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Feb. 17, 2025 - The Dan Bongino Show
59:19
Trump Is Cancelling DEI And Cancel Culture (Ep. 2424) - 02/17/2025
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Thank you.
Gino.
I don't know how many times I got to say it.
Snapshots and soundbites, folks.
That is what politics is.
You want to build political power.
You have to create kind of what they call now in the influencer business a brand.
For the record, I freaking hate it when they say that.
You gotta build your brand.
I just can't stand it because it seems like one of those dopey buzzwords.
Oh my gosh, build your brand.
But politics is no different.
The way you build a narrative around yourself like the media has been building around liberalism forever is by pictures and quick soundbites.
Why am I bringing this up at the beginning of the show?
Because this weekend with President Trump was just an epic master class.
In the snapshots portion of that.
This guy knows what he's doing, folks.
Nothing's done by mistake.
That, and man, did we not call it with mags?
Who am I talking about?
Anyone in the chat know?
Margaret Brennan at CBS is, I cannot believe the amount of training she's putting into the dopey media talking head Olympics.
She gets the bronze in record time.
Folks, she's ready to move into silver, I think, quick.
I'm not ready to make that bold of a decision yet, but in case you missed what happened this weekend, we had the worst Margaret Brennan CBS moment ever.
You've got CBS defending German crackdowns on free speech, and then you've got Margaret Brennan on CBS basically suggesting or implying that the Holocaust was caused by free speech?
What?
Is that for real?
Did you really say that?
Hey, get a good night's sleep.
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Let's get this party started.
So first, I have a very brief weekend update because I was busy this weekend on some things.
Long story.
But our good friend, producer Jim, from the radio show, ladies and gentlemen, let's just in advance send him our love and prayers.
He did have a pretty serious accident.
I'm not kidding.
It's not a joke.
I wish it was, unfortunately.
But he fell off a ladder.
And busted himself up pretty bad.
He's okay.
I told him to stay home today, but he insists on doing the radio show, which I can't talk him out of, folks.
He's a big boy, but he can show you the text.
I was like, please do not come into work.
And he wants to because he's a tough bastard, that guy, man.
He's like ready to rock and roll, right?
But he violated the golden rule of the Dan Bongino show.
He violated the don't get dead rule.
Folks, If you're going to go up on a ladder, be very careful.
And the degree of careful you need to exhibit going up on a ladder, it directly corresponds to the amount of years over the age of 30. 10 years over 30, extremely careful.
20 years over 30, you better freaking be like level 100 careful.
30 years over 30, there's no reason for you to be on a ladder.
I don't care if you're starving to death.
And there is an orange hanging from a tree with a banana.
You don't go up there.
Because you're going to go up and just die anyway.
You might as well get another few minutes and starve a little slower.
There's no reason to be on the ladder.
The poor guy.
We feel bad for him.
Send your best to Producer Jim.
He will be there today.
And just so you know, I asked him for permission to use this in the beginning.
And of course, Jim is always game.
So all our best to Producer Jim.
So a quick weekend update for you.
I didn't do too much this weekend.
Folks, snapshots and soundbites.
Kids, that's all that matters in politics.
If you're going to build a political brand, a political longstanding movement, you have to get people on your team.
You have to build a narrative, a brand, a story around who you are.
This is just a hard reality of how, you know, hardcore politics works.
You have to build an image around you.
Reagan did it.
George W. tried it.
Barack Obama tried it.
Remember the Hopi Changi posters?
But I'm going to tell you something.
Nobody has the political skills in the last 30 or 40 years that Donald Trump has.
This is just some of the imagery from this past weekend.
First, here's Donald Trump, the famous Daytona 500, which I've been to, which is amazing, by the way, if you ever get a chance to go.
Here's Donald Trump, as you can see.
Flying over with Air Force One.
This is just, again, the snapshots of this are just, they become iconic quickly.
You've got a crowd of Donald Trump supporters cheering as this beautiful plane that represents the United States of America and the presidency flies over.
Snapshots.
Do not underestimate this stuff.
If you do, you're making a big mistake.
One of the reasons Barack Obama had such political success on the other side of the aisle...
Is him and his team understood the whole branding exercise.
You remember that poster, the multicolored Hopi Changey poster?
Everybody remembers it.
What was that?
The answer is nobody knows, but the left loved it.
It helped build this brand.
Like, look at this guy.
He's bigger and larger than life.
Here's another one.
Donald Trump with the limo.
I give up.
Everybody calls it.
If you want to call it the beast, I'm just telling you we in the Secret Service think it's hilarious you call it the beast, but...
Oh, did she?
At the chat?
Thank you, chatsters.
But I'm just going to tell you, very rarely do I concede that I've just lost it.
So many people in the media and everywhere else just call it the beast that I don't even think it matters anymore that we think it's funny in the Secret Service.
We do.
If you ever meet an agent...
On the president's detail or on the transportation section and ask them, do you guys call it the beast?
They're going to laugh, but whatever.
Everybody seems to think it's funny, and so I give up.
I'm done with that argument.
I saw a ton of people this weekend tweeting to me, and I love you for it.
I mean it.
Dan, they're calling it the beast.
I give up.
I'm done.
It's not a fight.
It's not a fight worth fighting.
Here's one more for you.
This is Donald Trump and his incredible, unbelievable respect for our military.
Here he is exiting Marine One.
And look what he does.
If you've seen this, if you've listened on Apple and Spotify, he's stopping at the Marines there.
Heroes, Patriots, makes a point to stop.
Turns to his right.
I think he exchanges a challenge coin.
It looks like that's what he was doing right there.
The Marine goes up to the other Marine, gives him a pat on the shoulder, thanks him.
This is just who Donald Trump is, folks.
I'm not suggesting to you, by the way, that that last part...
At all, in any way, as part of a branding exercise.
That isn't.
That's genuinely who Donald Trump is.
When you talk to him one-on-one, he loves our military and police officers.
He just does.
You can't fake how he talks about them.
It's just so genuine.
But, you know, these other things like the limo and Air Force One, these are really, really smart political exercises done to build a brand around you.
Don't forget the snapshots and soundbites rule, folks.
If you forfeit that part of politics, you're making a huge mistake.
So this happened this weekend.
Have we ever, ever been so out in front of a media story?
Have we ever been as out in front as we have with the Margaret Brennan story?
This woman came out of nowhere.
Michael, wouldn't you agree?
We do this stuff for later.
He does a Vita show too.
Folks, let's be honest.
10, 12 weeks ago, 3 months ago, 4 months ago, 6 months ago, how many people really knew who Margaret Brennan was?
I mean, even if you follow the media, you're like...
Wait, isn't she the CBS anchor on the weekend or something?
But it doesn't come to mind right away.
You know, there are people we don't like in the media, but you mention the name and we instantly know who they are for all the wrong reasons.
Acosta, Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow.
Nobody goes, my gosh, who's that?
Margaret Brennan came out of nowhere.
Nobody had ever heard of this woman.
She had no, I think, significant media footprint to speak of.
She fires out of the gate, gets wrecked by Tom Homan, J.D. Vance, humiliates herself over and over again.
You would think on the weekend show, she has Marco Rubio on this weekend, that seriously, there would be some semblance of sanity, like, hey, I've had a really bad run.
It's time to kind of get back to baseline and start doing basic media work, like speaking in facts.
And what does she do?
Folks?
She drops the equivalent of a media nuclear bomb on the weekend suggesting that free speech, in other words, the ability of people to exercise their thoughts via speech without the threat of the government putting them in jail, that free speech somehow had a role in the Holocaust?
This is maybe the craziest thing.
A mainstream air quotes media person is set on the air in eons.
Check this out.
Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.
And he met with the head of a political party that has far right views and some historic ties to extreme groups.
The context of that was changing the tone of it.
And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.
No, I have to disagree with you.
Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide.
The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those.
They had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews.
There was no free speech in Nazi Germany.
There was none.
There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany.
You know, I'm sorry, we cut that off because Michael brought up such a good point.
You know what?
How do you even answer that?
I really do applaud Secretary Rubio for attempting to talk sense into what is such an insane thing to say that he must have been there.
He must have been sitting there in a chair because when you're doing these hits, sometimes you're alone in these studios.
There's no one around.
And he must be looking around at someone else like, did I hear that correctly?
How do you even answer it?
Michael said he just sort of responded like, J.D., you know, I don't really care, Margaret.
Like, what you just said is so crazy.
I have no answer for that.
Let's just move on to the next question.
Hopefully it's less crazy than what you just said.
Folks, I don't want to get into a long logic argument, but if you've ever taken a class in statistics or logic, when you're suggesting two variables are related, free speech caused the deaths in the Holocaust of millions of Jews, Big statements like that require what, fellas?
Someone in the chat, tell me.
Big statements require what?
Someone gotta get this first.
What about book burnings?
I know you guys will figure this out.
Come on, chat folks.
You guys got this.
Someone say it.
Alright.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yes!
Matthias Powerbomb.
Big evidence!
You're damn right!
I'm gonna make a big statement like, hey man, listen.
There are massive, powerful beings on Jupiter getting ready to annihilate the Earth.
You better freaking produce some big evidence to back that up, right?
Big evidence.
Receipts.
Yeah, same thing.
Big receipts.
Same.
You guys get it?
I love you guys in the chat, ladies.
You're so on the ball.
You're going to make a big statement like that.
You better produce something.
Folks, there is correlation and causation in variables.
You know, people get more colds in the winter.
They are correlated.
They're not causal.
It doesn't mean that the cold weather causes colds.
It doesn't.
Your nasal passages are just more dry and people touch them more, transmitting bacteria and viruses to their nose.
It's not the cold weather that does it.
Everybody who jumped in a cold plunge would be sick every day.
Am I really explaining this?
Is this so obscene of a statement?
Free speech?
Was one of the causes of Nazism and the Holocaust?
This is so sociopathic and insane that you wonder how there's even 30% of the culture left that even takes the media seriously anymore.
70% of people I saw in a poll don't listen to the media.
Who are the other 30%?
Folks, we are the media now.
I can't say that to you enough.
And I say it because that is a big statement, but it does have big evidence.
And big evidence is this.
This show has the biggest live stream audience in the United States by far.
When you combine us, Bannon, Charlie, Shapiro, the other right-wing shows out there, Mark Levin and others, we are the media now because we have a reputation for producing receipts.
We just do.
I said to you about three weeks ago when the lawfare started, when the Democrats started suing Donald Trump over every EO and everything he did, That the Democrats were walking into a trap.
I wasn't trying to be, you know, faux excited about it.
You know, sometimes you get kicked in the nads and you're like, that didn't hurt.
And you're dying on the ground.
You want to pretend you got one over?
That's not what I'm doing here.
The Democrats are seriously walking in a trap because of two reasons with all these lawsuits.
I hate to kind of relitigate this, but it's important because this next clip, you're going to see I was right.
The Democrats are even starting to realize they're walking in a trap.
Number one, Donald Trump is getting paid to toss, not just shake the apple cart, but toss it over.
He's paid to be president, execute, and fix the mess.
He can sit here and do this all day at no cost to you whatsoever, only a benefit, because that's what he's paid to do.
The left has to pay legal teams, lawyers.
Time, money, they have to pay every single time they sue.
So Donald Trump is suffering no loss here at all, money-wise or time-wise.
The left is taking a huge opportunity across their time.
Number two, they are going to lose a good number of these lawsuits.
And as they lose and the courts say Donald Trump can do X, Donald Trump can do G, Donald Trump can do Y, Donald Trump can do B, it is going to solidify the power of the presidency.
They are going to lose.
This clip's a little long.
It's about a minute 20. I try to keep it a minute, but the extra 20 seconds are worth your time.
This is a Democrat strategist.
And I know this guy from Fox.
He does a lot of hits on Fox.
He's a pretty strong Democrat.
He's not like one of these kind of like Carville Democrats who sometimes will...
He's a pretty strong, like, left-leaning guy.
Here is Julian Epstein on Fox telling you the same thing I told you last week.
Do not panic over these lawsuits.
The Democrats are walking right in a trap on this.
Check this out. - There is no constitutional crisis, and President Trump made it clear that he'll abide by whatever court decisions come down.
So there is no constitutional crisis, and moreover, Trump is likely to win on all the major issues.
Trump, as the chief executive of the executive branch, has the right to go in and audit and access payments, and he has his right to have his designee do that in Elon Musk.
So the access to the payment systems is perfectly constitutional.
He has the right to rescind or to slow down federal payments so long as they are not earmarked.
He has the right to do workforce reductions within limits.
Now, there may be challenges on second-order issues.
Imagine a judge saying that if Musk gets access to payment systems, he has to ensure that privacy information isn't leaked to the public.
That's perfectly reasonable.
I can see there being issues relating to lower-level civil service employees in terms of what protections they may have through the Merit Systems Protection Board.
But these are secondary issues.
issues, for the most part, Trump has all of the authority he is going to need.
And to the extent that some of these issues have not been decided and go to the Supreme Court, you're going to see happen exactly what happened in the ballot access, Trump's ballot issue in Colorado and the immunity decisions, which are the Supreme Court has made it very, very clear that they do not regard the which are the Supreme Court has made it very, very clear that they do not regard the bureaucratic Again, why are we the media now?
Because this show, you, all of us together.
I'm reading you.
I mean, I read your chats.
The reason we decided to go live, remember, we weren't live, what, a year ago, a year and a half we've been doing this?
We were never live.
We used to record the show at 9 in the morning and then launch it two hours later.
I decided to go live because I wanted to make this more of a symmetric atmosphere where you guys can talk to me, I can read your stuff.
When I said that, a lot of you got it.
I read the chat that they are walking in a legal trap that they've set for themselves.
They're actually empowering the Trump presidency.
Now listen to me, listen to me as your brother in this MAGA fight.
I understand it's frustrating, I get it.
And we are going to lose some.
You are going to get federal judges out there acting as politicians, appointed by liberals, who just make up the law.
It's going to happen.
And you're going to see it even at the appellate level.
Heck, you may even see a few of them at the Supreme Court dropping an L. The point is...
If they sue 100 times and we win 90, we can go back for the other 10 later.
They are setting themselves up for a major trap.
And folks, the Rock'em Sock'em Robots presidency is just not stopping.
Usually when I put out the political playbook early email, I'll give you kind of a piece from it.
The headline alone, though, this morning.
I'm going to read it to you and I'm going to take a quick break.
I'm going to tell you why this is so important.
Another thing that's happening where I believe the left walked themselves into a cancel culture trap and Donald Trump, put up that headline if you would, even playbook this morning, left-wing political playbook is starting to acknowledge again how Trump is canceling cancel culture.
I want you to think, folks in the chat, get ahead of this.
I want you to think, here's where I'm going to go with this.
Remember the dancing man video?
The guy who gets up and dances, everybody's laughing at him like he's crazy, and then the other person gets up and dances with him, and then the whole crowd is dancing?
I want you to think about how that ties to this.
How Donald Trump is just, almost in a month or two, just totally obliterated cancel culture.
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All right, back to the show.
Here's what I'm talking about with this Politico playbook headline.
Folks, Donald Trump has hit them with so much stuff so fast.
Again, I don't care what you call it.
Rock'em, sock'em, robots.
Flood the zone.
It doesn't matter.
He has taken my advice and the advice of many others.
I'm not the only one.
Where we said to him before the election, remember, you guys were here.
If you win, you've got about 100 days.
Where you can push through dramatic change of the government before the left gets their sea legs.
They didn't need it from me.
They already knew from 2016. But it is working.
And one of the things he's done is he has largely ignored media criticisms of people.
The political playbook thing this morning, the gist of it, is Donald Trump has appointed a bunch of change agents.
You know, some of them in the past because they were Loud or passionate or really hardcore conservatives.
The media would have went after him and said, oh my gosh, this guy's controversial.
They're not, but the media would have made it up.
And past Republicans would have let them go.
Playbook mentions a few names of people you may know or you may not.
He's like, Donald Trump's take was, we like this guy.
He's a conservative.
He's a MAGA guy.
He's a patriot.
You know, maybe they made mistakes in the past.
Maybe they didn't.
But we're not letting them go no matter what.
They are not letting the administration Mike Flynn people this time, General Flynn, they're not letting it happen.
And what's starting to happen is the media is realizing that the more time they waste on one person, like, oh my gosh, we're going to get rid of Pete Hegseth.
Well, that didn't happen.
Now we've got to move on to RFK. Well, that didn't happen.
Now we're going to move on to Tulsi.
That Donald Trump is not going to fold.
And as each person gets up and dances, Pete, Bobby Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Kash Patel, hopefully this week.
What's happening is you're now becoming the minority because there's no one left sitting down laughing at the person dancing.
They were all dancing with you.
You saw it this weekend at Daytona.
Let me tie it back to the beginning of the show.
Republican presidents in the past really weren't that popular, folks.
Let's be honest.
Maybe Reagan was, but, you know, George W., even candidates like Romney, even McCain, they get booed at big pop culture events like this.
Not now.
Donald Trump has everybody dancing with him, and the left has become castrated.
They just don't have any narrative-enforcing powers anymore because they've lost the power of snapshots and soundbites.
Why?
I played to you Margaret Brennan in the beginning.
I mean, just a tragically stupid clip.
Her even implying that free speech has anything to do with the Holocaust is so obscene of a statement.
And to watch the media, CBS, Embarrass themselves with people like Margaret Brennan on the air.
I'm not suggesting anybody get fired.
I don't care, folks.
Boycott, don't boycott.
It's up to you.
I don't care.
This stuff actually makes for great show content to show you what not to do.
CBS, it didn't end there.
I'm sitting there last night.
We had a really long weekend.
I had taken my daughter to her party.
I didn't get into a weekend update because, you know, it was just a pretty good birthday party.
You know who I ran into, by the way?
This is so crazy.
I'm sorry to me to get off track, guys.
I took my daughter.
It was not to Disney.
I don't go to Disney, but it was to a different park.
And I'm in the park, and I've got my daughter and her friends.
So it's me and my wife watching basically seven 13-year-olds.
I hear Bongino.
And I think it's, I don't know, someone who watches the show will watch Fox.
We had a lot of supporters there.
I said hello.
It was Vivek Ramaswamy.
I'm like, what the hell are the chances I run into you right here?
But I was tired this weekend because it was a long day.
It was like a three-hour ride, coming back and forth.
So I'm sitting upstairs in my little TV room thing, whatever, with Paula, and I'm watching 61 Minutes last night.
And this segment, folks, I'm really stunned at what I'm watching.
So you got Margaret Brennan attacking free speech on CBS in the morning.
And in the night, CBS runs a segment on 61 Minutes.
This actually happened.
Where they do a ride-along with the German police.
This is...
Even Guy's like, this is why.
They do a ride-along with the German police who are going out to arrest people for...
Orwellian wrong think speech because they said something people don't like on social media.
No!
Yes!
This actually happened and CBS is like proud of it!
Check this out.
Is it a crime to insult somebody in public?
Yes.
And it's a crime to insult them online as well?
Yes.
The fine could be even higher if you insult someone in the internet.
Why?
Because in Internet, it stays there.
If we are talking face-to-face, you insult me, insult you, okay, finish.
But in the Internet, if I insult you or a politician...
That sticks around forever.
Yeah.
The prosecutors explain German law also prohibits the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats, and fake quotes.
If somebody posts something that's not true, and then somebody else reposts it or likes it, are they committing a crime?
In the case of reposting, it is a crime as well, because the reader can't distinguish whether you just invented this or just reposted it.
That's the same for us.
The punishment for breaking hate speech laws can include jail time for repeat offenders.
This is unbelievable!
This actually happened!
The media in the United States is the one specific entity.
In the Bill of Rights mentioned that has its own particular carve-out.
Freedom of the press is specifically mentioned.
And yet, they take this freedom to run a segment earlier in the day about how free speech may have had some role in the Holocaust.
And a segment at night...
Celebrating that the media and their government benefactors now get to determine what the truth is.
And if you're on the wrong side of the truth, you're going to go to jail.
And CBS, by implication here, thinks this is somehow some beneficial thing you need to hear about instead of to condemn it?
Folks, Bongino Army in the chat.
What's the problem?
With a government media interpretation of the truth.
Any ideas?
Folks, the government is typically, yes, you guys are right there.
The government is typically on the wrong side of the truth.
You remember what happened with COVID? Did CBS forget all this?
Governments and world bureaucracies like the WHO, you know, the COVID didn't leak from the lab.
You mean the COVID lab?
Yes.
Censorship?
Yeah.
Exactly.
Folks, it is totally, completely out of line and out of bounds for the government to declare what the truth is on matters where, one, the facts aren't all in, the Bongino rule, and where the truth is a subjective opinion.
How many people told us it was the truth that the vaccine was going to prevent COVID? You know how many people may have died because of the government truth that vaccines prevent the spread of COVID? You know how many people who were immunocompromised may have wore a mask, got vaccinated, went out, caught COVID and died because they believed the government?
You notice how the government doesn't go to jail for lying to you.
You only go to jail for stating an opinion the government doesn't like.
CBS should be embarrassed.
Folks, we are in a dark, dark time.
The good news is Donald Trump has got a flashlight and we're getting out.
It's slow.
It's not going to happen overnight.
But they've got to continue with this flood the zone, rock'em, sock'em robot strategy.
Do not let them get their sea legs.
Because you see what happens when they do.
You get German anti-free speech laws.
What could possibly go wrong?
Alright, I warned you about this, folks.
I warned you about this a couple weeks ago.
Again, receipts incoming.
This is the receipt show.
I warned you about how the doge, once it started digging in, Elon and President Trump's doge, once it started digging in to significant spending cuts, because there's a massive amount of waste that people were going to start to object from the Republican side to.
Who was right?
This guy.
Receipts incoming.
Stay tuned.
Last break.
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Back to the show.
I warned you about this last week.
Folks, please, I need you to pay really close attention to me right now.
I know you do.
Sorry, I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but I've been warning you for a while now.
That the swamp is not just Democrats.
It is.
I know you know that, but there are a lot of swampy Republicans as well.
And they're motivated by the retention of power.
You've got a congressional seat or a Senate seat.
Your motivation often, not all the time, there's some good guys out there who've taken principled stands.
Your motivation is stay in power first, do the right thing second.
When you're a statesman and not a politician, your role is, you know, it's the opposite.
Do the right thing first, stay in power second.
I told you that once the Doge started digging into this massive pile of government waste we have out there, that there were going to be even Republicans who object.
It's happening already.
Eric Daughtry on Twitter.
Doge officials are expected to arrive at the Pentagon as soon as today.
This was last week.
DOD is preparing for spending cuts, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Wait, keep that up there.
What did I tell you was going to happen once they got into the Pentagon?
Folks, weapons systems in specific districts, even if they don't work and don't contribute to our military lethality and readiness, people are going to protect them because, hey, it's in my district.
That's not a statesman decision.
That's a parochial decision.
And they quote from the Daugherty tweet.
Some parts of the military are preparing lists of weapons they've long wanted to cancel, but couldn't get past lawmakers seeking to protect spending in their districts.
What did I tell you?
A decade plus in the government, I learned this the hard way.
Do you have any idea how many times I asked in my prior line of work as an agent, why the hell are we putting in our man hours into a database system from like the 70s or 80s?
There's no better way to do this.
Do you have any idea how many protection agents on the president's detail wasted hours upon hours a year away from protection or training?
It could be that manually inputting hours into a thing that had already been inputted by a supervisor on a schedule?
He's like, I believe it.
This is how the government prides itself on inefficiency.
But this is the kicker.
That doesn't surprise you that I did that.
I've told Guy and the guys the story.
The reason they didn't get rid of the old system that was told to me many times was because they didn't want to basically hurt the feelings of the guy who invented the system.
This is insane!
Folks, if you work for the federal government, your intention should be to be a statesman first and everything else second.
I'm begging you to get on your lawmakers now and say just this.
I wrote it down because I didn't want to miss this.
Folks, everyone is going to sacrifice something if we are going to save the republic.
There is a bright, bright future.
Listen, I have never been more excited about the future of this republic, ever.
You've got quantum physics.
You've got AI, material sciences.
You've got CRISPR-based technologies.
You've got medical breakthroughs coming.
Folks, they were looking at thousands of different prosperity-enhancing technology breakthroughs probably in the next decade.
The possibilities for the United States are endless.
However, there is going to be some short-term sacrifice.
If you are a member of Congress or elsewhere and you're planning on getting in the way of a military weapons system nobody wants but you want it because it's helping you get re-elected, That is not a statesman thing to do.
I need you to reach out and say, Congressman, Congresswoman, listen, we need you on board, fully on board with this.
The SALT deduction, state and local taxes deduction, you know, blue state Republicans are going to want that too.
You can't have the whole thing.
There's going to be all kinds of tax carve-outs for businesses that are going to go away.
Some of them may negatively impact my business.
That's okay.
For a freer, fairer tax code, I accept your conditions.
Deductions.
There are going to be programs that are going to go away.
There are going to be jobs that disappear.
We've got to adjust.
Here's Schellenberger on a similar topic here.
Michael Schellenberger on Twitter.
Democrats think attacking Trump for shrinking the government is good politics.
It's not.
Most people say the government has too much power, and now research finds that every swing voter, they did a poll in Arizona, Every swing voter approves of Trump's actions and support Musk's efforts to slash government.
Just send this information over to your lawmaker and tell them we're behind you.
Listen, I know it hurts, but we can't always be the stick.
We've got to be the carrot sometimes, too.
You want big government change?
It's going to require big courage.
And a lot of these lawmakers, they just don't have it.
Folks, I'm telling you, the $7 trillion government budget, you can probably chalk up.
10-20% of it to fraud, unnecessary government actions, unnecessary weapons programs.
Here's Caroline Leavitt in the White House press room.
She's done an amazing job in just a month there.
Talking about massive fraud, potentially in the trillions, in our entitlement programs between Social Security, people getting it who aren't entitled to it, pun intended, Medicaid, Medicare.
Trillions of dollars in potential fraud there.
The Democrats don't want you to see any of this because every dollar of government spending is good spending them.
Check this out.
Just for a second.
Earlier, the subcommittee headed by Chairman Marjorie Taylor Greene, her and her staff discovered $2.7 trillion in improper payments.
Medicare, Medicaid, overseas to people who should not have gotten it.
Some of this room might have missed that press conference.
Can you elaborate on what the president is thinking at this point?
Well, again, that's another example.
There's a very long list of the fraud, waste and abuse that Doge is identifying on a daily basis.
Elon Musk also talked about yesterday about Social Security payments that are going out the door for people who are no longer with us.
Unfortunately, I would say that is certainly a fraud.
Folks, there are massive amounts of fraud.
I'm playing the Bongino rule to a lot of this because there's going to be some things that look like fraud that aren't because government databases are so poorly kept.
But there's going to be other massive instances of fraud in these programs.
Ladies and gentlemen, the government doesn't have any real incentive to clean up its payment system.
It's Milton Friedman's fourth way to spend money.
The worst way to spend money is the fourth way.
You have tons of it.
You can spend your own money on yourself.
You can spend your own money on other people.
Other people can spend other people's money on themselves.
And the worst way, number four, other people can spend other people's money on other people.
If it's other people's money, you don't care about the cost.
If you're spending it on other people, you don't care about the quality because you're not even buying anything for yourself.
In any program that runs by those By that particular logic skeleton, there's no way you're not going to get massive amounts of fraud.
Now, I'm begging the Republican senators and congressmen who know this, if you do not shrink government now while we have the political momentum in Capitol and the snapshots and the soundbites and this bull in a china shop in the White House, if you don't do it now, we are never going to do it.
And you are going to have walked us from a de facto to a de jure bankruptcy, and I'm not having it.
Here's my last thought on this topic from Kim Strassel.
I got a lot more show for you today, including Rachel Maddow, promoting another hoax, folks.
I mean, this woman's record of factual inaccuracies is just incredible.
But Kim Strassel wrote a great piece in the Wall Street Journal, the GOP's Doge Test.
Remember, Democrats will defend any amount of government spending.
It's the Republicans I'm worried about.
She notes it's already happening.
She's like, the suspects are already mobilizing to protect their home state pork from doge.
Republican senators are balking at the administration's decision to cap the overhead dollars attached to research grants that go to their universities.
Farm state Republicans are trying to shelter an international food aid program that keeps their constituents in cash by moving it from now-hated USAID to the Agriculture Department.
It goes on and on, folks.
She's got a really long article about this entire thing.
It's happening here now.
It is time for you to get on the phone, get on the email with them and say, listen, this is the time to do it.
Everyone is going to take a little bit of a shot on the chin, folks.
Everyone.
I am not immune from this.
I'm sure a reform of the tax code, which is necessary, could have a negative implication on me.
I don't know.
I'm telling you I'm all in and I'm not going to be a fraud.
Everybody's got to get all in, folks.
We're not going to save this place by protecting only our parochial interests.
As I started the show with today, too, I told you, do not fall prey for the massive media propaganda machine.
I hate to have to tell you this, but after opening the show with Margaret Brennan CBS in 60 Minutes, appearing to defend the war on free speech despite a specific carve-out in the Constitution for media, Folks, they lie to you about almost everything.
We are scrutinized endlessly about every little data point we put out on the show by an army of fake fact-checkers out there.
The left can say whatever they want.
It's incredible to me that a hoax artist like Rachel Maddow honestly is still on the air.
I don't care about boycotts.
I don't want her to get fired.
I don't care.
It's not my business.
Evita and my other show.
Oh, did I just say the other show?
What?
The other show.
I care about what they...
I care...
If you're missing this on Apple and Spotify.
I care about my stuff.
You want to watch Rachel Maddow, fine.
Do your thing.
I'm asking you a simple question to the libs out there.
How many times is this lady...
Going to fudge the numbers and make up a story about Donald Trump before you're like, you know what?
I don't like Donald Trump, but I'd rather not be made a fool of.
Here she goes again.
Happened this weekend.
The Elon-armored Tesla hoax.
It's not a hoax that the government ordered armored Teslas.
However, Jesse Waters, listen at the end of this.
There's a little wrinkle to the story she tries to tag Donald Trump and Elon with.
It's actually a big wrinkle.
Check this out.
Elon Musk has apparently somehow convinced the United States government, specifically the United States Department of State, that the taxpayers of the United States of America should spend $400 million buying, quote, armored Tesla production units.
Isn't it great and definitely not at all illegal or profoundly corrupt?
Definitely not ripping us all off to pay themselves, right?
That contract to Elon Musk.
Joe Biden gave it to him.
How many times are you going to let these people lie to you?
Folks, edutainment.
How many times have you got to say it?
Hat Tip Boogie Down Productions, okay?
This show is supposed to be educational, but I want it to be entertaining.
This is the educational part.
I am not going to let you go to a weekend barbecue with your friends and some liberal shows up and goes...
Man, they're double-dealing on the inside.
Elon's getting rich off this.
I mean, he got $400 million for armored Teslas from Trump.
That was a Biden deal!
Moron!
Matter of fact, Elon Musk and Donald Trump and the Doge are looking at cutting Inflation Production Act subsidies for electronic charging stations around the country because they're not working, which would impact negatively.
Who?
The judges ruled one Elon Musk.
Does he have a middle name like Elon J. Musk?
I don't know.
Can you look that up?
He said everything Elon Musk is doing could potentially hurt him.
What is it?
Is it Reed?
No way.
Elon R. Musk.
Everything they're doing is practically hurting him.
Elon Musk benefits from a bigger government.
That can engage in crony capitalism.
Why would you engage in a product that crushed crony capitalism?
Elon Reeve Musk.
There you go.
I didn't even know that.
See, we learn something new every day.
I just educated.
These guys just educated me.
The program was started under Biden, not Elon.
Folks, don't ever facts get in the way if you're a leftist of your stupid arguments.
You acting as well like Donald Trump has no authority to control payouts the United States government makes within the executive branch is like suggesting a CEO has no authority to fire people within Ford Motor Company.
Can you imagine?
I give this example all the time.
Is this the argument you're making, leftist?
Donald Trump can't fire, hire, pay or not pay anyone in the executive branch.
Is that the argument you're going with?
So just to be clear.
We find out someone within the United States government has been stealing money and fraudulently paying out money to political cronies.
You're telling me Donald Trump has to continue to pay this person in perpetuity and allocate the funds?
Is that what you're telling me?
You guys are going to get this if I give you a winky winky nod nod.
I see it on the screen like...
This is Donald Trump here making the argument.
Jim, you too.
Here's...
Donald Trump making the argument that, you know, he has the power to make government more efficient and hire and fire people and determine if this government wastes fraud and abuse and combat it.
This is Donald Trump.
This is what the left objected to.
Play that cut.
One of the commitments that I made to the American people was that we would do a better job here in Washington in rooting out wasteful spending.
We don't need to wait for Congress in order to do something about wasteful spending that's out there.
Cutting waste, making government more efficient is something that leaders in both parties have worked on.
We haven't seen as much action out of Congress as we'd like.
And that's why we launched on our own initiative.
That's Donald Trump.
that's a That's Barack Obama.
It sounds like he's saying the exact same thing Trump did.
The difference is, I'm going to tell you for one of the few times, Barack Obama is actually correct.
The President of the United States does clearly have the power in the executive branch to weed out waste, fraud, government abuse, criminality, corruption.
He absolutely, you guys okay over there?
He absolutely has that power.
I think he was knocked over the desk.
He has that power.
Now, the government doesn't have the power within the executive branch.
Barack Obama, Donald Trump, George Bush, whoever it is, doesn't have the power to go over to Congress and demand they fire a bunch of staffers.
Because they don't like their politics.
But clearly they can manage the executive branch.
You see why it's so easy to be a conservative?
When you're consistent, Obama's right.
He had the power to do that.
He's saying the same thing Trump said.
The left, if we could have AI'd that and made that Donald Trump saying those exact same words, that's what I should have done.
I guarantee you the leftists in the chat, there's always a couple in there trolling.
Would have been like, oh my gosh, this guy's Hitler.
He's like a Nazi or something like that.
You know, free speech played a role in the Holocaust or some crazy thing, right?
It's Obama saying the same thing and the left celebrated.
You remember Bill Clinton when he got elected?
He made Al Gore in charge of this government efficiency task force.
Was that unconstitutional too?
Folks, the reason they're objecting to all of this is because their gravy train is drying up.
Donald Trump has every authority under the Constitution to stop taxpayer dollars, to go to pay for potential criminality.
That's why you get meltdowns like this from Letitia James up in New York, the Attorney General in name only, who has become an absolute tyrant.
Citizens of New York, you need to move on.
This woman is big trouble for your state.
A good portion of your problems with public safety are ironically being caused.
By your attorney general there, who is an absolute nightmare.
Here she is melting down and losing her mind because she wants Donald Trump to pay your taxpayer dollars to support actual breaking of the law via illegal immigration.
And she's going to make, what, a constitutional argument over it?
This is insane.
Check this out.
Payments to the state of New York and to states all across this nation.
It is unacceptable, unconstitutional.
Ultra-vias.
They've exceeded their authority.
And so it's important that Attorneys General, representing our respective states, stand up and enforce the rule of law.
Because Elon Musk, individuals at the Treasury, and the President of these United States is not above the law.
Hat tip, Colin Rugg, we got that off his ex-account, that specific video.
You see Donald Trump smiling in a little photo they put aside there.
You can expect these meltdowns to continue, folks.
The left has gotten used to running roughshod over the Constitution and stealing your money.
Imagine stealing money from Texans, Floridians, people from Louisiana, Wyoming, taxpayer dollars, to pay for luxury hotels for people breaking the law in the middle of New York City.
Other people spending other people's money on other people.
Why would they care?
Why would they care about the efficiency of the spending price?
They don't care about any of that stuff.
You know, I gotta show you this.
This is like the craziest thing.
We got this last week and did you guys see this?
Everybody went crazy over this thing on Friday.
Listen, I just gotta say again, I really appreciate every member of the Bongino Army more than you'll...
Ever.
No.
I mean, I can't get you into my cerebral cortex, but this managed to slip through, but this is a really nice thing, and it's the kind of thing, don't send stuff because it winds up getting lost, and I feel really bad.
This managed to make it through only because the guy at the old address dropped it off for us, but this is the FAFO pocket knife.
You're like, damn, that's an awfully big knife.
Well, it's wood, but it was...
Who made this again?
Let's see this.
This is a...
Wooden knives by Black Fox.
Bongino Army, it says on there, if you see.
But this is the FAFO pocket knife.
It's wood, don't worry, it's not sharp.
Amazing.
That thing's going in the new studio, which is ready to open up.
But the FO-ing is continuing at a dramatic pace.
So much where, again, the left is having a hard time getting their sea legs.
Because the minute they try to create a big controversy over variable X, Donald Trump did this, signed an EO, pulling money from transgender school, or whatever it is.
Something else happens.
This, however, the left really melted down about over the weekend.
Folks, Friday was a packed show, so we didn't get to cover this.
But probably a month in, I can say convincingly, at least this early in the presidency, I haven't seen a better vice president than J.D. Vance.
I mean, the guy walks the part, talks the part.
I mean, everything about this guy is just spectacular.
J.D. Vance went to the Munich Security Conference, and Europe needed a talking to, folks.
You know, if we're going to support international institutions, and that's your take, the level of support we can argue about, you know where I stand on this, but if we are going to support these global institutions like NATO, and that's your position, and we're going to defend the freedom of the European Union, Then the European Union better damn well start than defending freedom itself.
This took a lot of balls to do this.
Vice President J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference in front of a room of supposed allies saying, hey, listen, bro, you better start supporting free speech and other stuff or we're not going to be the world's cop anymore.
Needed to be said.
Check this out.
And expressing opinions isn't election interference.
Even when people express views outside your own country and even when those people are very influential.
And trust me, I say this with all humor.
If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.
But what German democracy...
What no democracy, American, German, or European will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.
Gosh, that needed to be said.
Folks, whereas in the past under a different administration, whether it was Obama, whether it was Biden, whether it was frankly George W. or even H.W. or Reagan, there would be, well, Reagan, maybe not so much Reagan, but there would be this sense of we got to give more of a diplomatic spin to this and not say it as it is, but as it should be.
The Trump-Vance administration is just going to talk in realpolitik terms.
You know, when they said during the speech there's a new sheriff in town, they're not kidding.
They're not kidding.
There is a fire going on.
There is a torching of free speech going on around the world.
And if you're going to expect us to sacrifice in blood and treasure, the defense of people, countries, and nation states that live across the ponds, then you damn well better defend it yourself.
Folks, it's gotten so bad for them that the libs are starting to eat themselves alive and own themselves.
Owning the libs is like a lifestyle choice, but there's nothing better than watching the libs own themselves.
Trump and J.D. Vance are hitting them so hard and so fast that they're responding with PR moves that are the biggest self-owns without even knowing their self-owns.
Did you see this with Sheryl Crow?
You know the singer, Sheryl Crow?
Check this out.
She's got a Tesla, so she decides it's a good idea to sell her Tesla and donate the money to NPR. Check this out, this video.
to you check it out what i find hilarious about this little snippet here from cheryl crow is they're supposed to be supporters of ev cars electric vehicle cars because they believe in like cow fart and green new deal stuff So she gets rid of the Green New Deal car.
Sells it using a capitalism mechanism.
She sells the car on the free market and then takes the proceeds she earned and then gives it to NPR, who then will hopefully not need taxpayer money because she can support herself.
She doesn't realize she's making the exact argument that she thinks she's making.
NPR should be supported by the free market.
Who knows?
Maybe they can find a capitalist way to do it.
Maybe everybody sells their cars and donates their money to NPR because they like the product.
Whatever if you're a lefty.
And then she takes an EV car she's supposed to support, puts it back on the market, gets rid of it.
What's she going to do, buy a gas car now?
I thought they were big cow-farting Green New Deal people.
There is nothing better than this guy with snapshots and soundbites keeping everybody so off-kilter that they self-own themselves and think it's a big W posting it to the interwebs.
Just genius.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in on this President's Day.
It's good to be here with you.
A little smaller crowd, probably vacation day and stuff.
I guess a lot of people probably not at work today, but I hope you enjoy yourself on this day, on President's Day.
Have a good time.
Everybody wish producer Jim the best.
He's at JJ Verdi on X and True Social, JJ, V-E-R-D-I. He really needs it.
He took a beating this weekend, and we don't want him to get dead.
That's the number one rule of the Bongino Show.
Love you guys.
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And subscribe to the Dan Bongino Show.
Rumble.com slash Bongino.
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Thanks so much, folks.
I'll see you back here tomorrow at 11 a.m.
in a radio show here in just a few minutes.
See you then.
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