What is Ops-Trust? You need to hear the answer. In this episode? I address the scandal. I also discuss the war in Ukraine and the failures of the Biden administration to present a plan.
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What is “Ops-Trust”?
Putin may have overplayed his hand in Ukraine.
Here’s how the Ukrainian army stacks up against the Russian army.
Joy Behar humiliates herself while discussing the Ukraine crisis.
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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.
So we're gonna open up today's show today talking about some finally a little bit of a small little sliver of good news recognizing what real heroes look like in real times of stress.
You know, it's easy to talk about heroism in novels and books and watch them in movies, but people in the real world, we still have real heroes left.
I want to talk about Snake Island and then a very important topic during today's show.
We'll cover Ukraine, obviously, but what is OPS Trust?
If you don't know what OPS Trust is, this is like one of those, what is Pegasus shows?
You should, because I'd never heard of him until this Margot Cleveland piece.
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Let's get right to it.
Obviously a very busy, somber Friday today.
We will reflect as much in the content, given everything going on in Ukraine.
Apparently some Chechen fighters are headed over to Ukraine now with kill lists for Ukrainian officials.
I mean, this thing is going to get ugly.
Uglier, I should say, fast.
Okay.
A lot to cover.
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All right, Joe.
Let's go, buddy.
It's Friday!
Like it or not, yes.
Yes, it is Friday, and we've got to keep our routine in play here.
Yes, we do.
Because we've got to make sure that we are thinking clearly as a country, as a movement, and we're standing up for freedom here and around the world doing the best we can.
Folks, I said to you yesterday that old adage that You know, strong men, hard men make good times.
Good times, sadly, make soft, weak men.
Weak men then create hard times again.
Well...
We may be back to strong men making good times, and there are strong men left.
If you haven't heard the story of Snake Island yet, you should.
Snake Island is an island.
It's actually, I believe, a little bit closer to Romania than it is, well, a lot closer than it is, obviously, in inland Kiev in Ukraine.
And Snake Island had a Ukrainian outpost of 13 Ukrainian border officers over there on Snake Island, right?
Well, the Russians pulled up in one of their naval vessels and told these 13—it's a very, very—when you say Snake Island, I mean a very, very small island, but strategically located in an important spot—and told the Ukrainian border guards there, the 13 of them, well, you better surrender or we're going to bombard this island.
And they were dramatically outgunned.
The Ukrainians, that is, were outgunned.
Well, the Russians didn't get the answer they were looking for.
Moscow.
Now this is in Ukrainian, but it's worth hearing anyway.
You'll hear some comms. It's very short.
Some communications from the Russians over to the Ukrainians, and I'll translate
for you what they said afterwards.
Check this out.
[Russian radio]
Now, obviously it's in Ukrainian, but it's worth watching the video too in the Rumble account.
Please check it out.
The Ukrainian looks at his fellow border officer there on Snake Island and he says, after the Russian military vessel says, surrender now or we'll fire on you and your island, we'll kill you guys.
The Ukrainian looks at him and says, should I should I tell him to go F himself?
And then gets back on and says, yeah, go F yourself.
Oh, there's a debate in the translation.
Did he tell him go to hell or go F yourself?
It doesn't really matter.
The sentiment is the same.
Now, unfortunately, they were killed.
But it goes to show you again that hard men, strong men can go on later to create good times.
It's kind of become a rallying cry for Ukrainians understanding that they're not going to give up their country easily to Vladimir Putin.
Which takes me to this second story that Vladimir Putin may have dramatically overplayed his hand and finds himself in a corner.
I noticed after we covered it yesterday in our show, a lot of folks picked up On this, uh, storyline, I was telling you that I think Putin boxed himself in a course.
That's something I exclusively had in for, it was out there.
I don't want to be dramatic about it, but Vladimir Putin wanted a commitment that Ukraine would not be able to join NATO.
If you want a full take on that, we covered it on yesterday's podcast.
The, the West and NATO countries basically told them go pound sand.
I have to be honest with you.
I disagree with a lot of content commentators on our side.
I believe that, that, that was an appropriate response.
You know, NATO is an organization that's free to pick its members as it pleases.
You all can disagree, that's fine.
We're here to have a diversity of opinions, right?
We're not the left, we're not automatons.
Okay.
They don't say we're not going to do that.
Putin did not want to lose face.
So what did he had to invade at that point?
I think a lot of people didn't think he would go further than eastern Ukraine trying to march into Kiev.
And supposedly we're hearing now that may be closer than we thought to Kiev.
But the problem is he's dramatically overplayed his hand, as I said yesterday, because taking Ukraine Taking Ukraine in a firefight and occupying and holding Ukraine are far different from one another.
Far different.
This Fox News piece by Rebecca Rosenberg covers it well.
Putin may have overplayed his hand by invading Ukraine.
Experts say it was a massive miscalculation.
Here's the problem he's having.
Putin, that is.
Quote, the Ukrainian army has become a much more formidable force.
There'll be a lot of fighting and civil resistance, he said.
The people will not give in easily.
He added, the only way for Putin to control Ukraine, a country of 40 million, is through massive Stalin-esque repression.
If Putin fails, if he's forced to retreat, he's finished.
Do Saudi predicted he will be deposed very quickly.
Couple of points in that we addressed yesterday and I'll hit again because it's summed up nicely in this piece.
It'll be in the newsletter if you want to read it.
Putin is a strong man.
A strong man requires what?
Strength or at least the perception of strength.
A mask of strength.
If he is publicly not just defeated but forced to retreat humiliatingly and then secure his own path out of Ukraine.
Remember, You say retreat.
There's no guarantee the Ukrainians will let them retreat.
You get what I'm saying?
It's like going in a boxing ring, you know, outmatched by your opponent going, okay, I'm done.
And the guy's still kicking your ass.
Wait, I said I was done.
We didn't say you're done.
Putin will be finished.
He will be finished.
The perception of strength is what keeps Putin in power.
I don't think he anticipated this kind of a fight from the Ukrainian army and Ukrainian citizens.
They're teaching their citizens now how to make Molotov cocktails.
They're arming them.
Folks, occupying them is far different than taking Ukraine.
I mean, you think Afghanistan was bad for the Russians?
Ukraine's, there's three million people live in Kiev.
If 500,000 of them start shooting, granted that's a lot, probably mathematically impossible based on the age and condition of a lot of these folks, but even if 100,000 start, start shooting back, combined with Ukrainian military, you'll be in real trouble.
And I, you know, I disagree.
There's been a lot of opinion on this too.
Understandably so.
That's okay.
It's okay.
We don't all have to agree on everything.
Some people say, well, it's not a good thing that they're firing back.
Well, we're not doing good or bad anymore.
The good or bad is, you know, good and bad and war.
You can throw those terms out.
It's what's strategically efficient and what isn't.
Believe me, having 10,000, 20,000, 100,000 Ukrainian citizens in Kiev sniping at Russian military personnel trying to occupy their city, trust me, is strategically inefficient for the Russians on the other side.
They'd be in a world of hurt real fast.
Making matters worse.
Remember what I told you.
He is a strong man.
Russia.
Russia's Vladimir Putin.
He needs the perception of strength whether it's there or not.
Even the perception of strength has been dissipating because large swaths of the Russian populace are not behind Putin.
Don't take my word for it.
Here's a video of police in Moscow.
City I've been to a couple times.
Cracking down on Russian citizens.
Protesting against Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Take a look at this.
[Crowd noise]
That's Russia.
That's not Ukraine.
By the way, what does that remind you of?
Moscow police coming in, breaking up protests, locking up people.
Kind of looks like Dictator Trudeau up there up north, don't it?
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
Canada.
No, it doesn't, Dan.
No, it doesn't.
Really?
You sure about that?
Want to compare the two side by side?
Now you know why I'm so concerned about what's happening up north, too.
Remind you of someone up there?
Folks, the Russian populace.
Was behind largely Vladimir Putin when he took Crimea in 2014 on the peninsula from Ukraine.
That doesn't appear to be the case this time.
Maybe a lot of Russians felt Crimea was part of Russia.
Maybe they felt like they needed some adventurism back to gain a sense of national pride.
It's clear right now, and not all, but obviously, but large swaths of Russia are not behind the strongman.
You can't have strength if you don't have your own people behind you.
Period.
This guy is in a lot of trouble right now.
Yes, Ukraine's in a lot of trouble too.
But Putin is way, way overplayed his hand.
Right, the Russian economy right now.
Good point.
Crash in the stock market in Moscow.
Stock exchange there.
Russian bonds trading near zero.
Worthless.
Garbage.
Who's going to invest in Russia and buy Russian denominated debt right now knowing you're probably never going to be paid back?
Only an idiot.
You know what the Russians will have to pay in interest?
They'll have to pay like Tony Zaza rates.
Is that the guy's name from Rocky?
Remember Joe, the loan shark from the Rocky movie?
Yeah, I'll give you a loan, Rock.
I'll give you a loan.
27%.
And then we'll break your thumbs if you don't pay.
Putin's gonna have to pay more than that.
Who's gonna buy Russian debt?
You'd have to be an idiot.
Now, here's the bad news.
Biden.
Again, I'm trying to keep a level-headed approach because I am... You say this, right?
As much as the left wants you to believe otherwise and divide us, the right is on Team America, at least the people I associate with.
Team America does not mean Team Biden.
If Team Biden do and continue to do or don't do things that are pro or against the cause of Team America, fine.
If they do things that are done well, I'll support them.
If they don't, they won't.
But I live in a constitutional republic where I have the right to free speech, and my humble yet Strongly felt opinion is that President Biden's actions right now are making the situation over on the Ukrainian-Russian border and in Kiev now much, much worse.
And I will vocalize them no matter what.
Here's what I mean.
This comes from the Joe Biden, please stop talking file.
You don't need to vocalize every single thing kicking around in your brain bucket all the time.
The man is entirely predictable because he keeps telling them what he's going to do.
Including, by the way, before I play this cut, this morning it came out, Friday, that Psaki is saying, well, that thing you heard yesterday I reported on my radio show about cyber attack options being on the table for Russia, that's been mischaracterized.
Please stop talking!
Why are you telling Putin that?
Folks, whether we decide to cyber attack and turn out the lights in Moscow or not, I don't need to know that and neither does Vladimir Putin.
Matter of fact, it's far better strategically if Vladimir Putin has no freaking idea if we're going to turn the lights out in Moscow.
Why do they keep talking?
Psaki this morning.
Well, that's not exactly what happened.
Reports that we were considering a cyber attack.
You don't need to tell us this!
Here's Biden yesterday, and again, just a horrible presser at the Q&A.
Don't take, you don't even take questions at this point, please.
He's asked about two things, and both answers are atrocious.
He's asked about the sanctions against Russia, where he acknowledges, and if you listen to the cut, that yeah, the sanctions basically weren't designed to stop anything.
So why do them?
And then he acknowledges with regards to Vladimir Putin's threats about nuclear weapons, which were more than a threat.
He basically came out and said, you'll experience consequences like you've never seen before, and then started talking about nuclear weapons later.
He admits he doesn't know what Vladimir Putin's thinking.
You don't need to say that!
Here, listen to his answer yesterday.
Joe Biden.
Sir, sanctions clearly have not been enough to deter Vladimir Putin to this point.
What is going to stop him?
How and when does this end?
And do you see him trying to go beyond Ukraine?
And a second question I'll just give to you now.
This statement that he gave last night, that the threat that he gave the West will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history.
Is he threatening a nuclear strike?
I have no idea what he's threatening.
I know what he has done, number one.
Number two, no one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening.
It has to show, this is going to take time.
And we have to show resolve.
So he knows what's coming.
And so the people of Russia know what he's brought on them.
That's what this is all about.
This is going to take time.
It's not going to occur.
He's going to say, Oh my God, these sanctions are coming.
I'm going to stand down.
He's going to test the resolve of the West to see if we stay together.
And we will, we will, and it will impose significant costs on him.
My gosh, does this, please stop talking.
Please stop talking!
Now, you may say, well, and fair enough, what would you prefer him to say, Dan, especially with regards to Vladimir Putin's nuclear threats?
Here, let me give you a hint.
First, it's probably not a good idea to tell Vladimir Putin, hey, you're so complicated, I don't know what you're thinking, therefore you have a strategic advantage.
I mean, he's only a former KGB officer.
Maybe a better idea would be to say, you know, it appears from Vladimir Putin's comments that he was Implicitly, maybe explicitly saying that nuclear weapons are on the table.
Well, let me tell you something, Vladimir.
The nuclear advantage is ours.
And if you want to see Moscow turned into a glass parking lot, tomorrow would probably be a good idea to continue these threats.
I'll leave it at that.
Good point.
He says that's what Trump told Kim Jong-un.
Apparently, according to yesterday's New York Post Michael Goodwin article and yesterday's show notes, apparently it's what he told Putin too.
Is it a bluff or is it not a bluff?
I don't know.
The nice part is Vladimir Putin probably wouldn't know either if Joe Biden wasn't so open about everything.
On the second part, the sanctions.
You don't have to say publicly they don't work.
And they're not working.
Because then it makes you look feckless and indecisive that you did it.
Maybe say there's more coming, you haven't seen the full portfolio of actions we could take.
You don't have to say publicly nothing you're doing is working and Vladimir Putin is doing things you don't understand.
You don't have to say that.
You don't have to say or hint that cyber options are not being discussed.
I'm a 47-year-old former Secret Service agent.
That's a four-star general in the military.
And it's fairly obvious to me, I'll bet to Joe and to Guy too, that we are totally blowing this whole thing.
And Biden's Biden's inability to keep his mouth shut and stop telling the world what he's not going to do and what he doesn't know is incentivizing Putin to do things he probably wouldn't do if he didn't know Biden didn't know things because he's telling people he doesn't know things.
You know what I'm saying, Joe?
Like, this is like... Yeah.
Please, Joe, shut your mouth.
Shut up.
Yeah, please.
Please stop talking.
You know, let me get to my second sponsor.
By the other side of the break, former Senator Judd Gregg, I believe he's from New Hampshire, was on CNBC.
It's a minute-long clip, and I don't know Judd Gregg particularly well.
But Judd Gregg, I mean, has it nailed down better than Joe Biden?
He's on CNBC, and he's asked, like, hey, what are we going to do?
Well, hey, here's what we could do.
We could start producing oil and basically bankrupt Russia tomorrow.
Like, there's an idea.
And by the way, on these sanctions things, when have they worked?
Like, ever?
Anywhere?
I'll get to that in a second.
It's an important clip.
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So as I said, whereas Biden feels the need to publicly air everything he doesn't know and every ineffective component to the sanctions and tell people about it, You don't need to tell everyone.
Here's former Senator Judd Gregg on CNBC describing how sanctions really don't do anything, which is probably why Biden should have considered something different, or at least considered SWIFT, getting them out of SWIFT, where it would have been effective at least.
And then saying, hey, we have this energy cudgel here.
We could produce all of these petro products and put Russia out of business.
But no, we don't want to do that either.
Here, check this out.
The market is being perverted by government policy, just as Joe said so eloquently a second ago.
The simple fact is you cannot have a market where you've got industrial policy determining that you use one of your major sources.
That's both.
Wait a minute.
You've got to remember something else here.
This is a three-element dance.
There's three people in this dance.
There's the United States, there's Russia, and there's China.
And China is probably more important to us in this confrontation than Russia.
Russia is a third-world country with a first-world military.
But China is a 1.4 billion people being run by an autocracy.
And where China goes in this whole element of what's happening with Russia invading Ukraine is a critical issue.
And sanctions never, never control the actions of dictators.
It didn't in Cuba, it didn't in Venezuela, it didn't in Iran, it's not going to in Russia.
What will control their actions is to fundamentally undermine their economy.
And the way you do that is for us to produce so much gas and oil that we are able to replace Russia as a force in this world for economic energy.
Couple points there.
He's right.
China is an enormous threat to the United States.
I think a lot of people would make the case, including me, that a bigger threat than Russia.
Second, sanctions don't work.
They haven't worked.
Tyrants and strongmen are not intimidated by sanctions.
They're just not.
I wish they were.
And the third point.
We're sitting on, ladies and gentlemen, floating on a national sea of liquid natural gas we can access through hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking.
We could be shipping that LNG, liquefied natural gas, over to Europe and basically ice out the Russians from the market, bankrupting them.
You may ask yourself, why aren't we doing it?
I'll ask you, why aren't we doing it?
Let me give you the answer, because Joe Biden and the left are in charge.
And their idea is that we should be, Joe, we should go back to burning wood stoves.
There should be no petrochemicals coming out.
All in the name of the Green New Deal, or the New Green Deal, as Hannity calls it, which I think is hilarious.
I think it's intentional.
That's what we should do.
We should go back to burning wood in the fireplace.
It does not emit particulate matter.
It doesn't matter.
AOC said it's healthier.
Whatever.
I mean, these people are really morons.
Causing a geopolitical crisis because you're so committed to taking us back to the Stone Age.
You know, some of you asked yesterday, Dan, what does it look like, a matchup, the Russian versus the Ukrainian military?
By the way, I'll be covering this on my Fox show tomorrow night, Saturday at 9 p.m.
I have a bunch of experts on the topic on.
I've also got a story about this OPS Trust thing coming up.
Don't go anywhere.
I haven't forgotten about that.
But it's a good article to be in the newsletter today.
Bongino.com slash newsletter.
If you'd like to sign up, it's free, of course.
Tale of the tape, how the Russian and Ukrainian militaries match up.
I got a lot of questions, so I figured I'd put this out there.
I got questions for Dan coming up later too.
Russia has approximately 850,000 active military personnel compared to Ukraine's 200,000.
So big advantage for Russia.
It's according to global firepower, by the way.
However, Ukrainian President Zelensky said Thursday the government would lift sanctions on all citizens of Ukraine so that they could be armed and ready to defend the country, which would add significantly.
I believe Kiev has 3 million residents.
We'll give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country.
Be ready to support Ukraine in the square of our cities, Zelensky tweeted.
Folks, again, you know, it obviously helps to have trained military personnel against trained military personnel.
But the hard reality is a lot of people in Ukraine probably are either retired military, you have people with hunting experience, you probably have people with law enforcement experience, they're intimately familiar with how to use and operate a firearm.
You add that 200,000 active personnel, you add another couple hundred thousand more.
And keep in mind, the entire 850,000-person Russian military is not in Ukraine.
They needed to occupy bases in Russia, and they have other commitments around the world too, just like we do.
You could cause Russia a real headache.
So the military, the standing military, doesn't really stack up.
But when you factor in non-regular personnel, they could cause the Russians a real problem.
You're right.
Yeah, what people do exactly, you're exactly right.
You start, you know, dropping bombs on people's apartments where their kids are.
You start taking their jobs and everything they earn.
You're gonna get a different fight in your hands.
Remember, you got one guy, a Russian military officer or a soldier, coming in here, you know, probably isn't making a lot of dough.
He's probably on a mission he finds questionable.
Then you got a dad with former police experience who you just killed this kid in a bombing attack and were scared the hell out of him.
And you should take over their city.
Yeah, it's kind of different.
Now there were a lot of bad takes yesterday including the ridiculous Malcolm Nance MSNBC guy suggesting that Chernobyl was being taken over by the Russians because it powers North Central Ukraine.
Chernobyl, Joe.
He hasn't seen the HBO special, apparently.
Chernobyl hasn't been powering anything for decades now.
He may have missed that accident thing.
Did you know about that, Joe?
Something happened in Chernobyl?
Oh, they did!
They had a big accident a while back.
Yeah, I remember.
Yeah, it was really screwed up.
Yeah.
Joe's a little older than me, so Joe remembers it well.
Malcolm doesn't, apparently.
I guess he thinks it's still up and running.
But that wasn't the worst take of the day.
Shockingly, there were worse.
Here was Joy Behar on The View, who she's like, yeah, man, listen, this is really bad.
I mean, I've been wanting to go to vacation to Italy, and now it's going to screw up my entire plans.
Not a joke.
This is, again, not the Babylon Bee here.
Check this out.
Estimates are 50,000 Ukrainians will be dead or wounded and that this is going to start a humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis in Europe.
We're talking about 5 million people that are going to be displaced.
It's heartbreaking to hear what is going to happen.
Well, I'm scared of what's going to happen in Western Europe, too.
Yeah.
You know, you just you plan a trip.
You want to go there.
I want to go to Italy for four years.
I haven't been able to make it because of the pandemic.
And now this, you know, it's like, who's going to what's going to happen there?
Yeah, it's got to be an honorary.
I mean, really, it's a good point.
We really need to adjust to this gold medal.
I think that comment on joy should at least be in contention for
the silver or possibly the gold.
Wow. You may need to, yeah, it's gonna mess up my trip to Italy, Joe, my gosh, sorry,
Joe.
Whatever will we do, Dan?
I don't know, how are you gonna do?
[LAUGH
Let me show you how worried they are, by the way, Biden indecisiveness and atrocious public comments
contributing to the geopolitical disaster going on right now.
The fact-checkers have kicked in as well.
I'm going to get to that in a second.
Let me get to my third sponsor.
Once the fact-checkers go to work, what do we know every time we see fact-checkers, folks?
What's the lesson?
Whenever you see the Pravda fact-checkers jump in to defend the regime, you know the regime is worried, okay?
It's the only, the fact checkers are checking no facts.
They're all obviously opinions.
We'll show you what, again, I keep saying every week, the most humiliating fact check yet.
This one's by a Camille Caldera.
And sadly, every week it's like they undercut the worst ever and make it the worstest, worster ever.
So this one's pretty hilarious.
We'll get to that.
And it's so true.
This one, I know you've seen it already.
This one's so stupid.
So here we go again with the fact checkers.
Every week I tell you this is the dumbest worst fact check yet.
And then we get another one.
Here is the embarrassing Camille Caldera.
Fact checking.
This is from back in December.
This was making its way.
Why are we talking about this now?
Because this was making its way around yesterday because a couple of people had reposted the Jen Psaki photo of her wearing the pink hammer and sickle hat.
Remember that one?
This is making its rounds.
So of course the Camille Caldera humiliating fact check made its way around again too.
Fact check.
Jen Psaki was gifted a hammer and sickle hat at a diplomatic meeting.
Now keep in mind, no one is disputing the authenticity of the photo.
Jen Psaki is in fact wearing a pink hammer and sickle Soviet hat in the picture.
Nobody's disputing it at all.
But here's the fact check when they had a rush to the regime's defense.
This is just comical.
They say, uh, first, uh, here's Jen Psaki hugging Russians for talking about a tweet, hugging Russia's foreign minister and Russia's chief foreign affairs propagandist while wearing a pair, a pink hammer and sickle hat.
He wrote, this is for tweets yesterday.
Here's another several other Facebook accounts have shared the image with comments like, Oh, the irony after three years of Russia, Russia, Russia from Russia with love while being sure to note the hammer and sickle are a communist symbol.
Now notice this.
They acknowledge in the piece, this is supposed to be a fact check, in return Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, had a gift for Saki.
The pink hat she's wearing, she's wearing, she's wearing in the photo.
Though it's difficult to decipher the logo on the hat, the traditional furry Ushanka hat resembles the hammer and sickle.
This is Camille Caldera.
It's just embarrassing.
I'm really sorry.
Again, you always know.
Whenever you see this, you always know that something is bothering them and always has been.
Their attachment to Russia, this regime, and their love affair with socialist ideology.
I love their fact check, too.
They check the fact that she's wearing a hat and acknowledge she's wearing a hat.
Speaking of misinformation campaigns, which fact checkers are experts in, that's what they do.
You know, yesterday I was out at some family in town and things pop and I saw this thing pops.
People always send me stuff when they see my name.
And I saw this article, Joe sent me a text about this before the show, which is rare.
He's like, I can't believe, like, this is embarrassingly stupid.
Psychology Today, Susan Nolan, PhD, and Michael Kimball have an article up, Misinform, Rinse, Repeat, an effective talk radio tactic.
The article is about yours truly, me.
Now, this is supposed to be a professional journal for people in my field.
You know, I never, rarely if ever, cite academic credentials because I think it really genuinely makes you sound like an idiot.
You're smart, you're smart, it should speak for itself.
But again, in this case, it's relevant to the story.
So I have a graduate degree.
It is not an MS as they cite in the piece, it's an MA.
It is a graduate degree in psychology.
It was a focus because the school I was in at the time, Queens College in the City University of New York, which is under the City University of New York system, specialized in behavioral learning and neuropsychology.
That's where our professors were focused in those specific arenas and spheres, right?
Those are the two things I found interesting.
I'm very proud that I went to school and found that program interesting.
Well, professional, I guess, colleagues in this professional journal decided it would be a good idea to again Try to defame me and destroy my name in a professional journal.
Ironically, talking about misinformation and me while citing misinformation, which is what Joe texted me about.
It's just kind of hilarious.
An article about misinformation, using misinformation to claim you're relaying misinformation to people.
Here, from this Psychology Today piece with these two dunces.
Showing you a PhD is indicative of nothing more than three letters behind your name if you're not smart enough to apply it to the real world.
Bongino is sometimes careful to avoid outright misinformation.
But with respect to the pandemic, he's been less careful and was recently permanently banned from YouTube for repeatedly posting coronavirus misinformation, including the fake fact that masks are useless.
So it was repetition that actually got Bongino booted from YouTube, but he retains access to numerous other platforms.
These two are morons.
These two, I swear, it's like there's nothing you can do to them either.
What are you going to do?
Sue them?
They'll sit there all day and be like, well, he's a public figure.
It doesn't matter.
I never claimed masks are useless.
What I said was the science of the cloth mask and improperly fitted surgical masks are useless.
Did you listen to the show?
Joe, did I not say on the show that the science seems to indicate that a properly, properly fitted KN95 may have some benefits?
Did I not acknowledge on the show that even a surgical mask may have some small, limited benefit on the transmission side, but there's no data that it stops on the receiving side from receiving the virus into your lungs and nose?
Did we not?
Did these two morons even go back and listen?
Nope.
What did they do?
They fell for a misinformation campaign by the slobs at Google and wrote it in a professional journal without doing any research.
Will we get any apology from Susan Nolan?
Who's the other moron?
Guy, put that back for a second.
Will we get any apology for them?
Susan Nolan and Michael Kimball?
Nope.
Nope.
They are actually using misinformation.
I want them to put the whole quote, here we go Joe, not missing context like a fact checker, I want them to put the whole quote in there.
They act like I said every single mask under every circumstance was useless, which would in fact be misinformation.
That's not what I said.
Did you even watch it?
Now you understand my point about why professional organizations like psychology associations are a total mess?
These two idiots write an article about misinformation using misinformation!
I swear, there's nothing you can do when you're a public figure.
Nothing.
Seriously, it's a total waste of your time.
They are allowed to defame you whenever they want because you have to prove that they had some malicious intent, which I know they did, but it's impossible.
It's almost impossible to prove in court.
I almost fell off my chair when you sent me that.
I know you did.
This guy never texts me after hours.
Never!
And that's not because we don't, we just, we're both busy and everybody wants, you know, after a hard day at work, he's like, this is really like the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
Yeah.
It's a professional journal.
You can read, you can read the piece.
I'm not linking to it in my newsletter today, but those two should be embarrassed.
And by the way, I'm not going to let that go.
Both of you who wrote that piece.
You should, morally and ethically, you should do the right thing.
If you want to accuse me of saying something, you should at least put the freaking quote in there and have some professional dignity, Susan Nolan and Michael Kimball.
But you don't.
You have no dignity.
None at all.
You're not serious people.
All right.
I want to get to this next one.
You know what?
Let me get my last sponsor and start to stack them up.
I appreciate your patience.
But what is OPS Trust?
If you haven't heard about this, I'm going to cover this on my show this weekend on Fox too.
You need to pay very close attention to this next segment.
Then we'll get to some of the questions for Dan.
You got some good ones this week.
So I read this piece and I debated, do I cover this exclusively on my Fox show?
But given that the segments can be a little bit shorter sometimes, I thought maybe I'll just have Margo Cleveland on my Fox show.
So barring any Any additional super-catastrophic developments in Ukraine, I still intend to have Margot Cleveland on to discuss what I think is the most profound piece I've read so far this month.
There's an article in the Federalist by the great Margot Cleveland.
It'll be in the newsletter today.
Please read it.
Bongino.com slash newsletter.
It's called, let's hope the special counsel and others are investigating the people who watch you online.
Who is watching us online?
And who the hell is Ops Trust?
Well, she describes a little bit how the special counsel investigation into the spying operation on Donald Trump may have a nexus through the tech executive to this group that has the ability, apparently, to watch some of the things we're doing online.
From the Margo Cleveland piece.
Hang with me.
It's just two paragraphs here, but they're important.
She's talking about Rodney Jaffe, the tech executive, who according to the legal paperwork filed by Durham, investigating the Spygate scandal, that Jaffe and his group exploited internet data for purposes they weren't supposed to be used for.
Okay?
So she says, so where did Jaffe's group get access to this data?
You know, but the Trump team, it had reviewed.
And what was the community this group was part of that had, quote, unusual access to the DNS lookup data of private companies, public institutions, and universities?
A random email forwarded by Jaffe to Georgia Tech's Anton Akakis provided a possible answer.
OpsTrust.
OpsTrust is a self-described highly vetted community of security professionals focused on the operational robustness, integrity, and security of the internet.
And they promote responsible action against malicious behavior beyond just observation, analysis, and research.
Wait, what?
They have access to a lot of this DNS stuff and some kind of like secret cabal of people who took it upon themselves, I guess, to promote responsible action beyond just observation, analysis, and research.
What does that mean?
Beyond just observation, analysis, and research.
She goes on to talk about this guy, Paul Vixie, and she says that slides available online from a 2014 conference contain several interesting tidbits of information.
First, the link to the Ops Trust presentation back in 2014 includes the name Paul Vixie.
Who has noted above, told the New Yorker, the journalist Malik, that Jaffe, the tech executive's group, is, quote, widely understood to have the ability to see nearly all the DNS lookups on a given domain.
In other words, whatever websites you're going to.
That was not Vixie's only connection to the story.
Rather, Paul Vixie's name first appeared when Slate, the online mag, pushed the Alpha Bank tale shortly before the November 2016 election.
The group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie, Slate wrote.
That was a funny moment.
Slate wrote about the supposed discovery of the Alpha Bank-Trump connection, and then after studying the logs, Vixie concluded that the parties were communicating in a secretive fashion.
So just let me get this straight, and I'm going to move on, and please don't miss the show.
Margot Cleveland should be on tomorrow night at nine to discuss this.
So there's a secretive group.
Guys, am I reading this correctly?
The secretive group of people called Ops Trust that has access to all the DNS lookups Or according to this report, access to data that we don't have and that there may be a relationship between them and the tech executive alleged to have exploited the internet data to push a fake narrative about Donald Trump.
Yeah, you're right.
You know, I never heard of that.
Yeah, me either there, Daddy-O.
Me either.
But kind of scary to think that this group may have that kind of access.
Who else could they be looking at?
They'd be looking at you?
Totally unintentional, by the way.
We had the ExpressVPN.
Seriously, right?
Who else?
They have access to every, what, DNS, the DNS phone book?
Ops Trust.
You'll see people searching that.
Just don't search it in Google.
Use DuckDuckGo.
All right, let me get to the questions, but just a couple quick things first.
Again, it's showing you how infuriating that Psychology Today article is.
I mean, if I was wrong citing the science, then why is this happening?
WHAS 11, CDC to drop most indoor mask mandate recommendations Friday, citing AP sources.
Gee, where'd that come from?
Oh!
Yeah.
Here, by the way, is one more.
One more piece of audio.
I had discussed with you yesterday during a quick semi kind of lightning round at the end, some more devastating data that COVID likely leaked from the lab.
According to a report at the Daily Mail yesterday, they found a sequence, a gene sequence in the COVID-19 virus that was sequenced by Moderna, created by Moderna.
Again, according to the report, three years ago, three years ago, Moderna rep was on with Maria Bartiromo yesterday.
Maria asked a great question of the Moderna rep.
Hey, what's the deal with this?
This sequence was allegedly found in the COVID virus.
That means it couldn't have possibly leaked from, excuse me, been natural.
It had to leak from a lab.
It's an artificial sequence.
It was his answer or not answer really.
Check this out.
Scientists find the virus contains a tiny chunk of DNA that matches sequence patented by Moderna three years before the pandemic began.
Your reaction, Stefan?
What can you tell us?
So, my scientists are looking into those data to see how accurate they are or not.
As I've said before, The hypothesis of an escape from a lab by an accident is possible.
You know, humans make mistakes.
So is it possible that the Wuhan lab in China was working on viruses enhancement or gene modification and then there was an accident where somebody was infected in a lab and then infected their families and friends?
It is possible.
On the claim you just mentioned, the scientists are analyzing to know if it's real or not.
Yeah, I mean, I was struck by the line, it matched a genetic sequence patented by Moderna for cancer research purposes, Stéphane.
Yeah, and that's the type of things that the team is looking at very carefully to know is it real or not.
So it takes a bit of time to analyze all the genetic sequence.
Yeah, as a Moderna CEO there, you may want to nail that down.
Sounds kind of important.
All right, it is Friday, so even though we're dealing with some tough circumstances this week, it's time for questions for Dan!
All right.
Hey Dan, this is from Jimbo Eagle, who I think has submitted a couple questions so far.
Jimbo Eagle, a regular submitter of Quentin, but that's okay.
How often do you come across people who used to be liberal but are now conservative?
Do you personally have any stories where you were able to convert liberals into conservatives?
This is an easy one.
Yes, I get emails all the time.
I hope it's comforting to you because anything I get an email on, The golden rule is five to six hundred other people are probably thinking about it.
Therefore, when I get 20 or 30 emails, I know we either caused the problem or said something that struck people.
We get probably 10 or 15 a week from people saying, yeah, I used to be a liberal.
I heard your thing, your show in a mechanic shop or something and thought you were crazy.
And now I realize you were right.
Yeah, we get them all the time.
So, yeah, good.
Good question.
Hey, Dan, question number two at Coderpath, boxers or briefs?
Boxer briefs, actually.
Tommy job.
Tommy job.
Always.
Yeah, seriously.
They didn't pay for Tommy.
I've always worn Tommy job.
Boxer briefs, of course.
It can't work out.
Boxers?
Come on.
Everybody knows that.
Hey, Dan, this is from Denise NB.
Do you think we just ushered in World War III?
Gosh, I really hope not, obviously.
I pray we don't.
I was praying last night that the Lord Almighty get into the head of Vladimir Putin and make him just see rationality again.
But I don't.
Unless Vladimir Putin gets incredibly desperate, I have to believe he's going to have to retreat at some point out of Ukraine.
But I know it's on a lot of your minds and I wish I had a better answer, but sometimes, unlike Joe Biden, sometimes not saying something is the best.
I just don't know.
I don't know.
Here's the next question.
Hey, Dan from at Statwoman.
I have a question about sanctions.
What, if any, would be the ramifications for impact on the US dollar if swift sanctions were imposed against Russia?
So SWIFT is the international Belgium-based clearing system where countries pay countries.
If you're going to have access to SWIFT, it's effectively like you not having access to the bank.
What effect would that have on the U.S.
dollar?
Well, the U.S.
dollar, it depends, you know, what other that there's so many different macro factors playing in right now, including excessive printing of money that are devaluing the U.S.
dollar.
That I think the status of the war would have more effect than Russia being taken out of SWIFT.
In other words, if the war gets ugly in Ukraine fast and starts taking in international partners of ours, then yeah, I think the U.S.
dollar, you know, could have an issue.
So, um, I don't know.
I can tell you right, this is going to crush the ruble.
That's for sure.
So that is, that we know.
Hey Dan, BWords11, do you golf at all?
And have you played with President Trump?
I don't golf and I'll explain to you why.
I played baseball my whole life, so my swing is in the horizontal plane.
I've had a hard time breaking that.
Now, I used to try to golf, but the problem now is because I have an arthritic left shoulder, which you can see is I can't externally rotate my shoulder.
So I can't follow through even if I wanted to with a golf club.
So no, I don't golf.
And no, I have never golfed with president Trump.
Uh, I've been on the golf course with many presidents, but it was typically in my prior line of work as an agent, not as a fellow golf colleague.
Here's another one.
8N King Henry 369.
Where was the Secret Service when Hillary and the gang spied on Trump?
Doesn't the Secret Service have countermeasures for that?
Yeah, they do, but the countermeasures were not tailored towards what Hillary and their team did.
In other words, Hillary Clinton's team used a spy, an actual person, and his colleague to go and spy on George Papadopoulos.
The Secret Service doesn't have a detail on George Papadopoulos.
There's no way they'd vet them.
You got me?
Also, spying angle number two.
The unmasking of Trump officials' team's communications.
The United States gets the metadata from almost every cell phone account in the country.
What they do with it later on in the metadata, the Secret Service doesn't have custody of that.
That's not ours.
That's in an NSA account.
The Secret Service would never know.
And third, the exploitation, according to the indictment of the DNS data from Trump Tower, the exploitation of that was a government account.
In other words, the tech executive we discussed in the Cleveland piece, Jaffe, had access to that account legally through a government contract.
What he did with it later and the allegations he exploited it to create this fake narrative, we would never know that.
How would we know that?
He could take the data, print up a bunch of DNS stuff and run away with it.
So they're not designed for that.
It's more designed to secure the president's phone with encryption to make sure no one's listening in on the president's phone calls or reading his emails.
Was that broken?
We don't know.
We'll see later.
But good question.
Fair enough.
I'm not defending or not defending anyone.
I'm just telling you the hard truth.
Thank you.
Hey Dan, Angie72222002.
I created an account at Truth Social.
It says I'm on a wait list.
Do you know why that is?
I do.
Angie, Truth Social does not want to make the mistakes of some other platforms out there and doesn't want to let everyone on at the same time because this is not some trick.
It's not some, let's create a line to make it look like we really want it in.
I really want to, you know, create demand and stuff.
They just want to make sure the tech functions seamlessly.
That's why.
Don't believe the leftist media hype.
It's all crap.
There's tremendous demand for true social.
I'm on there.
I'm at DeepOnGeno.
So I appreciate you following me over there.
Just give us a little bit of time over there to make sure it works.
Give them a little bit of time over there to make sure it works.
Okay, one last point before we roll.
Showing you again, sadly, we're being led by imbeciles.
This is an actual tweet from the New York Times, which shockingly did a bit of reporting, Joe.
Quote, the U.S.
met with China over three months to present intelligence to them showing Russia's troop buildup near Ukraine and to urge Beijing to help avert war, U.S.
