In this episode, I address the fireworks during the interview with Attorney General Bill Barr regarding the Spygate investigation. I also cover the enormous Nancy Pelosi blunder and how it hurts the Democrats’ long term. Finally, I address the real political battle plan for the liberals going forward.
News Picks:
Attorney General Barr drops some hints about the investigation into the Spygate scandal.
VP Pence strikes back at fake-news CNN.
Liberal media outlets edit their headlines to protect the Democrats.
A new study investigating the possibility of herd immunity in California.
The Spygate scandal is only going to get worse for the FBI. Here’s the latest.
The federal debt has exploded. This is absolutely unsustainable.
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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.
How is this interview on Fox with Attorney General Bill Barr?
Would all the tactical nukes he dropped not a major league national story right now all over the place?
I don't know.
Well, of course, we are going to give you the information you're not getting anywhere else.
I got that for you today.
I've got an update on Nancy Pelosi, air quotes, master political tactician, air quotes, because if you believe that, you may need professional assistance.
Got that.
Got an update on the debt and the New York Times blowing it again, along with other media outlets.
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Welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Fine sir.
And then it's Friday!
That's right a different way.
It's Friday!
Yes, it is Friday.
Finally some light at the end of the tunnel.
We're seeing some of these cases.
It appears to be peaking.
We're seeing some good news about a potential economic resurgence.
We'll see.
We don't do 24-hour hysteria on the show.
In the interest of time, let's get right to it.
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All right, Joe, let's go.
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Let's get to this first.
So Bill Barr gave a just incredible interview on Fox.
And listen, let me preface this.
Of course, he's the attorney general.
It was a number of different topics covered and addressed.
But when it came to Spygate, hat tip Laura Ingram, she asked some great questions.
You know, she asked some questions about the coronavirus and the evaporation of civil liberties.
All that stuff's important.
But it is not the only thing in the news, folks.
I'm not doing the 24-hour hysteria merchant stuff you're seeing elsewhere.
There are other things going on, like the evaporation of civil liberties now, and the evaporation of civil liberties during the whole Spygate scandal where they spied on a presidential campaign.
I think we're entitled to answers, and Barr is kind of leading us down the path of where is investigation in the Department of Justice.
Headed by prosecutor John Durham is going right now.
He drops a few hints in this.
I want to play this cut and I just want you to keep in mind, let me preface it by saying this.
I don't, until I see people in handcuffs or prosecuted, I'm not jumping the gun on anything.
I'm getting a little frustrated with people who don't listen to the show on their social media ecosystem.
Oh, Bajino is selling us on everybody's going to get arrested and blah blah.
I'm not saying any of that.
I'm following the facts where they go.
I'm being patient, but I'm not.
Until I see people in handcuffs, I'm not getting too excited.
Right.
But check this out.
This is an interesting click, but he says there's two takeaways from it.
We'll address on the other side.
Check this out.
I think the president has every right to be frustrated because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history.
Without any basis, they started this investigation of his campaign.
And even more concerning, actually, is what happened after the campaign.
A whole pattern of events while he was president.
So I, uh, to sabotage the presidency.
No.
What?
Folks, that's the attorney general.
That's not Joe Sh-ragman.
We had this guy in our neighborhood.
I was advised to be in Middle Village.
He used to sell, he used to walk in all the stores and sell, like in bagel stores and stuff, he'd sell rags.
Like the rags, you'd wipe them down and you'd give them back to him dirty and he'd bring them back in a new pile.
So they called him, his nickname was Joe.
I'll leave that for another time.
I think we figured it out.
This is the Attorney General of the United States.
You know where I may have used that before.
He was a real guy, I'm not even messing with you.
Like, here he is, Joe, the rag man.
He didn't mind it at all.
So Bard dropped two tactical nukes there.
I think how they've escaped mainstream media scrutiny is beyond me.
Number one, Joe, we were told by the liberal media, which again is getting to be a running joke.
I get it.
It's just easy to make fun of them now because they are so worthless and their disinformation propaganda campaigns are so obvious.
Weren't we told by the liberal media?
That, don't worry, the Inspector General Horowitz said this case was properly predicated, the spy geek, in other words, they spied on Trump for a reason, don't you worry, and there were no political motivations.
And we know that story's false because I played you clips of Attorney General, excuse me, Inspector General Horowitz saying the exact opposite, that he can't rule out political bias.
But, Horowitz, who I have no faith in at all, believes that the case may have been properly predicated.
Well, Horowitz clearly doesn't have all the information because that's not what he just said.
Barr just said that this was a travesty.
That he believes that the president, the case was opened up for no good reason.
You heard it, you can rewind it yourself.
You think he doesn't know, ladies and gentlemen, you think Barr, who is now the Attorney General of the United States for the second time, who does not, he's not doing reputation management, he's not running for president, he's not a politician like Eric Holder pretending to be a lawyer and the Attorney General.
This is a guy Who is at the end of the arc of his life.
I don't mean chronologically he's gonna die.
I mean he's done enough that he's not engaged in some kind of political reputation management scheme where he's saying things to kiss up to Trump because he wants to be the vice president later or something.
Right.
Deny that all you want.
That's fine.
You're living in a liberal bubble.
I'm telling you from friends of mine who know Barr well.
What Barr is saying is accurate.
Whether you believe it or not is up to you.
There is no reason Barr would put out there in a nationally televised interview with Laura Ingraham on a show that gets between 3 and 4 million viewers and eyeballs a night that he believes the FBI opened up a case for no good reason on President Trump and that the investigation resulted in sabotage of his campaign if he did not believe there was a substantive reason to say that.
Now if you're a regular viewer to this show, you already know this stuff.
But I'm telling you, people in the liberal media with no legal experience, no legal training, no law enforcement experience, no experience drawing up warrants, no experience appearing in court, no experience in the Attorney General at all.
As the Attorney General, are going to discount this and laugh it off.
And it's one of those laughs that's not really a laugh.
It's like those laughs I do.
I hate giving blood, but I have to do it once in a while.
And I'm really afraid of needles and the crook of my arm.
It drives me crazy.
It drives me mad.
So I laugh like.
That's the laugh the liberal media is doing when it hits bars.
So stupid.
Because they're terrified.
They're terrified.
They're tightening up their sphincters because they're terrified what's going to happen.
It's not really a laugh.
No.
They know exactly what's going to happen.
It's an affectation, yes.
Again, on the prosecution side, don't know, folks.
I'm not a law enforcement officer anymore.
I'm sorry, I'm with you 100%.
The pace of justice has been glacial, if non-existent, for Republicans and Republican-allied folks, while Democrats get off scot-free.
I'm with you 100%.
I'm simply suggesting I don't think Barr be risking his reputation if there wasn't some evidence there.
What's going to happen legally?
Are anybody going to wind up in handcuffs?
I don't know.
I'm out of the predictions game there.
I've been disappointed too many times, like many of you.
But he brings up something else in that cut too.
Did you catch it at the end?
Come on, I know you caught it.
Where he says, and this effort that sabotage, this investigation that went on for no good reason.
Wait, I thought we were told it was properly predicated.
I guess not.
He says it continued into the Trump presidency.
Oh, well, I know you caught that.
Really?
Really?
Because we were told they weren't investigating the Trump presidency.
It was just a mistake.
They looked into this Carter Page guy.
It was all properly predicated.
Don't worry.
But it happened into the Trump presidency.
What do you think he's talking about?
Well, again, our regular listeners probably already know what he's talking about, but it's pretty clear.
He's talking about the Mueller probe.
How the Mueller probe... Well, he's talking about two things.
Let me start with the first one, just to be clear.
We know in January of 2017, when Donald Trump is about to take office, mid-January of 2017, swear in as the President of the United States, we know the FBI interviews Christopher Steele's primary subsource.
We know that subsource that Steele is saying he got his dossier information from comes out and says, wait, what?
This is all crap.
I never told them that.
So when the FBI basically knows its entire case is garbage as of January of 2017, and they continue anyway, not only do they continue it, they back up via Jim Comey, who calls for a special investigation, the creation of a Mueller special counsel investigation, despite the fact that the FBI knows the investigation is all garbage.
The Mueller probe, which I believe Barr is talking about that January interview, In other words, they know in January the case is BS and they continue the investigation anyway.
And then they support some, Comey.
McCabe is kind of hesitant.
He wants to keep it in his house because he wants to hit Trump himself.
But they support the continued investigation by the creation of the Mueller probe, knowing it's all false.
It's a big statement, ladies and gentlemen.
Don't gloss that over.
Don't let that one go over your head there.
The whole Mueller probe, not only is he saying they were looking into a hoax, which we know, Mueller was investigating a hoax.
I mean, he's acknowledged as such.
Barr's suggesting that the initiation of the investigation itself is a hoax.
That it was a hoax distraction measure to keep an investigation the FBI already knew was bogus going.
Devin Nunes has already hinted at this, the congressman from California who's been looking into the Spygate probe for a long time, an interview he did a while ago.
I don't know if you remember this one, folks, but he did this interview where he suggested to, I believe, Maria Bartiromo, that the minute Mueller opens his probe, the FBI is forced to turn over its file on Donald Trump to Mueller.
You think Mueller can't read?
Mueller's reading this file going, this is what you have?
A January interview with sources that are saying this whole case is garbage?
Then who does Mueller hire?
It's his lieutenant, Andrew Weissman, who back in August of 2016, while Trump is still a candidate and Obama's president, gets briefed in that Steele's motivations are political for doing this.
This is Mueller's lieutenant.
Barr knows all of this.
All of it.
Facts matter.
Information matters.
The penalties for what happened?
I don't know.
Again, I don't have bracelets or handcuffs to put on people anymore.
Gosh, I wish I did.
But I don't.
I'm not an investigator anymore.
But ladies and gentlemen, the truth matters.
And Barr is putting it out there, and I don't think he cares one bit about the political ramifications from the left-wing media and the interference campaigns.
One more thing on this.
He's clearly focused in on Brennan, as we discussed yesterday, and hopefully I'll get to this John Solomon story later, which is really good, about a footnote.
If not, I'll get to it on Monday.
Just a lot to cover today.
But, ladies and gentlemen, he knows Brennan's a liar and a disgraced, I mean, horror show of a human being.
Brennan has been lying the entire time, just like Comey and McCabe.
Brennan has been saying, oh no, it's not just the dossier in steel who we knew in January of 2017 was lying.
Brennan knows earlier that he's lying, by the way.
Brennan has insisted, Joe, remember?
Oh, it was a corpus.
It was a corpus of intelligence.
What did Jim Comey describe it as?
The mosaic.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is all basura.
This is garbage.
This is all garbage.
This is nonsense.
There is no corpus.
There is no mosaic of intelligence.
There is one person this entire spying operation hinged on that is Steele and his network of fake sources who have already said they're fake.
That is it.
It is no more complicated than that, and Barr knows it, and so did Mueller.
Of course, in a normal press environment, you would have gotten that story, would have been plastered over.
Attorney General says they spied on Trump for no good reason and spied on his presidency, too?
Gee, sounds like kind of a big story.
Yep.
Not with these media hacks, it isn't.
All right, this one, let me get to my second spot, but folks, I don't want to hear any more from anyone.
If I've ever said this on the show, I deeply apologize for misleading you.
I don't think I did, but if I did, I am sincerely sorry about how Nancy Pelosi is a masterful grade A expert.
Master-level political tactician.
Please dispose of that ridiculous thought in the garbage disposal now.
She's a junk garbage politician who has no political instincts at all and is getting absolutely trounced right now by Skull King McConnell.
That's his new nickname, the Skull King.
Did you see that in the Washington Post?
Mitch McConnell on a hill of skulls.
He was Cocaine Mitch, now he's Skull King Mitch.
Skulk, they think that hurts them too.
McConnell is just Drowned Skulking McConnell at every opportunity.
I'm going to get to that in a second.
It's an important story.
Don't miss it.
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All right.
Get back to my story about Master Tactician Joe Nancy Pelosi, who just got absolutely wrecked.
So, here's the thing.
They have this Paycheck Protection Program, the PPP, that was signed by Trump and the Democrats.
It was built into the Porkulous Bill, otherwise known as the Stimulus Bill.
There's no government stimulus, I refuse to call it that.
But in that bill was a decent program.
I am again, a small government guy and always have been, but the government are the ones shutting down businesses.
There has to be some kind of a backstop here, especially for businesses that were fully liquid and earning money before this.
So I don't think it's a bad, we're going to pay for it in the future.
No money is free.
Of course, it's our money.
It's going to be either come from our tax receipts in the future, inflation or borrowing money from ourselves, but.
We do want to keep businesses in business because the ramifications from that are going to be devastating.
So this Paycheck Protection Program was a backstop for people who are out of work to be able to get some money in their pockets while the government enforces this shutdown.
The program was so popular, ladies and gentlemen, it was initially funded with $350 billion that it needed $250 billion more.
It's a lot of money.
None of this is free.
Let's not pretend it is.
It's us paying us.
So Mitch McConnell, Skull King Mitch, put together a, was it 25-line, like, two-page addendum saying, hey, we just need some more money.
The American worker's been using this program and we need some more.
We need $250 billion more.
$250 billion more.
Granted, we should all ask questions, but so you have the background on it.
Mitch said, well, listen, being that it's not changing the parameters of the program, just adding money to it based on its popularity, I'd like to take just a voice vote on this.
Escorted through quickly, this bill.
Well, Pelosi, as you know, Joe, who never misses an opportunity to screw herself and her constituents over.
Said, no, let's do this.
Let's hold out on that on the floor to get some other stuff.
So the Wall Street Journal covered yesterday exactly what she was trying to do.
Pelosi holds up small business.
Democrats may let a new relief program run out of money.
So what did she do first?
She decided that rather than making this paycheck protection program, Joe, available to people on just a normal basis where people can go or unemployed and get there, get that money.
She wanted to make sure there were identity politics carve-outs in there too.
Because, you know, you can't have anything fair across the board.
You got to pander to people using identity politics to divide the country.
So that's what you do.
So the journal covered this.
Pretty interesting.
And they tried to jam this one too.
The PPP money's already going to banks large and small through a network that includes any existing small business administration lender and any federally insured bank or credit union.
The money's provided on a first-come, first-served basis, which means farmers, women, and minorities have the same opportunities as others.
Any plan that seeks to allocate dollars on the basis of identity politics introduces bureaucratic interference and delay.
Of course, Pelosi couldn't have these small businesses get that money based on just a first-come, first-served basis.
She had to institute, well, we have to put this carve-out for this group and that carve-out for that group because that's What they do.
Well, this blew up in her face yesterday, of course, as people got wind of the fact that Pelosi's standing in the way of money flowing to these small businesses that need this money to stay afloat while the government shuts them down.
Second, she decided to hold it up because she wanted, as the journal indicates here, a bunch of bailouts.
They're demanding $100 billion more for hospitals and health systems, Joe.
This is on top of the $150 billion now.
Oh yeah, they haven't even spent all that yet, the $150 billion, but she wants more for state and local governments too.
So she wants bailouts for liberal states as well, which spent themselves into oblivion, rather than bailouts going to small businesses that have been shut down by the government who need it to keep their people employed and the people who need it to stay in their jobs.
This is the kind of person you're dealing with.
Well, she thought this was a real winner, ladies and gentlemen.
Well, showing you how bad this blew up in her face history.
Master tactician, Joe.
Master.
This thing imploded on her like you wouldn't believe.
To the point where CNN and NBC actually had to change their headlines.
Now, listen, we get it.
They're not serious media outlets.
But for a moment, Some editor ran a story at CNN and NBC that was actually accurate.
Then what happened?
The Democrats called up probably CNN or NBC or a book or an editor and said, you can't have those headlines tell the truth.
Do what you always do and lie to people.
So, hat tip Elizabeth Harrington and Robbie Starbuck on Twitter.
I found these other guys.
Here's the original CNN headline of what Nancy Pelosi did.
CNN.
Democrats block GOP-led funding boost for small business aid program.
Perfectly accurate headline.
What happened, Joe?
Somebody got wind of that, had to call up CNN and go, come on, guys.
Don't act like a news outlet.
Tell the truth.
You're making us look bad as Democrats.
You can't put that we blocked this stuff.
Okay, here's the new headline just moments after that.
This is real.
I'm not making this up.
This is not the Babylon Bee.
Let's see the new headline, what they changed it to.
Oh, sorry.
That is the new headline.
Thank you, Paul.
I saw the CNN deaths totally on me.
Senate, Senate, Senate, Democrat, Senate had stalemate over more COVID-19 aid
after Republicans and Democrats blocked completing proposals.
Of course, a total lie.
CNN, I saw the CNN, that's totally on me.
And I'm like, is that the same thing?
CNN got caught in a moment of honesty.
Now, you may say, well, gosh, no one takes CNN seriously.
But there are still people out there who actually think NBC is a serious news network, too, which is kind of hilarious.
CNBC, once in a while, does some decent stuff on the economy, to be fair.
Actually, I'll use one of theirs later.
But NBC's a joke.
MSNBC's obviously a joke.
I mean, Moscow Rachel Maddow works there, so nobody takes that network seriously.
You know, you have Chuck Todd on the weekend, who is still obviously the dumbest guy in media.
Stelter's trying to get back there, but Todd's holding strong.
Here's the NBC headline before someone called.
Senate Democrats block GOP bid for $250 billion in small business funds amid impasse over coronavirus aid.
Absolutely factually correct.
Well, someone must have called up, and here's the new headline!
Not a joke.
Senate hits impasse.
Over $250 billion in coronavirus small business funds.
Joe, can you imagine these editors getting these calls from these liberal activist groups and people?
You gotta take that headline down.
You gotta take it down right away.
Why?
It's the truth.
Doesn't matter.
Makes the Democrats look bad.
Again, please just stop.
Just stop.
I'm serious.
It's a Friday.
I'm in a pretty good mood today.
I love Fridays.
Joe loves them.
Paula loves them.
I only do this for hilarity because I know some of you out there, some of the liberals who watch my show still believe these are serious media outlets.
And I really, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for you.
I'm going to leave that at that.
Okay.
Now, I bring this up because one of the evergreen topics in the last few weeks of my show has been, we did this, and we caused this damage to small businesses that are requiring now $600 billion or more of aid to small businesses we're now destroying, because we based them on models suggesting that millions of people could die.
Ladies and gentlemen, information matters.
There's no question this is a serious virus, especially for the elderly and the immunocompromised.
There's no doubt.
The question is not is it serious, as I've said repeatedly, the question is how serious is this?
Because if it's as serious as the modelers said, then shutting down the economy may have been warranted.
But that requires the modelers and the experts who told us how deadly this was, Joe, to be even close to accurate.
Look at this story at The Blaze, which I had in yesterday's show notes.
They were off by a little bit and even Dr. Fauci's had to acknowledge that The numbers, ladies and gentlemen, were nowhere close to accurate.
They initially predicted, what, 2 million deaths?
Then what, 500,000?
Then it went down to 100,000.
Fauci admits previous projection of 100,000 to 240,000 coronavirus deaths was likely an overestimate.
Overestimate.
Aaron Conlin at the blaze.
You think?
Now, ladies and gentlemen, there is a desperate effort by people in the media, you know, not the serious people, I'm talking about the jokers, the propagandists in the media to cover for this.
Because as I'm going to explain to you in another piece next, which is fantastic in the Wall Street Journal, I think it's by Joseph Sternberg.
The left wanted these shutdowns.
Just listen to their own words.
They've wanted these shutdowns from the start.
They've criticized Republican governors who don't shut.
Kristi Noem in South Dakota, who's doing the right thing, saying we're not shutting down the whole state, is under ruthless attack right now.
Why?
Why did the left want these shutdowns?
I'll get to that, the why, in a second in this next piece.
But now, the left wanted these shutdowns and they wanted the hysteria.
And now that the hysteria models have not come to fruition and have been proven by the actual numbers to be wrong by exponential factors, now that they've been proven to be wrong, the left and their media allies are desperate to cover their tracks.
This is one guy you need to follow on Twitter.
This guy, Alex Berenson, he was a former New York Times, but he's not a left.
I don't know his politics.
He may be, I don't even know.
I've never spoken to him, but he put up this tweet about Ohio pointing out.
Interesting.
He said, let's talk more about the magic of social distancing.
Yesterday, the Ohio governor said it had reduced the state's projected peak daily cases from 62,000 to 1600.
Awesome.
But let's take a closer look.
This guy Alex Berenson on Twitter has been amazing because he's looking at the actual numbers showing you how bad these models have been off and he's using their own models and their own numbers.
That's not good enough for the leftists in the media who wanted this shutdown.
So Joe, now they have to cover.
So just to be clear, before I show you this tweet by this numbskull at the Washington Post, this guy's a joke, Philip Bump, really.
I mean, one of the class clowns of even the Washington Post.
But Bump running interference for the modelers.
They're now trying to explain away to the American public why they've been bankrupted by decisions made by the government.
Based on models that were wrong.
Ladies and gentlemen, the models that predicted this 100,000 to 240,000 deaths and were off by, gosh, if you go in at the highest, hundreds of thousands.
These models are completely, totally wrong.
And the leftists are now claiming, oh, it's because we implemented social distancing, Joe, follow me.
I'm with you.
That's why, that's not true!
The models incorporated the social distancing concept, and we're still wrong.
But leave it to the Washington Post.
Democracy dies in the darkness, even though they are the darkness.
Here's Philip Bump, class clown at the Washington Post, with this tweet, again.
Running interference already.
Look at this clown.
A notable shift downward in projected deaths from coronavirus already being spun.
Spun?
Like we're not using their own numbers, Joe.
As experts were wrong.
They were.
Instead of, hey, the thing experts said would drive down deaths might be driving down deaths.
Nonsense.
This is Bump using ex post facto reasoning.
This guy is really not very bright.
I mean, I could go on all day about some of the dopey stuff he tweets.
It's classic.
He swears he's smart, which is the... Those are the worst kind of dopes, you know?
They don't even know what they don't know.
Hey, I'm smart.
But Bump swears because he can't read.
And then it's hysterical.
He actually follows up that tweet with another statement by Dr. Birx, which he attempts to use as cover for what he just said, despite the fact that the models, if he actually read the stuff, had already incorporated social distancing, and we're still wrong.
Again, be prepared by the propaganda specialists at The Post and elsewhere.
Be prepared for a retconning of history.
Don't forget the retcon.
The Hollywood term for pretending that prior movies didn't even exist, right?
They are going to rewrite the history of this thing to cover for the experts who destroyed your business based on models that could not have been more inaccurate.
They'll say, well, well, the social distancing did it.
The models incorporated the social distancing and we're still wrong.
Can you read?
Look at the results of this, by the way, here's CNBC this morning, the results of this, these models that caused us to shut down the United States economy.
JP Morgan now sees the economy contracting by 40% in the second quarter and employment reaching 20%.
Thank God for experts.
We'd all be lost without them.
Alright, let's get to this next story.
As I said to you now, let's get to the why.
Why did they do this?
Why are Philip Bump, the Washington Post, the New York Times now ignoring the numbers right in front of our eyes?
Ladies and gentlemen, the number of dead.
Remember, every single person that died is a father, a mother, a grandmother.
A sister to someone, everyone has one of those, right?
These are people, these aren't statistics.
This isn't communist Stalin where, you know, one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic.
These are real people and real lives.
But you know who are also real people in real lives?
The people whose businesses have been entirely, completely wiped out, whose life savings have been burned through, who can't pay their mortgage and are having a tough time feeding their kids right now.
Those are real lives, too.
And you ignoring them, and pretending they don't exist, saying, who told you we'd make it all about the economy?
No, ladies and gentlemen, we make it about people's lives, their prosperity, their ability to feed themselves, and their dignity to go to work.
You ignoring them with your silly talking points, shut it down or you want people to die, is garbage.
Garbage.
You're a simpleton for making that argument.
So now you have to ask yourself, why?
Why did the left do this?
Well, there's an interesting piece with some hypotheses in the Wall Street Journal today, talking about motive and how they actually worked here.
It is by Sternberg, I was right.
A coronavirus reckoning for the left.
Progressives worldwide disdain for workers and they deride Sweden's moderate liberals for resisting a lockdown.
He goes into three ways the left has kind of instituted this new authoritarianism.
No worship in church, Joe.
No businesses will open, and you will not be seen in public, or we will arrest you, and if you dare, as a Republican governor, or any governor for that matter, speak out against our authoritarianism, we are coming after you.
And believe me, they've been doing it on Twitter.
When you mention the fact that people have been bankrupted, And grown men and women are having a tough time meeting their bills and feeding their kids and are getting depressed and are going to be stressed out, which could result in long-term health problems.
The left goes, you want people to die!
Because they're really not bright and they are intellectual simpletons.
So let's go to takeaway number one.
Again, some potential motives and reasoning behind this authoritarianism.
He says, one is the left's enthusiastic support for mass shutdowns of economic activity that wrecked the lives of lower paid factory construction and service workers while leaving lefty, urban, can-work-from-home creatives only moderately inconvenienced.
Amen.
Fact.
The techie folks at Google can take their computer.
I'm not knocking Google, by the way.
It was Alphabet, their parent company.
You can take your computer, go on home, do your thing.
I'll be honest with you.
Me and Joe ain't left.
He's obviously, you know, or Paula.
We can work from home too.
Hurt us a little bit, but we'll be fine.
We'll get through it.
We'll be all right.
But the people who actually work for a living, coal miners, people out there on construction sites, Those folks, you know what the left thinks is the great unwashed.
They don't give a damn about you.
And they know it.
The left is catering to the Silicon Valley types.
They don't give a damn about the people get dirt underneath their fingernails, folks.
They don't give a damn about you.
They don't care one bit.
And you know why they don't care?
Because they don't want a control group right now.
As has been pointed out by Berenson many times in his tweets.
What do I mean by that?
Before I get to their motive number two, think about this.
If you're doing an experiment, Joe, on the effectiveness of a drug, you have a, usually you randomly assign people, you have a group that gets the drug and a group that gets the placebo.
Right.
And you'll determine if there's any effectiveness, what the therapeutic effect of the group that got the drug was, and to make sure it's not the placebo effect after random assignment, you give some group a sugar pill.
Why do we use control groups?
We use control groups to make sure that the effect of that drug is statistically significant.
In other words, Joe, if you just give the drug to a group of people and their blood pressure drops by two or three points and it's a blood pressure medication, you don't know, maybe the economy was good at the time and everybody's blood pressure dropped to two or three points.
They're confounding variables that can pollute your results and you can't isolate that effect down to the drug.
Make sense?
That's right, yeah.
So what do we do?
We put a control group in that's there at the same time that doesn't get the drug, that's dealing with the economy in the same time, and if their blood pressure doesn't drop because the economy's great and everything's going good, you can reasonably assume statistically that there's a statistical effect of that drug.
How does that relate to this and why the left doesn't want any states not locked down despite the fact that many states don't have a systemic problem with coronavirus?
They have isolated problems with it.
Because what they don't want is later on, when the history is written here, to be able to look at states that didn't do these lockdowns and compare their infection rates, economic performance, and fatality rates to states that did.
They want authoritarianism.
And they want to be able to write in the history books that, look, it worked!
And that, follow me here!
and they can't say, "Look, it worked," if there's a control group that didn't do it, that shows it didn't.
Brilliant assertion by Berenson.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
They don't want a control group.
Everybody's going to play into our authoritarianism.
Everyone.
If you don't, we're coming after you.
I don't care.
At one bit.
Zero.
Okay, let's go to motive number two here for the authoritarians on the left.
Another is the prioritization of the needs of public sector employees over those private sector employees who still have jobs.
Witness how London Mayor Sadiq Khan demanded that construction workers be put out of their jobs so that the underground rail network could run less frequently for the benefit of its staff instead of having to carry all those builders to their job sites.
So first, we want mass shutdowns with no control groups.
Secondly, we want to make sure that those public sector government workers are taken care of.
Those private sector people, you get off that train.
We need to run less trains, not more.
And if you don't get off that train, we won't be able to get our government employees to work.
Government employees?
Motive one's fairly obvious.
Shutdowns, because shutdowns are what they love and they're authoritarians.
Motive two's an interesting one.
Let's beef up the public sector and really wreck those private sector folks.
Number three, Sternberg's article.
Well, there's another motive for this, too.
The welfare state.
My gosh, the third is an aggressive expansion of the welfare state as a substitute for productive work.
A looming disaster in the U.S., as writers on this page have warned.
Is that the coronavirus stimulus bill creates incentives to receive unemployment benefits rather than return to work once the lockdowns are lifted.
The left used to think of itself as a movement of empowered working people.
Now it's trying to become a movement of the dependent lockdown poor.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's obvious to anyone who follows leftist ideology over the decades, the era of the John F. Kennedy, even Bill Clinton approached the government, the era of big government is over.
Ask not what your country can do for you.
That stuff is over.
The leftists do not care.
They want a poor United States dependent on the government so they can get votes and institute their authoritarianism.
That is it.
And what a perfect vehicle right now, these shutdowns to do it.
Shame.
A damn shame what's going on.
All right.
I got one final sponsor here and I want to get to, uh, Collusion, man.
You know Collusion Maggie at the New York Times?
Maggie Haberman, the deep stater who the Democrats wrote in their emails that were released.
Oh, she's great.
She never lets us down.
She never does.
She's always there for a good conspiracy theory.
I've got her promoting a conspiracy theory debunked by her own newspaper, which is...
Which is pretty hilarious.
I got our video.
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So as I told you, Collusion Maggie, who was one of the New York Times reporters who, you know, actively pumping the collusion hoax forever, she's on CNN the other day from her home studio.
You can always count on her to just pump and promote these absurd, ridiculous conspiracy theories.
And the segment is about vote by mail.
Listen, I vote by mail.
All the time.
I'm going to be, I'm not a hypocrite on this.
I like voting by mail.
I have no issue with voting by mail with the proper security measures.
Having said that, the Democrats want to make vote by mail the de facto option and expand it.
I don't think it should be that there's a reason I vote by mail beyond the scope of this.
I used to go in person.
I don't, I don't even like saying this cause it sounds like a pretentious jerk thing to say, but I, in the interest of, cause you may want to know, well, why do you support vote by mail?
Because when you go, it creates a scene.
People recognize you from Fox and it gets to be a real mess.
So Paul and I vote by mail, just to kind of not mess up anybody's, you know, voting experience.
Having said that, it's not for everyone, and we should primarily vote in person if we can, and I was trying to for a long time.
But the Democrats want to expand this all over the country, and Maggie Haberman appeared on CNN and suggested, Trump said there's evidence of fraud in voting by mail, but you know, again, it's like she loves promoting conspiracy theories.
That's just total nonsense.
Listen to this, then we'll show you using her own newspaper how Maggie just, again, never, ever knows what's going on.
Check this out.
There was a push for a much more uniform and broader form of by-mail voting.
That's what he's reacting to, but he's reacting to it in a way that sounds dismissive of a form of voting that some of his own voters and some Republicans need, particularly older voters.
So he tried moving away from that last night.
But look, there is a broad Republican push to try to limit the expansion of mail-in voting beyond what state-by-state laws dictate.
And so you are going to see a well-financed effort by the Trump campaign, by the RNC,
to try to push back on efforts by Democrats to expand it.
Democrats have argued that studies all show that the fraud the president talks about
is exceedingly rare.
And they argue that this is being done to disenfranchise poorer voters, minority voters, voters who tend
to vote more with Democrats.
It's so easy.
It's so yeah.
Remember that?
Yeah.
It is so easy.
It is so easy.
Hat tip, Elizabeth Harrington on this one for picking this one up.
So Maggie Haberman, just to be clear, you listen to it just like I did collusion mags from the New York times.
Hey, vote by mail fraud, exceedingly rare.
We should just expand this thing.
No such thing.
Vote by mail fraud.
Come on, guys.
This is just another one of you crazy Republican conspiracy theories.
That's kind of hilarious, because when you go back to the New York Times, where she works, own reporting on this, you get this little gem of a story.
Error and fraud at issue as absentee voting rises.
New York Times.
This is from 2012.
Wow.
New York Times.
Wait, wait.
Let's read further down into the story.
Remember, Maggie told you this is exceedingly rare.
Vote by mail fraud.
I'm quoting where she works, the New York Times.
Yes, votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised, and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth.
Statistics show election officials reject almost 2% of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.
Collusion mags.
Always there to pump a conspiracy theory.
Republicans just don't want vote-by-mail because they're trying to disenfranchise minorities.
That complete ridiculous nonsense she just fabricated on the air.
And the evidence isn't there.
I just showed you the evidence from your own newspaper.
I'm sorry I have to do the work for Maggie all the time.
Remember, the journalists, they're the smart ones.
What do I know?
I was just a dumb cop.
What do I know?
So stupid.
I'm only reading the New York Times' own reporting.
Back to the reporter for the New York Times.
I mean, really, what do we know?
Idiots.
We're so stupid.
Thank God for Maggie.
We can get the facts.
All right, quick one here.
I'm trying to get through the stories I missed earlier in the week.
Folks, there's going to be a reckoning one day.
The media's narrative about what's going on in New York has been shameful.
New York State was grossly unprepared.
We can do the report cards on this later, and we will.
But some people are starting to do it now, and they're not conservative outlets.
I don't know if you've ever heard of ProPublica, but they are not some conservative, you know, right-wing outlet.
They do public accountability stuff, but they'll pretty much slam anyone.
But they are definitely not conservative.
And I'm getting a little tired of this media narrative out there that, gosh, Trump dropped the ball and Andrew Cuomo has been all over it, and gosh, they're so great.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, things happened in New York, in New York City specifically, that the media is starting to pick up on it.
Again, this isn't my story, this is from ProPublica.
New York City, they had an emergency ventilator stockpile and it ended up on the auction block.
Huh?
This was in my yesterday's show notes.
Bongino.com slash newsletter if you want us to send the show.
Yeah, Joe, they had emergency ventilators.
Back in 2012, they auctioned them off.
They didn't want to maintain them.
Not my reporting.
So again, we can do report cards later.
We're in the middle of this crisis and we need to get through it.
Yeah, sure.
Fair enough.
But, ladies and gentlemen, let's just put on pause the whole Cuomo and de Blasio, oh thank god, they're so great up in New York and Trump's such an idiot.
Pause button, please.
Let's look at the facts about what really happened before we get into that nonsense.
All right.
Good.
I'm glad I got this.
John Solomon.
Great story yesterday.
Just the news is new website, which is terrific.
This will be in the show notes today.
Again, up on gino.com slash newsletter, sign up for my newsletter.
I'll send you these stories every day.
Oh, Oh, Oh, John Solomon, April 9th, 2020 Russia case footnotes to be declassified, exposing FBI concerns about steel disinformation.
Now my next book, we have a whole chapter on this little gem.
Ladies and gentlemen, we know Steele was full of stuff.
You can fill in the rest if you're interested in the unfamily friendly version of the show.
Cheese.
Yeah, cheese, right.
We know Steele was full of it.
I already told you that in the beginning of the show.
His subsource is interviewed in January of 2017, says, I don't know what Steele's talking about.
This stuff he's citing here is all garbage.
Basically, you guys were investigating a hoax.
We know that.
But there's been kind of a sub-thread here amongst us who do this Spygate investigation and have written about it extensively.
And the sub-thread has been, Joe, how much of what Steele put in the dossier about Trump, you know, the PP tape, the Carter page was going to be bribed by the Russians, you know, Manafort and Cohen were arranging this thing.
How much of that was outright just made up?
Just completely false?
What percentage?
And what percentage, ladies and gentlemen, may have been calculated disinformation?
T.O., time out on the field.
Okay.
Joe, Paula, tell me you understand this before we go forward.
Yeah, I'm square with you.
Yeah, I am.
The dossier is false.
Right.
None of it's correct.
The only thing that's accurate is Carter Page went to Russia, which you probably just got right by chance.
The dossier is completely false that they used to spy on Trump.
The question is not false or not false.
That's answered.
It's all false.
The question is how much is totally, completely made up by Steele, who just fabricated it, and how much was given to him deliberately by Russians, engaged in an effort to destroy the election's credibility.
It is a key question that I can't, when I don't know, I won't, I don't know the percentage breakdown.
50-50, I'm not sure.
We're gonna get an idea, though, based on John Solomon's breaking news yesterday, which is a big story.
Let's go to takeaway number one from his piece.
I'm gonna actually do this, and if you read the piece, this comes after this, but it's important to get out of the way first.
The guy who was running the counterintelligence section, this guy Bill Prystep, he actually supervised Peter Stroke.
You remember the guy with the text, the lead investigator.
So Prystep is Stroke's boss, who's investigating Trump.
Stroke's doing the investigation, Prystep's his boss.
When pressed by the IG about the possibility Steele had been the victim of Russian disinformation, again, what percentage, folks?
Offered an uncertain answer.
He said, quote, I'm struggling with, you know, when, you know, the Russians and this for my intelligence community work that they favored Trump.
They're trying to denigrate Clinton and they wanted to sow chaos.
I don't know why you'd run a disinformation campaign to denigrate, denigrate Trump on the side.
Price step answer.
There's a lot, a lot in there.
You ever hear that expression, you know, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
It's in that movie, World War Z. It's, you know, pretty famous old adage.
It's all over the place.
No, I don't know it.
When you're an anti-Trumper, Joe, everything looks suspicious when it may favor a Trump now.
I get that.
Okey-dokes.
You get what I'm saying?
I don't know.
PriceTips' answer is very telling.
He's so convinced that the media, FBI, anti-Trump narrative, that the only way Trump won this election is because the Russians helped him, he's so convinced, Price, that for this narrative, either because he doesn't like Trump or because people under him don't like him, Stroke, and have convinced him of this narrative, that the fact that the pee-pee tape dossier makes Trump look bad The fact that it could be Russian disinformation and done intentionally makes no sense to him, Joe, because he's fully sold on the narrative that the Russians helped Trump win.
That's the only way he could have won.
Hammer must be a nail.
He has failed to remove himself from his own bubble and look at the peepee tape stuff and say, hey, is this just Russian disinformation?
It can't be.
The Russians want Trump to win.
That assumes the Russians wanted Trump to win, which is a liberal narrative.
Which isn't true!
You may say, well, what was the Russians' motive?
Well, I cover it in Spy Game, my first book.
The Russians' narrative was clear as day.
The real story.
The Russians engage, as Joe and I have talked about on this show often, in what's termed a nuclear war, mutually assured destruction.
The Russians just want to sow chaos and uncertainty.
Fiona Hill, who doesn't even like Trump, who testified in the impeachment hearing, the Russia specialist, even admitted it.
The Russians, ladies and gentlemen, just want to sow electoral chaos.
Make Trump look bad, make Clinton look bad, make the Justice Department look bad, the FBI look bad, the American citizens look bad.
They don't care.
They weren't in this to get Trump elected.
Are you crazy?
It was Hillary who hit the reset button with the Russians, not Trump.
Are you crazy?
But when you're a hammer, everything's a nail.
And when you're an anti-Trumper, everything is viewed through the prism of an anti-Trump narrative.
And the anti-Trump narrative was the only way Trump got elected is because the Russians helped him.
And how could the Russians help him if there was a pee-pee tape dossier that made Trump look bad?
Because it was disinformation, you dope.
Did you miss that?
His answer is so telling.
Now, the fact that the FBI may have already had evidence this was Russian disinformation, this Steele stuff, and ignored it is even more telling because it speaks to one of only two possible solutions.
Number one, the political bias was so rampant against Trump and they hated him so much that they ignored their own evidence in front of their eyes that they were being played by the Russians.
Or two, they were too stupid to figure it out.
There is no option three.
Either politically biased against Trump, or really stupid.
Now, this other takeaway from the Solomon piece is actually before that, but I wanted to get to that first because the hammer nail, that's the whole point.
So apparently these footnotes, which are about to come out, are expected to provide new data points in the timeline showing when the FBI learned, or should have suspected, That it's key evidence suspecting Trump was colluding with Russia was erroneous and how high up those concerns were known.
Who knew what and when?
The new information quote will make clear, clear the FBI possessed information at multiple levels that undercut the evidence it was using to sustain a collusion investigation.
Whether the FBI intentionally ignored red flags or simply was blinded by ambition from seeing them clearly, one source with direct knowledge said.
Oh boy, ladies and gentlemen, either way.
Whoa.
They are in a world of hurt.
What the penalties will be, I don't know.
I'm not touching that.
I'm not a law enforcement officer.
I'm simply telling you facts matter.
I want the story.
I want the truth.
Nathan Jessup style.
You want the truth?
You can't handle the truth.
I want the truth now.
It's actually Tom Cruise who said that.
I had that in reverse.
What's Tom Cruise's name in A Few Good Men?
You remember that show?
Daniel or something?
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't even remember.
I don't even like that movie.
You want me on that wall.
Right.
You need me.
It really, they, they really take some unnecessary shots at old Jess up there.
Shouldn't have definitely code redded the guy, you know, kind of illegal and stuff, but you want me on that wall.
You need me on that wall.
Remember that?
If people watch that in a movie, I saw that in a movie, they'd be like, Whoa, folks, I'm just telling you hammer, nail, hammer.
When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
And when you're an anti-Trumper, everything is viewed through phony media narratives.
And they could not see the truth sitting right in front of them.
Alright, one last story.
This is incredible.
I mean, let's get to both of them.
Two more.
But this is an important one.
CNS News always does good work on this, especially the author of this piece.
He's all over this.
Terrence Jeffrey.
Be up in the show notes today.
Federal debt tops $24 trillion for the first time.
GAO predicts the current federal fiscal path is unsustainable.
Folks, listen, I can't hammer this home enough.
We are looking at the most predictable national bankruptcy in human history, and everybody is just whistling past the graveyard.
I grew up in Glendale, New York, where it was known for graveyards and bars.
There was a bar on every corner, my family owned one, and a graveyard on every other corner.
Mount Carmel, I remember all of them.
Cypress Hill.
I worked in one of them.
We are whistling past those graveyards, which I used to walk past every day coming home from St.
Pancras School.
We're out of money.
And you may say, well, why aren't I feeling the effects of it yet?
I'm going to make an analogy for you.
I feel is strange and not stretched, but necessary now because it describes a preparedness for a pandemic.
I told you that story before about ProPublica, where New York City auctioned off the ventilators.
You know, I spent most of my adult life in preparedness in the Secret Service doing security plans, preparing for things that were, candidly, probably a one in a billion chance of happening.
That's what we did.
We used to have an A to Z plan, not an A to B plan, because we couldn't afford to lose the president.
Yeah, maybe a Black Swan event, but there's no coming back from it.
So we would do things.
Some of the stuff we did, the staff thought were ridiculous and absurd.
Why do you do that with the cars around the corner?
It freaks the president out.
Well, because if an attack comes from that side of the street, we want to make sure it hits us first.
We used to do this way.
We maneuvered the cars.
I'll leave the specifics out, but you can probably figure some of it out.
It's not like classified or anything, but we used to do that.
Our job was to prepare for things that most people thought were silly because if we lost and that thing happened, it was over.
That's not how government thinks, ladies and gentlemen.
Government doesn't think that way.
Government is run by politicians who are self-interested.
They're not interested in you.
I'm sorry, there are some probably pretty nice people up there, but my experience with politicians has been a frankly awful one outside of a few people.
They are some of the most greedy, self-interested, self-absorbed human beings you will ever meet in your entire life.
Joe has probably interviewed, when he was at WCBM, how many, Joe?
Five, six?
Trillions.
More?
Politicians?
Who knows?
I'm not kidding.
Pretty much every politician in Maryland has spoken to Joe Armacost.
And you're right, though, for the most part.
Yeah, you're right.
Oh, the worst.
I'm not kidding, ladies and gentlemen.
The worst among us.
They are not interested in anything other than the moment.
Preparedness be damned.
We're seeing it now, in this pandemic, where people at all levels, federal, state, and local, knew a crisis was gonna happen.
They knew it!
They were issued reports, the Obama administration, the Bush administration, current administration, everybody was issued these reports at some point.
It is an indictment of government at every level, and what was done about it.
The answer is almost nothing.
The Obama administration let the stockpile of our N95 gas missile, they never even replaced it.
And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a Black Swan event happens, and we get this coronavirus, and everybody's looking at each other like, what?
What?
We didn't know.
No, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You all knew.
Everybody knew.
It's not a Democrat or Republican thing.
It's a government thing.
Yeah, I go.
New York knew.
Everybody knew this was going to happen.
And when it did, because politicians only care about today, not tomorrow, They just said, man, we'll handle it when we, when it happens.
Folks, the same thing happens with debt crises.
The exact same thing.
Everybody's sitting there and whistling past that graveyard and out there buying their cars, hanging out in the bars, doing what they're doing, sitting in a restaurant.
And a week later, 40% of the nation's out of a job.
You don't believe me?
I spent a lot of time traveling the world.
One of the most painful conversations I ever had was with Jenna Bush down in, not talking to Jenna, I was with, on a security detail with Jenna Bush down in Argentina.
Oh yeah.
And I was talking to one of the police officers who was, remember this story?
Yeah, yeah.
And he was assigned to us.
And he was around when the entire Argentinian economy collapsed almost overnight, and he said one of the most disturbing things he had ever seen and heard about, where cop friend of his, people who'd been around a while, who were arresting doctors and lawyers on the street who were mugging people to feed their kids.
When the Argentinian economy collapsed, it went like that.
You understand that the reason these politicians are doing nothing about the $24 trillion in debt we have right now and the $100 trillion in liabilities we have, although they understand fully, every one of them knows, and I'm covering it now, mark the date, we will go bankrupt if nothing is done.
And you will be wiped out.
And everyone around you will be wiped out too.
And it will happen fast when the bond vigilantes catch on to the scam.
In other words, once people figure out they're not going to get their money back from the government, which they won't.
We are going bankrupt.
Once they figure that out and they start demanding interest rates like a loan shark, and the bond vigilantes come in, it's over.
It will collapse so fast you won't even know what hit you.
But again, people in DC, I understand you don't have the character spine or anything to do anything about it, so I have no hope you'll actually fix it.
None.
None.
Sorry to leave you on that dour note, but you won't.
There'll be a bankruptcy, a mass bankruptcy, and you will see a massive reorganization of government and people's allegiance to government at all levels.
Finally, one maybe positive story about the coronavirus I'll leave you with.
I saw that Paula sent this to me yesterday.
Interesting.
California, a lot of friends of mine, I'm not going to say who, I don't want to put them on the spot, but one of them I had spoken to recently suggested that there was a crud going around in California at the end of last year.
And suggested to me, given the travel from China, that the coronavirus could be more widespread in California a lot earlier than people suggested.
So here's a local station, WK, excuse me, K and not W. W is East Coast thing.
KSBW.
A new study investigates California's possible herd immunity to COVID-19.
But check out this screen cap from this piece.
It's interesting, because this is what a couple of friends of mine in California have already suggested.
They say, as of Tuesday, the state had 374 COVID fatalities in a state of 40 million people.
Compared to New York, which has seen 14 times as many fatalities as the population halved out of California.
Social distancing could be playing a role, but New York's stay-at-home order went into effect on March 22nd, three days after California's order.
Something's going on here, folks, as Victor Davis Hanson says.
Hansen says he thinks it's possible for COVID-19 to have been spreading among Californians since the fall.
I'm telling you, I've heard this from a lot of people.
When doctors reported an early flu season in the state.
During that same time, California, listen to this, was welcoming as many as 8,000 Chinese nationals a day into their airports.
Some of those visitors even arriving on direct flights from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China.
I'm telling you, ladies and gentlemen, I'm convinced I had this thing in February.
I caught it at that Super Bowl media day thing.
I'm getting the antibody test as soon as I can so I can verify because I don't want to put out... I'm not sure of it medically.
I just had a dry cough, was sick for a week, and I didn't know what it was.
I'm convinced this thing has been here sooner.
We'll see.
All right, thanks again for another great week.
I appreciate you sticking with us throughout this crisis.
It really matters.
That listenership has really done very well.
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel for the video version of the show.
YouTube.com slash Bongino.
Is it Bong?
I forgot.
YouTube.com slash Bongino.
YouTube.com slash Bongino.
I know, I say it like three times every day.
YouTube.com slash Bongino.
Subscriptions are free.
I really appreciate it.
Have a great weekend, Joe, for our standard Friday departure.
