he can.
That's why.
Because we don't live in Cuba.
That's why.
But he's a phony!
He's a big fraud, he can only live in one of them.
Secondly...
So Bernie Sanders' salary is out there.
Bernie Sanders earned $1 million in 2017, including $900,000 from a book he wrote.
Now, again, Bernie Sanders is a phony and a fake and a big fraud.
Why is Bernie Sanders not redistributing this money out to people in the economy, donating it to the government?
Why?
His whole campaign platform...
His whole platform is based on the idea that money collected above a certain point necessary for living, which Joe, can we all agree a million is, a million is far more than someone would need to live a life of basic sustenance, right?
Oh yeah, yeah.
Again, I'm not faulting anybody who has that.
I'm simply suggesting that as a mathematical fact, an economic financial fact, Unless you're living in Beverly Hills, you can probably get a decent home and live well off a million dollars.
So Bernie doesn't need all that.
Bernie probably needs about, he could live on $50,000 plus I think his wife used to work, she probably has some pension.
So Bernie doesn't need $950,000 of that.
Now my question is why isn't he donating that to the government?
Bernie can pay higher taxes.
Now keep in mind, you may say, well why would Bernie do that?
Because Bernie's whole ethos, his whole ideology, his whole ideological house is built on a bedrock that government is a force for positive good in our lives.
That we should give what we can above a level of basic need to the government because the government will do better things with it than you will.
Of course, folks, that is asinine.
That is one of the dumbest things any human being could ever align themselves with.
There's no evidence that's true at all.
It's just dumb.
As Milton Friedman always said, when government, you know, government's other people spending other people's money on other people, neither cost nor quality matter.
You're not buying anything for yourself, so the cost doesn't matter and the quality doesn't matter because it's not your product either.
You're buying it for other people.
That's what Bernie doesn't get.
But Bernie doesn't live that way either, folks.
Bernie lives like a fraud.
Bernie has money he doesn't need using his own line, and assets he doesn't need, two extra homes out of his three, and $950,000 in money he makes a year.
Why isn't he giving that away to the government to increase the net good of society, the positive externalities?
Folks, the answer's obvious.
Because Bernie knows that's not true.
He's a fraud.
He's telling you that's true because the financing of big government, if Bernie Sanders were the president, empowers Bernie Sanders.
The financing of big government allows him in his Senate spot in Vermont to control the economy, to increase his power, to have people come in to get handouts, the scraps from Longshank's table to quote Braveheart.
They have to go to you then to get the money.
Bernie's a fraud.
He's a fake.
You're being le- You know, that's what I've always admired about Trump.
At least he's honest.
He's like, I'm rich!
I love being rich!
It's great!
We should all be rich!
You should be rich!
Joe should be rich!
Reminds me of Oprah.
You know, remember Oprah?
You get a book!
You get a book!
You get a car!
You get a- Trump, that's Trump!
Trump's like, everybody should be rich!
Bernie just wants to be the only rich guy in town.
He wants you to all be poor.
Finally.
For the elections, right before the midterm elections, Bernie Sanders traveled around the country campaigning for people.
Bernie Sanders is a Green New Dealer.
Bernie Sanders believes in climate change.
Air travel obviously contributes to that via CO2 emissions, according to Bernie.
CO2, by the way, is not a poison, but I'm just giving you Bernie's take.
Air travel's bad.
Air travel's definitely bad if you don't need to travel.
So Bernie felt necessary to travel around before the midterm elections to get other like-minded socialists and communists elected.
So Joe, he spent a few bucks on air travel in October alone.
And by a few bucks, I mean $300,000 in air travel.
So let's just sum up Bernie here.
He's an alleged climate change alarmist who will fly around the country instead of taking trains or cars, emitting CO2 everywhere on those airplanes in the amount of $300,000 he didn't need to advocate for people who are going to take more of your money to make you poor unlike him because he makes a million dollars a year and owns three row homes.
And you're following this fool.
Folks, along the lines of yesterday's show, I get it.
Some of you may email me.
I read your emails.
Some of you may say, oh, don't pay attention to him.
You're giving him, you know, you're giving him unnecessary PR.
Folks, no, no, no.
No, that's not the way this works.
There are people who donated $6 million to this guy on his opening day.
It is up to us to use the political tactical weapons we have to start to knock this guy's nonsense down and point out the hypocrite that he is.
And that starts now.
By the way, I got a nasty email yesterday from a guy.
I'm not going to say who it is.
But yeah, he was so upset.
He's like, he's ready to give up on Trump.
Oh, it's over!
Ah!
He's screaming.
I read the whole thing.
It was like a rant.
And he's like, I can't believe you're falling.
I'm like, falling for what?
I'm like, did you miss the tax cuts, the regulatory reform, the two Supreme Court justices, the circuit court justices, the border wall money I told you we already got?
I mean, listen, folks, it's not a perfect presidency.
He's two years in.
Sheesh, man.
What do you want?
Guy was like all fired, ready to give up.
I guess and do what you want, give up.
And he throws in a little shot like at the end.
He's like, I don't care about your going to the White House story either.
All right, great.
It's a free show.
You don't have to listen.
You don't like my stories.
That's fine.
I don't know what to tell you, buddy.
I'm not Bernie Sanders.
I'm not a communist.
I'm not going to chain your ear to the computer and hit the play button.
This is not a clockwork orange.
Where you're sitting there with the eyes open with the eye opener things watching Dan Bongino podcast.
I love my audience to death.
I say it all the time, but I'm not forcing you to listen, bro.
Guy was like so upset.
I don't want to hear stupid stories anymore.
Screw this story.
Trump sucks.
I'm done.
Like, oh my gosh.
Take a chill pill, man.
I know.
Take some Pepto.
It's funny how the rage comes through in the letters and the words.
You know, it's amazing.
Oh my gosh.
I love reading the emails.
99.9% of them are really, really good.
I mean, a lot of them are commentary on sponsors, commentary on a show, Spygate, the book.
People really enjoyed the Spygate book.
But we do.
Once in a while we get someone who just like loses it and is so bitter and you're like, oh my gosh.
You know?
Seriously, brother, take some charcoal tablets for your tummy and soothe down a little bit.
I don't know what to tell you.
It's not that bad.
It's really not.
He's doing what he can, this guy.
He's got a Democrat House of Representatives.
The president, he's got a, he doesn't have a super majority in the Senate.
He had two years of rhinos in the house obstructing his agenda and trying to help the Democrats get him out of office.
I mean, what do you want the guy to do other than cut taxes, grow the economy, get two people on the Supreme Court, engage in regulatory reform, and start building the Wally?
But what else do you want the guy to do?
I'm serious!
All right.
That was a fun show.
This has been a great week of shows.
Thank you very much.
I think we pretty much decimated Andy McCabe's credibility this week, and it was important we do that because he is going to be the key witness in this future obstruction thing they're going to push against Donald Trump.
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