In this episode, I address new data from Italy which paints a much different picture about the virus crisis. I discuss some likely permanent changes to our country after we clear this crisis. I also address the suspicious reemergence of the Obama “fixer.”
News Picks:
Things will never be the same after this.
Serious allegations emerge against these US Senators.
Yes, China did this. Don’t be a sucker like the media.
The Obama fixer is back!
Trump wrecks biased reporter after asking a stupid question.
Reporter asks an asinine question in the briefing room and is humiliated by the President.
99% of those who died from virus in Italy had other illnesses.
Here are a list of regulations that have been sidelined, which shows the uselessness of a lot of red tape.
Sidney Powell’s excellent piece about the Obama “fixer.”
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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.
Whoa was yesterday a big news day.
Whoa.
Woe is me, woe is the word, woe is whatever.
A lot going on.
Troubling story out of the United States Senate.
Some optimistic, or at least, I don't know, nothing's really optimistic, but less bad news, I guess.
A lot to talk about with you today, folks, including other non-coronavirus-related stories, including the Obama fixer.
Who is back, unbelievably.
Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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Protect it today using expressvpn.com slash Bongino.
Welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Hey, it's fine.
Friday!
That was a medium kind of a Friday.
Moderately.
We were debating that before the show.
We're trying to stay positive.
Again, I do have some, again, less bad news, some positive news coming out of this, and some updates for you.
Don't go anywhere.
One quick programming note, my interview with Dr. Ronnie Jackson Former White House physician under President Trump, who was attacked by the Democrat machine, is up on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and all our platforms.
Please listen to it.
We recorded it, made it available last night, early this morning.
It's very good.
He talks about his time in the White House with President Trump.
How they're keeping the president safe right now in this and other things like his congressional campaign and some medical questions answered about the coronavirus.
You probably haven't heard before.
Check it out.
It's doing very well overnight.
So please look at that.
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Number one, as I discussed with you yesterday, we will not be beholden to the Chinese overlords right now trying to pass off propaganda through our useful idiots in the media about how this did not originate in China.
It is a free speech issue.
It is an enormous issue.
I have an update later on what we will call from this point on the free speech fight because that's what it is.
I will not capitulate.
I know neither you will either.
Neither many of you will either.
President Trump yesterday was at the White House also and was having none of this nonsense with the media, who again is not only engaging in misfeasance but malfeasance.
They are not only not helping in many respects, but actively harming the United States economy, the United States' flow of information back and forth between its population and media representatives.
They are also gaslighting many of us.
Trump is having none of it.
Here is a quick A piece of video on tape, President Trump yesterday with an NBC News journalist who's not really helping the situation and basically just nails her to the wall on this because she's trying to not help but of course playing let's dunk on Trump.
Check this out.
I'll tell you how prepared I was.
this was a pandemic that was coming.
So why was the United States not prepared for more testing?
-We were very prepared.
The only thing we weren't prepared for was the media.
The media has not treated it fairly.
I'll tell you how prepared I was.
I called for a ban from people coming in from China long before anybody thought it was --
In fact, it was your network.
I believe they call me a racist because I did that.
It was many of the people in the room.
They call me racist and other words because I did that because I went so early.
So when you say we weren't prepared, had I let these tens of thousands of people come in from China a day?
We would have had something right now that would have been, you wouldn't have even recognized it compared to where we are.
How many people have passed away?
How many people have died as of this moment?
You could multiply that by a factor of many, many, many.
So when you say that I wasn't prepared, I was the first one to do the ban.
Now other countries are following what I did.
But the media doesn't acknowledge that.
They know it's true.
They know it's true, but they don't want to write about it.
Yeah, go ahead.
Here we go.
Here's the media again.
That's Kirsten Welker from NBC, I believe.
Kirsten Welker not asking any kind of a productive question.
What are we doing?
What's happening now?
What are we doing tomorrow?
What can we expect?
Where can we get to?
None of that.
She wants to pin the tail on Trump, plays the dunk on Trump game.
And what does she want to do?
She wants to knock him again for his so-called lack of preparedness, as if anyone on the planet had a crystal ball and could have seen this coming.
Anyone.
Paul and I were talking about this this morning.
Nobody saw this coming.
Nobody.
The only one who acted on it early, when he did see some rumblings of how significant a problem this was going to be, was Trump, who banned travel from China, which could have saved thousands, if not tens of thousands of lives, and outlets called him, media outlets, a racist for doing so.
Yep.
Even scientists said it was a quote, overreaction and an emotional solution to a problem.
Useless media people in a crisis.
Useless.
Here's number two.
President Trump injecting a bit of his own opinion about the media.
I'm sorry, a little bit of... This is hysterical.
This is President Trump.
He's asked a question about if Congress is responding appropriately to a potential outbreak on Capitol Hill.
And President Trump's answer here is pretty priceless.
Some of you may have seen this.
Check this out.
Members of Congress are now being tested positive for coronavirus, and you have almost two dozen who are self-quarantining.
Do you have any guidance for Congress?
I know all of them.
I don't know if they're sitting like you people are sitting.
You're actually sitting too close.
You should, really, we should probably get rid of about another 75-80% of you.
I'll have just two or three that I like in this room.
I think that's a great way of doing it.
We just figured a new way of doing it.
But you're actually much too close.
You two, you should leave immediately.
I'm sorry, it's just... I'm glad he's not playing your game.
You two, you should leave immediately.
I got more on this later.
Again, don't go anywhere today's show.
Believe me, the Obama fixer segment, this is just under the radar too.
Fixer's back.
Here's a third video.
This is from MSNBC yesterday.
I'm front-loading a lot of the video, sound on tape, video on tape today because it's important.
This is MSNBC.
This is the former Obama era, I believe an emergency manager, Craig Fugate.
I think he was the head of FEMA.
I'm sorry.
I know the name.
I've seen him around, but he's on MSNBC and he makes a valid point that, listen, We can't rely on the federal government to be our nanny in this.
This is going to be run operationally at the local and state level with federal support.
A perfectly valid point.
Donald Trump can't fix everything.
He's not a monarch.
He's the President of the United States.
I think he's doing a great job.
He's doing what he can.
He's not some Merlin-like wizard from the Middle Ages who can fix things.
He's the President of the United States.
He has limitations on his power.
So Craig Fugate makes this point.
And of course, this is MSNBC.
So this is, make no mistake, an effort by MSNBC to pile on here.
This is what they do.
They want to pile on and make it look like because there are issues.
There's no question.
There are pipeline issues.
There are supply issues.
There's no question.
Ladies and gentlemen, if it was an emergency, if it wasn't an emergency, right, and this was normal times, everything would be fine.
It's an emergency.
There's going to be issues.
We have to fix them and play whack-a-mole with these problems as they come up.
They want to pile on Trump and make it look like it's his fault.
So this MSNBC commentator goes to jump in and attack Fuge, who has clearly, clearly had enough of this talking heads nonsense.
Check this out.
We have masks, we have a lot of these things.
Guess where they are?
They're sitting in the supply chain, people are profiteering off of them, or they're going to places where people are hoarding them.
Now that happens in a crisis.
It's only by someone looking through the entire system And seeing where those needs are, that you can say, stop hoarding them all in Texas.
We need them in New York right now while we build manufacturing capability and put them in Texas.
So what your other guest is suggesting here is not helpful.
We need a great partnership between the federal and state government.
Craig, you want to sit down and respond to this?
I guess Craig has left.
We need more of that on MSNBC and CNN.
If you missed it, because it was low at the end, we have to edit it because of the cuss word there.
He says, I don't have any more time for these bull fill-in-the-blank people.
Now, as I said to Paula, is he saying, I don't have any time for this bull comma people?
Or is he saying, I don't have any time for these bull people?
I don't know, I'm not sure.
But either way... I took it the first way.
Yeah, that's what I heard.
Yeah, I think so too.
I think so too.
He's clearly had enough of these frauds out there not trying to solve the problem again.
And listen, the guy's point is not invalid.
If there's a bottleneck of respirator masks, he's right.
But that's not why they're doing that.
This is my point, folks.
The point is, again, to try to dunk on Trump on MSNBC.
That's the only point there.
The only point.
Make no mistake.
Alright, again.
Some, I don't want to call it good news because, you know, anytime we're talking about a viral pandemic, you know, it's not good news.
It's less bad news, but I want to give you some notes.
There are some possible positive signs coming here.
There's a story and gosh, if I'm using Bloomberg, it must be really good, but needless to say, it's worth your time.
I mean, really, we've crossed the Rubicon now if I'm using a Bloomberg, but I saw this story yesterday and it's definitely worth your time up at Bloomberg.
Check this out.
99% of those who died from the virus had other illnesses, Italy says.
Folks, there's a critical takeaway here.
Again, we are not, for the 10 millionth time, for the liberal buffoons and utter turds that watch this show in their mommy's basement for, like, the Media Matters losers and those other ones, looking to play gotcha with conservatives in a time of a national crisis, despite being morons themselves.
Nobody's downplaying the seriousness of this.
People have died.
Period.
The question isn't serious or not, it's how serious and what's the response.
If the death rate and the mortality rate, Joe, like it was like the bubonic plague, where there were estimates that it wiped out from 25 to 60% of the population in Europe, a national quarantine might be warranted.
Right.
If the death rate is less than 1%, there are other measures to be considered other than draconian measures.
I'm not saying it's not serious.
The question's how serious?
From Bloomberg.
We're starting to find out that this new study could provide insight into why Italy's death rate at about 8%.
That's a lot of total infected people.
It's higher than in other countries.
The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country's coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology.
Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses, and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions.
More than 75% at high blood pressure, and about 35% at diabetes, and a third suffered from heart disease.
Again, this isn't good news.
There is no good news.
But it is less bad news.
The at-risk population from death, based on probability equations, clearly is not the entire society here.
It's older folks and other folks with pre-existing conditions based on data.
I thought the left believed in science.
Are we abandoning that now?
Gaging risk matters, folks.
We do it in our own lives every day.
I can't say this enough.
I'm not going to give you hysteria here.
I refuse.
I'm sorry.
I'm not going to be pressured into doing it either.
The left-wing sites want us to engage in full-time hysteria here.
We had good news yesterday.
Actual good news.
Hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment.
Vaccines moving down the pipeline.
People coming together helping out their elderly neighbors.
Today we find out that it might not be as deadly as we believed if you're young and healthy.
Why is the left avoiding all this?
Why do they want us in full-time hysteria all the time?
You want people having nervous breakdowns here?
I'm not doing it.
I'm sorry.
I refuse.
Again, there is other news going on that we are going to continue to report on this show.
The Obama fixer, ladies and gentlemen, is back!
Again!
If you're a regular listener to the show, you know exactly who I'm talking about.
This is an important story.
Before I get to that, let me just knock out our second sponsor.
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Okay.
The fixer.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you're a listener to my show since the famous episode number 628, which really exploded our audience, I think we tripled in a week or so after that.
You know the Obama fixer, Catherine Rumler, who was President Obama's former White House lawyer, keeps incredibly appearing in all of these cases involving the Spygate scandal, the Mueller probe scandal, all of this stuff.
The Obama fixer is back.
She always resurfaces everywhere.
It's simply incredible.
So hat tip to Jerry Dunleavy at the Washington Examiner, who again is busy reporting other stuff outside of coronavirus too, because it's not the only story going on right now.
Washington Examiner.
We'll get back to some of that other stuff in a minute.
I know, I know.
Some of you say, what about Richard Burns?
I got it.
I got it.
There was a lot of stuff to get to.
Joe's thing.
We got to get you all this stuff in an hour.
Headline, Jerry Dunleavy, Washington Examiner.
Be available in the show notes today.
Bongino.com slash newsletter.
Go subscribe to my show notes newsletter.
I'll send them to you every morning.
Headline, Obama White House lawyers fight Carter Page's DNC lawsuit by defending, quote, the gist of the Steele dossier.
Let me just put the headline up front for you right now and translate for you.
What?
Carter Page, as you know, was the, I know, I know, I know a lot of the audience is saying that now, our terrestrial audience and our digital audience too.
You're like, wait, what?
They're defending the dossier again?
Yes, again, again.
Carter Page has a lawsuit out there.
He was the Trump foreign policy advisors, you know, who was the main character in the dossier.
I say character, not because Carter Page isn't a real person, but because the dossier is a work of fiction and Carter Page's name was inserted into this work of fiction.
So the Carter Page you know in real life is not the Carter Page in the dossier because the Carter Page in real life was not in the dossier.
It was just made up.
Carter Page is suing.
Who resurfaces magically in this lawsuit and says, well, the gist of the dossier was true.
The gist what?
What gist?
What are you talking about?
The gist of it?
What gist of it?
The pee-pee tape?
The bribes?
The meetings with the Russians?
None of that actually happened.
So what gist of it are you talking about?
Do you need a dictionary.com definition of the word gist?
Whoa.
Gist.
That's not the gist.
Now, from Dunleavy's piece, take away one.
The Obama fixer again is back!
Hold on.
She's always back.
Whenever things get rough, Katherine Rumler, Obama's White House lawyer, resurfaces.
It's like magic.
Quote, this week, the high-profile lawyers defending the DNC and Perkins Coie, defending them against Carter Page's lawsuit, Joe, filed a 43-page motion asking the judge to dismiss the case, claiming that the court lacked jurisdiction, that Page's claims of defamation and conspiracy passed the statute of limitations, and that Page failed plausibly to allege defamation and conspiracy.
This is hilarious.
They also argue Page had not alleged actual malice or proven any economic losses.
Yeah, you know, Joe, actual malice, accusing someone of being a Russian trader, there's no actual malice there.
It goes on, right?
I mean, everybody wants to be accused of being a Russian trader.
Of course, if you're a loser Democrat.
The DNC's attorneys insisted This is even more hilarious.
The allegedly defamatory statements against Page were substantially true and are capable of an innocent construction.
This is unbelievable.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the bizarro world we live in right now.
We live in a world where everything's upside down.
Sadly.
It's not just the Wuhan virus here.
The dossier has been categorically proven to be false by now, what, four or five different investigations, including the recent one, the IG report?
There's not a scintilla of evidence anything is true.
The DNC and Perkins Coie will not give up on it.
You know, it's substantially true.
The gist of it's true.
None of it's true.
It's made up.
It's a work of fiction.
Now, who turns up again?
She's always around whenever the going gets rough for the Democrats.
Check this out from Jerry Dunleavy's piece.
Magic!
The DNC Democratic National Committee, their legal team, is compromised of five lawyers from Latham Watkins, including lead counsel of this person and former White House counsel Catherine Rumbler.
She's back!
And she claims, quote, the statements at issue in this case are not merely susceptible of an innocent construction.
Really?
Accusing President Trump of allowing prostitutes to pee on a bed?
I don't understand what the innocent construction is there.
And she says, quote, they relate to business and political contacts that Page himself undisputably cultivated in Russia.
Conveniently leaving out the fact, Joe, that Page was working on behalf of our CIA to cultivate Russian contacts in a mission to take those Russian intelligence contacts down.
Conveniently left out by Obama's fixer.
Catherine Rumler was known in DC circles when she was Obama's White House lawyer as the fixer.
Oh, remember the cases she was involved in?
Ladies and gentlemen, I was going to go through the screenshots again today, but I've done it a thousand times.
Yeah.
She was the lead figure in the Secret Service scandal.
She was the lead figure in the Benghazi scandal.
She was involved in the IRS scandal.
She was always there, like that TV show Scandal, that Kerry Washington character.
She was always there to Fix the situation for Obama.
Now she's magically back fixing another mess to the dossier headache.
Where have we seen Rumler resurface before?
In some of her post-Obama administration, air quotes, work?
Remember this gem?
ABCnews.com?
A Mueller, key Mueller witness.
Remember George Nader?
George Nader was involved in setting up Eric Prince.
Yeah.
A Trump orbit official whose sister works in the Trump administration.
Nader was involved in setting up a meeting with Prince and some Russians who are connected to the Clinton Foundation lobby.
Well, George Nader was a witness for Mueller.
Here's a headline from ABC News.
George Nader was a big problem for the Democrats because he knows a lot.
Mueller witness, that would be Nader, charged in child pornography case.
That's pretty disgusting.
I can't think of anything more disgusting, actually.
I mean, on the triage scale, disgusting, that's pretty much number one.
Let's go to a screenshot from that piece.
Who shows up to defend Nader, who may have information about the Russian collusion framing operation to frame the Trump team members?
Quote, Nader had frequent access to almost every White House, Democrat and Republican, since Reagan was in office.
Except for the Obama White House they throw in there.
Sources and records showed.
One of his lawyers shepherding him, Joe, through seven interviews with Mueller's prosecutors, Catherine Rumler, was White House counsel under Obama.
It is truly amazing how the media has not caught on to this story.
How Obama's fixer, who fixed the Secret Service issue, the IRS issue, the Benghazi issue for Obama, has magically resurfaced to fix the dossier issue and to shepherd a key Mueller witness who was involved in child pornography who, if the evidence holds and we see, has key information about what I believe was a setup of Trump officials connecting him to Russians so they can allege they were colluding.
She always shows up to fix.
It's the fixer.
Better call Rumler.
So convenient.
Better call Rumler.
Yeah.
You're darn right.
Sidney Powell, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn's excellent lawyer, has a piece up at the Daily Caller.
It's an older piece, but it'll be in the show notes today.
It's worth your time.
Please read the show notes.
A lot of good articles in there.
Again, Bongino.com slash newsletter if you want to subscribe.
Sidney Powell, Daily Caller, Swamp Reunion, Obama's three muses reappear in Mueller's Trump investigation.
Ladies and gentlemen, again, showing you the topic of my third book, how follow the money.
These people all know each other.
They all have relationships with each other and they all have something to lose.
Katherine Rumler's connected to a lot of different people, not just Obama as the fixer.
From Sidney Powell's excellent piece, She says, so was Catherine Rumler, President Obama's long-term White House counsel.
Indeed, their careers have long intertwined.
She said, Rumler and Lisa Monaco, who is a counterterrorism advisor under Obama, were prosecutors under Andrew Weissman on the Enron task force.
Wow, isn't that convenient?
The Obama fixer worked for Andrew Weissman, Mueller's quote, pitbull.
Where they were all implicated in various forms of prosecutorial misconduct.
Oh my gosh, they're such great lawyers!
Which was documented in her book, Licensed to Lie.
That's Sidney Powell's book.
Indeed, Catherine Rummler signed a letter to defense counsel in the Merrill Lynch Enron case that was false and deceptive.
And she hid evidence that showed they were innocent.
The Fifth Circuit Court reversed 12 out of 14 counts of the conviction.
Here's the kicker.
Bob Mueller had a hand in selecting them for the Enron task force.
So now we know, again, it's not shocking to anyone in the mainstream media who has no interest in overturning the rocks right now and discovering what's living underneath.
Catherine Rumler, Obama's fixer, shows up to fix the dossier problem, to fix the problem they have with alleged child pornographer George Nader, who is a Mueller witness.
We then find out Rumler had an existing relationship with Andy Weissman on the Mueller team, and Bob Mueller had a personal hand in selecting Catherine Rumler for Andy Weissman's Enron task force.
Ladies and gentlemen, they all know each other.
All of them.
And they all have something to hide.
And conveniently, the fixer.
Again, I know the liberals who watch this show with their six-inch thick skulls.
I know you're incapable of processing basic facts.
And I know your first instinct here is to try to silence everybody with, it's a conspiracy theory.
I'm asking you what part of the reporting we just covered at ABC, The Washington Examiner, and the facts Sidney Powell laid out, they're facts.
We have the court documents to prove it.
What part of that's a theory?
What part?
Was Catherine Rumler not George Nader's lawyer?
Was Nader not accused of child pornography while acting as a Mueller witness?
Was Nader not accused of setting up the meeting between Erik Prince and the Russians?
Were the Russians that showed up not connected to the Clinton lobby as reported by Salon.com?
Is Nader not the lawyer for the DNC and Perkins Coie right now who just gave a statement in the actual case trying to destroy the reputation of Carter Page who was targeted by the Obama administration?
Was Rumler not on the Enron task force?
Did we miss that?
Did she fake those legal documents?
What part of it is theoretical?
Answer's easy.
None.
All right, I want to, if you allow me to take a point of personal privilege here, you know, Joe and I and Paula and Drew and everyone, part of the team here, keeping everything together here, we're doing the best we can like everyone else.
You know, we were having a conversation before the show and, you know, Joe's a hard guy, tough guy.
I don't mean tough guy, like, you know, he's going to go out there and do Mike Tyson on you.
I mean, he's, you know, Joe's been through a lot in his life.
So have we, and so many of you.
We all have, yeah.
And, you know, I didn't learn a lot In school, I don't mean that as like a knock or some sad attempt at knocking myself for humor.
You know, you don't remember a lot.
I learned stuff at the time, but a lot of it dissipates.
But one of the things when I was in graduate school studying neuropsychology and behavior learning, I learned that I never forgot I had this professor in personality psychology, I think his name was Essman, he was a decent guy, very informative course.
A lot of those courses can be fluffy, especially in the social sciences.
This one wasn't, there was a lot of substance to it.
And one of the things he brought up a while back that I never forgot, this is decades ago, was how cases of problems adjusting psychologically during times of stress like this, some people have a tougher time than others.
And Joe, if I don't explain this well, please tell me, Paula, you too, because this is an important point I never forgot.
That a lot of that can be attributed to people who understand problem-focused solving versus emotion-focused problem solving.
Let me explain that more.
I wrote it down because I don't want to mess this up.
And I'm not meaning to downplay the stressful times we're in at all.
People are losing their jobs.
This is serious.
But I hope this helps a little bit.
Some of the best-adjusted people, you'll see people who handle this better than others.
You always will.
There's always going to be a gradient.
People who have Navy SEAL Delta Force-like levels of stress, ability to handle stress.
Some of the best-adjusted people, these are my words, by the way, in times of stress, they know to focus on either emotions or the problem when that's appropriate.
I'll give you an example.
The what-if people, they tend to adjust less well in times of stress.
And if I can, I'll give you an example of when I fell for this myself.
When we lost, when we lost our political campaign, Paul and I, we ran for Congress.
We won on election night and lost a few days.
It was devastating.
It's the only time I've ever seen Paula Christian, not a crier at all, at all, not even a little bit.
The only time I ever seen Jason come home every day I had to be, it was just devastating to go through.
Nothing like people are going through now, it's a political loss, we'll get over it.
But I think Paula, you can attest to this, right?
How many days, weeks, months did we say, what if?
What if?
Gosh, what if we knocked, we only lost by, what was it, one point?
If we would've knocked on a few thousand more doors, what if we didn't get, we got a job offer in the middle and it caused like a two week delay in the campaign where we had to figure out what to do?
Like, what if we wouldn't have followed that?
What if we, no.
No.
That's emotion-focused problem solving.
Problem's over.
We lost.
No more what-ifs.
The problem is over.
The problem to be solved now is not the emotions of, I feel bad because what-if.
There's no what-if anymore.
The people who are best adjusted now, and this is what Americans do best.
I'm not kidding.
This isn't some faux patriotic G.I.
Joe bull, you get the rest.
What we do best, what we've always done best, Is large majorities of our population scrap the what-if and say, what's the problem?
The problem is I lost the damn campaign.
It's over.
Move on.
It took me two weeks to say what next.
I had to find some work.
And you know what started after that?
This show.
I called up Armacost and said, it's time to do something.
You're listening to this show precisely because of two weeks of my own self-pity that I got over, put the damn boots on, and Joe and I got to work.
Mm-hmm.
But I fell for it.
And this isn't a lecture, folks.
I'm in no position.
You all have been through a lot more than I have.
I'm just saying, in the Secret Service, we had the same thing.
We had people who would focus on the emotion.
Oh my gosh, this is chaos.
Great.
What's the problem?
Fix it.
I ask yourself, I ask you now, and I'm trying to do this myself, have that Navy SEAL, Delta Force, good secret service agent mentality, where the what if, we have to throw it out.
We focus right now on problems that are going to come up like a whack-a-mole game every single day.
We can do the emotion stuff in the report cards later, but not now.
You're good at that.
You know you're good at that.
Every one of you knows you're good at that.
You ask these Navy SEALs and these Delta guys to go out on a mission.
They don't go, well, what if the enemy attacks us?
No, no, no, that's not, that doesn't, they go.
I will never forget being in Bagram in Afghanistan during a visit with President Obama, where I was the lead advance, and we brought this Delta guy in.
He was going to get a medal from President Obama's Delta Force individual, this operator.
I've never seen a look like that in my life.
I'm not messing with you.
I have never seen a look like that in my life.
Ever.
He knows who he is.
I mean a steeled look like, what's the problem?
How do I fix it?
I don't want to hear any of your whining.
That Delta guy, always admired.
I've said almost no words.
By the way, on a slightly more humorous note, take the tone down a little bit.
That was the time a White House staffer, I've told this story before, came up to me and said, you have to ask the Delta guy to leave his stick outside, his rifle.
I was like, sure.
Yeah.
You do it, toolbox.
Then they went up to the Mill-Aid and asked him.
And the Mill-Aid, who was a Navy SEAL, was like, no thanks.
He walks in there with whatever weapon he wants.
Think this guy's gonna whack the president?
What are you, a moron?
I will never forget that stupid White House staffer.
Ask him to put his weapon down.
Yeah, okay, you ask him.
Dope.
Having said that, let's lead by example.
What's the problem of the day today we can look at?
And I'm gonna, hopefully, along with our free speech fight segment, want to incorporate this as well.
Some problems of the day we can fix.
No emotions, let's get to the problem.
PJ Media, big problem.
You know I love truckers, folks.
I've told stories about them a thousand times.
They work their cojones off every single day.
PJ Media, urgent!
States are making life impossibly hard for truckers who can't find food or bathrooms by Megan Fox, PJ Media.
Please spread this story around.
Mr. President, anyone, governors, Hogan, DeSantis, anyone from Maryland, New York, Cuomo, I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, I'm not concerned about that.
We can do the report card stuff later, not interested at all.
If our truckers aren't out there working and getting goods to stores, we will starve.
Simple as that.
The verdict is in.
We gotta open the rest stops.
We have to.
If it's minimal staffing, we need to get some protective equipment, whatever we have to do.
I love our truckers.
I will never forget going to work at a morning show in Washington, D.C.
You got to get up at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning, driving in and seeing lines of truckers down I-95 and down right outside of Washington, D.C.
sitting there, sleeping in their trucks, getting ready to rock and roll.
Yep.
These are the veins and arteries of this entire collective United States organism.
Without the blood flow they provide, we are all goners.
We need to fix this now.
They need to have a place to use the bathroom and to rest.
Open them up.
We've got to open them up.
Please, Mr. President, if you're listening, this is our problem of the day.
I can't focus on everything.
I have one show amongst many, but we have an audience.
God blessed us with you all.
Please email your congressman or whatever.
These truckers need help.
We're going to help you.
We're not going to do the Chinese propaganda.
Let's play dunk on Trump game like the morons in the media.
Okay.
Many of you are probably wondering why I haven't mentioned this story yet.
Promise you I get to it.
Huge story yesterday and today Breitbart has it up.
Tucker Carlson covered it last night on his show.
Apparently a number of United States senators, Republican and Democrat have been accused.
It's important.
Of selling stocks while this outbreak was breaking out, when they had access to some information the public may not have had.
Some of them have been accused of even telling the public other advice than telling private groups.
One of those senators is Richard Burr, headlined Breitbart by Jeff Poore.
Again, story in the show notes.
To quote Tucker Carlson, Richard Burr must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not a hypocrite.
I'm going to apply the Bongino Rule here.
I know a lot of you are angry.
You should be.
Paula, candidly, was furious I was even applying the Bongino Rule this morning.
24 to 72 hours.
You're almost done.
I will say this, though.
While this is being looked at, we need a full... This will decimate credibility in our politicians if this happens.
Decimate it.
If this turns out to be true, if we will apply the Blangir, I'm not calling for it until I'm sure we have the facts.
But until that time, Richard Burr needs to be removed from the Intel Committee.
If he got information and used it to trade, to profit, or to save his profits, while the rest of us out there took a bath, I'm happy to show you what I lost.
And won $44,000 in one fund alone that I've been saving my entire life.
Folks, listen, we're not billionaires here, okay?
We do okay.
And we are doing our best to keep everybody employed.
We lost a lot of money too.
If you sold, if, the Bongino rule, give it, let's get the facts.
Right now you need to be removed in a full investigation.
If this turns out to be true, and there were any criminal laws violated, write out of Capitol Hill in bracelets.
And I don't mean like, you know, Tiffany bracelets, I mean like handcuffs.
Having said that, I'm asking everyone, I know it's tough because this is... I don't care at all if they're Republicans or Democrats.
Again, we'll do report cards later.
If this happened, this is a grotesque breach of the public trust that can only deepen the wounds right now the working class Americans have and the chasm we have between us and these elitist snobs running our lives.
But he deserves his day here.
We'll see you on Monday.
I'm no fan of Burr, you know that, but we'll see what happens.
Now, this is our free speech segment.
You know what?
Let me get to my last sponsor first, but this is important.
As I said to you yesterday, do not get baited into this media Propaganda.
Chinese propaganda nonsense happening right now.
We've been demonetized on YouTube every day this week.
Probably because we refuse to propagate Chinese gaslighting efforts.
We're not doing it.
It's happening right now.
Ladies and gentlemen, this virus will pass.
We will get a vaccine and we will find treatment.
If we lose free speech, it will not pass.
The Republic will be dead.
I'm not doing that.
Finally, today's show brought to my buddy's, gosh, my butt.
I'm sorry, folks.
I'm just, there's so much going on.
I know I'm kind of skipping over words and everything.
It's not due to like lack of sleep of anything or anything.
I'm just trying to keep the show somewhat optimistic in light of 24 hour dreadful news.
We are going to get through this.
My friends at Duke Canada, it's good to have them back because I will be having a, it'll be a quarantine date night, but it will be a date night nonetheless this weekend because our marriages and our relationships matter.
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Get back to the show.
A free speech fight.
As I said, I am not going to acquiesce or fold to the Chinese overlords desperate to make their culpability in this Global pandemic go away.
Nope.
Not here.
Not on this show.
I don't, you can, you do YouTube.
You can demonetize this all we want.
That's fine.
That money's not as important right now as to getting the message out here.
It's not as important ever message matters.
Free speech matters.
Our country's freedoms matter.
Let's go to number one.
Here is a tweet from the global times.
Forgive me for that lack of a hat tip here.
Honestly, I forget where I got this off Twitter, but it was a tweet from the global time showing you again, ladies and gentlemen, that China knew.
China knew the whole time what was up.
Twitter, at Global Times News.
Look at the date on this, folks.
Those of you watching on YouTube, youtube.com slash Bongina, you see it now.
January 2nd, 2020.
Police in central China's Wuhan arrested eight people spreading rumors about a local outbreak of an unidentifiable pneumonia.
Previous online posts said it was SARS.
Why were the Chinese police arresting people before the word got out about the severity of this global pandemic and the Wuhan virus?
Why were they doing that?
Saying, oh, they're just rumors about a local pneumonia?
Why were they arresting people?
If it was just a local pneumonia, why were you putting people in jail for talking about it?
But don't worry, media folks.
Please, continue doing what you're doing.
Defending Chinese propaganda that any discussion of the Chinese Wuhan virus is racist.
They know you're morons.
They know you love identity politics.
And I want to hat tip some of my coworkers at certain places, you know who you are, who have not once acquiesced to this BS.
Including Tucker, Martha McCallum, and others in other places I work as well, who are not folding here.
We are not doing this.
It's racist.
China's not a race.
It's a country.
Use zeros.
And no one in the history of the naming of viruses, in the history of humankind, has ever claimed it was racist to give a regional designation to an outbreak of a pathogen.
No one.
Only now, because one, it's Trump, and two, you're defending your Chinese overlords.
That's it.
Not here.
Man, knowing it.
Showing you why.
I can't imagine having anyone else in charge right now either.
I can't.
You know, listen, sometimes he says the present things don't come out right.
I'm not interested in any of that.
Again, we can do report cards later.
This is clearly the builder and the doer we needed in charge right now.
He's not folding to any of this stuff.
The guy's on the news four and five hours a day, holding pressers, answering questions.
The media, he's a tyrant.
Really?
A tyrant?
I'm not sure tyrants give pressers for four hours a day answering questions about their response.
But again, the media has been, malfeasance, not misfeasance, totally involved in advancing the problem, not solving it.
Yep.
Here was a Washington Post, you're going to like this one, Joe, you haven't seen this yet.
A Washington Post photographer, gosh, I love this president right now, took a picture behind the podium of Trump's speech, which is kind of unethical, but whatever.
He put it out on Twitter.
I want you to see something.
I'll describe it to you.
This is Jabin Botsford.
Tweet.
Closeup of President Trump's notes is seen where he crossed out the word corona and replaced it with Chinese virus as he speaks with his coronavirus task force at the White House.
You can see the image if you want to check it out on either his Twitter account or myyoutube.com slash Bongino.
Mr. President, good for you.
Yeah, yeah.
I can't imagine a better guy in charge right now.
I can't.
I'm not Golden Calfing anyone.
I don't do that.
He's a man.
We're all sinners like everyone else.
Everybody makes mistakes.
But this guy's not having any of this BS.
He is not going to allow the Chinese media overlords to dictate to us how we talk about a problem that originated in China.
Even his own speech writers.
Cross that out.
It's the China virus.
Now, showing you how the culture is completely lost on the left and the Chinese overlords are, they're everywhere.
I'm talking about that clearly, ladies and gentlemen, so you understand because we do have some leftists who listen to the show who are incapable of processing basic information streams.
We are talking about their political class.
This has nothing to do with the victims of their political class in China, many of whom are dead because China hid the ramifications of the Wuhan virus from the people in Wuhan.
You have our deepest sympathies for your crap government.
Showing you, though, a pandemic of stupidity and propaganda has even reached the hapless Wikipedia, which is a joke of a site.
I don't even like to go on because once I get into what they did to me, I go on and that's not important right now.
Wikipedia is a joke.
It is not a source of serious information.
It is a bunch of left-wingers who edit it to gaslight you all the time.
If you ever cite Wikipedia for me in a tweet, as quickly as I can block you, I will.
It's a joke.
Hat tip Ian Miles Chung.
He's at Still Gray on Twitter.
Wow!
Wikipedia's retconned the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic to quote, the 1918 influenza pandemic!
To preserve the present narrative.
Ladies and gentlemen, they're gaslighting us in real time.
If you go to Wikipedia now, Google the Spanish flu, it still comes up, but there's a little note at the bottom, Joe, because literally nobody calls it the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Look at this little note under Spanish flu.
It has been requested that the title of this article be changed to the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Oh, man.
We are living, ladies and gentlemen, in like Orwellian Newspeak times.
We are re- the thought police are rewriting history in the language right now to fit the Chinese overlords in their narrative.
Nobody calls it the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Nobody.
It was called the Spanish flu.
It didn't even originate from Spain.
The king of Spain got it and that's where they're getting their information from.
It wasn't even, it didn't even originate in Spain.
You know what retconning means, by the way?
You ever see a movie, I mean, the best example is, you ever see Halloween, Michael Myers?
How they retcon it all the time.
Retconning means you just forget like all the old movies happen.
Like they just put out another Halloween movie where Michael Myers has been in an institution his whole life, which makes, that's not what happened in all the prior sequels.
He was out of the institution whacking people.
That's why he's Michael Myers.
They retcon the new one to make pretend those other movies didn't happen.
Forget those.
Forget all of it.
That's what Star Wars should do now.
It could be that they screwed up all the sequels and just retconned the whole thing.
Make pretend none of the sequels and prequels ever happened and just start over.
Retconned means make pretend the past didn't happen in movies.
Except it's not fiction.
This is actually happening.
We are retconning our own past, renaming the historically known Spanish flu pandemic, this pandemic, the 1918 influenza pandemic, because the Chinese don't like it and their media overlords are playing right in the game.
Again, this is why Wikipedia is steaming garbage.
They have lied about me endlessly, easily documented lies.
I don't even bother anymore.
We used to edit it or try to get, but we don't even bother.
It's garbage.
It's trash.
It's a free speech fight, folks.
It matters.
Possibly the most important article in the show notes today is this article by Hugo Gordon and the Washington Examiner.
I read it last night.
It's not very long.
But ladies and gentlemen, this is worth your time.
And don't, the gloom and doom title is, I'm not going to make this gloom and doom.
I'm not doing that.
Not on a Friday here for you.
All right.
Yeah.
Hugo Gordon, Washington Examiner.
Please read this in the show notes.
Things won't go back to normal is the title of the article.
I don't disagree with his premise.
Normal is going to be new after this.
In other words, there's going to be a new normal.
And the normal you knew a month ago is not going to be the normal when this is done.
Now, the article focuses on some kind of dour, sad points where things will change.
A lot of things will change.
Some of the things I'll point out quickly, I'll get to some of the screenshots from it in a minute, but obviously there's probably going to be a boom in telecommuting in the future.
You may say, well, how's that bad news?
It's not.
A lot of it's good news for people who prefer to work from home, could have, and were never given the option.
The downside to it, he discusses in the piece, a lot of real estate investment trusts and other things that engage in commercial real estate and elsewhere, they're going to struggle.
Commercial real estate after this, there's a potential that a lot of people are going to abandon properties.
So again, there's kind of a ying and a yang and a good and a bad.
The good news, a lot of people are going to work from home, saving a lot of burned up gas, a lot of unnecessary commuting, a lot of unnecessary meetings.
The bad news, some real estate's going to suffer.
Again, we do facts here.
What the left claims they used to do, facts and science.
Another thing he talks about, it's good news.
It's going to be border control.
There's no question.
Anyone talking about open borders right now is going to be completely laughed out of the conversation.
It is now clear.
That although we need borders, we need border traffic.
The idea of open, uncontrolled immigration into the country where we have no idea who's coming in and around is completely absurd.
You're not even worthy of serious conversation.
Please sit down and let the adults stand up.
That conversation has now changed permanently.
No doubt.
From the piece though, a screenshot from the piece.
This is interesting and he takes it to a different place I would, but he talks about this growing kind of what I'll call patriotism.
He's referring to as kind of like almost like a new nationalism here.
He says, quote, Hugo Gordon, governments that recently fostered the idea that their citizens were Europeans rather than members of distinct nationalities.
Drew a line around the people who knew they were indeed a people.
This is an important point.
Italians in lockdown didn't sing the European Union anthem on their balconies.
They sang patriotic songs about Italy.
For worse and for better, this pandemic will stoke suspicion of foreign peoples and lands and will give extra force to increasingly persuasive arguments that nation-states are the most effective bulwarks against arrogant encroachments on self-government.
I'm not sure, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to stoke suspicion of foreigners.
I'm not knocking Hugo Gordon.
I mean, clearly, you're always going to have examples of prejudice and racism and xenophobia in any society.
We're human beings.
There's always going to be a small percentage of people who can't resist those impulses.
Is that going to be some kind of national epidemic?
Folks, that's nonsense.
We were told that was going to happen after 9-11.
It's gonna be a national outrage against the American Muslim population.
Ladies and gentlemen, it was not a national outrage.
The problem was limited and solved, and people largely embraced people of all nationalities after 9-11.
If anything, it led to a collective spirit of well-being.
Afterwards, we thought, gosh, we're gonna get through this.
But he does make an interesting point.
They're not singing the EU anthem now.
They're singing patriotic songs about their country.
That they built with their hands and their brains.
Be nice to see a little more of that here.
That's why I've worn this shirt twice this week.
I didn't wash it either, but I only had it on for an hour.
So it's okay.
Yeah.
She said, no, I do need to share.
Why not?
It's fine.
Only an hour.
It's good.
Paula's like, I didn't see that in the wash.
Of course not.
That's why I wear it.
Cause I love this shirt.
Look at the flag.
This is a Bravo company shirt.
I love this shirt.
I share everything with my audience.
Good, bad, and indifferent.
Here's another screenshot from the Hugo Gordon piece.
Again, worth your time.
Share this.
It's a good piece.
COVID-19 will also change the way we regard China.
Oh, you're damn right it will.
Which, since the Clinton presidency, has been treated less as a strategic rival than as a trading partner.
Now we will see it as a tyranny responsible for a scourge laying waste to our economy, jobs, wealth, and well-being.
We'll be less tempted to subordinate recognition of its malignancy to wishful thinking and commercial desire.
Ladies and gentlemen, I bring this up to my own detriment.
Those of you who listen to my shows in the past, I put this out there.
I don't have to, but I will because you're owed a full spectrum of my thoughts and my evolution on this as well.
I will always be a free trader.
I was a big advocate for free and open and fair trade with China.
I still am.
Having said that, there are going to be massive conditions imposed from this point on.
I, again, in a moment of self-deprecating honesty, but necessary to the audience, I have reevaluated all of this.
It's great to be a free and fair trader until a global pandemic is imposed upon you by the people you're trading with as they deceptively arrest people trying to sound the alarm.
We're going to have to trade with China at some point.
We have farmers here who provide them with food and others.
But there's going to have to be a drastic re-evaluation of their strategic importance to us.
There needs to be a reckoning here.
No doubt about it.
Read that piece.
Worth your time.
I have another piece in the show notes that's worth your time as well.
It's from Americans for Tax Reform, ATR.
I'll just put the headline up.
You can read it, but it talks about how in this time of national crisis, did you notice President Trump is scrapping regulations left and right?
Ladies and gentlemen, has the world collapsed?
No, it hasn't.
If this isn't the time for you leftists and big government Republicans out there to seriously reconsider the government red tape imposed upon us, then I don't know what is.
This article at ATR is a list of rules and regulations that have now been scrapped.
I'm actually going to go through a couple of them.
I'll read through them here.
Please read the piece, though.
It's a whole list of them.
Doctors are now allowed to practice medicine across state lines.
Why weren't they before?
What the hell was the point of that regulation?
The FDA has now loosened the ability for drugs to be tested that are previously approved on people with the Wuhan virus.
Why do we have these testing requirements before?
If a drug is safe, let the doctors figure it out.
Discussed that yesterday.
Patients now have more control over their medical data.
We didn't before?
Why?
Doctors are now allowed to practice telehealth over the internet.
What was that regulation about?
Garbage, right now, I don't want to see it back again.
These are all the things that got scrapped by President Trump.
Which again, should beg the question, why were they there in the first place?
Online school regulations, a lot of them being thrown out.
Here's one.
Companies that make spirits, consumable alcohol products.
You know them.
Oh yeah.
Sometimes a little, maybe a little too well, maybe on date night.
They were not allowed to produce hand sanitizer.
The hell was that about?
What?
I don't know.
I said the same thing, Joe.
I have no... I'm sure someone had a reason for it.
That's now been scrapped too.
Good.
Let's scrap them all.
Let the American entrepreneurial machine rock and roll.
Yep.
They'll fix this.
Let's not be Will Smith's character in that zombie movie.
What is it called?
I Am Legend.
He's like shaking the lady.
The rule!
No, they weren't!
There was a place up in Maine or whatever they went to.
Stop!
Media people.
All right, one last article.
I'm going to get through everything today.
Paul will be impressed.
We get through every story every day of the week.
That's a record.
More problem solving.
Quick article, Wall Street Journal, but worth your time.
You want to fix something else right now?
Dump these regulations?
Help our truckers?
Stop the 401k distribution rules right now.
Wall Street Journal editorial board, the emergency 401k button.
Stop it right now.
No penalties for distributions from 401k.
I don't care how old you are.
People have about 17 trillion in assets.
Let them take their money now.
No penalties.
None.
Matter of fact, no taxes at all.
But Dan, they're not going to save.
Folks, this is a crisis.
Forget about 20 years.
They need the money now.
If we have to work a year or two longer to make it up, we will.
Congress, please email your congressmen and your senators right now.
Dump this stupid rule now.
If you need to take a distribution, I know everyone has 401ks.
I get that.
It's not going to help people who are lower income.
But if we can help some people, little bits at a time, let's do it.
Dump the stupid 401k rules right now.
We can fix it later, but they're not going to get their tax money.
Who cares?
Fix it now.
All right, folks.
Thanks for your patience with us this week.
And thanks you for, you know, thank you.
I don't want to get choked up, but thank you for sticking with our show.
