The Dan Bongino Show - Ep 487 The Media is Misreading Voters, and the Data

Episode Date: June 22, 2017

In this episode I address the media's failure to analyze the mood of the Trump voter and their selective use of data.   I also discuss voter ID and the Left's misleading use of statistics to make spurious claims.  https://www.google.com/amp/amp.nationalreview.com/article/448765/hillary-clinton-wisconsin-voter-suppression-claim-dubious-excuse-flawed-campaign   Finally, I address the unnecessary secrecy behind the Obamacare replacement bill.      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dan Bongino. They've been tweeting to me, Bongino's a nut, Bongino's a blanker, blanker. The Dan Bongino Show. Everywhere big government gets bigger, corruption grows bigger, and these liberals just keep going on and on and on about how great big government is, and they can't prove to you any examples of how wonderful big government is almost anywhere. Get ready to hear the truth about America. Young kids, you are too stupid to

figure out your health insurance needs, so we're gonna hammer your cabooses to death until you figure out that the government knows what's best and you're an idiot. On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino. All right, welcome to the Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino. Producer Joe, how are you today? Doing well, man. All ready to go, brother. Yeah, a lot to talk about today. So I just wanted to hit a couple quick things here. You know, this constant focus, I think the media is actually electing Republicans in these special elections, whether they know it or not, making these things a referendum on Trump and totally not understanding that they are not referendums on Trump. They are individual congressional races between Republicans and Democrats,

making it a referendum on Trump. Trump makes it a race between the media and Trump, which Trump has shown an ability to win over and over again. So I covered that on a Facebook Live today. I'm going to hit that briefly, and I want to get to a couple other stories as well, including a really dangerous phenomenon I'm seeing going on right now, dangerous to the Republic. I don't mean physically dangerous, but this negotiation and secret stuff we're seeing,

whether it's Obamacare for Republicans, whether it was Obamacare for Democrats when they started it, this is not good. This is bad stuff, folks. But I want to get to that, and I want to tell you why that's happening and why it's not the Republicans' fault. It's their fault they're doing it now, but it's not their fault it started. I'm not trying to cover for them. I just don't want to get to that, too, because it's a really dangerous development. All right.

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congressional races, like the Georgia 6th special election, which we saw the other day where the Republicans prevailed, looks like it's now going to be a victory by four points. The mistake I think the media is making is they're assuming that Trump is unpopular, but they're assuming that amongst all the wrong people. And here's what I mean by this. So let me just reset the argument here. These are congressional races, ladies and gentlemen. Frankly, a lot of the people running in these races have very little to do with Trump other than the fact that they're running as Republicans and there's an opponent running as a Democrat. Make sense, Joe?

They're not. Yeah. Some of them are running with Trump. Some of them are running and not running against Trump, but they're not really saying much about Trump. Some of them have different ideas than Trump, but the media is obsessed with, quote, sending a message to Trump. So when you see the CNNs and MSNBCs and NBC News,

you know, the mainstream media, which are hopelessly biased to the left, in their obsession to hurt Trump, they keep saying, this congressional race, if the Republican loses, it's a message to Trump. The problem is,

the public's not playing along because the Democrats keep losing. They're 0 for 5 now in these races. That's zero wins for five losses for Democrats. Okay. The Republicans keep winning. So now, yes, the margins have been slimmer than Republicans have performed historically in these districts.

But here's what I think is going on. You know, for those of you who are regular listeners to this program, you know my story about when I ran for Congress last time and how Joe and I predicted the Trump victory when nobody, very few people were. I mean, Chris Silliza from the Washington Post had Trump's chances of winning at zero. I still have a screenshot of the Washington Post headline. And, you know, listen, I'm not the Carnac guy, the magic predictor of the future. Or was it Zoltar from the movie Big? Was it Zoltar or whatever?

But one of the things I noticed when I was running for Congress, knocking on doors, and it's critical you understand this out there, is that I would knock on the doors. I was running in a Republican primary in Florida. So when you're running in a Republican primary to win Republican votes in a really competitive primary, you knock on Republican doors. You don't knock on Democrat doors in the primary. It makes no sense tactically at all. Why? Because Democrats can't vote in a Republican primary in Florida. In the general election, you knock on Democrat doors,

try to change some minds. You don't do that in a primary, not if you want to win. So I noticed that I was given a walk list of Republican voters. And when you pay for data when you're running for office, this is how this works. You'll get a whatever you use, Voter Gravity or whatever company out there. There's tons of companies that do this. They will aggregate for you basically on a Google Maps type thing, a walk list. It's really cool.

You pull it up. You click on a house address. It tells you the name. It tells you how often they vote. It obviously doesn't tell you who they voted for. It's a secret ballot system. But it tells you how often they voted. It obviously doesn't tell you who they voted for. It's a secret ballot system, but it tells you how often they vote. So you could be reasonably assured, Joe, if when you click on that house in a Google Maps type program and you're a congressional candidate and it says whatever, 2020 Mockingbird Lane, right?

And it says Joey Bag of Donuts and Melissa Bag of Donuts live in there and they voted in the last four primaries and the last four generals and they're registered Republicans. You could be relatively confident these are pretty diehard Republicans. Point of the story, I would be checking on the list and I'd see a Trump sign in a driveway and I'd be like, wow, gosh, why aren't they on the list? There's got to be a mistake. And I would look and they would be, so say a Republican, you had a voter score and it was like one to 12. Say a 12 was someone who never misses an election no matter what, like a nuclear explosion couldn't keep them away from an election, right? Those are the people, Joe, you want to knock on their doors because they're guaranteed voters, right?

Right, yeah. The reason a lot of these people weren't showing up on my list that had Trump signs in their driveway and on their lawn is they were like R1s. In other words, they voted like once in the last 30 years, if at all. And I thought, you know what? I don't want to keep wasting time because the way the district was set up in Florida in Cape Coral and Naples in that area, there's a lot of canals in Cape Coral. So it was very difficult to drive the route because of the, I mean, to walk the route

because every time you'd reach a corner, be a cul-de-sac, there'd be a canal. I'm not swimming to the other side of the street. So you'd have to get back in the car. In contrast to where I ran in Maryland, where you go in an HOA development, you could just walk a big circle. So I didn't want to keep passing the houses up. You see what I'm saying, Joe? It didn't make sense. You're in a cul-de-sac, you're stuck there, you can't swim across. Might as well just knock on the damn door with the Trump sign there and stop wasting time. So I spoke to tons of these people. And forgive me if I'm repeating this, but it's a really critical point. And after speaking to probably two or three hundred of these Trump sign voters, we'll call them, that were not regular voters,

I realized they're not Republicans. They're registering Republicans to vote for Trump. They're not voting for Trump to vote for the Republican Party. They're they're registering Republican only to vote for Trump. They're not voting for Trump to vote for the Republican Party. They're registering Republican only to vote for Trump. Folks, if Trump ran as a a Whig W-H-I-G, the way you know the Whigs

the now defunct party. If Trump ran as a Whig, they would register in the Whig Party. If he ran as a Libertarian, they would vote Libertarian. They are not traditional Republicans. Therefore, a couple of things. They're not turning up,

I think, in the polling data. Remember the polling data, Joe, had John Ossoff, the Democrat congressional candidate in Georgia, up by seven. And me and you were, we sat on the show, go back and listen, we were very skeptical. I was like, guys, take it easy with these polls, okay? He wound up winning by four. So the poll was, excuse me, losing by four.

So the poll was way off. It was off by 11 points when you think about it. He was supposed to be up by seven. He lost by four. So that's a pretty dramatic swing. I had warned you. I'm like, listen, be careful with these polls. These people aren't showing up in the polls.

I said this. They're not showing up in focus group data because they're not the people in the data sets that all of the political operatives in D.C. are buying, Joseph. They're all buying the same data. Do you get what I'm saying? Like, if you go to say, I think I used voter gravity and I forget what we use a second timer.

Say there are a hundred companies that do this, folks, that put out data sets of voters, walk lists, mailing lists, candidates buy them. So if I, I'm not running again, let me be crystal clear. But if I were to, I'm not, but to play for a second the game. You go to these companies and say you want to send out an issue mailer. You go to one of these companies and you say, I want to send an issue mailer out on Social Security. They will take the data set and they will say, well, it'd probably be better to get people 65 or older who are Republicans. And here are the addresses. And here's how we find.

Make sense, Joe? Yeah. But understand this, ladies and gentlemen. It's the same data. we find it makes sense joe yeah but understand this ladies and gentlemen it's the same data the only difference between the hundred companies i'm asking to buy the data set from is how they massage it they use different types of voter scores but it's not like they're all accessing some different stuff it's the same stuff some of them may have access to magazine subscriptions and a couple other things but it's the same data. It's just how they aggregate it and massage it. So the point I'm trying to make that I make over and over again

on this show, whenever I discuss things like big data, how big data can lead to big mistakes. And I've always used the Bertrand Russell turkey problem. How all the turkeys on the farm, they're born and they're all going to be slaughtered a year in, but they don't know it. So say these turkeys on the farm can access the internet, have access to big data. And every day they're putting in data about their life on the farm. These turkeys are like, this is the greatest place ever. Day two, day three, day four, this farmer comes out every morning. He feeds us. He chases off the wolves. It's nice and warm in here. This is the greatest place on earth. They're sending emails. By day 360, Joe, these emails are spread around

the world. All the turkeys are coming into the farm going, hey, can we get a spot? Yeah. Until day 365, and all their heads come off, and they're all dead. You see how the big data, the data wasn't lying, Joe. Right. At day 364, the data was

absolutely correct. Far jones is feeding every one of them providing warm providing food providing safety the problem is the big data if it didn't spread around a hundred thousand turkeys wouldn't have been wiped out maybe 20 would have if only 20 lived on the farm the problem is you know 99000 more commuted over the farm based on a data set that was incomplete. And if you don't factor in the incompleteness of that, then what do you do? It leads to big catastrophic errors. The problem we had in the housing market. When due to big data and the ability of companies to see what other companies were doing that was not there in the past, you know, with community banking, Joe, 100 years ago, loans were made locally.

You weren't talking to a bank in China about what it was doing with real estate. There wasn't a Chinese real estate market 100 years ago. But banks were talking because of the growth of internet technology, data sharing, quants, people who analyze data. And they were all saying, well, Chase is investing in housing. Housing's got to be a good bet. And then the government was subsidizing it. And Wells Fargo and all these other people were issuing mortgages.

So what happened, Joe? They all said, well, Bobby's doing it, so we should do it. And it created this circular spiral where all the turkeys started piling onto the farm. But the data set wasn't complete. The data set wasn't complete the data set wasn't complete because once you had a minor blip in the housing market and sales started to go down which they never thought would happen and demand started to dry up a little bit and oversupply kicked in the whole housing market was wiped out none of this would have happened if it wasn't for the international and basically

global exchange of data. Now, how the heck does this relate to what I'm talking about with Trump? This is what's happening with Trump right now. You're having big data groupthink. They're using the same data sets on voters that are not taking into account voters that just voted for Trump for the first time. If you would let the data set be complete and you would acknowledge the faults in it now granted the data set wouldn't have worked pre-election i mean in other words when i say data set complete over a few cycles if these people continue to vote joe they will become part of the big data set

they're not now so but they don't acknowledge that in the data you know they'll give you an error rate oh it could be plus or minus three or four. But what I'm saying is, obviously, the data's wrong. Nate Silver, who's a pretty popular and famous pollster, even acknowledged it. Before the Georgia 6 race, he said there's a 70% chance that the Democrat candidate, Ossoff, is going to win and a 30% chance that big data and math is all wrong. You're all wrong. It's not that the data is wrong.

It's that the analysis of the data is wrong. In other words, you are polling people who are saying they won't vote for Trump. It's just the wrong people. There's a whole bunch of people you're not polling because they don't appear because they have a yard sign. They've never voted. They're not in your data set and you're not polling because they don't appear because they have a yard sign. They've never voted. They're not in your data set. And you're all using the same data set.

Now, the mistake they're making. Does that make sense? Did I land that plane right? Yeah. Chris Crane is a. You're still. Yeah. Three points.

Yeah. Good. Thank you. The problem I see that me and I'm not giving anybody advice, folks. I'm just trying to explain to Republicans to how this can turn around and bite us later on. It's always better to know than not know. And we'll get to the secrecy thing in a moment. But don't we?

Eventually, they are going to figure this out and they're going to stop making these things a referendum on Trump. And they're going to run local candidates on local issues, which frankly, folks, is the way to win these congressional races. You're a Democrat. You want to run on the Second Amendment in a Republican leaning county. Honestly, that's probably the way to do it. It's worked in West Virginia for a long time. They're going to figure this out eventually. And this is my warning sign before the 2018 elections the media is going to figure out and what i'm getting at is what i mean figure out is that referendums on trump are not working because when you make a local race a race about

anything other than the candidates who are actually running you get what i'm saying joe you're actually drawing out trump voters who frankly jo, couldn't give a rat's caboose about the candidates. These are the people in the yard signs. I'm not disparaging them. These people have actual lives. They work for a living. They're hardworking Americans. They do real stuff.

They don't worry about journalism all day. They're not watching CNN. They only found out that the race was a referendum on Trump because the media said it every single day and they probably accidentally clicked on the nightly news one night and saw a story that this is a referendum on Trump if if Karen Handel loses Trump will get hurt they're like really these are people with jobs that work for a living Joe they catch the story you know they get off work early one night because they're actually doing stuff and they're like this is a referendum on Trump I better get out and vote. You see my point?

The media like gave the election to the Republicans because they're so obsessed with sending a message to Trump, not realizing that the Trump voters are sending a message to you, which is the double barrel middle finger. What has two thumbsticks, two middle fingers in the air and screws the media? This guy. It happens every time. Whoa. They can't seem to get past the fact that nobody trusts them.

Like, Trump is historically unpopular. Newsflash, you're historically more unpopular, the media people. Just shut up. Again, you may say, well, why are you giving them advice i'm not giving them advice i'm warning republicans that it's already happening now in case you have any doubt what i'm saying is true like oh dan you're just making this up the democrats aren't gonna change their approach and they may not i mean like i said to you in yesterday's show they are obsessed with emotion-based problem solving you know when when I was in graduate school for psychology and a pretentious, you know, I never talk about education and stuff because I always think it's like, when people tell you what degrees they have, don't you want to like get them in like a rear naked choke in jujitsu and like tap them out? You're like, will you please shut up?

Shut up. No, but it's relevant only to this topic. There was a really bright professor I had he was a huge liberal but he was a smart guy and he used to say to me all the time that uh when we were talking about people who have not biochemical imbalances in the brain but who have like problems with mood and adjusting to you know to to life circumstances and things like that you know they're not clinically psychopathological but they have some issues dealing with things he would say one of the problems i see all the time is the idea of um emotion-based problem solving versus problem-based problem solving he said

people do the wrong thing in other words when it's time to focus on the emotions because there's no problem to be fixed in other words like death not your death obviously but a death in the family a father a mother god forbid you know i know joe you you know dealt with this recently yeah you know last year yeah you grieve i mean this is your parents it's not but the reality is when you think about it rationally the problem there's nothing you can do about the problem that death is obviously permanent there's nothing good that what you have to learn to do is deal with the emotions.

And what people want to do sometimes, this is his, you know, the psychologist who was telling me this, who was the professor, is that they constantly, they're always seeking to like

somehow bring the person back and relive the... Rather than dealing with the emotion, you can't deal with the... And he said the vice versa too. Sometimes people deal with emotions when they should be dealing with the problem.

Why am I bringing that up now? I was going to ask you. Yeah. Give me a second. What does that do anything? The media Democrat complex is so angry at Trump, Joe, that they're not focused on the problem. They're only focused on the emotions and a way to deal with the emotions, not deal with

the problem. The way to deal with the quote problem of trump if you're a democrat media complex guy joe is shocker to win elections which they've shown absolutely no evidence they can do at the state federal local level the democrats have ebbed in power so much they've had the least power they've had since the 1920s based on the state federal local power indexes of how many elected offices they hold but they're not doing that joseph no that's standard operating procedure for the left i mean dealing with emotions does it feel good does it feel bad i mean that's normal that's what i

would expect it it's you're absolutely it's it's it's an obsession with intentions rather than reality you know they're always focused on the intentions of a policy. And their thing, again, it's an obsession with emotion and being married to feelings. And it's imbued them even tactically to the point right now they're so mad at Trump that they may not change course, at least in the short term. I don't want to say contradictory things, but at least in the short term,

because they're still obsessed with dealing with their hatred and anger towards Trump, which is doing nothing. They need to focus on the problem, but they will figure it out. And I'm pretty sure of that. And that's why it's a warning sign to Republicans that we better keep our candidates in the races. We better get good candidates out there. We better be ready to deal with them on local issues and not necessarily any more referendums on Trump. Now, here are two examples to show you that they are getting it. Chris Murphy, Democrat senator from Connecticut, who this guy was one of the biggest conspiracy theorists out there about the Trump Russia fairy tale.

Yeah. So he said yesterday after the election, here's a quote from him. This is a Democrat senator from Connecticut speaking about the Russia thing. I have to say, he's talking about voters right now. He goes, they are never talking about issues like Russia. They're just not talking about it. He goes, frankly, about what's on cable news at night. They're not talking about Russia.

He was giving an interview. This was one of the biggest Russia conspiracy theorist advocates of all. And he's now saying that the voters on the ground just aren't talking about this. And he says at the end, they're not watching cable news at night what did it sound like yesterday's show joe right told you that those 20 percent of persuadables when i was knocking on doors have no idea what you're talking about with this trump russia thing yeah most of them are like well whatever dude it's just embarrassing can we move on to stuff that actually matters to me second debbie dingle who is a democratic representative another one not far left but

far enough left debbie dingle said the identity politics platform is killing absolutely killing the democrat party this is a democrat rep talking about in other words the democrats obsession with calling everybody a racist a homophobe a misogynist a phobophobe and it's the is to whatever you know it's and phobes everything's got to be an is to a phobe racist or a phophobe, a misogynist, a phobophobe, an ista-ista, whatever, you know, ists and phobes. Everything's got to be an ista or a phobe, racist or a phobe. She's saying this is killing us. Now, I've warned about that forever. But again, Joe, it's an obsession with the emotions of the Democrat Party. They are upset they're losing.

They want to personally, they want to feel better about themselves, their rage and their anger. So what they do is they do what children do. They scream out and they have temper tantrums. And that temper tantrum is you're a racist. And even Debbie Dingle's like, hey, this isn't working. Calling people racist and abandoning half the country who considers themselves conservatives by smearing them with racist and anti-gay nonsense, it's just not

working. So on one side of it, the Democrats are still furious, angry, hateful towards Trump. And I think in the short term, at least, that's still going to dominate a bit. But in the long term, even some of the most ardent conspiracy theorists and haters of Trump are starting to figure out that this just is not working. So again, I bring this up as a warning sign to Republican candidates. You are going to get local candidates in these. I'm even seeing it in the 18th down here in this Brian Mast election. There's a guy, Palm Beach County State's Attorney, this guy Aaron Berg, who he's thinking about putting his name in a ring.

I wouldn't call him a centrist. But these are guys who are going to try to run on local issues. Joe, you're not going to see in the 2018 elections referendums on Trump. You're just not unless his approval rating goes down even worse. Make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like old Democrats here.

Well, the old Democrats will be turned over in their grave with what's going on today with the new Democrats. Well, because the old guys would deal with issues. I mean, you even remember, Joe, you know, in Maryland. I mean, Maryland, the deep blue state. You know, they've had Democrats over there a while back who were, you know, I mean, when Dutch Ruppersberger first got elected, he was, I mean, he was definitely a blue dog. I mean, it changed later. Yeah, absolutely. You're right on the money. But this is in Maryland, the a blue dog. I mean, it changed later. Yeah, absolutely. You're right on the money.

But this is in Maryland, the deep blue state. And I think Joe's right. Even a guy like Dutch who had some mainstream bona fides. And God forbid now you're a Democrat who's pro-life. I mean, it just doesn't happen. So you're right. That part JFK is rolling over in his grave right now. Right.

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reviews from actual customers yourself. You'd be very impressed. Go request your free 16-page guide. It's pretty comprehensive and check it out. No commitments to do it. Just go check it out. Birchgold.com slash Dan. Okay. One quick story before I went to the secrecy and Obamacare thing. You know, I always talk about how Democrats can almost never tell you the truth. And, you know, I don't like to use categoricals like that, but sadly, folks, it's true. The examples are everywhere. And, everywhere. And the story's not super relevant to what's going on, but it's another example of how, and I mean this, this is when I was younger and I was relatively independent leaning. When I started to figure out what Democrats really did, I have no loyalty to the RINO class at all. But even though a lot of them are not necessarily the most principled in the world, the RINOs, Joe,

they're not going to lie to you that often. You may not be happy with what they're doing, but at least you know what they're doing. I mean, if they want to cut taxes, they don't make it up. They're like, no, no, we legitimately want to cut taxes. Democrats don't do this. Democrats, what they do is they fudge the numbers constantly. And if you just here's my best advice to you. If you hear something from a Democrat that sounds insane, like I'll give you an example.

I was watching a Sunday show one day, a news show and a commentator. This is like five years ago when I lived in Severna Park. One of these Democrat talking heads, news commentator type said, well, the government's far more efficient at delivering health care. Look at the administrative costs of Medicare. They beat the private sector. I said, what? I addressed this, I think, on the show yesterday or last week. I was like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I just Googled myth, Medicare more efficient than private sector. And like 100 articles came up debunking how stupid that idea is. It doesn't make any sense, of course, and it was ridiculous.

But I saw one yesterday I want to bring up to you so tammy baldwin who is a democrat senator from wisconsin and hillary clinton both are trying to explain away why the republican party is winning in wisconsin okay so that's the premise all right republican party's winning that's a fact donald trump won the state uh ron johnson won re-election as a Republican senator from Wisconsin. Scott Walker won election, reelection, and then reelection again in a recall election. They're winning state legislature seats. And the Democrats are in a panic. They need a narrative, Joe. The Democrats always need a narrative to explain away the obvious, right? Which is they're losing. So instead of just admitting we're losing, we're not doing well,

let's fix the problem, they need to pitch a narrative to the media to make it out like they're looking better than they really are because then it leads to this kind of negative energy like that book The Secret or whatever. I don't believe in that stuff, but they don't want the negative energy to continue. So their narrative is this, Joe. Voter

ID. Voter ID did it, Joe. Voter suppression. Voter suppression. That's why we're losing. And Tammy Baldwin recited a statistic that has been debunked so thoroughly that frankly, she should have been embarrassed bringing it up. She's not. She's probably going to repeat it again. But she said that voter ID reduced turnout in Wisconsin by 200,000 voters. Oh, my gosh. That's insane. Really? 200,000 people were stopped at the post.

Stop. Hey, the universal sign for stop. Time out. Red flag. We're going under the hood for review here, folks. Yes, you cannot vote. Gosh, 200,000 people couldn't vote. You would think there would be media stories on CNN

every night. Focus groups, I was prevented from the polls. You're like, 200,000 people. So Hans von Spakovsky, who has the greatest name ever, who writes for National Review, is a personal friend and a good man. And I'm telling you, there is no more authoritative source on voter ID than Hans von Spakovsky. He's been on CBM before. This guy is amazing. He wrote a piece for National Review, which I'll include in the show notes. And I thank you to Don and a couple other people. The show notes are at conservativereview.com under the podcast tab.

I'm working at moving them over to Bongino.com, too, just to make it easy for people having a tough time. But thanks for all the emails on that. But I'll put the article there. And he brings up some interesting numbers, absolutely thoroughly debunking this ridiculous report that came out and was put out by two left-leaning groups that 200,000 people couldn't vote. Folks, again, this is clear as day. These are facts. Let's just throw this out and make them look silly. So the 2016 turnout, Joe, was down from 2012. Well, why was it down? But the 2016 turnout was higher than it was in 2008 before there was a voter ID law. So again, when you cherry pick a data set and you cherry pick it from 2012 to 2016, rather than the 28 presidential election of 2016, you can get, what is it,

lies, damn lies, and statistics? You can get statistics to say anything when you massage them. So just to track, 2018, there was no voter ID, Joe. 2018. I mean, excuse me, 2008, 2008 presidential election. 2008, right. There was no voter ID. In 2016, the turnout was higher than it was in 2008 with voter ID.

So if voter ID was suppressing the vote, which is nonsensical, how was the voter turnout higher in 2016 than it was in 2008? This is a vexing issue. This is a vexing issue. But, of course, if you pick 2012 as your starting point, you know what I'm saying? That's like saying, like, here's how they do statistics. It's like, let's say, you know, George Brett,

who he was a great third baseman for the Kansas City Royals. Let's say George Brett, God forbid, had a wrist injury in his career and during a one-month stint was batting 200, which is pretty bad. Let's say you forget the year he won the batting title with a batting average of, I think he hit 390 or something one year. He almost had a 400 batting average. I mean, the guy was phenomenal, Brett. But let's say you pick that one month as your starting point

and you ignore all the other data in the past. George Brett pretty much sucks, right? Gosh, this guy's a 200 hitter. No, you're dope. He's an almost 400 hitter he was in his season. He just had a bad wrist you just picked the statistical starting point at the wrong point the statistics aren't wrong 2016 voter turnout was lower than 2012 but it was higher than 2008 when they had no voter id

i mean but here's another one it's even more damning just to show you again how the left just completely fabricates and makes things up. Wisconsin had the fifth highest voter turnout in the country, far higher turnout than states with no voter ID at all. Again, libs, don't let facts and stuff like that, silly things like facts and actual data get in the way of a stupid narrative. But keep it up. I mean, Tammy Baldwin, I have no doubt, will continue to use this statistic no matter what. Really. God bless her, but they're just not telling you the truth. They're just not telling you the truth. I'm sorry. get to oh yeah this is dangerous folks this is i know i said a couple days ago the texas wind story it's interesting i'll bring it up it's not really groundbreaking but it was a interesting market story on the uh power of free markets of the texas wind market but i will get to that at some point it's interesting i also want to get to illinois going bankrupt you know

there it is liberalism at its finest bankruptcy every time but this thing happening on obamacare right now i got uh the word from not personally but through a third party from from a senator who i really trust up on the hill there who um they're really bitter about what's going on with obamacare here it is in a nutshell this obamacare replacement plan the senate's doing right now under mcconnell's being conducted in secret now the democrats did this with obamacare remember nancy pelosi's famous line joe you have to pass it to see what's in it i think everybody pretty much remembers that one the republicans are replicating this strategy now i just want to quickly explain why they're i'm not this is a terrible move i i it but i want to explain to

you why the why does matter even when the why explains bad things i'm not explaining it away just giving you background. Here's what's happening and what the Republicans know is going to happen. If the bill slips out early and it's going to be released later today, the Obamacare replacement bill in the Senate, it is going to be annihilated by the media no matter what. They're going to lie about it and they're afraid of them lying about it. And you need an example of this.

Remember the 23 million people are going to lose insurance, Joe, when the House GOP bill was leaked early? do you remember that uh they don't want that they don't want a repeat of that so we're doing it in secret i i do not approve of this at all i think it's a terrible idea i can't be clear on this they're going to release the bill in a little while but i i'm trying to explain to you why that number and what happened to them with the House GOP bill, that number was a lie. Again, it was a total fabrication. The CBO score of the bill did not say 23 million people were going to lose, L-O-S-E, insurance. The CBO score said those people, large majorities of them, were going to choose not to pay for Obamacare insurance plans because they were too expensive.

to choose not to pay for Obamacare insurance plans because they were too expensive. Now, the media knows this. The media knows they're lying, but they chose instead of the choose narrative to pick the lose narrative. It's just not true, which is interesting because if the roles were reversed and they needed to make the Democrats look good, they would have chose to choose rather than the lose narrative. But the media loses because the media has lost credibility and no one trusts them anymore. But the Senate Republicans have taken that, I think, to the extreme and are making a big mistake doing this in secret and not letting in conservative senators and the Rand Paul

types. And the Rand's office, that's not where it came from, the information. But not letting them in on the negotiation does not make secrecy the right thing to do. We are a constitutional republic and we should be willing to wither a little bit of a media storm to do the right thing. Even though the media hacks, they work for the Democrats. Everybody gets that. Nobody thinks the media is impartial. Nobody thinks the media can do healthcare. As I said, in economics, they can't even do journalism. Forget about doing healthcare analysis. Nobody actually believes that, but it's still not right to do this in secret. There are a lot of people out there, Mike Lee's, Ted Cruz's, Rand Paul's, who have really good ideas on how free markets

can impact their healthcare infrastructure, and not including them in the debate in some way, shape, or form is a really, really bad idea. So not to pile on the Senate Republicans. I know they're dealing with a lot right now, but this is a really big mistake. They should have done this in public and been able to wither a little bit of a media storm. Have some guts like our founding fathers. I'm reading a really cool book right now, an older one, but Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose about Lewis and Clark. You think of the guts these guys had. Gosh, folks, our founding fathers in the later generations had real guts. I mean, come on, guys.. Man. I mean, you know, gosh, folks, our founding fathers in the later generations had real guts.

I mean, come on, guys, step up. What, you're afraid the media is going to lie about you? They're going to lie about you no matter what. Put the bill out there in public. Let's get some more ideas in there. Let's fix this thing and let's have some cajones, you know? Yeah. All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.

I really appreciate it. Thanks again to everybody who picked up my book. And I got an interesting story, too, I want to get to tomorrow or something about prison education. You may be surprised by my take on this. I haven't been a cop, but interesting piece in the journal on that. All right. I'll talk to you all tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in.

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