The Dan Bongino Show - Ep. 625 Liberals are Panicking Over This

Episode Date: January 3, 2018

This piece clearly lays out the real reasons for government deficits.  This piece debunks silly liberal talking points about the tax cuts. Liberals are panicking over the growth of conservative media, and their “solutions” are disturbing. CNN can’t seem to get past their fascination with the “white truck.” Manufacturing is coming back. Is school choice 2.0 coming?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

get ready to hear the truth about america on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host dan bongino welcome to the dan bongino show producer joe how are you today i'm cold dan it's eight degrees here dude i'm telling you man this is if this isn't an incentive for all of you up north to move to florida i don't know what is please Please, come down here. You know what's funny, Joe? It was yesterday. I don't even want to say cold because I don't want to humiliate myself to all of our Northeast listeners who are genuinely suffering with real cold.

But it was about 55 down here yesterday and people were freaking out. There were like wool hats. There were mittens. There were parkas. I saw dog sleds in the street. I mean, it was ridiculous. I'm like, dude, it's 55 degrees. I was outside in cargo

shorts and my Malloy Stanners t-shirt. I went to Archbishop Malloy High School for all you Stanners out there. You know what? Our mascot was a Stanner. You know what that means? No. The school was originally called St. Ann's. So the St. Anners and they just called them the Stanners after that. So Malloy Stanners out there. I was the Northeast guy. I'm like, this is ridiculous. It's 55 degrees. It's not

that cold out. I had the air conditioner on in my car. I was like, oh man, people up North are really suffering. But if that is not an incentive for you to move to Florida, I don't know what is. Get down here, folks. We're all waiting for you. All right. Listen, I got a lot to talk about today. I got nine stories that are really, really good, and it was tough for me to prioritize which ones were the best. So let me do my best. The first one. You know, it's fascinating. I sent out a tweet.

This is a short one, but it's a good one. I sent out a tweet last night, and I meant it. I'm sitting around, and, you know, you ever have one of those eureka moments where you're like, oh, now it makes sense? Yeah. Yes. You know, I... Yes yes you asked for it yeah i know i just set

myself up on that you sensed my in your in your extrasensory perception i was i was looking for couples retreat yoga guy um i'm sitting there now i'm emptying the dishwasher and i'm like trump's twitter account do you ever notice i've said on this show a couple times that when you're doing something that your opponents don't like you're probably doing the right thing yeah and did you notice the cornucopia of people the collection of people who want Trump to stop tweeting. I'm bringing this up. And I'm not just this is some rando topic. I'm bringing it up because the Obama administration kids, and that's what they are.

Ben Rhodes, Tommy Vitor and all these other former Obama administration. They want Trump or John Brennan. The other four. He's not so much a kid, but they all want Trump to stop tweeting about Iran. It's interesting because who else wants Trump to stop tweeting? D.C. swamp rats, Hillary Clinton, liberal big government Democrats who have been fighting, who've been anti-Trump and been fighting Trump from the start, Russian collusion conspiracy theorists, liberal media hacks. So

what's the common theme there? The common theme here is these are all our political opponents. They want Trump to stop tweeting because his messaging on Twitter has been so effective at breaking through the media wall of silence on conservative principles and ideology. That's why they want

him to stop. Then do it. Yes. Then do it. Yes. Do it. Couples retreat yoga guy has the answer here. Yes, he does. Then do it.

Yes. Just tweet. Yeah, I get it. Not every tweet is the most diplomatically worded. I understand. I get it. The guy's a builder from Queens. He's not a lifelong politician.

Not everything is in Shakespearean prose. I get it. But I just, I had this idea in my head. I'm like, this Twitter is really starting to scare people. They want him to stop tweeting on Iran, the Obama administration, former Obama administration acolytes, Brennan, John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes. All of these people want him to stop tweeting these former Obama administration officials because they know that Trump's tweeting, Joe, is giving actual, real, tangible support. They can see it. They can look at it. They can feel it. They can almost touch it.

Right. This support to Iranian protesters on the ground and may lead to an overthrow of this despotic regime, which would be the worst thing in the world for former Obama administration officials who told us, Joe, the entire time that once we got this Iran deal, remember this, that it was going to moderate. It was going to moderate Iran. That Rouhani and Khamenei, that they were going to moderate, that they were going to become less

terroristic after this Iran deal. The incentive was going to be to normalize Iran a bit. Well, it's hard to normalize a country when the people in that country are protesting to overthrow that same regime and are protesting for justice and freedom.

It's hard to say, well, and then by the way, watching the Revolutionary Guards beat people and kill people, oh, look, they're normal. You can't do that. That's why they want Trump to stop tweeting, because he's highlighting the Obama administration failures. This is critical. So I'm just asking you, don't fall into that trap. There's some downsides to it, no question. There are some tweets I bet even Trump would rather he take back. But on the margin, folks, which is all that matters in life, meaning nothing's black or white.

It's just a whole bunch of gray. Meaning nothing's essentially good. Sometimes you're measuring things on what's less bad. What's less bad right now? What's less bad is for Trump to keep tweeting. What's more bad is for Trump to stop tweeting. I know it's terrible English, but you get the point I'm trying to make. On the margin, he needs to keep tweeting.

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I got a story from a listener. You are always welcome, by the way, to send me stories, links you you think are interesting if i uh agree we will put them on the air uh listeners sent in a story from american thinker uh authored by a guy named jeff scribner it's a really really good piece i strongly encourage you to read it'll be at the show notes today at bongino.com if you want to get on my email list please subscribe it's uh available at bongino.com you see the link it says subscribe to email list it helps me get these articles to, if you want to get on my email list, please subscribe. It's available at Bongino.com. You see the link. It says subscribe to email list. It helps me get these articles to you if you choose.

It's a great piece about something I've discussed often, and he puts it in simple, very elegant terms. And Joe, it's the effect of these tax cuts plans and historical tax cuts plans on government revenue. And without doing in repeating a show i've done multiple times he makes two really simple points in the piece one of them is going to drive joe nuts because every time i mention it i joe is the audience ombudsman and for those of you think he yeses me to death on everything you're absolutely wrong because there are a couple topics i bring up where he's hit me

up after the show and been like dude i don't get it you're not making sense remember hauser's law yeah joe hates when i bring it up because he's like you you just never seem to explain that right he he said it to me a couple of times. Because I got an email once, Joe agrees with everything. No, trust me, he doesn't. He disagrees because it makes sense. He's not going to lie to you. But this one doesn't. So I'm going to make

it simple because this guy does in the piece, and it'll be at the show notes, this said American thinker. He basically says the only thing, Joe, the historical evidence shows that affects tax receipts to the government. In other words, how much money the government makes from its citizens, earns off its citizens. Because it doesn't earn from selling anything. It takes it from its citizens.

The only thing, Joe, is GDP. Now, yeah, I get that. I mean, if you want to take it to reductio ad absurdum and reduce the argument to absurdity, you could say, well, what if the government had a zero tax rate? Tax rates do matter, right? The government has never had a zero tax rate, ever. Okay? It has had taxes, duties, and excises imposed even in the Constitution.

It has never had a zero tax rate on the revenue circulating within the country. How it's taxed, it has changed. The income tax, at least in a historical timeline, is a relatively new phenomenon, right? But the government has never had a zero tax rate. So within reason, the point the author's trying to make, Joe, is that the only thing that is going to affect the amount of money the government has is GDP. In other words, growth. Whether you have a 15%

tax rate over time, and we're talking about effective tax rates. In other words, you may say, Dan, there are marginal tax rates, there's seven categories of tax. We're talking about an effective tax rate. In other words, what the country makes as a whole, Joe, and what the government takes from it. We're talking about the biggest possible scale. Does that make sense? Because a listener could respond and say, well, what do you mean, Dan? A 15% tax rate. There's the 35% bracket, the 25% bracket, the 10% bracket. The author is simply stating that the percentage of money the government takes versus the percentage of money the United States collectively earns, that is the effective collective national tax rate, right? With everything, corporate taxes, income taxes, import taxes, everything, Joe.

The effective rate barely moves over time yeah i get what he's saying that's that and that's hauser's that's basically what hauser's law says that the government is going to collect about 17 to 20 percent of what the nation earns right but here's the caveat no matter what the tax rate is that's what confuses people you're like wait now now now i'm lost because you just said the government's gonna take about 18 to 20 percent of what the nation earns if the tax rate is what 70 if it's 28 if it's 30 the answer is yes yes and yes now people get lost because they're like, well, that doesn't make any sense. No,

it makes perfect sense. When the tax rate is high at 70%, what do people do? They pay accountants to not pay taxes. So when the tax rate is high at 70%, the effective tax rate is about 15-20% because the people in the 70% tax rate don't pay the government.

They pay accountants and they get out of it. They move their money overseas. They buy municipal bonds. They do whatever they can to avoid paying 70%, which in the end, and by the way, people not subjected to that 70% rate will pay taxes normally. So it averages out to about 18, 17 to 20% of the GDP. When the tax rate's 28%, it's not worth it for people to pay millions of dollars to fancy accountants to avoid paying a million in taxes, Joe. They just pay the taxes.

So the point the author makes, and by the way, folks, in case you think any of this is in dispute, this guy Scribner in the piece in The American Thinker, it's a great, it's short, it's very readable. It's not even remotely wonky. He puts Federal Reserve charts.

Federal Reserve, folks, that's our central bank. This is not a partisan outlet. It's not Breitbart, Conservative Review, The Daily Caller, Mother Jones, on either side of the political spectrum.

I'm not saying that their facts are wrong. I'm just saying, there's no disputing the data on a partisan basis, Joe. He puts Federal Reserve charts. You can look at yourself. You'll see a relatively flat line over time, regardless of what the tax rates are.

Look at it yourself. You think I'm making this up? Now, what should that tell you, Joe? If the only thing affecting the tax receipts to the government, how much money the government makes to finance itself, is basically growth, and you are looking to increase government tax receipts, which we're not, but liberals are,

then you would think, Joe, based on data, what? That you would want to increase growth, right? You would think. You would think, because you and I are common sense folks, that if you're a liberal who believes the government should get a bigger chunk of money to do bigger things, I don't believe this. I believe the government should get the smallest chunk of money. But even if you're a liberal, you should look at those charts and say, wow, okay.

So government receipts and the amount of tax money we get to play with to do our good things, because we're liberals, is only dependent on growth. As growth goes up, government receipts go up. As growth goes up, I got this grows up in my head for some reason, because I'm talking about growth. It's like when people say Don Bongino. They say Don instead of Dan because of the bond and the Gino. I say it all, even people who know me.

As growth goes up, tax receipts go up. Any common sense liberal looking at this Federal Reserve chart should say, well, we want growth to go up then. But they don't. What do they want to go up, Joe? The tax rate. The tax rate. No, yes.

But yes, you're right. They want taxes to go up, but they focus on the wrong thing. They focus on the tax rate when the data is clear as day. The tax rate within a band doesn't matter. 28%, 50%, 70%. It doesn't matter. All it does is impact. Now, this is where part two comes in. The tax rate will not affect receipts, but it will affect growth. tax rate will not affect receipts, but it will affect growth. So now this is where it gets a little confusing, and this is where liberals like to throw you the curveball. The government will take 17 to 20% of what our GDP is, what we produce, whether we produce a little or a lot. I just told you that producing a lot and incentivizing us to grow and produce a lot

is a good thing even for liberals because tax receipts depend on growth. He has another chart in there that's even more fascinating that shows that when you look at growth rates and you look at debt problems and you chart it, you find out that high government spending, Joe, is correlated pretty well with low growth, which is correlated with low government tax receipts.

So now, Lips, don't let any of that get in the way of your silly dopey arguments. Continue to advocate for higher tax rates, knowing it leads to low growth, knowing that low growth leads to low government tax receipts. Continue to, you're just, I mean, you're destroying American lives, American finances, the American economy, and ironically, you're destroying as well,

your own chances at growing your big government nanny state. But it's, as I've said repeatedly, because people go, why Dan, you just laid out this whole show about why liberals are intentionally destroying the system. Folks, it's not about tax receipts to them. It's not about the money. It's about who controls the money. When you understand that, this all makes sense. It is not about that. In other words, Joe, it's not about the pot of money.

It's about who has the money in the pot. Liberals would rather take the last dollar left in a dead economy and control who gets it because they are obsessed with the power of the state than have $25 trillion from a pot of a $200 trillion economy. You may say, Dan, that's ridiculous. Folks, it is not. Read the history of liberalism. They are obsessed with the allocation of resources. They are obsessed with controlling and dictating who gets what resources when.

They are obsessed with planning. They are obsessed with controlling the flow of cash. They are not obsessed with the amount. If they were, they would incentivize growth and lower tax rates, and they will never do that. You know, one of the most important things you can grasp from this show is that concept that to the liberal, money is a vehicle. It is not an ends. It is a vehicle to power. People say, oh, liberals are obsessed with our money. They want to take our money. No, they want to take

away control of your life. If you read Thomas Sowell's book, Vision of the Anointed, he makes a great case for this throughout the entire book. Vision of the Anointed, he refers to the anointed ones. In other words, liberals in government who've anointed themselves, you know, these geniuses and these super intellects over your life. They are obsessed with the idea of controlling the minutiae of your life. And to do that, they have to control your finances, even if there's nothing left. Why would liberals, when I say liberals, I'm talking about the far left, a minority of a minority of Democrats. But why would liberals still constantly can consistently advocate for

socialism, knowing that it leads to mass starvation and mass death? Mao, Pol Pot, Maduro in Venezuela. Why would you do that? Because you're obsessed with control. If it involves death, destruction, economic destruction, none of that matters.

It's irrelevant. I'm just saying, folks, once you grasp that, everything else makes sense. One quick thing, by the way. For those of you who follow me on Twitter, I had a little incident on Twitter yesterday. I want to give a quick shout out. I'm not going to go into the incident because it's so, frankly, irrelevant. I'm not going to bore you with it. For me to take pot shots at people on my show is a waste of your time and mine. I did it once regarding another case. One was important I had to talk about, but the other one, and the audience didn't like it, and I totally understand.

I'm not going to waste your time. But I just want to give a quick shout out on a positive note to my man, Doc Thompson at The Blaze and Chris Cruz, his producer. Folks, if you've ever listened to Doc in the morning show at the Blaze, he's a great dude. I just want you to know there are some good people left in this movie. Bottom line, someone took a shot at me on Twitter. It was unnecessary. It was wrong. I shot back like I always do, of course.

That's why I said I'm not going to get into it because it's really stupid and irrelevant. I do have a lot of friends in the movement. The movement's not as unified as you think. And Joe, I know, you know,

this, every, everybody thinks like, but you know, because we're all conservatives, like everybody's friends. And the truth is folks, there's some awful people on our side too.

Yeah, there are. I've been, Joe and I have been victims of it. It's a lot of jealousy and envy in this business, sadly. And that's why Joe and I like to do our own thing. Yep.

Because we don't want to get tied into that but I just want you to know there are good people out there and Doc Thompson from The Blaze and Chris his producer are really good folks and I appreciate what they did yesterday so thank you all right today's show brought to you by our buddies at Filter By too Filter By folks no better time to change your filter than now we just had a change of season into the winter you're going to have spring coming up soon too you're going to want to get all that allergy aggravating pollution mold mildew all that crap out of the air. The holidays might be over, but the winter's just begun. And according to studies, this bothers

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Go check them out. FilterBuy.com. Switch out those dirty air filters today. Thanks for supporting our sponsors, folks. Again, we appreciate it. Okay. Just kind of doubling down a little bit on this piece. Marco Rubio, who I don't have any personal issues with.

He seems like a nice enough guy. I just, I can't, I don't understand where he's going lately with economics and this tax law and it's making me very hesitant you know to to support him in it not that he cares i mean i'm just saying if he was to take on the presidency again or anything like that he made a comment comment, Joe, which was very bizarre. He was talking to the news press, a news outlet I'm pretty familiar with. They're actually pretty decent when I ran for Congress over there. And he made a

bizarre statement about the tax law. This is just doubling down from the last article we talked about. I'll make the connection in a second. It'll make sense. And he said something puzzling. The gist of it was, you know, I think we were too generous to corporations, which is bizarre. What do you mean you were too generous? Yeah. What were you giving them money? No, no, we were letting them keep their money. Well, how's that generous? Allowing air quotes, allowing corporations to

keep their own money. What are you giving them? What is Rubio coming out of his own pocket to give corporations money? Did we miss something? Is he a multi-trillionaire? I don't know. I never saw that. I haven't checked his financials, but I'm pretty sure that's not true. And Eddie said, well, we're being generous. These corporations, it was overly generous in the tax cuts.

Some of them may just go and buy back their stocks instead of investing it in the United States. And I thought, oh my gosh. Again, Republican on Republican violence is not really my thing um i don't like it i have to get into it sometimes because it's it's critical this is a case i would have rather stayed away from but folks this is just dopey republic a republican saying how corporations may buy back their own stock now there, there's a piece in the Wall Street Journal today. But more importantly, the piece in the Wall Street Journal links to a better piece. Not to knock the journal piece, it's good.

But it links to a terrific piece by a guy I've cited on this show many times, John Cochran, who is a terrific economist, who writes the most readable, elegant economic pieces on his blog I've ever seen. You'd be doing yourself a favor by reading it. You could do yourself a favor, though, by going to Bongino.com and subscribing to my email list, because I will email you his articles whenever I pick out a real sweet one. And this one was great. In the piece, he entirely debunks this myth that both Savannah Guthrie from, what is he, from NBC or AB?

I don't even know. She's a media person on one of the networks. She attacked Paul Ryan about this. We've had a number of MSNBC fools talk about this. And sadly, we had Marco Rubio bring up this idea of the buyback fallacy, Joe. In other words, the idea that the corporate tax cuts, these companies are just going to buy back their own stock,

increase their stock price and their shareholders will get wealthy and everybody else is going to get screwed. Now, Cochran does a great job dismantling this real,

this nonsense. It's garbage. It's a steaming hot pile of garbage. Joe, as Thomas Sowell has always, you know,

has said often, you know, you have to think past the first order effects to the second order effects. So let's say a company, right? You know, Joe's Computer Company, whatever it may be. You get a corporate tax cut, Joe. You now have some extra money you didn't have before.

You get a 15% tax cut. The corporate tax rate is 21%. It was 35% before, a little more when you factor in the cost. So you get about a 15% percentage point tax cut. So now you have a little bit of extra money. All right. So you're, all right is right. You're a publicly traded company.

Yeah. Let's say you buy back some of your own stock. What Rubio is saying might happen and Savannah Guthrie and these others. If you buy back your own stock, the stock price is going to go up because it's increasing demand for it. the stock price is going to go up because it's increasing demand for it. When you increase demand for anything, if you have 100 people bidding on a product and then 1,000 people bidding on a product on eBay, the price goes up, right? You have the Punisher number one on eBay and one person wants it, you're not going to get much of a bid. 10,000 people want it, that price is going pretty high. So when you start buying back your own stock and you increase the demand, the stock price

is going to go up because you have more people, even though it's their own company, Joe, bidding on it. Make sense? Yeah. So the Rubio theorem, which is, I mean, silly, is that by them bidding up the stock price by buying it back, that people who own shares of that company are now going to make out because the value of the stock they hold is going to go up too. So think of it in terms of an eBay analogy, Joe.

You had one person bidding on the Punisher No. 1, the limited 1985 series, right? Now you have 1,000. The Punisher No. 1 was going for $250. Now 1,000 people are bidding on it, and then the price goes up to $500 because they're all bidding. One guy says, I'll give $250. Another guy, I'll give $251. I'll give $253. You get what I'm saying?

Pretty simple, right? Yeah. How does that benefit people who already own the Punisher No. 1? Pretty simple. Because now they know on the market that their product isn't worth $250 anymore. It's worth $500. How? Because they can go to eBay and look at it.

The same thing works on the stock exchange. If Joe's Computer Company buys back its own stock and bids up the stock price from $50 to $75, all the current holders of Joe's Computer Company now can go to a stock exchange and go, wow, I'm $25 richer with Joe's stock, right? Right. Make sense?

Yeah. So the Rubio theorem seems to be that now that additional money that all those stockholders have in Joe's computer company, that it just vanishes into thin air and goes away. Now, that's nonsense. Cochran walks through in his piece very simply, what happens to the money? Well, when stockholders increase their value in a stock from, say, Joe's computer company was $50, now it's $75, Joe. A lot of them are going to say, all right, you know what? I've made some decent money on this. I bought the stock at 40. It It went up to $50. Now it's $75. I'm going to cash out and take $35

in capital gains. Joe, let me just ask you. If you were a stockholder in your own computer company, when you cash that out, right? Do you take that money and go throw it in a fire pit in your backyard? Oh, hell no. Hell no is right.

You don't. Very good use. This guy's really... I love that cut. right, you don't. Very good use. This guy's really... I love that cut. No, you don't. Of course you don't. What happens to the money? Joe takes it and goes, hey, I got a really interesting stock tip from a buddy about Snapchat. I'm going to take that $35, and I heard Snapchat is...

I don't know what Snapchat... I own some Snapchats. The only reason I say that... Listen, buy is, I don't know what Snapchat is. I own some Snapchats. The only reason I say that, listen, buy it. I don't care. This is not a financial advice show. It's just the first thing that popped in my head. But let's say Snapchat has some revolutionary technology

that you heard about publicly. You're not insider trading or whatever. And you think, no, that could be a good thing. I'm going to buy Snapchat. I think Snapchat's $24 or something to share right now. And then I'm going to a good thing. I'm going to buy Snapchat. I think Snapchat's $24 or something to share right now. And then I'm going to take $10 and I'm going to invest it in whatever company X. That's a new company, a startup, but it may have some growth potential. It is that second order effect that requires the deeper analysis that Rubio and Savannah Guthrie are missing.

Now Snapchat, Joe, if it was an initial offering, I mean, technically when you buy Snapchat, you're really buying the stock from someone else, but say it was an initial offering for Snapchat. Now Snapchat gets your $25. Company X gets your $10 of additional revenue you've made off the stock buyback. And what do they do? They invest in their company.

And what happens? Snapchat goes up to $35 instead of 25. And all those people holding Snapchat make $10. And what do they do it? They invest in company X because they, they heard company X has an artificial intelligence technology. That's terrific. And then company X blows that up. And then company X invests in, you know, their stock goes up. And all the people invested in Company X take their money and go invest in Company M. And Company M has a blockchain technology. And then that blows up. Folks, this is how economic growth works. This is not mysterious. How do you think we got from riding horses around an undeveloped Manhattan to taking Uber rides around the greatest skyscraper Mecca in the world? How do you think that happened? I mean, a serious question. I'm not joking around. You think angels came down from heaven and, you know, waved some magic wand

and automotive technology appeared and skyscrapers built themselves and companies populated them of random phantoms they pulled out of nowhere? This is how economic growth works. When companies buy back their stock, the money goes into shareholder pockets. Yes, oh my God, shareholder pockets. And what do they do with it? Oh, well,

that's where the liberal thinking stops. They take the money and invest it elsewhere. Oh, no, they don't. They just put it in a bank. Okay, then the bank takes the money and invests it elsewhere. Folks, do you realize banks have an overnight lending rate?

Banks don't even hold money for 24 hours. You think they're holding your money for a lifetime? Borrow short, lend long. That's what banks do. They arbitrage things. They lend money out like that. The best thing a rich dude can do is put his money in the bank. The bank gets rid of it like that.

Lends it to someone else. Some small business guy comes in. I need a bank loan for 10,000 to increase my business. Wow, that's a good investment. Here you go. Whose money you think they're giving? They're giving yours. Then he grows his business. He pays back the 10,000 in the bank plus interest. Who then gives it back to the rich guy with interest, who then goes and buys a stock that finds its way into another shareholder's pocket, who invests it in another company. Listen, it's not personal against Rubio, but I don't understand why he said that. Because as the author of the Wall Street Journal piece points out, accurately so,

now liberals, Joe, are taking this talking point and running with it that, look, even Marco Rubio is saying that this is just going to result in a shareholder increase. Sure they are. Yeah. Yes, of course. Because that's what's going to happen. Shareholders are going to increase their value.

But then what? That's the question. Well, what do they do with that? Liberals, stop thinking now. They burn it it that's what happens you just don't understand economics or even worse and again i'm not trying to make this personal against anyone you're lying i mean please give me a third option you either don't understand basic economics cash flows and how an economy works. Because what I just explained to you is a fact. It's not open for interpretation. You either don't understand that

or you do. And for some bizarre reason, you're lying to people. I don't get it. I just don't understand it. And again, I have no interest in Republican on Republican violence. I think he's a great speaker. I've heard he's a super nice guy. But that is just bizarre why Rubio would say something like that. It makes no sense at all. I'm not asking for anybody's sympathy. The show is for you. I get paid very well. Thanks to you all. And the sponsors take very good care of the show to keep it free. But I am asking you to please check out the article today from Cochran, his blog piece,

Sean Cochran, that explains this. It is very readable and explains exactly what I just said in a little more advanced terms, but by no means in any way wonky. You'll read it and come to the exact same conclusion I did afterwards, which we've said on the show multiple times. We've explained this thing. I'm not trying to take credit for it, but Cochran's far smarter on economics than me and most people. This guy's a genius. But he explains it in really elegant terms, how it takes a really low level, almost grade school level of thinking to think that even if companies did engage in massive shareholder or stock buybacks, that shareholders increasing their wealth is somehow going to hurt the economy is juvenile and just plain silly. All right.

Today's show brought to you by our buddies at iTarget Pro. Hey, by the way, for those of you listening, you know I'm always open and honest about our sponsorship of the show. Some of you maybe say, wow, three ads. Folks, we're going to extend out the show a little bit. You are my peeps, my audience. Some of you are friends.

I've emailed, some of you email me so often, I feel like I know you personally. I mean that. I'm not saying it to be funny. So I always explain to you the mechanics of the show. I know it probably drives some of the owners of the show. I know it probably drives some,

the owners of the show crazy, but it's my show. And I feel like you're always owed an explanation. I'm going to try to extend out the show a little more. I've been cautious about this because I feel like we hit a real sweet spot. Joe, I think you'd agree with about 45 to 50 minutes of content.

The show has been exploding. I mean, seriously exploding. The numbers we had last night, Joe was like, wait, what? Did you say that right? Yes, I did. Yes, the numbers have been exploding, but I think an hour show

or 50 minutes to an hour is probably just about right. And folks, as we grow, and again, this is stuff people don't explain on terrestrial radio. Joe would probably agree. They never talk about the business side. The show is getting a little expensive.

The reason, if you ever enter into podcasting, is as our downloads have started to grow substantially, it gets very expensive to host the show on a third-party platform, which you have to do to verify your audience if you're serious in podcasting. No one cares about, oh, well, I got a couple thousand downloads on SoundCloud. The advertisers don't want to hear that.

SoundCloud's great. I love it. We're on SoundCloud. By the way, we're on Spotify now, iHeart, iTunes. So go check us out on Spotify. That's how my daughter listens to the show. So we just got up on that recently. But they need verification.

So you have to pay a third party to verify that your downloads are authentic. So you're not making up your numbers. This stuff gets expensive. That's the reason we're going to lengthen out the show, provide some more content, and we're going to add a third spot in to the show. Not on every single show, at least for now, but until we lengthen out the show, we're going to start throwing three spots in here because it's getting expensive to produce. And I want to keep this audio portion free for you. So I'm sorry for that long-winded explanation, but I feel like I owe it to you. You are my audience, and I love you to death.

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No problem at all. It was a little bit of user error. But it's very, very, very easy to use. Can't mess it up. Okie doke. Got a lot of crap to get to. A lot of crap as always, yeah. All right, here's a good one. This is an older piece.

I'm debating Medicaid or this. I do this on the air sometimes because given the flow of the show, sometimes I order it out, but sometimes I have to change things around. I was in the gym yesterday. I'm working out, and I saw this guy, Mike Gonzalez, who I follow on Twitter, who writes really good stuff. And he sent out a piece and it appears from the piece because he references the Obama presidency as if it's still going on because I can't find a date on the piece. It appears that it's an older piece.

It doesn't matter. It's at the Federalist. It's a really, really, really good piece. I'm going to put it in the show notes today. And I've, as of course, I'll sum it up for you what I think the big takeaways are from it. The takeaway is this. He references this report from a bunch of left-leaning authors that are suggesting a joke, a fix for the new media environment. Now, you know, I like to sum things up and make it easy for my audience to digest.

What's the Dan Bongino takeaway here? Liberals are freaking out that they've lost control over the news. That's the takeaway. And Gonzalez does a good job. It's not like, like I said, an overly wonky piece where he's like, you're like, what's the point? It's a great piece. But liberals are freaking out over the democratization of news. In other words, Breitbart, Conservative Review, The Daily Caller, Fox News, One American News, Newsmax, all of these outlets that are now putting out right-leaning commentary, and Fox, which does have straight news, they have Bret Baier and stuff like that. Liberals are losing their minds. They're losing their minds because they're losing, Joe, the narrative, the narrative.

It's all about the narrative. Liberals always own the narrative. When they had the big three, ABC, NBC, and CBS, Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, a little bit later on, when they owned that and there was no cable news, there was no Breitbart, Conservative Review, Fox, none of that, whatever they said on the nightly news was what the nation was forced to digest. Now, how they digested it was up to the nation. Reagan won without Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. So people obviously were not digesting some of the stuff the way the liberal media wanted them to because they voted for Reagan despite their relentless attacks on Reagan, his senility,

his intellect, and everything else. But liberals are starting to freak out now because they're starting to realize that this could get a lot worse, Joe. In other words, as a la carte options pick up and traditional TV programming goes away, people cutting the cord, people who, Joe, don't care about NBC, ABC, or CBS. That is, and you, Joe, you and I are in this business. We know it, especially working with CRTV, which is entirely a la carte. We're seeing it now.

Cord cutting is picking up. Viewership of traditional media networks or networks are going down. And people are starting to go to Netflix, Hulu, Sling, all kinds of different options to get things a la carte. That's what this podcast is. Joe knows, having grown up in the terrestrial radio business,

it is, I mean, it's not in catastrophic shape. They're doing okay. But I think, Joe, you having seen it over, what, 20 years now? Oh, yeah, it's picking away, yeah. People, podcasts are starting to pick away as the car dashboard becomes

divorced from traditional radio FM AM bands and becomes a plug-in for podcasts. People are going to get in their car and play the Dan Bongino show, the Ben Shapiro show, the Doc Thompson show. Now, there's still going to be another generation of people and there's, I think

there'll always be a role for terrestrial radio. Terrestrial radio may just decide the podcast itself. I mean, Joe's in on a relatively popular morning show. One of the biggest ones in Maryland, Sean and Frank, Sean and Frank are just podcasting. And then you get in the car and you plug in and you,

you know what I'm saying? Joe, you play. So, and I think people are figuring that out slowly. The point I'm trying to make folks is, is this a la carte options pick up. A la carte meaning you get to pick and choose whatever. In the old days, you turned on the car radio, your local morning show was it.

The morning mayor in your, everybody's the morning mayor. Did you notice that? I've seen that all over. There's a guy in Western Maryland's the morning mayor. There's a guy in Florida morning mayor. The morning mayor, the local talk show guy in the morning, that was your guy no matter what. Right? Joe, 20 years ago, what were your choices?

We had Lee Case, the morning mayor at WCBM. I didn't even know that. This guy, I'm not kidding. I did not plan that. Everybody was the morning mayor. Your radio, car radio only got the wattage that was within a certain sphere. You couldn't hear what was happening in LA.

Now you want to listen to WCBM, WMAL, WCBM as an app. Go listen to it. You can listen to it on Mars. You probably could if they beamed it to Mars. I'm not even kidding. This is all happening. And the Democrats are freaking out.

They don't know what to do. So these people wrote this report. And it is astoundingly undemocratic. These two lefties who are joe are projecting some joe solutions for this so whenever you hear solutions from the left run seriously turn around and run it is always going to be something that involves undemocratizing the democratizable their solution is this that liberals and and their like-minded folks should gather together and through crowdsourcing learn basically what to click on and how to manipulate seo search engines and like

google and and and bing and stuff and things like that and click on only certain articles that of course are liberal leaning joe because those are the articles that'll come up first now and we can suppress all those evil breitbart and conservative reviewers and and daily callers of the world you're like wait said that's your solution yeah that's there's a couple other ones in the piece you can read about but this is amazing that they just cannot tolerate joe an alternative you know view of the world, view of the universe, view of how things work. They have such little tolerance for it

that they'll engage in open strategies on papers anybody can read to suppress information from you as if you're not smart enough to distinguish between what's good news and what's terrible news. Vision of the anointed, anyone? Again?

These anointed folks, they anoint themselves planners over your life even when they don't have official government power now he does point out in the piece which is interesting to gonzalez how this happened and he says it was basically the internet the web that shattered all barriers to entry for news. Now, this is the critical takeaway. So you have their solution first. I kind of read it in reverse. Their solution is, liberals and all our buddies don't click on stuff, and we can manipulate the SEO, and we can suppress all that conservative garbage. Got that, Joe? Yeah.

But Gonzalez sets up how they get to this point. They're like, well, the internet shattered barriers to entry. And what they mean by that is, back in the day, Joe, again, if you didn't turn on Walter Cronkite, there was nowhere else to get the news other than the newspaper. And to get the newspaper requires you to own a printing press, which required massive amounts of capital and a distribution network. So basically all of these companies were liberal. There were really not that many strong competitors. Liberals dominated the industry. And there was a barrier to entry to get the news out. What was the barrier to entry, Joe?

You either had to own a TV channel or own a printing press. And a distribution network to come along with. Those are very expensive and people didn't do it. The internet changed everything. Blogging came about. He gives some interesting examples of news stories that were broken before the media could get them out he talks about like whitney houston's death and how these stories were broken on the internet and social media by people who just saw it okay whitney houston's dead oh my

gosh you know in the past joe how would that get out it would get out on like the ap remember the wire you know the newswire yeah they'd get out on the news wire and that's how these companies would make their money. Now, there's no need to click on an AP story and pay their advertisers if you've already read it a thousand times on social media from Joey Bag of Donuts. You see what I'm saying, Joe? Oh, yeah. There's no money.

There's no money anymore. I should say none. There's no significant returns on regular news anymore. Why? Because nobody's going to click on a story they've read 6,000 times on Twitter already before you broke it. Make sense, Joe? Yeah. So therefore, you're not going to get your sponsors because sponsors pay for clicks. People are not going to do that. So premise number one of the piece is that straight news, Joe,

is not profitable anymore. It's commoditized. Anyone with a camera, anyone with an iPhone, anybody with a Twitter account could put news out there. Bam. He says, but what is profitable? And this is what's really scaring the left. And hence their manipulation of SEO strategy. What's really profitable, Joe, is differentiated news. Now, that's a fancy way of SEO strategy. What's really profitable, Joe, is differentiated news.

Now, that's a fancy way of saying opinion. Like us. What we do. There has been an explosion in conservative and, to be fair, liberal podcasting. Pod Save America, which is a liberal show, does bonkers numbers. The Dan Bongino show, the Ben Shapiro show,

the Steve Crowder show, bonkers numbers. Tens of Dan Bongino show, the Ben Shapiro show, the Steve Crowder show, bonkers numbers. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of listeners a night, millions a month. These, the differentiated news is where the money is in the future. And the problem they're having with this

is differentiated news. Opinion, Joe, puts out two alternative explanations of the universe whereas in their prior universe when it was just what they called straight news right walter cronkite or tom brokaw it was just one and that one piece of straight news was really news with a liberal slant does that make sense joe yeah that's. That's why. So then Walter Cronkite, Brokaw, the New York Times, they love that. That was Joe quote, straight news. It wasn't, it was with a liberal slant. But now that straight news is dead because anybody can put out straight news on social media and beat them to the punch. Their theory is that as opinion news takes off,

that's where the money is now. Podcasting, blogging, that type of stuff. As that takes off, conservatives are now going to compete on a level playing field with liberals and people are going to be able to form their own opinions and they're freaking out. Make sense? Did I tie that up nice? You did a good job there. Super thank you. Super good piece by this guy, Mike Gonzalez. I'll put it in the show notes today. It's at The Federalist. Go check it out, Bongino.com. Thanks again, folks. I really appreciate it. Appreciate you bearing with me on the explanation, but I feel like I owe it to you. You are my audience and we do this show exclusively for you. We deeply appreciate your loyalty. Please spread the word. Again, check us out on Spotify, iHeart, SoundCloud, iTunes. You can also listen at

Bongino.com if you want to listen there. We really appreciate it. I will see you all tomorrow. You just heard the Dan Bongino show. Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com. You can also get Dan's podcasts on iTunes or SoundCloud and follow Dan on Twitter 24-7 at DBongino.