The Dan Bongino Show - The Bongino Brief - Feb 26, 2022
Aired: 2022-02-26
Duration: 09:43


=== China's Stockpile Concerns (05:14) ===

[00:00:00]  Dan Bongino.
[00:00:02]  Welcome to the Bongino Brief.
[00:00:03]  I'm Dan Bongino.
[00:00:05]  Listen, I can't vouch for every statistic in here to do in a homework, but I'm putting it up because it's from Zero Hedge.
[00:00:14]  And it's interesting if the numbers are even remotely accurate.
[00:00:19]  Given everything that's going on with the Global instability right now between China and Taiwan, Ukraine and Russia, Iran trying to get a nuclear bomb.
[00:00:30]  It's a lot going on, a lot we have to be concerned about.
[00:00:33]  But I ask you this, China, are they prepping for something?
[00:00:36]  This is a tweet from Zero Hedge.
[00:00:38]  China currently holds an estimated 84% of global copper, 70% of corn, 51% of wheat,
[00:00:45]  40% of soybeans, 26% of crude oil, and 22% of aluminum inventories.
[00:00:51]  China's stockpiling commodities?
[00:00:55]  Why would they be doing that?
[00:00:57]  Why did they tell their people, and this I can confirm, months ago that it was a good idea to start preparing with emergency food and then to start stocking up on items?
[00:01:10]  Food and things like that.
[00:01:11]  Why would they do that?
[00:01:11]  You think it's by mistake?
[00:01:12]  You think this communist regime just slipped up and by accident let that message go out?
[00:01:18]  You know, I said to you before, I said again, I'll say it again, just because the Russia-Ukraine fight is not our fight, doesn't mean it's not a situation we shouldn't be concerned about.
[00:01:28]  This could spiral out of control quickly.
[00:01:31]  I'm afraid if the Chinese Communist Party learns a lesson from this, they'll invade Taiwan and we can find ourselves in a far worse situation.
[00:01:38]  If that data is even remotely accurate, there's no reason they should be stockpiling all of those commodities to hedge against something without, you know, without thinking what the something is.
[00:01:46]  They know what the something is.
[00:01:49]  Question is, do we know?
[00:01:50]  And our intelligence?
[00:01:53]  Now, one of the things I said to you about the Ukraine crisis is, Biden has to get serious, folks.
[00:01:58]  I'm on Team America, okay?
[00:02:00]  I don't want America to lose here to make a political point.
[00:02:03]  The guy in the White House is a hapless buffoon, that's obvious.
[00:02:06]  But we're stuck with what we have right now, unfortunately.
[00:02:08]  I wish President Trump was back in there right now.
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[00:04:11]  You know, I used to kind of, it's not a joke, but I used to jokingly refer to it in a number of situations as the Brock Lesnar-Vinnie theory of foreign policy.
[00:04:20]  There are two ways to do this.
[00:04:22]  You can be the toughest guy on the block, like a Brock Lesnar type, and no one's going to mess with you.
[00:04:27]  You go in a bar, you see Brock Lesnar.
[00:04:30]  How many beers do you have to drink before you take a shot at Brock Lesnar?
[00:04:34]  The answer is, there isn't enough beer in that bar for me to get my caboose kicked by Brock Lesnar.
[00:04:40]  He's a beast.
[00:04:41]  You ever see him, UFC guy, WWE guy?
[00:04:43]  He's like 6'6", 300 pounds of muscle that he's mean looking too.
[00:04:49]  I'm not trying to downplay this, but sometimes simple stories work best.
[00:04:53]  You can do that in these geopolitical fights.
[00:04:57]  Where you have the biggest, baddest military in the world, and nobody dares mess with you because you'll get crushed.

=== The Vinny Approach (04:44) ===

[00:05:03]  One of the lessons they learn from the Iraq war, foreign governments around the world, is don't dare go to a ground war with the United States without nuclear weapons.
[00:05:12]  You'll get crushed like the Iraqis did.
[00:05:14]  Remember all the stories, Joe, about the Iraq army?
[00:05:16]  Oh my gosh, it's so powerful.
[00:05:18]  One of the largest armies in the world.
[00:05:20]  Elite!
[00:05:21]  It was humiliating.
[00:05:23]  We destroyed them.
[00:05:24]  Humiliating for them.
[00:05:27]  That's because we had the Brock Lesnar approach.
[00:05:29]  Or you could take the Vinny approach.
[00:05:30]  That's the Vinny approach.
[00:05:31]  Vinny was a kid I grew up with.
[00:05:33]  He was a very small kid.
[00:05:34]  I don't think he had an ounce of muscle on him.
[00:05:37]  But the thing with Vinny was he was unpredictable.
[00:05:39]  Vinny'd fight you at the drop of a hat, he'd lose every fight, but it didn't matter because he'd fight you, and you'd take a few lumps yourself.
[00:05:47]  And you know what?
[00:05:47]  I'm telling you, nobody messed with Vinny.
[00:05:49]  Nobody.
[00:05:50]  Even though they knew they could beat him in a fight, because they knew they'd have to fight Vinny because Vinny was totally unpredictable, he'd wind up smashing you over the head with a bottle.
[00:05:56]  Like Vinny, yeah.
[00:05:58]  This applies to Biden now.
[00:05:59]  Either Biden has to do something muscular or stand easy and be unpredictable.
[00:06:06]  The problem right now is he's doing neither one of those things.
[00:06:09]  You don't think Putin is like, I smell weakness.
[00:06:14]  This is the neither the Brock Lesnar nor the Vinny approach.
[00:06:18]  This is the Brinny approach.
[00:06:20]  You're trying to be halfway between both.
[00:06:22]  Either cut them off from Swift.
[00:06:25]  You know, sanction everyone in London, grad, over there in London where the Russians go and hide their money.
[00:06:31]  Or just sit back and wait and be strategically ambiguous, which will scare Putin a little bit because he doesn't know what you're doing.
[00:06:39]  Now, being strategically ambiguous has its benefits.
[00:06:42]  I always said this about Trump.
[00:06:44]  That one of the benefits of Donald Trump in office was that they never knew what he was going to do.
[00:06:50]  He was the Vinny character.
[00:06:51]  He was unpredictable.
[00:06:54]  They never knew what he was going to do, and they did not mess with him for four years.
[00:06:59]  I've discussed this story on the show many, many times, right?
[00:07:02]  And nobody seems to believe me.
[00:07:04]  I bring it up, and no one believes me that this was a strategic benefit to Trump, and this is why Putin wouldn't mess with him.
[00:07:10]  I've told the story on the show about the Russian mercs in Syria.
[00:07:13]  They had this mercenary force in Syria.
[00:07:15]  You haven't heard much about the story.
[00:07:17]  The reason you haven't heard about it is because the media sidelined the story.
[00:07:20]  They talked about it a little bit.
[00:07:22]  But it made Trump look tough on Russia so you never heard about it.
[00:07:25]  Did you know he wiped out 90 Russian mercs and 100 recruits of other nationalities in Syria with zero injuries to U.S.
[00:07:35]  personnel?
[00:07:36]  Holman Jenkins talks about it in this Wall Street Journal piece containing Russia old school.
[00:07:40]  Jenkins says a delicate observation also needs to be made.
[00:07:43]  He saved his Ukraine depredations for the Obama and then the Biden administration.
[00:07:48]  Talking about Putin.
[00:07:50]  So his expectations of Mr. Biden so far seems to have been disappointed.
[00:07:54]  His biggest misreading may have been talking about Putin of the events of February 7, 2018.
[00:07:58]  That was the day U.S.
[00:08:00]  ground and air forces in Syria destroyed an armored Russian mercenary column, killing an estimated 90 Russian citizens and 100 recruits of other nationalities at a cost of zero injuries to U.S.
[00:08:13]  service personnel.
[00:08:16]  Folks, I'm not asking you to agree with the decision or not Trump made February 7th of 2018.
[00:08:22]  But Trump, as commander-in-chief at the time, obviously it's 2018, gave Jim Mattis, the go-head, the defense secretary at the time, to annihilate, in their words, a group of Russian mercenaries in Syria for strategic reasons.
[00:08:39]  They warned the Russians.
[00:08:42]  They went through proper de-confliction channels and they warn these Russian mercs, we are going to kill you if you don't leave.
[00:08:49]  You know what Putin said, Joe?
[00:08:50]  No, you won't.
[00:08:52]  I don't mean to make light of death, but that decision didn't quite work out for Putin, did it?
[00:08:59]  Do you know that was the largest loss of life in decades in a Russian US military interaction?
[00:09:10]  You're like, my gosh, I've heard about that before on your show, but I haven't heard about it in the mainstream media much.
[00:09:15]  Why is that?
[00:09:17]  Because it defeated almost immediately the narrative that Trump was a Russian stooge.
[00:09:22]  Really?
[00:09:22]  By wiping out nearly 100 Russian mercenaries in the Syrian desert?
[00:09:26]  Really?
[00:09:28]  That's what Russian stooges do?
[00:09:30]  And you know what Vladimir Putin did about it, ladies and gentlemen?
[00:09:35]  Nothing.
[00:09:37]  Because Trump was unpredictable.
[00:09:39]  Biden's very predictable.
[00:09:41]  The Dan Bongino Show.