In this episode I address the stunning revelations by Attorney General Bill Barr yesterday about government spying. I also destroy the liberal talking points about “Medicare for all.”
News Picks:
Maxine Waters gets humiliated while questioning bank executives about student loans.
Of course the Obama administration spied on the Trump team. Don’t listen to the media nonsense.
The spy sent to report on the Trump team courted at least 3 Trump officials.
New poll: Americans love the Trump economy.
Here’s a list of the huge tax hikes in Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for all” plan.
This 2011 piece debunks the myth that government-run healthcare will be more efficient.
This Washington Examiner piece destroys Bernie Sanders “Medicare for all” plan.
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.
Alright, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Man, I'm feeling groovy from Maryland.
Yeah, well, totally, completely.
Completely 100% vindicated yesterday.
Attorney General Bill Barr drops a nuclear explosive up on Capitol Hill, asked a question by Senator Jeanne Shaheen about spying, and yes, there was spying, hence the title of my last book, Spy Game.
It wasn't called Unauthorized Surveillance Gate, We're Watching You Gate, it was called Spy Game, for a reason.
The Trump campaign was spied on by a spy.
S P Y. So yesterday the media freaked out.
I'm going to go into this today.
I've got a ton of video for you.
I've got a lot of other things to cover too.
Let's get right to it.
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All right.
Getting right to it.
Let's go.
Ding, ding, ding.
So, Bill Barr, Attorney General, was up on Capitol Hill yesterday.
Here is the video.
Watch the face of Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who did not expect the answer she got from Attorney General Barr about if the Obama administration was spying on the Trump team.
I think there was a spying did occur.
Yes, I think spying did occur.
Well, let me... The question is whether it was predicated.
Adequately predicated.
And I'm not suggesting it wasn't adequately predicated, but I'd need to explore that.
I think it's my obligation.
Congress is usually very concerned about intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies staying in their proper lane, and I want to make sure that happens.
Oh, look at the face on Jean!
She's like, huh?
She's stunned that this guy says that.
Right?
Did you see it, Joe?
This is going to go down as one of the more iconic images ever in a Capitol Hill hearing.
I will never forget her face ever, and you shouldn't either.
Because she was expecting a more nuanced kind of DC focus group tested way of saying that the Obama administration spied on the Trump team.
There are two things going on right now, ladies and gentlemen.
The media and the left freaked out yesterday.
They lost their minds.
Bill Barr should resign!
You know, Jennifer Rubin, a liberal from the Washington Post who laughingly pretends to be a conservative, pretends to be rational, which is even worse.
Jennifer Rubin, we should impeach Bill Barr!
They're losing their minds because two things are happening now simultaneously.
What I said was going to happen a very long time ago.
The collusion hoax is dead.
The real scandal is the spying scandal on the Trump team by the Obama administration.
And that is very, very much alive.
So, the media flipped out yesterday and they're taking a number of different approaches, okay?
I'm gonna get to some Aaron Blake stuff later in the show from the Washington Post, who was the lead propagandist yesterday.
It's kind of funny, I'll get to that later.
But here's the big overall approach they're trying to take now.
They're back to the, well, the use of the word spy is inflammatory.
It's unnecessary.
The Trump team wasn't spied on.
It may have been maybe some surveillance, but it certainly wasn't a spy.
Ladies and gentlemen, they are talking about Stefan Halper.
Jerry Dunleavy is a good piece in the Washington Examiner today.
I will put up in the show notes.
Please read it because there's a paragraph in there that is a key takeaway which Joe and I hit a very long time ago.
This sounds very familiar to you, Joe.
Title of the piece, Stéphane Halper, the Cambridge Don, the FBI sent to spy on Trump.
So just to be clear for those who are just joining in today, haven't heard the show in the past, Stefan Helper is a US intelligence asset sent to spy on the Trump team during the Obama administration.
That is a fact.
None of that is any longer in dispute.
It's even been acknowledged by the lunatics at the New York Times.
Now, For those of you out there, liberal lunatics, media hacks, activists, and general police state supporters on the liberal side who want to brush under the rug the fact that the Obama administration act like a bunch of tyrants and police staters,
What they want to do, Joe, is they want to say, well, he wasn't a spy, a helper, he was an informant.
Well, considering I have taken information from both as a former federal agent, notice I said both, I'm implying to you that those are not the same thing.
Now Joe, of course the media wants to massage the Halper thing, the massager.
They want to massage, you know there's massage and massager.
They want to like massager the whole thing because they want to make this thing go away and say, well he was just an informant.
Yeah, just an informant.
There's a little snippet in Jerry Dunleavy's piece which is very good and describes something Joe and I talked about a while ago.
Here is the difference between the two.
Spies and informants are not necessarily the same thing.
From the piece, while the FBI describes Halper as its informant, he did far more than report things he'd become privy to in the course of his normal life.
Rather, this is important, he actively courted at least three Trump campaign officials offering to pay for travel and misrepresenting himself as eager to work for Trump.
During the campaign, Halper was asked by the FBI to gather information on Page and Papadopoulos, a foreign policy aide, A foreign policy aide more junior than Page, and he met with Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis.
Now, to be clear and get the facts right, which the media has a problem with, we're not sure yet that the FBI instructed Halper to meet with Sam Clovis, Trump campaign aide, but we're darn sure that someone in U.S.
intel law enforcement instructed him to meet and go make contact with Page in Papadopoulos.
What am I getting at?
Ladies and gentlemen, informant in normal law enforcement jargon, An informant is someone on the inside of an organization, pre-existing, who's there, who informs on potential criminal activity or intelligence-related activity inside said organization.
This is an important distinction!
Words matter!
So follow me here.
If Joe's robbing a bank with six guys and one of the guys who shows up to the FBI or the Secret Service to inform on the operation, he is by nature an informant.
Yes.
He exists inside the organization.
He's a friend of Joe's, which we know Joe doesn't have friends that rob banks.
I don't have friends.
But if he did, if Joe was a bad guy, if Joe was the Bonnie of the Bonnie and Clyde of his time, and Bonnie informs on Joe, Bonnie would be an informant.
Right.
She is not a spy.
Guys, ladies, please.
I can't emphasize enough how important this is, because it's the dipsy-do-flipperoo by the left.
They're trying to massage the language to make it sound informant.
Stephen Hopper was informant.
That he was informing on some pre-existing criminal activity to get in your head that, oh, it was just the government doing their job.
We have informants all the time.
Joe, is this making sense?
This is very important.
What I'm getting is a spy is more proactive.
That's what I'm getting here.
Yes!
Yes!
And that's where Dunleavy's snippet in the Washington Examiner piece, which will be in the show notes, at Bongino.com.
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I'll give you the best articles today.
He brings up the word, which I hadn't used before, courted.
Stefan Halper, when Joe and I discussed this, when Chuck Ross from The Daily Caller broke the story about Halper, I had said to you the distinction between an informant and a spy is a spy is someone external to the organization.
Joe does not know a spy.
This spy has to enter the organization.
He has to enter the organization at the behest of someone else to spy on them.
There's a difference.
Now, sometimes they can be the same thing.
Sometimes, you know, in a criminal case, you can get someone who's a long-term spy, you know, someone who enters into a banker, biker gang, excuse me, as a fake member, and eventually, you know, spy and informant become interchangeable.
In this case, they are not.
Halpern was not an informant person.
He was a spy.
He was an external force to the Trump team who, this is a critical point here, nobody knew Page did not know him.
Trump did not know him.
Papadopoulos did not know him.
Sam Clovis, one of the campaign officials, higher ups in the Trump campaign, had no idea who this guy was.
He is external to the organization.
He makes contact.
Why?
Well, because he knew them.
He didn't know them.
Somebody pushed him in.
He is a spy.
A spy.
His sole purpose for being Joe was to spy on the Trump team.
Pushed in.
This is important.
He courts them, these officials.
In other words, what we would call entrapment if there's no evidence of a crime.
There you go.
There you go.
You don't push someone into Joe Armacost's or Trump's orbit to spy on them if they've done nothing wrong.
That's what they do in police states.
Political surveillance of political opponents.
This is a low point in the history of the disgraced media.
Disgraced.
Never in the utilization of the word disgraced has there been a more efficient and proper time to use the word disgraced when talking about the media now.
The fact that they are so uncurious about a political opponent of Barack Obama Who no evidence of any crime related to collusion has ever emerged, ever.
Matter of fact, Mueller has entirely exonerated them of collusion.
At no time has the media been less uncurious about the fact that an intelligence asset for the United States, a spy, without question, was pushed into their orbit to gather information on them about a crime nobody has ever acknowledged has occurred and was predicated on false political information from a political opponent.
The media is entirely uncurious about this, Joe.
Entirely.
Yeah, no kidding.
Unbelievable!
Unbelievable!
Ignore the media here.
And I don't say ignore them lightly.
I'm not suggesting to you that they're engaged in misfeasance.
In other words, misfeasance and malfeasance.
Malfeasance, you know, misfeasance, maybe a woman falls on the sidewalk, you pretend you don't see her and, you know, you walk past a little bit.
Malfeasance is like you kick her when she tries to get up.
I'm suggesting to you the media is engaged in malfeasance.
They are actively lying to you.
Actively lying to you about what happened in an effort To take away what is the lead of this story, how we started the show, Collusion is dead, SpyGate is very much alive.
They do not want you to know the truth.
They are kicking you as you try to get up to gather and grasp at the facts.
The incredible part about all this, Joe, the ironic part about all this, Is as the media is doing this, they're actively insulting people who are getting to the truth.
Yeah.
You're all right-wing conspiracy theorists.
I saw this Amy Siskind and Matthew, I think his name is Miller.
Two leftist police state supporters on their Twitter yesterday.
This is unbelievable.
It's going to give fuel to the conspiracy theorists.
What have we said that's been wrong?
What have we said that's been wrong?
It is not theoretical.
We know the Trump team was spied on!
Are you suggesting the Attorney General of the United States is lying at a Capitol Hill hearing with hundreds of millions of potential people watching over time the video?
Are you nuts?
You're not even a little bit curious about why the Attorney General of the United States would say, yes, there was spying.
You're not even a little curious.
That's why I was so furious at Chris Hahn last night debating on Laura Ingraham's show, debating Hahn.
I mean, the guy's a lawyer!
He doesn't know that this spying happened?
Are you naive to the case?
I'm gonna get into some more facts, but he said something else yesterday, too.
Bill Barr.
He said, quote, he wasn't just talking about the FBI, but he was talking about intelligence agencies more broadly.
Oh, he was!
Whoa!
He was talking about intelligence agencies more broadly?
What did he mean by that?
I thought we were just talking about FBI spying.
No, not if you listen to this show, you don't think that.
I have to ask John.
I've told you from the start, John Brennan is neck deep in this, and so is Jim Clapper, who I'm going to get to later, too.
Because Aaron Blake, who is, again, a guy who is 100% in for liberal activism and gaslighting, wrote an unbelievably bad piece yesterday, and cites Clapper as his authority on this.
Intel agencies more broadly.
Ladies and gentlemen, how is that?
John Brennan told us he didn't see the dossier until December, after the election.
We played that video last week.
Or the week before?
The dossier, the whole case is based on.
John Brennan already told us, Joe, don't worry, he didn't see it until December of 2016.
We're cool, we're cool.
Don't worry, nothing would- really?
Yeah.
So how is it a FISA warrant based on the dossier was approved in October of 2016, months prior to December, where Brennan lied and said he didn't see it, and now Barr's looking into intelligence agencies more broadly and the spying thing.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not sure if you're aware of how intelligence operations overseas work, but let me just throw this out there.
If you think for a moment...
Foreign intel officials from the United Kingdom, who we already know, according to CNN themselves, were passing information on the Trump team to US officials.
I don't need to put up that article again.
I've mentioned it a thousand times.
CNN themselves wrote a piece on this.
If you think foreign intel was dealing with US intel, passing information about the Trump team, and John Brennan, the head of the CIA, was not intimately involved in this, Then I'll sell you the Veterans Bridge in Palm City over here for a dollar.
Send it over to my house.
I'll give you the P.O.
box for it.
You are an idiot if you believe that.
Or you're a member of the media.
But I just said the same thing twice.
Another piece by Byron York in the Washington Examiner.
Byron York.
Barr is right.
Spying on the Trump campaign did occur.
Another angle the left-wing media activists like Blake and others are trying to take.
This isn't even personal with Blake.
A couple times when he's tweeted out some stuff about agents that needed help when I asked for it on the show.
It's not personal.
I mean, I'm offended that a guy who writes for the Washington Post, which is supposed to be one of the papers of record, is so intimately involved with the biggest cover-up of a spying scandal in American history.
What I don't understand, and I mean this, And the reason I bring this up is because Blake's also trying to run cover for the FISA warrant.
Well, the FISA warrant was issued after Carter Page left the campaign.
Doesn't he realize, like, history is going to monitor all this stuff?
History is going to look back at all the articles written covering up this Spygate thing and be horrified at these people?
Doesn't he realize that?
Does it matter to him that his grandkids are going to look back knowing that their grandfather Aaron played a role in covering up the biggest government spying scandal of his time?
Does that not bother him?
I'm not kidding, folks.
I can't- I'm really having a hard time digesting this.
Yeah, I see.
Yeah.
If I knew, right Joe, if I knew a Republican president was involved in a police state spying scandal, weaponizing government intelligence assets based on a false dossier paid for by a Republican political opponent of a Democrat, I would be horrified.
And you should be too.
Oh, you wouldn't do that, Dan.
Really?
I'm on tape in 2011 talking about how awful the Patriot Act is, even though it was signed by George Bush.
So don't give me that crap like we don't have bona fides on this.
This is unbelievable!
This guy's a member of the journalistic enterprise, which is entirely, completely collapsed.
Now, this York piece is important because there's two talking points here.
I addressed one of them in the Jerry Dunleavy piece.
So talking point number one, by the left, the liberal talking points are, he wasn't a spy.
He's an informant.
That is not true.
He was not informing on the organization from the inside.
He was an external US intelligence asset.
Pushed into the Trump orbit to spy on them.
That is the very definition of a spy.
Understand the distinction.
An informant originates on the inside typically.
A spy is someone not known to the inside at all.
He is pushed in to monitor He courted them using John Levy's language, which is correct.
That is a spy.
There is no doubt about that amongst sane people.
Talking point number two, which York addresses in his piece, is the FISA warrant.
What Aaron Blake and others put out there is they said, well, the FISA warrant on Carter Page, Joe, wasn't approved till October of 2016, after Carter Page had left the Trump campaign.
So their logic here is that, well, they weren't really spying on the Trump campaign because the FISA warrant was approved afterwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is nonsense for a couple of reasons.
Number one, Jim Comey has already acknowledged under oath that they were investigating ties to the Trump campaign and Russia.
You know what?
I'll add that screenshot after the show so you guys can see it.
I'll put it up on the screen, the exact quote where Jim Comey says we're investigating the Trump campaign.
So Joe, talking point number two by the left.
They weren't spying on the Trump campaign is debunked by Comey himself, who literally said they were investigating the Trump campaign.
We'll put it up youtube.com slash Bongino.
You can check that out.
But secondly, more important from the Byron York piece, Aaron Blake and others insisting that all the FISA warrant was after Carter Page left the Trump campaign do not understand at all how FISA warrants actually work.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are two components of a FISA warrant which debunk that entirely.
Component number one, these FISA warrants to spy on their emails, their phone calls, and their texts are retroactive.
In other words, they can get all the emails from Carter Page that he had sent to the Trump campaign, Joe, when he was there.
The fact that he left is entirely, completely irrelevant.
Here's from the York piece.
Byron York, it is heavily redacted, talking about the Pfizer war, but it's clearly focused on Page and quote, the Russian government's attempt to influence the 2016 US presidential election.
Page was wiretapped because of his connection with the Trump campaign.
Joe, the U.S.
presidential election in 2016 was between Hillary and Trump, right?
We didn't miss anything, did we?
We didn't miss anything.
We're not missing anything.
Nope.
So Fred Flintstone wasn't running against Wilma?
Nope.
Nope.
Okay, thanks.
Just check in on that.
The fact that the Pfizer warrant was issued afterwards, keep that talking point in mind.
You have to have the talking points ready to go to refute liberal talking points.
The difference is yours are actually truthful.
Don't believe it.
That is not the case.
Comey's already admitted they were investigating the Trump campaign.
The Pfizer warrant was about Russian influence in the Trump campaign, the presidential election.
And secondly, the Pfizer warrant is retroactive.
But sub-bullet number two under the Pfizer warrant.
First, it's retroactive.
You get all this stuff.
Second, He doesn't understand, Aaron Blake and others, why this, because he puts it in a tweet.
Oh, they said it was after the campaign.
After he left.
There's this thing called chaining.
Other words known as the hop rule.
Discussed it on the show multiple times.
Not only when you get a warrant on Carter Page for his emails when he was on the Trump campaign, And forward, until the FISA warrant expires, you get to hop to everybody he emailed to, and texted and called, and then you get to hop from them to other people!
Which creates a dragnet which encompasses basically the entire Trump team!
So again, your silly logic, well, Carter Page, the FISA warrant was only approved afterwards.
By the way, you don't know how many they sought on Carter Page before.
You have no idea.
But again, they're not interested in facts.
None of this matters.
It doesn't make a difference.
It goes retroactive, and they're hopping to everybody in the Trump campaign, meaning they've got basically the whole team.
Once you've got one, you've got them all.
Please tell me you understand how that works.
Hop to Carter Page, Let's say Page emails Manafort or Clovis, and then Clovis emails Trump Jr.
or someone else.
You have the whole dragnet.
The whole operation in one guy.
Oh, the naivete is just stunning.
And then secondly, again, their talking point is that Halper Halper was in fact an informant.
But this is, folks, this is just nonsense.
You're just making this stuff up and it's very, very frustrating.
Alright, I want to move on because I want to hit citing Clapper as a source of authority, too, because this is utterly absurd.
I'll totally debunk that.
Before I get there, just a quick word on the Assange arrest.
Julian Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
We'll see how this materializes, but I just want you to remember an interesting angle on this.
Mueller's team and the Russian collusion hoaxers, including Mueller, Weissman, and others, have Insinuated from the start that WikiLeaks was involved with the leaking of the hacked DNC emails and there was a connection to Russia.
In other words, the collusion hoaxers, Joe, have insisted that the Russians used WikiLeaks as a conduit to influence the election.
Right, right.
Why is this important?
Now that Assange is in custody, if Assange is not in fact indicted for his role in the DNC hack, Then ladies and gentlemen, we got a really big problem.
Because remember, the entire collusion hoaxer premise, Joe.
Russia hacks the DNC, gives the emails to WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks works with the Trump campaign and others to influence the election.
That's it.
That's the lead.
If WikiLeaks, who has insisted from the start, as has Assange, that they did not get the emails from the Russians, Then Houston, we've got a big, big problem.
Now we already know collusion's a hoax, but can you imagine if their premise that WikiLeaks was working with the Russians is a hoax too?
In other words, Joe, what I'm getting at is, if Assange, who's now in custody, is not indicted by the United States for a role in this hacking of the DNC, and there's no evidence of that at all, you haven't only been lied to about the collusion hoax, you may have been lied to about where WikiLeaks got the emails from in the first place.
Oh.
Oh.
Stay tuned.
I don't report things, as you know, on the show.
I'd rather be last and right than first and wrong.
But it is not wrong to expect an indictment, right Joe?
Assange should be indicted for working with the Russians on that.
That's what we've been told, right?
That's what we've been told, yeah.
That's what we've been told, Daddy-O.
We'll wait and see.
Alright, I got a lot more to get to.
Don't go anywhere.
Just for a little comic relief before we get to Clapper, I want to play a video of Maxine Waters.
That is one of the funniest things I've seen all day.
Maxine Waters' capacity for self-humiliation is endless.
Hold on, before we get that.
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Okay, moving on.
We all love Maxine Waters on this show.
Maxine, another one of the big collusion hoaxers with Adam Shifty Schiff and Eric Stalwell.
Or I'll call them Eric Stalwell instead of Stalwell.
Which is right, because his campaign for president was Stalwell.
But Maxine's a big collusion hoaxer.
Maxine is running one of the committees up in Congress responsible for oversight of the banking community.
Now, for some history quickly before we play this cut.
She has oversight of the banking community and she's entirely unaware of the fact that roughly 10 years ago, the United States government under the Barack Obama administration took over the student loan market.
Maxine is a little confused.
She appears to believe that the student loan market is run by the banks.
Check out this cut.
This is priceless.
This is her questioning bank executives about what they're doing about student loans they no longer offer.
This is great.
Today there are more than 44 million Americans that owe, this is student loan crisis, 1.56 trillion in student loan debt.
Last month this committee received testimony that last year 1 million student loan borrowers defaulted, which is on top of the 1 million borrowers who defaulted the year before.
What are you guys doing to help us with this student loan debt?
Who would like to answer first?
Mr. Monaghan, Big Bang.
We stopped making student loans in 2007 or so.
Oh, so you don't do it anymore, Mr. Corbett?
We actually did student lending in 2009.
Mr. Diamond?
When the government took over student lending in 2010 or so, we stopped doing all student lending.
Oh, you did?
Shut up about that.
[Laughs]
[Sighs]
I don't even know what to say.
If you're watching the video, you can see my light.
When I lean back, the light in front of me exposes it.
I don't even know what to say to that.
Maxine Waters is responsible for oversight of the banking community and is unaware the government is now in charge of the student loan market.
All right, I got just one final thing on this.
This is, ladies and gentlemen, the reason why the student loan market right now is out of control and is bankrupting our 18 to 24 year olds out there.
Do you find it, liberals who listen to my show, even a little bit odd that the two spheres that have the biggest cost control problems right now, healthcare and higher education, right?
Student loans and healthcare prices are high.
Cost control problems.
Do you find it a little odd that those are also the two spheres with the largest government footprint?
I'm just asking!
If facts and reason ever get in the way of your liberal ideology.
Like, gosh, the government's heavily involved in health care and student loans and costs are out of control.
Golly!
Golly, how'd that happen?
What's that from?
Wasn't that one of those shows back in the 50s or 60s?
Well, golly!
I didn't realize that.
You know, it's called the third party payer problem.
It's not complicated.
It's like economics 0001 for kindergartners.
When students and patients don't pay the cost of their care directly, they pay taxes first.
What happens?
The government's the consumer, not the patient.
Therefore, the doctors and hospitals take as much as they want because there's no cost control.
The patient's not paying.
What's the bill?
I don't care.
I already, the government's paying.
That's why there's no cost control!
Universities, don't you find it a little odd that the universities...
As the government influence has gone up by percentages into the student loan market, the administrative costs of the university have gone up and up and up.
Why?
The universities are getting taxpayer dollars, they have no cost control anymore, and as the government pays more, the students and the universities lop up the money and pay more administrators and less students to lighten their workload.
Folks, this isn't complicated.
But that's, I'm sorry, that's like our comic relief for the day.
Maxine Waters has no idea that the Obama administration basically monopolized the student loan market.
The bank executives must be looking at her like, I really cannot believe we have to answer to Maxine Waters.
All right.
I want to go on to Jim Clapper.
I just had to break up the Spygate thing a little bit because it's been heavy the last week and it's a lot of heavy information.
So, I want to go back.
I've been referencing Aaron Blake a lot.
This is how this started.
I don't mean to pick on him specifically.
There was a lot of leftist media hackery yesterday.
But Aaron Blake put up this tweet I've taken a screenshot of and it's fascinating because it really describes where his head's at.
Blake's a reporter for the Washington Post.
He wrote a ridiculous piece yesterday Where he talks about the quote, highly questionable use of the word spy, which is absurd.
He has no, this guy is not a law enforcement guy.
He has no idea how it works.
Sorry, put up that tweet again.
So Blake hits two points in his tweet.
First, He says, uh, Clapper, Jim Clapper, was asked last year whether the FBI had been spying on Trump's campaign.
His response, no they were not.
Then he hits the point that Barr now says they were, aligning with Trump's talking points.
It's not a talking point!
I just laid out to you a bunch of facts!
There was a FISA warrant issued on Trump team members.
There was a spy, Stefan Halper, spying on the Trump team.
There were record numbers of unmaskings of people on the Trump team by the Obama administration.
Wiretaps!
National security letters were issued to spy on the Trump team.
Does Blake not know this?
The answer is of course he does.
He's lying to you because he has to.
That's why I'm telling you his grandkids are going to be horrified and embarrassed at this.
None of these are disputable facts, but he hits two points here.
That clapper said there was no spying on the Trump team.
Hmm.
That's right.
Joe knows where I'm going because I already sent him a cut.
Joe's like pretending he's going, huh, wow, Dan, where are we going to go?
He already knows.
I already sent him a cut.
Oh, interesting.
Well, ladies and gentlemen.
How would Jim Clapper, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, his lead czar for intelligence, Jim Clapper, Barack Obama, tied together at the hip, how would Jim Clapper know that if, number one, Jim Clapper's denied he knew it, and secondly, I want to play this cut first, this is Jim Comey up on Capitol Hill When answering a question from Elise Stefanik about when he briefed the DNI, that's Jim Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, about when he briefed the DNI about the investigation into Trump, that used the spy.
So keep in mind, just so you understand where we're going with this, I hate it when people who do these shows don't explain to the audience.
Aaron Blakes, a Washington Post reporter, is saying this spying or insinuating spying didn't happen because Clapper said it didn't happen.
I'm telling you, Jim Comey, who's running the investigation where they used the spy, in this clip tells Elise Stefanik he never even told Jim Clapper.
Play the cut.
So, since in your opening statement you confirmed that there is a counterintelligence investigation currently open, and you also referenced that it started in July, when did you notify the DNI, the White House, or senior congressional leadership?
That's a good question.
Sometime recently, they were briefed on the nature of the investigation in some detail, as I said.
Obviously, the Department of Justice has been aware of it all along.
The DNI, I don't know what the DNI's knowledge of it was because we didn't have a DNI until Mr. Coates took office and I briefed him his first morning in office.
Did you catch that?
Folks, did you catch that?
Comey, who was in charge of the FBI, is running the investigation using the spies and the FISA wards.
They're signing off on them.
He just told the congressional representative that he didn't even notify... He's confused, by the way.
He says there was no DNI.
Of course there was.
Clapper stayed on until right after Trump was inaugurated.
There was a DNI.
There was a DNI the whole time.
Ladies and gentlemen, Crossfire Hurricane and the use of the spy, Stefan Halper.
Please follow this timeline.
This is really important.
I need you all to be an army out there debunking liberal stupidity.
Stefan Halper contacts Carter Page.
Two weeks before the case opens in July of 2016.
Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation into Trump.
So the use of an FBI and an intelligence asset starts in July of 2016.
Jim Clapper is the DNI when that happens.
He's the DNI through 2017.
Does Jim Comey not know that?
No, no, no.
Jim Comey does know that.
Jim Clapper Listen, take this to the bank and Jim Comey are best buddies.
This is Comey covering up for Clapper.
He can't have, you get what I'm talking about?
Comey can't have Congress knowing that this investigation using a spy Had to have been known by Jim Clapper because then Clapper's role in it will be exposed.
So he hides it.
He says to Elise Stefanik, rewind, you can watch it again on YouTube.
Hit that 10 second back button.
He says, oh, there was no DNI while this was going.
That is factually incorrect.
That is false.
Dan Coats isn't appointed till March of 2017.
He says, well, I just notified Coats.
That's Trump's DNI.
That is not true.
Comey is lying.
Of course Clapper knew.
So I say that because Aaron Blake's citing Clapper as the source of authority.
Well, Clapper said there was no spying.
Well, Aaron, do you believe Jim Comey then?
Because you can't have it both ways.
If you believe Jim Comey, Clapper never knew about the case, so how would he know there was spying?
And if you don't believe Jim Comey, then there was spying and Jim Comey's covering it up.
You can't have it both ways.
Aaron, this is called, let me wink at a knot here.
This is called journalism.
Investigative reporting.
Try it sometime.
Now, citing Clapper as an authority, if Trump was spied on or not, I just told you it's ridiculous because Comey said Clapper didn't even know.
But let's just take it from Clapper himself.
Here is video we played last week of Jim Clapper telling Chuck Todd there was no FISA warrant to spy at all.
Don't worry at all.
Let me start with the President's tweets yesterday.
This idea that maybe President Obama ordered an illegal wiretap of his offices.
If something like that happened, would this be something you would be aware of?
I would certainly hope so.
Obviously, I can't speak officially anymore, but I will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI, there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign.
I can't speak for other Title III authorized entities in the government or a state or local entity.
I was just going to say, if the FBI, for instance, had a FISA court order of some sort for a surveillance, would that be information you would know or not know?
Yes.
You would be told this?
I would know that.
If there was a FISA court order on something like this?
Yes.
Something like this, absolutely.
And at this point, you can't confirm or deny whether that exists?
I can deny it.
There is no FISA court order.
Not to my knowledge.
Of anything at Trump Tower?
No.
Well, that's an important revelation at this point.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's a lie!
That is not true!
He directly says, I can deny it!
There's no FISA warrant!
There was a FISA warrant!
There were four!
One and three renewals!
Or if it was Joe Biden, one and three renewals!
Joe can't do basic math.
There was one and three renewals!
There were four Fizes!
It's a... Guys, ladies, we live in a post-fact universe.
The Fiza exists!
We've seen it!
Do you understand, like, you can go look at it!
Some of it's redacted.
You can look at it!
You can see what was in there!
It's there!
The Fizes exist!
Clapper is lying!
Of course he knew about it!
Of course he knew about what was going on!
And if he's not lying, then Aaron Blake from the Washington Post is even more wrong!
Now, he got ratioed nearly off Twitter yesterday.
I mean, you want to talk about a guy getting ferociously dunked on.
By the way, I gotta hat tip again that John W. Huber account on Twitter for pointing out, which is really smart, That he was dunking on, and he actually uses that term, dunking on Blake again.
Because citing Clapper as an appeal to authority is ridiculous.
Clapper's a known liar.
He lied up on Capitol Hill.
Yeah.
Are you collecting, remember when Senator Ron Wyden asked Clapper about the metadata collection program?
Yes, I do.
Are you collecting data on American citizens?
No, not with, he lied.
This guy's a liar.
Chuck Todd, did you know about the FISA?
I can deny it.
I don't know, but the FISA's there.
You're denying what?
And then up on Capitol Hill, Comey lies about it too!
Well, we didn't brief the DNI.
There was no DNI.
No, there was!
And you trust these people?
And you trust a journalist who, I'm sorry, is engaging entirely in fake news propagation?
Hey, Aaron, you're gonna- He is propagating fake news.
You're gonna have to find a proctologist that specializes in head extractions.
I know!
And I get that.
You know the other day you said you're tired of this shift with Adam Schiff.
I got that, folks.
I got a thousand emails.
Thought I missed it.
I got it.
It's a family-friendly show.
I have to let Joe do his stuff without, you know, I don't want people with their kids in the car asking too many questions.
Remember when you said that the other day?
You know how many emails I got?
Yeah.
They're like, Joe, Joe, Joe said that you, I didn't miss it.
I got exactly what he said.
I just, you know, I got to let Joe do his thing.
But yes, we will need a proctologist.
Your kids probably don't know what that doctor does, but there are going to be some extractions and Blake is going to be embarrassed.
You cited Jim Clapper.
Oh my gosh.
All right.
I've got a couple more things to get through here.
It's really important.
Heavy news day.
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Okay.
So, you know, this may be the last story of the day because it's going to take a little bit.
So Bernie Sanders launched again a revised Medicare for all disaster.
This abomination is going to infect the 2020 election cycle.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the government takeover of your health care.
If you believe otherwise, I genuinely feel sorry for you because you are either being lied to or you're lying to yourself and you're sucking it all up in an effort to believe a fairy tale.
Medicare for All, the new, he just launched a revamped version of this, which has fewer co-sponsors than the last one, by the way.
This Medicare for All program is Medicare for None.
It is a government takeover of the healthcare system.
Here are some quick, I'm going to go into the debunking here in a minute as to why this won't work, but here are some quick lowlights, because they're not highlights, of this disastrous program.
Folks, if you are on Medicare now, Listen to me.
Now, Medicare Now is broke.
I don't want to put a shine on Medicare, the Medicare we have now.
But if you are on Medicare Now and you like it, you will not be allowed to stay on Medicare you have now.
Bernie Sanders plan.
Listen to me and listen clear, because I'm not going to be responsible for your misinformation.
You have been warned right here first.
Again, I'm not defending Medicare.
It's broke.
But if you like it, you will be kicked off that plan for the new Bernie Sanders Medicare for All plan.
You've been warned.
It's in my show notes today.
Philip Klein piece at the Washington Examiner.
Which is very good.
Some more lowlights.
If you have private insurance, free market insurance from your healthcare, Excuse me, from your job who provides healthcare for you?
Or you're in the individual market and you like the plan you have now?
It will be legally banned.
It is going away.
If you agree with this, understand the plan you have now is done.
Done-zo.
Finished.
It's in the plan, Medicare for All, Bernie Sanders.
Read it yourself.
Don't take my word for it.
Unlike Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, we do facts here, and I humbly beg and request that you fact-check me.
Your insurance will be banned.
They will not be allowed to provide insurance services provided for by the government payer, which will be almost all of them.
As someone said to Bernie Sanders yesterday, so basically private insurance will be for nose jobs.
And Bernie Sanders said, yes it will, yes it will.
It'll be nose job insurance.
So if you need a nose job, insurance is yours.
If you need life-saving cardiac surgery, you're finished.
You'll be calling a government bureaucrat.
So the Medicare you have now?
Finished.
The health insurance you have now?
Finished.
The tax hikes.
Peace and ATR, Americans for Tax Reform, all up in the show notes today as well.
Excellent.
Good piece.
Lays out in simple bullet point.
Here it is.
List of tax hikes in Sanders' Medicare for All plan.
7% payroll tax paid for by your employer, which means paid for by you.
4% employee payroll tax in addition to Social Security and FICA, excuse me, Medicare, where you're paying now.
An additional 4%.
You're looking at a 70% top marginal tax rate, capital gains as well.
So in other words, you're looking at a crashing of the stock market, a crushing of our economy, the highest confiscatory tax rates in the world, and additional payroll taxes to finance the $32 trillion to spend over 10 years.
A doubling of the government budget from what we have today, although we're already in debt.
People will die.
What did he say, Joe?
People will die.
One more time, Bernie.
What'll happen if we don't pass this?
People will die.
That's right!
He says this all the time!
Now, how is he defending this abomination?
Well, we've tried government-run healthcare, Medicare for All.
They've tried it in the United Kingdom.
I discussed this the other day.
The first downside to this, you will see, is rampant government rationing, as you're seeing in the United Kingdom now, based on this headline, where, Joe, tens of thousands of people, quote, are being left, this is a quote, struggling to see because they cannot get cataract surgery to clear their eyes of blindness.
Now, I had put in an article and discussed one the other day about this from years ago.
This article is new!
Look at the date!
April 6, 2019, The Times.
Elderly go blind as the UK's National Health Service ignores eye surgery rationing advice.
They are rationing eye surgery and people are going blind.
So not only is Medicare cancelled, as you know it now, and free market insurance, and your tax is going up to the highest rates in the industrialized world, your cataract surgery, if you have cataracts, and other surgeries as well, you will be getting on a waiting list where you'll be calling a government bureaucrat for permission to see.
Not a joke, folks.
How are they defending this abomination?
Folks, take some notes, because this is important.
Bernie Sanders is making two significant claims here as to why this is going to be better, this Medicare for All, for the American people, that I am going to debunk quite easily.
And the articles will be in the show notes again for your reference.
First, He's citing the administrative costs of government-run healthcare, using debunked numbers.
What he's suggesting, Joe, is that when the government runs the healthcare system, it'll be more efficient because insurers won't have to deal with, healthcare providers won't have to deal with insurers.
Uh-huh.
Now, there's a piece up at Forbes.
In that piece at Forbes, which is in the show notes, up at the youtube.com slash BonginoNow.
Here's the issue with that.
So just to be clear what we're talking about.
Bernie's suggesting the administrative cost, the paperwork cost will be lower because it'll only be the government paying.
That is wrong for two reasons.
Number one, ladies and gentlemen, as Avik Roy puts in this Forbes piece in the show notes, Medicare is partially administered by outside agencies.
Also, Medicare's administration is also tax-exempt.
So folks, anyone telling you you're going to hear that, listen to me, please, please take notes on this.
This will be the talking point for the left.
Get ready to go.
They will say, well, Medicare's administrative costs are lower.
They are not.
Medicare is tax exempt.
The free market is not.
Secondly, Medicare's administrative costs are offset by help from other agencies that aren't factored into the calculation, like the IRS.
That is not true.
Medicare's administrative costs are not lower.
You have to move outside of Health and Human Services, which administers Medicare, to find the hidden administrative costs.
Does that make sense, Joe?
Yeah, yeah.
They get help from the IRS and others.
That costs money.
That's not factored in.
That's how they're getting this artificially low lumber.
So again, talking point number one for Bernie.
The administrative costs are lower.
That's not true.
Medicare is tax exempt.
They don't have to pay 30-40% taxes like other companies do.
Secondly, they get help from other agencies.
Here's the sub-bullet here on this.
Another reason Medicare's administrative costs are the way they inflate them and confuse you with the numbers.
Their administrative costs are not lower.
Medicare is simply dealing with an older, sicker population.
The left is confusing you because the left doesn't understand how fractions work.
In the Forbes piece, here's the headline from this.
Administrative costs are calculated using faulty arithmetic.
He gives an example in the piece.
Joe, if two patients, patient A and patient B, cost $30 each to manage, but the first requires $100 of health expenditures, and the second, much sicker patient, requires $1,000, the first patient's insurance will have an administrative cost ratio of 30%.
$30 for an administrative cost for $100 in health expenditures.
But the second will only have a ratio of 3%, because there's $30 of administrative costs.
It's the same paperwork.
To get him started.
Right.
But the patient requires $1,000 in healthcare.
But this doesn't mean that the second patient's insurance is more efficient!
All it means is Medicare is dealing with older, sicker people!
Which is true!
Medicare starts in your late 60s, where you're older, and by no fault of your own, due to human DNA wearing out and people getting sicker as the body wears out over time, as people get older, they get sicker.
This is only confusing to the modern far left.
So your nonsense talking point that administrative costs are going to be lower is based on the fact that you don't understand fractions.
No, it's not lower.
The administrative costs are roughly the same, if not higher, for Medicare.
They're just dealing with an older, sicker population.
That makes the fraction look lower.
Read the piece in Forbes.
It's clear as day.
It is not true!
I seem to remember the same thing, exactly the same thing, what, maybe a year and a half, two years ago, we covered.
Do you remember that?
Yeah.
Oh yeah, yeah, we did a show on this, like a special show on this.
Yeah, same stuff.
Because it's important to hammer this again.
And Joe, you're right, one of the other points we made in that, I think we did like a whole show on it.
Yes, we did.
It's not just that Medicare's administrative costs are the same or lower.
They're higher!
They're just masked by the fact that Medicare spends so much on healthcare through your tax dollars because people are older and sicker.
Yeah.
But if you understand basic arithmetic, which the left doesn't, you'll understand that that's a garbage talking point.
The administrative costs aren't lower.
Second Bernie talking point.
Administrative costs are lower.
They're not.
Wrong.
ER usage.
Well, if we keep Bernie in the Bernie vote, if we keep people out of the ER, it'll save us a bunch of money.
Now that they have insurance, they'll go to the doctor.
Not true either!
Here's a story by NPR, no bastion of right-wing conservatism.
NPR, National Public Radio, dated October 19, 2016.
Emergency room use stays high in Oregon Medicaid study.
Ladies and gentlemen, in Oregon, there was a very unique opportunity in Oregon for a study of government-run healthcare.
Why?
Oregon didn't have the money to give everybody expanded, government-run Medicaid healthcare.
So Bernie's theory that if you give people government-run healthcare, that they'll have insurance and they'll go to the doctor rather than the ER, the perfect opportunity to study it was in Oregon, where they did a lottery.
So Joe, just to be clear, they didn't have enough money.
So they did a lottery and some people got government-run insurance and some didn't.
Perfect opportunity for a randomized control study, right?
So if Bernie Sanders' theory is correct that giving people government insurance was going to keep them out of the emergency room, saving the government money, and send them to the doctor for preventative care, you should see ER usage in Oregon go down in the study group that had Medicaid, government-run insurance.
That is not what happened.
Look at the NPR piece.
Let me read.
This is NPR.
They don't get more left than them.
Well, not yet, suggests the latest findings from a landmark study published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study of Medicaid patients in Oregon who got Medicaid in 2008 found their ER use stayed high two years after they gained the health insurance coverage, even as they also increased their visits to doctor's offices.
Oh!
So not only are they spending more money at the doctor, they're spending more money in the ER too.
Nothing Bernie Sanders is telling you is true.
You will not save money on ER costs for preventative care.
The Oregon study debunks that entirely.
And you will not save administrative costs at all because Medicare diffuses its costs over a number of agencies to hide them and then uses faulty fractions on an older, sicker population to make you believe administrative costs are lower when they're in fact higher.
This plan is garbage and it's hot, smelly garbage.
All right, hey folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks to everybody who picked up my book, Spygate.
I think our title's now been vindicated.
It's available on Amazon.
We had a nice jump in sales yesterday.
Also, Exonerated, my sequel to it, it's available for pre-order now.
Exonerated, the failed takedown of President Donald J. Trump by the swamp.
Go pick them up.
And please check out the show today, youtube.com slash bongino.
Also available on iTunes, SoundCloud, iHeart, Google Podcasts, and elsewhere.
You just heard The Dan Bongino Show.
You can also get Dan's podcasts on iTunes or SoundCloud.
