The Dan Bongino Show - Ep. 498 Warning Signs Ahead for the GOP?

Episode Date: July 7, 2017

In this episode I discuss the upcoming midterm elections and the warning signs for the GOP.  http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/generic-ballot-model-gives-democrats-early-advantage-in-battle-for-control-of-house/   I also address another eye-opening Obamacare study about its destructive economic impacts.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-many-jobs-does-obamacare-kill-1499296604   Finally I address the Reagan tax cuts and I debunk recurrent liberal tax cut narratives which are resurfacing in light of the current tax cut debate.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dan Bongino. Aiming to stop free speech so the speaker can no longer speak is exclusively a far left phenomenon. The Dan Bongino Show. I'm talking to moderates in the Democratic Party who are actually interested in what's going on, not blind lemmings walking off a cliff into an abyss of stupidity. Get ready to hear the truth about America. The rich did it. Yeah, the rich did it.

They lent money to people who bought homes, and the people never paid the money back. Oh, wow, that sounds like a great business plan. 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 and this fine Friday? All is well, Dan Bongino. All right, welcome to the Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino. Producer Joe, how are you today on this fine Friday? All is well, Dan-o.

All right, great. Another big weekend coming up for the Bongino family. Always we stay busy in the summers, as do most of you. Man, I got to tell you folks, not to complain, but I am so sore. It is unbelievable. I've been hitting the gym like a mad dog. I've been hitting the gym like a mad dog trying to stay loose and flexible and strong at 42 is a difficult endeavor to jump into. And I'm just a big believer in the big lifts, man.

If you're going to get in the gym, you got to lift heavy. You got to hit the squats. You got to hit the deadlifts. You got to hit the bench presses. And you got to hit the weighted pull-ups. You do those four exercises, I'm telling you, everything else takes care of itself. And by the way, push-ups are great too. I know that's the old standby, but push-ups are absolutely fantastic. All right. I got a lot of interesting stories I want to get through today. Interesting analysis on job losses due to Obamacare in the Wall Street Journal, something I've talked about. Your Democrat friends want to constantly talk about how the Republican

replacement, which I'm not a huge fan of, granted, but how the Republican replacement for Obamacare is going to cost people insurance. But what they're not telling you about is how Obamacare now is costing people jobs, literally now. And there's a really good analysis by Casey Mulligan. I want to get to that. I want to get to a little bit about Reagan's tax reform because it's coming up again in light of the tax reform debate now. Something on this Trump Russia thing from a different angle. But I want to start this off today on the generic ballot, the generic ballot for the midterm elections. Because folks, this is something you as regular listeners to the show and some of our new listeners, you need to be aware of. We're in a little bit of trouble in

the midterms. The Republican Party I'm talking about, the congressional midterms coming up in 2018. Larry Sabato, who does really astute political analysis work over at his Center for Politics there, which is – let me see. I always have his website up. Oh, it's Crystal Ball is his thing, but he has the Center for Politics or something like that. But he has an email list called the Crystal Ball, which I really like. I subscribe to it. But he has an email list called The Crystal Ball, which I really like. I subscribe to it. He put out an email this morning, and I will put the article linked in the email in the show notes today as well,

which, as I said yesterday, if you go to Bongino.com and subscribe to my email list, if you're interested, up to you, I will get the show notes and the show articles to you every morning in your inbox, and you can look at them before the show. But it's interesting. Larry sabato is sounding the alarm and i this guy even even though you know larry i like larry sabato he's a very nice guy i think i met him in a green room one time not name dropping at all just stating a fact and uh his his he's all he was off a little bit on the presidential but i i find him to be a fair uh arbiter of uh arbiter of what he believes to be the truth at any given time based on the data he has. And he's kind of sounding the alarm for Republicans right now based on something called the generic ballot. Folks, you have to know about this because

it's not a, and I don't say this so that any of you are in a panic, like, oh my gosh, we're going to lose, Republicans are going to lose the House, we're going to be in a lot of trouble. And I know the Republicans haven't done a great job of defending core conservative values. But as I've said repeatedly, I'd rather have a bad Republican than a horrible Democrat, because your choices are the prolonged, lengthy destruction of the United States under a bad Republican and the immediate destruction under liberal Democrats who don't care about anything. They don't really even have any principles anymore. So I'll take the prolonged destruction so I can think about time to adjust. I know that's not the most optimistic take, but we need to keep the House. It's the only way to get a Trump and hopefully conservative agenda

passed is with the Republican House. So we don't want to lose it. But here is the bad news. So we don't want to lose it. But here is the bad news. In 16 of 18 midterms, post-World War II, midterm elections. Again, we're talking about elections that are not the presidential ones. The elections for the House of Representatives and in some cases the Senate. Obviously, a Senate term is six years. So it depends what class you're in. But in 16 of 18 midterms, post-World War II, the party in power holding the presidency has lost seats.

So the party in power now, obviously, is the Republican Party via Donald Trump. The numbers aren't good. The statistics say that the Republican Party should lose seats this year in the midterms. Now, in order for the Democrats to regain control, Joe, of the House, they would need to gain 24 seats. Now, using this tool called the generic ballot, and this is the pay attention portion of it, right? The generic ballot is basically, exactly it is, the generic ballot. Who would you prefer in the midterms, Republicans or Democrats, is a very good indicator,

correlationally, of what's going to happen in those midterms. So Sabato has in this piece, the piece is actually by Alan Abramowitz, and I will put the link again in the show notes. It's a very easy piece to read, but a very good one. Look, it's a little statistical in the middle, but nothing overly complicated. he gives you a chart at the end of how far the republicans would have to be underwater for the democrats to take those 24 seats and you would the republicans would have to be between six and eight points underwater so you know the democrats would have to be beating them in the generic ballot by that amount six to seven points the problem is that's roughly where they are now at that six to seven points now i i say i don't think there's any reason to panic or be overly

concerned now. I'm just telling you to get your level of concern up because people in midterms generally, you know, the turnout is always lower. I know in Maryland, I ran in a presidential as on the Senate ballot and I ran in a midterm on the gubernatorial ballot for Congress. And the turnout was, gosh, two thirds of the of the presidential. That means you have to go out there and get involved, folks. I mean, this is something to tell your friends at Republican meetings, conservative meetings. If you're on a college campus, you're a member of a conservative group. We are right now at about minus seven underwater in the generic ballot, meaning we could very well lose the House. If you believe in statistics, which I do, I don't believe these polls are

dispositive that this is the end all be all, but it's definitely a reason to go out there and express a high level of concern to your conservative friends who may be thinking about staying home in the midterms. No matter how bad a lot of these Republicans are, and believe me, many of them are terrible, they would be far worse with a bunch of Democrats in charge. I mean, you're going to see just would be a total logjam, complete total obstruction. So again, I'll put the piece in the show notes at Bongino.com. Yeah, just check out the show notes tab. You can read the piece yourself.

It's a good piece and a little bit of a reason to heighten your alarm. I wanted to do this story because sometimes we don't do enough political analysis on the show where we get into a lot of ideological stuff, but it's important to get to the nuts and bolts in politics so you understand what's going on. So the takeaway, remember the generic ballot? Yeah. We're about minus six, minus seven now. Yeah.

If that holds and the correlation between the generic ballot and the results in the midterm stay strong, we could be looking at a Democrat takeover if we don't start getting busy soon. So a note to those congressmen out there on the Republican side, too. It's time to get busy on tax reform, which will tie into what we're discussing later in the show. All right. Hey, today's show brought to you by our buddies at Freedom Project Academy.

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This is a great idea. I want to take a look. But what's that website again? I'm like, didn't I say it a few times? Just to be clear, it's F-P-E as in Edward, USA.org. F-P-E-U-S-A.org. But here's what Freedom Project Academy is. Listen, you have to ask your question, this question to yourself.

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No commitments necessary, folks. That's Freedom Project Academy and tell them Dan Bongino sent you. Now, go to fpeusa.org and go check them out. You will be very impressed. This is a great place. I've done some seminars for them. I like them so much for their – they have summer camps, which are really great, fpeusa.org. Okay. So Casey Mulligan has a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, which I tweeted out, D. Bongino, at D. Bongino, if you want to follow me on Twitter. But again, I will put it in the show notes as well. And Casey Mulligan is a very, very good, talented researcher who I strongly encourage you to

check out the work put together by him. It's really terrific. But he has a piece today in the journal about Obamacare. And it's interesting because he mentioned some things that may have gone unnoticed about Obamacare. The liberals always like to point to Obamacare and the replacement for Obamacare and the people that are going to supposedly lose insurance, according to a CBO report, which I've debunked on many shows before. Folks, that's just nonsense. The people are going to choose not to have insurance, not lose insurance. There's a difference. Choose, lose, choose, lose. Those are two different words. Now, the frightening part about that CBO report about the Republican replacement, I'm not a huge fan of it, folks folks. Again, a lot of the 22 million that are supposedly

going to lose insurance, which is nonsense. They're going to just choose not to buy Obamacare. The irony of that is about 15 million of those are Medicaid folks who don't want insurance, even though it's free, even though it's being paid for by the taxpayer. It's free to them. It's not free to the taxpayer. I don't want to get into the CBO thing. I'm always so deeply offended by how people fall prey to just nonsensical, stupid narratives. But Mulligan has a great analysis today in the journal where he talks about the jobs being lost right now to Obamacare. So this is the takeaway. And what I want to leave you with on this. I mean, I'm going to cover this in a little more depth here.

But I want to make sure you leave the show with this understanding. And Obamacare now, if the status quo remains in effect, Obamacare as we know it now is costing roughly 250,000 jobs a year. Just if nothing changes at all with Obamacare, just the status quo now. Now, the phenomenon by which Obamacare is costing Americans jobs is very easy to explain, something I have addressed on the show before. But I feel like given the ferocity of the current Obamacare replacement debate, this requires an individual, me addressing this component of the Obamacare problem individually so that you understand it and you're able to effectively debate your liberal friends about what's going on. Because they deal with hyperbolic emotional nonsense and we deal with reality and facts. Now, one of the stipulations of Obamacare was the employer mandate. The employer mandate basically said that if you're a company with 50 or more employees, you are obligated to provide health insurance for your employees.

Now, I get it how if you're a liberal, the analysis stops there. I'm serious, and I don't mean to be, you know, I'm not trying to be overly confrontational with our liberal friends. I'm just stating a fact. Liberals live in the world of emotion, not in the world of reality and incentives. So liberals will respond like, oh, well, what's the problem with that? If you have a company of 50 or more employees, that's a big company, and they should be providing insurance for their employees. Yeah, should, could, would. Everything's great big company and they should be providing insurance for their employees. Yeah, should, could, would, everything's great in the world of shoulda, coulda, woulda.

But in the real world, what winds up happening is a lot of those companies that are right on the margin there that have between say 48 and 60 employees or whatever it may be are not large companies. Many of them are rather small companies that just have a workforce able to do whatever the company does, makes t-shirts, baseball bats, whatever it may be. These are not multi-billion dollar conglomerates. Now in Mulligan's piece, he throws a number out there that was pretty staggering. In the piece, he points out the fact that, I'm just pulling it up on the journal because I want to make sure I get this exactly right, this number, because it's really when I read it, I had to read it twice. I'm like, like is this right i hope this isn't one of

those subscriber articles by the way that would really drive me nuts yeah so he says the it's costing fifty thousand dollars a year and where's that number sorry i should highlight this stuff beforehand but it's hard to do on my... Oh, okay. Here we go. I wanted to read it exactly. All right. So this is a quote from the piece. The ACA, Obamacare, includes a penalty on employers if they fail to provide, quote,

adequate insurance for full-time workers. Thanks to the ACA, hiring the 50th full-time employee, listen to this, folks, effectively costs another $70,000 a year on top of the normal salary and benefits. Hiring one more employee. So let me just simplify that for you. If you have 49 employees and you hire that one more, your company now has liabilities, financial liabilities of $70,000 or more to add the insurance for all of the other employees that you'd had, the 50 employees. So what happens is people have an incentive. Do you see why that is?

Does it make sense? Yeah. Because what happens is you have to provide employees for everyone. Right. Excuse me, health insurance for all of your employees. Right. So that's where this term, the 49ers, originated. It's not the football team in San Francisco.

The term 49ers, when it came to Obamacare, was a term for employers that refused to hire the 50th employee. Now, the Democrats' argument to this, to be clear on this one, so you know the counter, what they'll say is, well, those are just, Mulligan addresses this in the piece, those are just anecdotes. Those are just individual stories. This is not a systemic problem economy-wide. But oh, no. Mulligan did a pretty thorough analysis looking at over 250 businesses from all different areas that are in this 40 to 60 employee threshold and found out that, yes, many of them are in fact not hiring new

employees because they cannot afford it. Folks, they don't have the $70,000 a year to dish out for a benefits package they can't afford. This is not complicated. Again, this is only complicated to liberals who have a difficult time with math. We're going to have to get Joe, get the abacus out again. I mean, this is only complicated for people who don't understand basic arithmetic. If businesses had this money and could use it to attract new employees by giving them a gold-plated insurance plan and getting them to work in their company rather than their competitors, they would have done it. These businesses that are in that threshold, a lot of them don't offer health insurance because they don't have the money. They may do other arrangements.

I mean, I have a different arrangement with my employer now. And that arrangement works for me and it works for the company. Folks, the disincentive to hire that 50th employee is costing Americans $250,000 a year because this is not just one business. This is businesses across the entire country that are not hiring that 50th employee or even let's say you have 45 employees and you want to expand and you need 10 more to create another t-shirt line in Joe's t-shirt company. They're not hiring those 10 more employees either.

This is costing 250,000 jobs a year. This isn't a joke, ladies and gentlemen. This is costing 250,000 jobs a year. This isn't a joke, ladies and gentlemen. This is real. My problem with the left, what's always been my problem with the left is they ignore the effects of incentives, of economic incentives. They pretend they don't exist because acknowledging economic incentives overrides the left's infatuation with emotion. Their emotional argument about the 50 employee rule, that if you have 50 employees, you have to provide people with an Obamacare or Obamacare compliant type plan in your business, is sold strictly on the emotion that, oh, well, big companies should pay for their employees' insurance. That's nice. Okay.

I understand that. That's great. But when you start getting into rational, reasonable arguments after that, you have to say to yourself, well, where are they going to find that money and how much? Oh, well, it's going to cost them $70,000. Well, where are they going to find the $70,000? What are they going to do? They're going to borrow it? A lot of these small business owners who own whatever, baseball bat companies, baseball glove companies, t-shirt companies, they don't have the $70,000. So what do they do? They just don't expand. And when you extrapolate this effect across an entire economy, folks, you're talking about costing, again, thousands of jobs. And Casey Mulligan's estimate is 250,000 jobs. That's not small potatoes, ladies and gentlemen. That's the real thing. It's very frustrating trying to talk to

liberals about economics because they are so enmeshed in emotion. They can't get past the reality of the side effects of their emotional policies. And the side effect here is a loss of jobs. And I always think back to that story I tell often about the Brazilian computer industry, how decades ago in Brazil, they were infatuated with the idea of building a domestic computer industry. And it sounded great. And the trade protectionists and the liberals in Brazil said, you know, this is a great idea. These are tech jobs. These are high paying jobs. This will be fantastic. We're going to build this Brazilian computer industry. And many of you listening now are probably like, all right,

that sounds great. So what did they do? Well, what they did is they put massive tariffs on imported computers with the hope of increasing the prices of imported computers from other places in the world, which would make Brazilian computers more competitive by default, right? If there's a tariff of whatever, 20%, 30% of a price hike on imported computers and Brazilian computers aren't subjected to that price hike, then they thought people would buy Brazilian computers, which they did to save money. Well what happened, folks? By insulating the Brazilian computer industry from proper competition, what wound up happening?

That insulation of the industry wound up protecting Brazilian computer makers from competition and therefore they felt no reason to get more productive and produce better computers. So these computers, obviously, the quality suffered because they didn't have to worry about competing nationally anymore, so they produced the crap computer. The computers made their way throughout the entire economy. These were not great computers, and these computers, which were substandard, a lot of them were broken and didn't work as well as the foreign computers subjected to the tariff were then embedded in every industry. And you may say, well, what's the problem? Well, these crap computers led to crap performance in the industry as well.

One of the examples I heard in an economic series I was listening to on audio once was that the hospital industry was using these computers and the computers would break down and they wouldn't appropriately monitor storage supplies whenever they were supposed to do. So hospitals suffered, businesses suffered that were using these computers. This is the whole point. When you engage in emotional economic arguments rather than reasonable ones, and you forget the, quote, side effects and the incentives created by your problems, you wind up causing more problems than you solve.

And that's exactly what happened with Obamacare, with this 50 employer threshold. They were in love with the idea that, oh, big companies should provide insurance, not understanding what was the definition of big companies going to be. And what's that threshold? You created a cliff there at the 50 threshold mark. So now people are not hiring another employee. It's just ridiculous, folks. It's very frustrating arguing economics with liberals. Sometimes I want to pull my hair out. All right. Today's show also brought to you by our friends at My Patriot Supply.

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Preparewithdan.com. Hold on. I'm going to get a drink of coffee here. All right. Better? I don't usually drink coffee during the show, but I got a busy day today. I'm going to need a lot of Java to get through the day. Okay. Another piece I read in a journal today, they're talking about Reagan's

monstrous tax reform back in the 80s. And I mean monstrous in a qualitatively good way. You know, Reagan, the tax reform in the 80s, which led to 6%, 5%, 4% growth rates in But the tax reform in the 80s, which led to 6%, 5%, 4% growth rates in 84, 85, and 86, these were watershed moments in American economic history. I mean, they proved that tax cuts work. And when you put money, shockingly, I say that sarcastically, back in people's pockets, that people will spend the money, invest the money, and the economy will grow. And there's an article in the journal today that spurred me on to discuss a little bit of what happened with the Reagan years, because there's a debate again going on about what did

happen in the Reagan years, given the fact that Trump and the Republican Party want to push taxes as well. The liberal counter to the Reagan tax cuts, and there were multiple tax cuts during his term, but the liberal counter has always been that these tax cuts during the Reagan years unfairly benefited the rich. Now, folks, this is one of those really big double question marks moment. I mean, the left says this about everything. There's nothing you can say from a policy perspective to back up conservative ideological thought that the left won't counter with a stupid income inequality or identity politics argument. Nothing. It'll always be either benefits the rich or the Republicans don't like black or brown or gay people or Muslims. when it comes to attacking Reagan because, as I have mentioned many times before, if they don't, quote, debunk the Reagan years, and debunk to them means a lot of different things other than the actual, because you can't debunk actual statistics about what happened.

But if they don't debunk the Reagan years, liberals are in a lot of trouble because what happened in the Reagan years is clear evidence that conservative economic policy works. So they lie about it and they say, well, it disproportionately affected black America. Reagan benefited the rich, the tax cuts. Well, I just want to give you some quick numbers. So you're intellectually prepared to argue with your liberal friends. And again, just to be clear, the takeaway here, the reason I'm bringing this up is not to keep invoking the memory of Reagan, but liberals are bringing it up now.

Again, I'll even put this piece in the journal in there where the author talks about the Reagan tax cuts and what happened. And the reason he's doing it as well is because his Trump tax cuts that they're proposing are quite bold. And the liberals are going to say, look, it didn't work in the Reagan years and here's why. That's why I'm bringing this up. Meanwhile, it's all nonsense. Okay. So here's the first thing. They'll tell you it disproportionately benefited the rich, but that's nonsense.

We measure, well, I shouldn't say we measure. We, for statistical purposes, we use, we put people into 20% groupings, breaks them up into bottom 20%, top 20%, you get it. Quintiles, right? So during the Reagan years, if that was true, that the Reagan tax cuts disproportionately benefited the rich, then you would think the top 20% would have benefited by a greater percentage jump in their income than the bottom 20%. Let me be clear on this, Joe, so everybody understands what we're talking about. All right. If the richest 20% had income gains of, say, 15% to 20%, and the bottom 20% had income gains of 4%, we could say that they both did well under the Reagan years because they had

income gains. But it would be fair to say that, well, the rich did better because the percentage point increase by the top 20% was greater than the percentage point increase of the bottom 20%. But ladies and gentlemen, here's the but. That's not the case. That's not what happened. During the Reagan years, the bottom 20% of earners and the top 20% of earners, their incomes jumped by roughly the same percentage points, statistically speaking.

So saying that the rich got disproportionately rich over the poor is just not accurate. Now, to put hard numbers on that, the average American worker gained about $4,000 in income under the Reagan years. Now, making matters even worse for the left, I want you to believe that the deficits rose in the Reagan years as well well which is nonsense and total garbage and it's completely made up deficits rose in the reagan uh deficits wrote i'm not saying the deficits didn't rise i'm saying the reasons the liberals give are nonsense deficits and debt did rise to really ridiculously high amounts during the reagan years not no not worse than the obama years by the way, but they did rise, but they rose because of government spending, not because of tax receipts. Even when you factor in

inflation, there was a 28% spike in tax revenues during the Reagan years. I always give the number that when Reagan got into office, it was $500 billion in tax revenue. Reagan cut taxes from 70% to 28%. And after Reagan cut taxes and got out of office, tax revenue to the government went from 500 billion to 900 billion, folks. So saying that the Reagan tax cuts cost the government money and therefore led to the deficits is factually incorrect. You're just making it up. You're lying. Folks, if you're on a college campus and you're a liberal person who's been told this, do you understand your professor's lying to you? Do you understand he's making this up? You believing it makes you a total sucker. It doesn't make it true. It doesn't make you educated. It doesn't put you into the economic elite, this pantheon of intellectual wizards. It makes you a dope, an idiot. You're adult.

You're falling for the oldest trick in the book. Reagan cut taxes and tax revenue went up. The reason the deficits went up is because government spent more. So therefore, any reasonable common sense analysis would conclude that it was increased government spending or big government liberal policies that led to the deficit in the Reagan years. It was not the tax cuts because it's not possible. Reagan cut taxes and tax revenue went up. You just spent a lot of money. Now, another argument you'll hear, which I really dislike, by the way, because it plays on identity politics and this nonsensical idea that Reagan somehow was attacking black America. Black unemployment in the Reagan years fell from 19.5 percent in 1983 to 11.4 percent in 1989. Wow. So I don't understand.

Folks, this is a simple number. It doesn't require any eloquent speech to explain. Reagan gets into office. Black unemployment is closing in on 20% by 1983 in the depths of the recession as we're trying to get cut out of it. It's 19.5 percent reagan leaves office in 1989 it's 11.4 you know and if you're looking for some work on this this

guy joseph perkins has done a really good analysis of uh how blacks benefited black americans benefited substantially from the reagan economic policies and it's just really shocking to me that you're not willing to admit that what you're saying is simply not true black americans did not do worse than the reagan matter of fact he did far better far better than they did under the obama years you're just making it up otherwise and folks these are critical arguments i'm not i i'm bringing this up now because the journal piece you're gonna see it as the tax reform argument gets hotter and hotter the liberals are going to see it. As the tax reform argument gets hotter

and hotter, the liberals are going to bring up the Reagan years and just lie about the record. You need to have the intellectual material to fight back. All right, Joe, one more story I wanted to get to today because I don't do a lot of foreign affairs on the show for a number of reasons. We don't have a lot of time and there are a number of shows that do that exclusively. I like to focus on economics and political street strategy. But I do feel with this Trump trip going on over there with Germany and Poland, then he's going to be the G20. Yeah. Well, he is the G20, but they aren't in Germany now, actually. You know, there's the Trump Russia thing is bothering me.

I just wanted to make a few points on it for the your your adult leftist friends who continue we already know the trump russia collusion narrative is a fairy tale we everybody knows that it's nonsense i mean serious people liberal idiots don't but that's okay they you know they live in their own little isolated bubble but i just wanted to point out a couple things and if you forget about the collusion narrative for a second but if you think that trump is somehow a Russian plant, here are just three quick points that would almost completely debunk your point if you are a reasonable person, which again excludes most liberals out there. So if Trump's a Russian spy or he's somehow colluding with the Russians, why would Trump admit Montenegro to NATO? Montenegro was admitted to NATO under Trump's watch here. I'm not taking a position on it pro or con. I'm just telling you what happened to show you that what

does this have to do with the Russians? By the way, the Russians, the number one enemy of the Russian pseudo empire right now is NATO expansion. Putin hates NATO expansion. He hates the idea of it. It has a lot to do with Ukraine. He can't stand NATO expansion. He hates the idea of it. It has a lot to do with Ukraine. He can't stand NATO expansion. He sees it as his number one enemy on his border. So expanding NATO under Trump by admitting Montenegro is the ultimate slap in the face. As a matter of fact, it's a backhand slap to Putin. And if you don't understand that, you're just not paying attention to what's going on. Secondly, our ability to export petroleum products, which happened, granted, pre-Trump,

but Trump is really focused on the export of liquid natural gas, natural gas overseas. This does extreme damage to the Russian economy, which relies heavily on natural gas exports to certain parts of Europe. The fact that we're increasing this and trying to shut them out of the market, you don't think this is kicking the Russian square between the legs right now? If you're a Russian agent right now and you think you got a compliant dimwit in the White House, he certainly isn't working out in your best interest right now. So you have NATO expansion and you have your biggest economic weapon, your cudgel you can use, which is your gas supplies, which are now being shut off by the United States because they're exporting their gas. How is this better for you? Are you that dumb? Finally, and then this one's an obvious one. And again, I'm not suggesting that we should

get overly involved in these places either. I'm just telling you what's happening so you have an idea of just how stupid this Trump-Russia agent collusion narrative thing is. Trump's engaged in, he has given our military the ability to fight back in Syria. We've had strikes, we've had cruise missile strikes, we've had the engagement with the Syrian fighter aircraft. Syria is a Russian client state, folks. The Russians are heavily involved in Syria. They need the water access there. The Russians have really developed that relationship with the Syrians. Us attacking the Syrians when the military deems it militarily appropriate, this is not the action by some kind of a Russian sympathizer. You'd have to be an absolute idiot to believe that. But again, the left is so obsessed

with this Trump-Russian narrative that it's, you know, they're losing their common sense. We expanded NATO, we're increasing our gas supply, shutting them out economically, and we're attacking their client state. Oh yeah, Trump's a Russian sympathizer. It's just dumb. And in light of what's going on in the G20 and the meeting with Putin, I felt the need to put that out there because no matter what Trump says to Putin, Trump could say to Putin, you know, tomorrow morning, God forbid, we're going to drop a nuclear explosive on Moscow. And the left would be like, oh, yeah, no, no, this guy's still a Russian client. I mean, it's just dumb. It's stupid stuff. I mean, and you can see it with the CNN coverage and those James O'Keefe tapes where CNN and the producers already know that this is a nothing burger story

to use that horrible term. But it's it is pervasive at dc now there's nothing there there's no there there and they keep going with it it's just really a shame all right folks thanks again for tuning in thanks for another great week of listens i really appreciate it i'll see you all next you just heard the dan bongino show get more of dan online anytime at conservative review.com you can also get Dan's podcasts on iTunes or SoundCloud. And follow Dan on Twitter 24-7 at DBongino.