In this episode I address the critical revelations by a GOP congressman this weekend about the status of investigations into media and liberal misdeeds. I also address some key questions still unanswered which will blow the lid off of this scandal. Finally, I address the upsides and the downsides to Trump’s new immigration proposal and the key decision Trump could make to ensure his re-election.
News Picks:
Three big things the collusion hoaxers got wrong.
Congressman Mark Meadows says justice is coming.
Is President Trump preparing congress for major budget cuts?
The Democrats aren’t “lifting a finger” to help the President on immigration.
Democrats are panicking as Devin Nunes closes in on the Spygate scandal.
Paul Sperry’s piece addresses some of tricks the Mueller team used to confuse the public.
Copyright Dan Bongino All Rights Reserved.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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?
Hey, man.
It's a Monday.
New week.
Let's go with it, baby.
Yeah, Joe knows Mondays, there's no time for nonsense because we have to catch up with all the Saturday and Sunday news, too, as well.
So a stacked show for you today.
I've got some really, really good stuff.
So let's get right to it.
Today's show brought to you by our buddies at Lending Club.
Yes, for decades, credit card companies have been telling us, buy it now and pay for it later with interest.
And despite your best intentions, that interest can get out of control fast.
We all know that feeling.
With LendingClub, consolidate your debt or pay off credit cards with one fixed monthly payment.
You can't beat that.
Since 2007, LendingClub has helped millions of people regain control of their finances with affordable fixed rate personal loans.
No trips to a bank, no high interest credit cards.
Just go to LendingClub.com.
Tell them about yourself, how much you want to borrow, pick the terms that are right for you, and if you're approved, your loan is automatically deposited in your bank account in as little as a few days.
Come on, you can't beat that.
LendingClub is the number one peer-to-peer lending platform with over $35 billion in loans issued.
Go to LendingClub.com.
Check your rate in minutes, borrow up to $40,000.
That's LendingClub.com slash Dan.
LendingClub.com slash Dan.
All loans made by WebBank member FDIC equal housing lender.
Don't forget it.
Go check it out.
LendingClub.com slash Dan.
All right, let's get to it.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Yes.
Story number one today.
The Democrats are freaking out over Trump painting them into a corner on this sanctuary city's policy.
Now, I addressed this on Friday and last week.
Let me give you what the policy is and I want to tell you what the ups and downs are to this because I want to give you the full context of what this could mean for us if it takes effect.
First, what is the policy?
Trump has indicated last week that he wants to start sending people who cross the border illegally, who are waiting for hearings and other things because we are running out of detention beds for people who enter the country illegally, he wants to start sending them to sanctuary cities.
I said last week and I'll say it again, this is brilliant.
This is a brilliant policy because it's got the Democrats in a corner.
So I want to tell you about the ups.
There are some downs to this.
I'm going to get to that because I want to give you a full spectrum analysis, not just simplistic nonsense, but let's start with the upside to this policy.
First, the upside to it is if you're going to enter the country illegally and the Democrats have absolutely no intention of deporting you at all ever, and they basically want a de facto amnesty, sorry, I've got fans blowing on my shirt.
A de facto amnesty, then cities run by Democrats which support this type of and people who vote for these Democrats should be forced to support it.
That's correct.
Nice!
That's right.
There you go.
I don't want to hear about your NIMBYism.
You know NIMBY, right?
Not in my backyard.
So let me get this straight.
You love illegal immigration.
You want to be a sanctuary city as long as people who are illegal don't come to your city.
Is that what you're telling us?
It's not just that that has the Democrats running around in fits.
It's rhetorically speaking that Democrats cannot figure out a way to combat this policy of Trump suggesting he's going to put illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities without stepping on their own moral argument as to why illegal immigration is good.
What do I mean?
I'll explain in a second.
I want you to listen to this soundbite of Cory Booker on Face the Nation where he trips over himself explaining why this policy of putting illegals in sanctuary cities is bad.
Listen to this.
This is gold.
Do you think this is an empty threat by the president, though, to talk about busing people from the border into these sanctuary cities?
He likes to create friction sometimes to jumpstart, he says, a Congress that's not active.
You say friction.
I say he's trying to pit Americans against each other and make us less safe, because what you're seeing now— So you take the threat seriously?
I take this.
He is injecting fear into our country.
And so if he was looking to solve a problem, he wouldn't be doing things to divide this country against itself.
Beware of anybody that's trying to tell you to be afraid in the strongest country in the world, as opposed to showing our strength and our courage by pulling people together to find common sense solutions to solve this problem.
Lord of the idiots!
Yes.
Yeah.
Did you catch it, Joe?
The line where he says, it's going to make us less safe.
Wait, time out.
You know what?
I know I need it.
Oh, you know, in the NFL, you get the red flag.
The coach is challenging.
Red.
We need a red flag.
Somebody please send us a red flag.
I'm just kidding.
Don't send us a red flag.
We'll get a thousand of them in the PO box.
Send it to Joe.
Red flag!
Under the hood for review.
Joe's got the abacus.
He's got a couple other things.
What are you talking about?
We have been told by Sanctuary City Open Borders Democrats Forever, that illegal immigration is not dangerous.
That people are just looking for work, that there's no danger, it's not a crisis, it's not an emergency.
Matter of fact, the only crisis is humanitarian.
In other words, we should be taking care of even more people who ignore our laws.
So why is Cory Booker saying that this is a dangerous policy?
That it's going to make the streets less safe?
Why?
This is the genius of Trump every single time.
The Democrats cannot reconcile their prior talking point.
Illegal immigration is great.
Sanctuary cities, we should pay for their college or healthcare, everything.
We should open up our borders to the entire world.
Then Trump's saying, okay, you want that?
You take them.
And they don't know what to say, because one, they can't say Donald Trump is right.
But number two, they can't acknowledge that the people in these cities who actually vote for these sanctuary city policies don't in fact want illegal immigration either.
They just want to be morally superior to you.
I saw this cut this weekend.
Oh, dude.
Excuse me, I sent it right to Joe.
This is genius.
Okay, so the upside of this is Trump has painted the Democrats in a corner again in their rhetoric.
They don't know how to respond.
There is a downside, though.
I want to give you full scope of the problem.
The downside is highlighted a bit in a Wall Street Journal article today, but I'll give you the tidbits of it.
It's a subscriber-only article, and they talk about the census in the House of Representatives.
And they're not inaccurate on this.
Wall Street Journal's very wishy-washy on immigration at times.
They're not open borders people, but they're very pro-immigration, almost to the point of coloring them to the point of illegal immigration a little bit.
That's my one objection to their op-eds a lot.
They're pretty good on economic stuff.
Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a constitutional republic, that's obvious.
We don't live in a direct democracy.
You do not vote directly on bills.
Bills are voted on by people you vote on to represent you.
That's what a representative democracy is.
You know, if there's a tax hike plan at the federal level, it doesn't go to federal referendum.
It's voted on in the House, the Senate, and if it's passed, signed by the President.
I mean, listen, this isn't one of those Schoolhouse Rock, I'm just a bill up on Capitol Hill.
I just want to explain because some people don't understand.
We're not a democracy.
We are a constitutional republic.
There is a difference.
We don't vote directly on things.
So having members in the House of Representatives to measure and to represent large amounts of people, roughly 700,000 people a district.
The Democrats figured from the start, if they can't get illegal immigrants to vote, follow me here, and Joe, if this doesn't make sense, you gotta stop me.
If they can't get illegal immigrants to vote, which they always, well, the Democrats will do anything to hijack an election, right?
That they'd like to at least bump up the census count in certain liberal states to do what?
To add members to the House of Representatives to vote for them.
Now, the census story from the New York Times from a while ago, this is from March 14th, 2019.
Explanation of the census citizenship question doesn't pass the laugh test, a Democrat lawmaker had said.
What am I putting this up for?
This is why the Democrats don't want a citizenship question on the census and they say a quote doesn't pass the laugh test.
No, asking people their citizenship on the US census makes a world of difference.
The downside of this is now does it explain to you why the Democrats don't want to know who's a citizen and who's not?
Because if they can't get illegal immigrants to vote, they can at least get them moving into liberal states to bump up the number of congressional representatives they have in those states to vote for them.
That's right.
But they can't do that if the House of Representatives is allocated according to the census count and the census count somehow manipulates citizenship versus non-citizenship.
I don't want to say manipulates in a bad way.
I mean counts only citizens.
They don't want that.
That's why I'm trying to give you a deeper explanation of the ups and downs here.
That's why the Democrats are so virulently against asking on the census count if you're a citizen or not.
They want non-citizens counted too because they want to be sure non-citizens bump up the numbers in liberal states to add members of Congress that can vote on their behalf.
What does that have to do with... Okay, cool.
Now, what does that have to do with the Sanctuary City's policy?
The downside of it is, people are going to enter illegally, and there is a chance that if this policy were to take place, that you are going to bump up the numbers of members of the House of Representatives.
Now, having said that, I think the upside to the policy far outweighs that, because of one reason, Joe.
They're coming in anyway!
It doesn't matter!
So basically, the Wall Street Journal almost argues against its own point.
They're coming in anyway, they're not being deported, and they're already changing the voting patterns of specific communities along the border.
Notably, New Mexico, Arizona, portions of Southern California, Texas, they're already changing voting patterns.
So the question is, do you want liberal states to become more liberal, or do you want conservative states to turn moderate and potentially Democrat?
Either way, we lose.
So I'm just trying to give you a full scope of what's going on here.
And I believe the upside of getting the Democrats to be able to trip over their own words on sanctuary cities, to be able to use Cory Booker's own words against them.
Cory, what do you mean?
It's going to make the city less safe.
You told us illegal immigration is not dangerous.
And benefit number two.
So number one, it makes the Democrats trip over their own words.
Number two is important.
Make the Democrats feel the ramifications of their own policies and answer to the citizens who voted them in.
You're the mayor of San Francisco?
You like to be a sanctuary city?
Gives benefits to people here illegally?
Good.
Now take in a hundred thousand of them.
Let's see how you like them apples.
Let's see how you like those policies.
It ain't gonna go very well, is it?
You're not gonna like that.
All right, story number two.
This is important.
Mark Meadows appears on Maria Bartiromo's show this weekend.
I love this show, Sunday Morning Futures.
There's always some breaking news on it.
And he drops another, you know, tactical nuke on the battlefield of this debate about FISAgate, Russiagate, Spygate, whatever you choose to call it.
I think we should go back to Obamagate because this is all about the Obama administration.
Here's Meadows in a short snippet describing something.
And I want to give it some color and tell you how dangerous this is going to be for the left and the media.
They're in a world of trouble.
Play that cut.
What we would find is people within the Department of Justice, primarily the FBI, would actually give information to the media.
Then those reports would actually come out and they would say, wow, we have these reports now.
And then they would take the actual reports and use those as the probable cause to do a further investigation.
It was a big circular reasoning.
You'll see all of that come out.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Washington Examiner has a piece up about this too.
This is Mark Meadows is describing the conspiracy here between the media, the FBI and law enforcement officials.
Here's the piece.
Mark Meadows, highly likely FISA abuse investigation spawns more criminal referrals.
What is he talking about?
What is he suggesting?
Let me tie this up for you.
Again, Monday's always busy because I have to sit there all weekend and watch the news and figure out what's going to come out on Maria Bartiromo's show.
I have to tape it because I go to church at that time.
Come back and watch it.
Folks, there was a felony leak.
We've been talking about this on this show for a long time.
A felony leak of information.
To the Washington Post, notably David Ignatius, a writer over there at the Post.
That felony leak consisted of information contained in a monitored phone call between Mike Flynn and the Russian ambassador.
Track me here.
This is really important.
What was contained in that leak, basically the name of Mike Flynn, which had been unmasked, And the contents of that phone call was classified information.
The leak of that classified information is a federal felony.
Now, here's what Meadows is hinting at.
It is reports like that and felony leaks of information, whether it was FISA documents, whether it was classified information by the FBI, that was then reported on by the media.
It was then some of those reports, whether it was the report about Mike Flynn used to get Flynn fired, whether it was the David Corn, Michael Isikoff reporting.
About the dossier that was then used to push the FISA warrant, whether it was the Jim Comey leaks to his friend, his lawyer friend that were used to appoint Bob Mueller.
Do you see a pattern?
Yeah.
This is a critical component of this whole abuse case and what Meadows is getting at.
The media was used as a bunch of useful idiots by the FBI and the DOJ.
In some cases, eager useful idiots.
Lapping it up like dogs!
This is from the Washington Examiner piece.
What we would find is people within the Department of Justice, primarily the FBI, this is from Meadows, would actually give the information to the media.
Then those reports would actually come out, and they would say, wow, we have these reports now.
And then they would take the reports and use those as probable cause to do a further investigation, Meadows said.
It was a big circular reasoning.
You'll see all of that come out, I believe, when the Inspector General report comes out.
Now, think of this in three tranches.
I gotta make this understandable for you.
To get a federal investigation, an arrest warrant, and a federal investigation at the local level too, but since we're talking about Spygate, which was conducted by the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you need probable cause.
You need evidence.
They didn't have evidence.
Follow me.
So in order to generate evidence, the Bureau and the DOJ start leaking unsubstantiated, unverified rumors to the media that they don't want to swear to in court yet.
They then take the media reporting on the rumors they leaked, put it in the FISA application and say, hey, lookie here!
We have evidence that this happened!
The media reported on it!
Knuckleheads!
They reported on it because of you!
You leaked it to them!
That's why they reported on it, huh?
You leaked it!
So that's number one.
FISA warrants.
They leaked information about the dossier to get the FISA warrants.
This is what Meadows is referring to with this circular reasoning.
Number two.
The Mike Flynn case.
It's important.
They leak information to Ignatius of the Washington Post, totally illegal to leak Flynn's name, which unmasked, and they leak the contents of his call with the Russian ambassador.
It's that story that's used to create public pressure to get Flynn fired and to garner political weight to be used against Flynn later by the Democrats to pressure an investigation.
Again, circular reasoning.
Leaked to Ignatius.
Flynn did nothing wrong with the phone call.
Used the story by Ignatius and others to gather a tsunami against Flynn to push for him to be fired and prosecuted.
The third case of this is even more troubling.
Jim Comey wants a special counsel appointed to investigate his own firing, basically.
They were never investigating collusion to Mueller probe.
Don't believe that nonsense.
They were investigating obstruction from day one.
Obstruction of justice on a crime that was never committed.
Comey actually leaks potentially classified information to a friend of his to leak to the media to get the president investigated for firing him, which allows Mueller to then look back into the president's activities and continue the surveillance of the presidential campaign.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is devastating, devastating stuff.
That's what he's talking about with the circular reasoning.
It's a three-pronged attack.
Right.
It's the FISA circular reasoning, the Flynn circular reasoning, and the use of the media, useful idiots, and the use of Comey to play the media as useful idiots to continue an investigation into Trump and to continue this spying operation.
Listen.
I'm telling you with certainty this is all going to come out soon and it is going to be devastating.
I want you to smile a little bit knowing that vindication is right around the corner for everyone out there who's put their name on the line in this investigation and has been called everything from a conspiracy theorist to other horrible names on Twitter.
The left is going down on this.
I'm telling you.
There is no way they're going to be able to run from this.
The media played an active role in the biggest spying scandal in American history.
By using the reports they were leaked to the FBI, using them and feeding them basically back to the FBI and the public to be used as evidence, when the evidence came from the FBI.
From the FBI.
Yep.
Market.
It's going to roll into my next one, too, because this next story is even better.
All right.
Today's show also brought to you by our buddies at Bowling Branch.
These are the finest sheets out there.
You will never sleep on anything else when you pick up a set of Bowling Branch sheets.
You will be spoiled to death.
You will be sleeping on clouds.
They are so comfortable, Bowling Branch sheets.
Everything Bowling Branch makes, from bedding to blankets, is made from 100% Organic cotton, which means they start out super soft and they get softer over time.
Listen, we could all use more sleep, okay?
How better to sleep than to change your sheets to these excellent sheets at Bowling Branch?
We love them.
Everyone who tries Bowling Branch sheets loves them.
That's why they have thousands, not hundreds, thousands of five-star reviews.
Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company are all talking about Bowling Branch.
Even three U.S.
presidents sleep on Bowling Branch sheets.
Shipping is free.
You can try them for 30 nights.
If you don't love them, send them back for a refund.
You won't need to.
You'll never send them back.
But I doubt that you want to send them back.
There's no risk, and there's no reason to not give them a try.
To get you started right now, my listeners, get $50 off your first set at Bowl, B-O-L-L, and Branch.com, promo code Bongino.
Go to Bowl, B-O-L-L, and Branch.com.
Promo code Bongino for $50 off your first set of sheets.
There's a lot of unanswered questions out there, and I'm going to try to kind of tie up this segment in conjunction with the Meadows stuff.
So now that you understand the media's role in this and why the media, people like hilarious Chuck Todd from NBC, now that Chuck Todd knows the media has been owned in this whole Russiagate, Obamagate, Spygate scandal, as I just laid out to you, the media have been co-conspirators in this.
They've been used as a conduit to produce evidence, evidence they were fed by the FBI that was rumor, never evidence.
So Chuck Todd and everyone else, they're freaking out on the left side.
Bill Barr is promoting conspiracy theories about spying.
No, spying happened, okay?
Don't be an idiot.
Spying actually happened.
And the Mueller probe has been a farce from the start.
I mean, Paul Sperry is an interesting piece in Real Clear today, which is fascinating.
In there he talks about how Mueller, just a quick aside before I get into this, how Mueller used the selective use of emails the Trump campaign gave them to paint a picture that never existed.
He gives this great example about how Papadopoulos, in an email with Papadopoulos, there's some mention of a low-level campaign person contacting foreign governments or the Russians.
So Mueller like puts that in there like wow look they're reaching out to the Russians and foreign governments and then he notably admits the email Joe where the Trump campaign tells the uh orders as a matter of fact the Papadopoulos people and others that these meetings are not going to happen he ignores that completely just leave that out Bob that's not really relevant to the story that's why anybody Anybody who believes Mueller is a good guy, I'm sorry.
You have been grotesquely misled.
He is awful.
He has done this country an enormous disservice, and when what Mueller did comes out, his legacy is tarnished forever.
He has disgraced himself with this investigation.
All right, that leads me to the next piece, unanswered questions here.
Byron York has another good piece up at the Washington Examiner about basically five unanswered questions that the Mueller report that's going to be released maybe today, who knows, won't settle.
I'm not going to get to all five of them because if you've listened to the show, you basically know many of them already.
But he mentions one, and it's important, and it's the first one.
He mentions this point about how Although the report was conclusive that there was no collusion, that the Democrats are going to move the goalposts.
Here's a cutout, a snippet from the Washington Examiner piece.
This is important.
He says, listen, basically even though the collusion is dead, he says that's not the end of it.
Immediately upon the release of the Barr summary, some of the president's accusers began moving the goalposts.
This is critical.
What Mueller really said was that the evidence did not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no conspiracy or coordination.
Here's going to be their new line.
Maybe the evidence shows collusion, but it doesn't meet that high legal standard.
No, no, no.
I was on Fox and Friends this morning and I addressed this.
Brian Kilmeade asked an excellent question.
He said, Dan, The question was exactly what is in this Washington Examiner piece, which is in the show notes today, Bongino.com.
Please read it.
Well, Dan, what if the Democrats say, hey, look at all this negative information, Joe, in the report.
Trump was clearly a bad guy.
No, ladies and gentlemen, that's not how the justice system works.
I took this big note here on my own show notes.
Negative information does not equal probable cause.
Joe, can we acknowledge fairly that if you, me, Paula, my mother-in-law, my kids, anybody, had a $30 million special investigation with 10 to 20 federal attorneys, 30 FBI agents, unlimited resources, and subpoena power, can we fairly acknowledge that you, I, and everyone else listening, that negative information would come out?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's not a trick.
Listen, we're all sinners.
I said on Fox & Friends this morning that when I ran for office, Paul and I were going through significant money problems.
I left my job to run for office.
It was a big sacrifice.
That's how I met Joe.
I mean, remember, folks, a little backstory here.
Joe did this show for free in the beginning.
Why did he do it for free?
Not because he didn't want money.
Everybody wants to work for money.
No one wants to work for free.
I did too, dude.
I couldn't afford to pay him.
I think, Joe, what did I give you?
Like, we did the show once a week, Joe, like $500 for like 20 shows.
Folks, we had no money.
I felt bad taking that.
I did.
I know you did.
You almost didn't want it.
But Paul and I were working to make ends meet, put it together, because we had sacrificed a lot.
Listen, I'm not looking for anybody's pat on the back.
I'm not like, hey, look at me.
I'm just suggesting, like, we've been through the fire here, okay?
Nobody wants to work for free.
People want money.
There's negative stuff in everybody's background.
People may have missed credit card payments.
People may have at some point in their childhood, you know, stolen something from a store or realized it was wrong and moved on.
My point is not to make a big moral argument or lengthen out this conversation any more than needed, but everybody's going to have negative information.
That does not mean you are a criminal!
Right.
So the Democrats moving the goalposts to tie this up to say, well the Mueller report is negative information and it means nothing!
Here's your answer, just so you're ready for the retort.
Because I'd love to give you the mental ammunition to fight these liberal police state tyrants.
Your answer to them should be succinct and to the point.
Are you willing to undergo a full financial audit and a full investigation into your entire business history, you, and willing to tell me there wouldn't be negative information there as well?
I want that on the record.
Yes, I'm willing to say there would be nothing.
You are a liar and you know it.
Negative information does not equal probable cause.
Probable cause, for those of you out there who were not cops or lawyers, I'm sure you've heard the term, it's a smart audience.
But probable cause is an evidentiary standard needed to arrest someone, needed to get a search warrant.
Probable cause there was a crime committed, committed by this person, and to do that you have to establish evidence.
Evidence is not always negative information.
That part may have been confusing.
But this is critical too.
Sometimes negative information is wrong.
In other words...
If Mueller's report contains information, this is why I threw that Paul Sperry thing in there, about emails from Papadopoulos about meetings they were supposed to set up from Russia, wow, that sounds pretty negative, doesn't Joe?
Yeah.
Gosh, Russian collusion and Papadopoulos is being told to go meet with Russians?
Bad, bad, bad.
That's negative.
Bad, bad, bad.
You know why, Joe, it's not probable cause to arrest Donald Trump?
Do tell.
Because there's other emails that are not in the report Or may not be, we haven't seen the report yet to be clear.
Other emails, the Trump team telling Papadopoulos, you will not do these meetings!
In other words, yes, negative information taken out of context appears criminal.
But it's not criminal because it's not evidence, because there's other evidence saying that that's not evidence!
There's other evidence saying, don't do those meetings!
I can't think of how many times, ladies and gentlemen, I have told this story on this show probably 10 or 20 times, where we had a criminal investigation going on, and we slipped something across the table to an attorney about his client, and the information wasn't about the client!
We were like, uh-oh.
And we had to go back and redo the case!
It was a different guy.
But that, now a guy was involved in the same, it was just, I can't explain the details or anything, you know, but I'm telling you, this happens all the time.
And it's negative information.
I saw Joe robbing a bodega down the block.
Negative, right?
In the report.
Then you find out later that the witness takes his testimony back and says, you know what, come to think of it, it wasn't Joe, it was Elvis.
I saw, because Joe looks like Elvis.
Joe, he does.
He looks like Elvis.
Paula, throw Joe up on the screen.
Throw me up on the screen.
Joe, there he is!
Joe, Joe, good look at Elvis.
There he is.
Thank you, thank you very much.
All of a sudden you find out Thank you!
That the guy who ID'd Joe is crazy and thought it was Elvis!
Negative, right?
But when it's taken in context of the guy's larger testimony, he thought it was Elvis, it becomes anti-evidence, not evidence.
That's the point, folks.
I don't want to drag this out.
I just, I know what the Democrats are doing, and it is sickening.
They're going, they want the Mueller report exposed to mine it for selective pieces of information that reflect poorly on Trump, but are not evidence of any crime at all, because they want to fabricate a crime.
If you have evidence to charge someone, we have a court system where you have to do what?
You have to have the nerve to walk into court, swear your professional FBI reputation on it with your right hand up, to say that that evidence is true, that Joe committed this crime, and this is how it happened.
The reason Mueller's team is not doing that, and is not waltzing an FBI agent into court with an arrest warrant, or signing one themselves, is because they don't have that!
They don't have evidence.
Negative information is meaningless.
It doesn't mean anything.
So the goalpost was here.
Let's prove collusion.
The report, there is no, Mueller could not have been more conclusive in the summary.
Bill Barr's summary of the Mueller report contains quotes about there is no evidence of collusion with the Russians.
So now the Democrats take that bar and move it up.
Well, there's negative information.
Negative information is meaningless.
Meaningless.
It doesn't mean anything outside of its context.
Gosh, I hope I summed that up for you.
I guess as a criminal investigator, having dealt with this a thousand times, you get a source that comes in, man, I got negative information on my neighbor.
This guy's involved in a major terrorist plot.
Oh my, this is, man, is that negative.
The neighbor's name is whatever, you know, Joey Bagadonis.
Gosh, Joey Bagadonis, a terrorist.
Then you find out later that your source hates the neighbor, is involved in a lawsuit, Joey Bag of Donuts is a choir boy.
He's never been involved.
That was negative information.
In context, it was not evidence.
It was anti-evidence.
That's why we have probable cause standards and you have to swear to it.
My gosh!
Democrats don't know this?
Ask your liberal friends.
How much negative information out there is about you?
Are you willing to expose that to the public?
I didn't commit any crime.
Yeah, either did Trump.
I'm telling you, we're at peak stupidity.
I want to get to some more unanswered questions and I want to get to some other stuff too about what Trump can do, I think, issues-wise right now.
To seal a 2020 re-election.
I mean, hook, line, and sinker, it'd be over.
This is going to be important.
All right, a lot more to go.
It's our last sponsor of the day, but another great sponsor.
Speaking of sleep, Helix Sleep, the most comfortable mattresses out there.
HelixSleep.com slash Dan.
You get up to $125 off all your mattress orders.
Here's how Helix Sleep works, which is genius.
Don't buy some off-the-shelf mattress.
It's like buying an off-the-shelf suit.
It's not gonna fit you.
You wouldn't do that, right?
You gotta have it tailored.
Well, Helix Sleep tailors mattresses for you.
They have a sleep quiz.
It takes two minutes, two minutes to complete and matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you, whether you're a side sleeper like me.
It's hot when you sleep, like me too.
I always gotta put the fan on.
It frees my wife up.
You like a plush or a firm bed with Helix?
There's no more confusion and no more compromising.
Paula, how much do you love our Helix Sleep mattress?
Tell the audience.
Love!
She's not kidding.
She does.
Sometimes I lose her because she sleeps on my daughter's inside.
Helix Sleep is rated the number one mattress by GQ and Wired Magazine.
And CNN called it the most comfortable mattress they've ever slept on.
Just go to helixsleep.com slash Dan.
Take their two minute sleep quiz and they'll match you to a customized mattress that'll give you the best sleep of your life.
Oh, it will.
For couples, Helix can even split the mattress down the middle, providing individual support needs and feel preferences for each side of the mattress.
Come on, who's better than you?
They have a 10-year warranty.
You get to try it out 100 nights risk-free.
They'll even pick it up for you if you don't love it.
There'll be no need for that, because you will love it.
Helix is offering up to $125 off all mattress orders for our listeners.
Don't make the mistake of an off-the-shelf mattress.
You wouldn't buy some crappy suit off the shelf and not tailor it.
Go get a mattress tailored to you.
$125 off at helixsleep.com slash Dan.
That's helixsleep.com slash Dan for up to $125 off.
That's Helix, H-E-L-I-X sleep.com slash Dan.
Go check it out.
$125 off.
That's a nice savings.
All right.
So, Byron York's piece is a really good one.
Again, go to Bongino.com, check out the show notes.
But I want to add three more unanswered questions.
I'm going to make this quick because a lot of you regular listeners to the show know where I'm going with this.
But I had an interesting conversation with a buddy this weekend.
And some email exchanges with another friend of mine that I've been working on with book two exonerated.
And I said to my wife, this case, the whole operation to take Trump down can really be summed up right now with three questions, which I'm reasonably confident I have the answers to.
But once we get finality on it, once we get a period at the end of that sentence, and we can conclusively claim these to be facts, this thing is going to blow wide open.
Alright, let's get to question number one.
Folks, I've emphasized to you from the beginning of this entire operation to take the Trump team down that it is not about Trump.
Please understand the Spygate-Obamagate scandal is bigger than just Trump.
The fact that Trump was spied on is horrible on his team.
We know that.
Contrary to what Chuck Todd and the conspiracy theorist tinfoil cap wearers in the media tell you, the spying scandal is very real.
FISA warrants, national security letters, the use of human spies to spy on Trump team.
What if I told you that was not the biggest part of this?
That the biggest part of this was an ongoing scandal to abuse the NSA database, to abuse unmasking, to abuse the weaponized power of the intelligence community for political reasons, not intelligence and national security ones.
That's the scandal.
What's unanswered question number one that will tie this all together?
Ladies and gentlemen, we saw in April of 2017, the FISA court was asked by Mike Rogers, the head of the NSA, to look into abuses of the database that stores texts, emails, and everything on US You know this if you're a listener.
You know this from my viral speech.
There are redacted components of the report that's now public, released by the FISA court that looked into this.
To be clear, government's abusing a database which has your emails.
It's as simple as that.
The FISA court looked into it.
Said there's some scary stuff going on here.
There were a number of queries into this database.
In other words, using it for reasons not appropriate.
One of the things they found was that private contractors working with the FBI had access to this system and were engaged in some of these abuses.
Question number one.
Who were those private contractors?
Ladies and gentlemen, if those private contractors, one of them, turns out to be Fusion GPS, and I'm telling you I am working overtime to confirm this, then ladies and gentlemen, this case is going to blow like a hydrogen bomb.
Because a company paid by a political candidate, Hillary Clinton, Was that same company granted access earlier on before the Clinton contract to use the government's own database of its citizens' emails, texts, phone calls, and that kind of stuff?
Was that company using that information that they later could have sold to Hillary Clinton in the form of a dossier or others?
Wow.
Wouldn't that be special?
It seems weird a little bit.
Thank you, Peewee.
Very weird.
That's Peewee Herman, by the way.
I always get emails, people think it's someone else.
It's Peewee Herman!
Thanks, Joe.
Confirmed!
Question number one.
Was Fusion one of those private contractors?
Question number two.
Who the heck was Joseph Massoud working for?
Massoud starts his whole case, he tells George Papadopoulos allegedly about this dirt on Hillary that the Russians have.
Adam Schiff has insisted Massoud was a Russian agent trying to turn Papadopoulos.
I'm telling you that's not true.
That I'm sure of.
Massoud was not a Russian agent in that respect.
I believe strongly, based on overwhelming evidence, including statements by Ms.
Sood's own lawyer, Ms.
Sood was working for friendly intelligence assets to set up Papadopoulos.
Once that answer comes out conclusively, and is affirmed, it's gonna blow the whole thing wide open, because number one, And question number one, Joe, about Fusion, will prove that this was a spying scandal that was bigger than Trump.
There was abuses of the spying infrastructure before Trump even gets on the scene.
Yes, yes.
Via the NSA database and others and unmasking.
The second point will prove that this was never Russian collusion.
It was entrapment by our own government and friendlies from the start if Mifsud was not a Russian agent.
Question number three that's unanswered, but we'll blow this thing wide open again, is the scope memo.
What does the August 2nd, 2017 scope memo, what does it say and why is it classified?
I'm staking, I'm planting a flag that that August 2nd memo, telling Bob Mueller what else he can do, In addition to investigating Russian interference in the election.
That I believe that scope memo is an obstruction investigation.
And I've told you that's important because it'll make my point that Mueller was never investigating collusion.
He was given revised responsibilities just months after getting hired because collusion was a hoax and they didn't want to tell the American people.
They needed a gray area judgment crime like obstruction of justice to keep the case open.
Because obstruction's not a bank robbery.
The bank robbery either happened or it didn't.
Collusion either happened or it didn't.
Obstruction's a judgment call.
And a judgment call, Mueller could keep this investigation open forever.
Only reason they shut this down was because of the appointment of Bill Barr.
And they were gonna damage Trump from the start.
That's why that scope memo is so critical.
Because it'll show the Mueller probe was a farce.
Question one.
We'll show the spying scandal started before Trump and is all about Obama.
It will dismantle Obama's legacy forever.
Question two will show that our government, in conjunction with friendly intelligence services, tried to set up George Papadopoulos and the Trump team in American Citizen.
Question three will show the Mueller probe was a disgrace.
That it was never about collusion.
It was always about a judgment call so they could keep the investigation into Donald J. Trump open the entire time.
And that is the whole premise of my second book, Exonerated.
The deep state plot to take down Trump and how it failed.
You will be, I'm telling you, blown away.
I'm not exaggerating here.
We have been working on this over time.
I've got snippets of testimony in there.
Pieces under oath, people have leaked out.
You're going to be flabbergasted by what you're reading.
Dan, I think that was the most simplest explanation you've ever given.
You know what I mean?
Concise.
One, two, three, boom, boom, boom.
Thank you.
And I thought about it because for those who've heard my viral speech, the one I gave at David Horowitz's Freedom Center rally, it was a 20 minute speech that summed up the whole Obama administration attack on Trump and why it was bigger.
And that was basically it in a nutshell.
And once we get these three questions back, that speech, I'm sure I will be vindicated because I've had people attack me for it, say I was speculating on stuff.
I'm not speculating.
Listen to me.
But this is important.
All of it is important.
Because you have to understand the big picture too.
And one other thing I want to explain to you here.
Devin Nunes has been a godsend to this entire movement.
Again, I can't endorse or advocate.
I'm just saying if there's anybody out there to support outside of your district, Devin Nunes from California, the congressman, he is your guy.
This guy has a backbone made of pure titanium.
He has been under relentless assault by the left as he exposes this massive scandal against Trump.
Relentless assault.
It has never stopped.
And Nunes came out this weekend and said something else, and he has this way of just distilling it down to simple, digestible points.
He said, if Mueller's probe—and forgive me, this is not a direct quote, so I want to be clear on that, because I want to be precise in my language, reflecting what he said.
He said, in effect, if this Mueller probe was legitimate, was really investigating collusion, How did they not know from the start there was no collusion?
And he brings a great point up.
He says, Joe, he goes, when Mueller's appointed, he goes to this FBI team.
He had to.
And here's the quote from Nunes.
He says, show me what you have.
Right?
So Mueller goes to Peter Strzok, the FBI, Andy McCabe and others.
And he says at some point, show me what you've got on collusion.
Folks, they had nothing.
They didn't have anything.
Do you understand?
It was a great line.
Show me what you got.
Show me the money, Jerry.
Remember?
Show me the money.
Remember?
For Jerry Maguire.
That'd be great.
We can throw that in there sometime.
Jerry Maguire on the phone.
Show me the money.
They had nothing.
They had been investigating Trump for a year.
They had to walk up to him and say, Bob, Um, we don't have anything but this dossier.
He knows instantly it's a hoax!
And yet he kept it going for 675 days.
Mueller's a hero!
Tell me again?
Establishment rhinos?
Clueless Democrats and media hacks how Mueller's a big hero?
Think about this if this was your guy Obama, who you loved and adored.
If he was being investigated for being a space alien.
What?
Obama's not a space alien?
Yeah, Trump didn't collude with the Russians either.
Obama being a space alien is equally as true as Trump being a Russian colluder.
Which is to say, it's completely made up.
Imagine they investigated that for nearly 700 days.
Destroying the Obama presidency.
You'd be furious.
But because you're unprincipled hacks, and you don't care, you celebrate this.
But there's negative information!
Oh, really?
Let's look into your past.
I guarantee you we'll find negative information.
All right, I got other stuff to get to.
I said to you before, I teased it, if Trump wants to ensure re-election, there's something he has to do.
The Trump presidency so far has been gold for conservatives.
There have been a number of enormous policy successes.
I think it is 2020 re-elect and debates are going to be devastating because there are a lot of things in there that Across the aisle.
You may say, Trump crossed the aisle?
No, no, I'm talking about him particularly, although I think he will.
I mean, a lot of blue collar Democrats voted for Trump.
But I'm saying a lot of his policy successes are going to cross the aisle because even a lot of moderate Democrats know that they're rational things.
First is going to be the tax cuts, the economic growth.
Listen, nobody's anti-economic growth.
The liberals are going to try to paint this as this is all for the rich and the middle class isn't benefiting.
It's nonsense because the middle class actually knows that they're getting jobs, they're getting raises.
So it's garbage.
That talking point isn't going to work.
So a lot of what Trump has done, bringing some saneness back to the courts.
Nobody likes government red tape.
It's going to appeal to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan blue-collar Democrats.
He needs those states.
We may have a shot at Minnesota.
We may have a shot at other, I think, what is it, Maine, where they split the congressional district.
We may have a shot up there, too.
We may have an outside shot at Virginia, too, which would make it an even bigger landslide than last time.
But being candid, again, giving you both sides of it, there is one thorn in the side of the Trump presidency that is causing a lot of trouble with the conservative base.
I don't want to absolve it, I don't do golden calf worship here, but it's hurting Trump because the Republicans and the Democrats in the House have no nerve to fight it, and that is government spending.
There's an interesting piece up from the Wall Street Journal today about this and how Trump is holding a, pun intended, Trump card right now on spending.
Ladies and gentlemen, spending is out of control.
The piece is by James Freeman, who does really, of all the editorial, if you read the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, which I read every day, Freeman's work, in my opinion, is the best.
Well, Strassel's is great too, but Freeman is fantastic.
The title of the piece is Make Washington Small Again.
He says, a hint of Beltway budget discipline and a new limit on red tape.
Now what he says in the piece is Trump has this trump card out there.
Federal spending, we have to be candid folks, is out of control.
Trump had told us after he signed that budget he was not going to sign another one like it.
I am hoping and praying he sticks to it and let me go back to where I started this because out of control government spending appeals to only one group of people.
Radical, extreme, far-left Democrats who share nothing in common with the rest of us.
Who will never, ever vote Trump or Republican anyway.
So basically what I'm telling you is forget them.
They are useless to getting reelected.
These are the infanticide, Bankruptcy, out of control government debt, anti-school choice, anti-free speech, anti-civil liberties, college campus, uh, you know, radicals teaching some of our kids who are never voting for Trump, don't worry about them for re-election.
It is probably 20, maybe, generously, 30% of the electorate.
It's over.
They're not our voters, they never will be.
It doesn't matter.
The rest of the population, I would say between 60 and 70 percent, probably more, probably closer to 80, actually cares about the federal government going bankrupt, right?
If Trump can get a hold of government spending, he will sail to re-election.
Okay, what's the Trump card, you ask?
Here it is!
The BCA, ironically, passed under the Obama administration to control the out-of-control government spending.
In other words, commonly called the sequester.
Ladies and gentlemen, the sequester, or the Budget Control Act, was enacted under the Obama administration with Republicans and Tea Party types pushing for it.
To control out-of-control government spending.
In other words, very simply described, it put a lid on top of government spending.
It sequestered money.
It said, you cannot spend more than this amount.
Now, of course, Rhino Republicans, in conjunction with their out-of-control Democrats, what did they do?
They have been bypassing and voting to surpass these sequester caps for the last few years.
Well, here's the catch, as described by this journal piece.
If Trump does nothing, folks, nothing, those caps go into effect with this next budget, and we'll lop a pretty impressive $125 billion off of our spending bill.
From the Wall Street Journal piece.
He's citing the Hill.
The Hill reports, President Trump has indicated, this is nice, that he would allow the $125 billion in spending cuts to take place for both defense and non-defense spending if Congress does not agree to his spending plan, according to Larry Kudlow, one of his top advisors.
The President has indicated, if the spending caps going all the way back to 2011 are not met, then he will sequester across the board defense and non-defense, excluding entitlements, And we will run by those rules, Kudlow said.
That's tough stuff, but I think it's appropriate.
That's a quote from Kudlow.
Nice!
Yeah, man.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, to be clear, we are running a massive, massive deficit annually.
Deficits are annual.
Debt are the accumulated annual deficits.
They're not the same thing.
Deficits are our annual shortfall.
Debt is our accumulated annual shortfalls over time.
Our national debt is about $22 trillion, which is enormous.
It's the value of basically everything our economy produces.
If you made $100,000 a year and owed $100,000, that's the equivalent of what we owe as a government.
It's a lot.
But the deficits are getting ridiculous.
They're over $500 billion closing in on a trillion annually.
$125 billion in cuts is not going to solve the problem in itself.
But it gives Trump a major win.
That's at least one-tenth of our annual deficit knocked off right there.
A little bit more than that, actually.
And it gives him a major winning issue going into re-election.
Because... Think about this.
Let's think this through.
This is important, folks.
The Democrats are going to run on Trump deficits if Trump tries to call out their big spending.
Think it through.
If Trump is up on the debate stage and says to Bernie Sanders, say he's the nominee, Bernie, your plan for Medicare for All is going to cost $32 trillion a year.
They are going to respond back, well, listen, uh, Mr. President, your record on spending isn't great either.
Look at your deficits of a trillion a year.
If we're going to spend a trillion, we should at least spend it on health care.
Mark it!
Mark it right here!
What is it?
53, whatever we're at in my show.
We have a little timer.
Mark it!
That'll be his response.
If President Trump does not cut federal spending, He will not have a response for that.
If he does and he lets the sequester take place or can get a budget pass that does a decent job of cutting large swaths of spending, he can fire back, really?
Because let me tell you something, I'm the one who enacted 125 billion dollars in spending cuts and is putting our nation on a path to a balanced budget.
This is gold for re-election.
I'm out there every day talking to people, seeing them in the gym.
Gave a speech last week, was talking to a bunch of activists.
This is their key issue, government debt.
And it crosses the aisle.
This will be absolute gold.
Now, doubling down on this.
Another story in the Daily Signal today about how your tax money is spent.
Really good.
Please read this.
It's up at the show notes.
Again, pongino.com.
If you subscribe to my email list by going to my website, just click subscribe.
I humbly ask you to do that with respect.
I know a lot of you don't.
We only email out like once a day and sometimes a weekend snippet, but these are really good articles and we put a lot of homework into getting out there what you need every day.
This is a great piece.
It's very well done.
Daily Signal in one chart, how your taxes are spent.
Now, we just addressed the budget problems.
They're significant.
Trump has a Trump card, the sequester.
He needs to use it.
It will give him powerful ammunition in the debate.
But secondly, somebody's going to have to explain how the money we're spending now is spent.
Because as I said, although $125 billion is some pretty decent cuts, which will put us at least on some glide path in the future to fiscal sanity, it is not going to balance the budget because entitlements are the big problem right now.
There's a chart up in this Daily Signal piece, which is excellent.
Here's where your money's going.
52% of our federal spending is entitlements.
Medicare, Medicaid, healthcare, Obamacare, social security.
52%.
28% for healthcare programs, 24% for social security.
16% for income security programs, TANF, other stuff like that.
15% for national defense, 8% for net interest, 9% all other spending. 9%?
Think about what I just told you, ladies and gentlemen.
The things you think the government is doing.
When you take public polls, Joe, about government spending, people are convinced, oh, we're wasting all this money on, you know, the FBI, Secret Service, Post Office, all this other stuff, whatever it may be, quasi-government entities, bailouts, foreign aid comes up, we're spending all this money.
Ladies and gentlemen, the bureaucracy is a smidgen It's less than 10% of what we're spending!
What I'm trying to tell you is if we don't reform entitlements, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and these other programs, forget it!
We will never balance the budget.
Why am I bringing this up?
Ladies and gentlemen, you are now paying $26,000 per household.
That's contained in that Daily Signal piece.
$26,000 on average per household in taxes.
Think about what you could do with that money if the 52% of it that is being spent on Medicare and healthcare, you could just spend yourself.
Has anybody explained this ever?
Ladies and gentlemen, the average is $26,000 per household in taxes.
Roughly 13,000 of that is being spent on social security and Medicare and Medicaid that people think are free.
Folks, you're already spending the money!
This is not free!
What I'm trying to tell you is you are having the...
The snot taxed out of you, I don't know any other way to say it, or how gross that sounds, to pay for programs that people are insisting are free.
You could pay for this yourself.
I have a note here to myself.
Can you do a better job?
If the government gave you back, it's $13,000 a year.
For the rest of your life, don't you think you could invest it better?
The government, there's no money, they've already spent it!
Ladies and gentlemen, by 2023, Social Security will be bankrupt according to its own actuaries that are non-partisan, and benefits will be cut by an astounding 23%.
They've already wasted your money!
Think about your working years.
What does the average person work?
40 years?
35, 40 years?
Something like that.
If you saved $13,000 a year for your healthcare and for your social security, your own retirement, ladies and gentlemen, you'd actually have money in 2023.
They wasted it.
It's been burned.
Now, why am I bringing this up?
Because there's a proposal out there to not give you back more of your money, ladies and gentlemen.
There's a proposal out there Again, in the Washington Examiner today, to take more of your social security money away.
Here's the piece by Mattie Doppler.
Old problem, tired old solution.
Democrats want to tax millennials to save social security.
Surprise!
So not only do they take your money.
Yeah, shocker!
I know, right?
I mean, they want to tax you more.
Here's the kicker.
Throw you younger men and women out there, vote Democratic and they're in it for the little guy.
They're not in it for you!
They want to bump up the payroll tax 2.4% to an astonishing 14.8%!
Now, what's the difference between the payroll tax and the income tax?
Ladies and gentlemen, large swaths of America, upwards of 40%, don't pay the income tax!
They get refundable tax credits, their net tax liability is zero.
But they do pay the payroll tax.
Everybody gets sucked into that one.
In other words, the Social Security Medicare tax, the FICA taxes.
Including younger Americans.
Now, this piece makes a great point.
Folks, the gig economy's taking over.
A lot of young kids who have apartments, they travel sometimes, or they have some off hours, they'll do some Uber, they'll do some Airbnb, they'll do some side jobs, work three or four part-time jobs.
A lot of these younger Americans doing Uber and things like that, what they call the side hustle now, making some decent money by the way, are sole proprietors of their own businesses.
Young Man and Women, Inc.
When you're that sole propriety of your own business, ladies and gentlemen, you're paying both portions of those FICA taxes.
In other words, that 14.8% rate they're proposing would be split between you and your employer if you were a full-time employee somewhere.
Which is really nonsense, because the employer's just paying you less anyway.
But just pretend the employer half just goes away, using Democrat liberal economics.
If you're a sole proprietor in a gig economy running your own business, you're going to be paying both parts of that.
14.8% of your money to pay into a social security fund the government just flushed down the toilet.
Nice job, government.
Don't you think you could do a little bit more with that money yourself?
Millennials, why you keep voting for these people that are taking away your money to finance a government-broken system is absolutely ridiculous.
Do the math.
It works.
You'll be a conservative quickly once arithmetic takes over.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
That was a stacked show today.
Monday always is.
I really appreciate it.
We're going to do, maybe doing some traveling this week, so I'll keep you updated on the shows.
We will always produce a show, but we'll see what we're going to do.
We're working on some video adjustments here.
But please subscribe to the YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Bongino.
Subscribe to the audio podcast on Apple, the Apple podcast, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, and elsewhere.
