The Dan Bongino Show - Interview with Kash Patel (Ep. 2455)

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

In this episode, I speak to FBI Director Kash Patel on a wide range of topics, from my time in the bureau to the biggest controversies surrounding the FBI. Plus, another media hoax was dismantled, and a flashback to one of the Biden era's lowest points. Trump Absolutely Rips AOC, Newsom for Embarrassing U.S. on World Stage https://nypost.com/2026/02/16/us-news/trump-rips-aoc-and-gavin-newsom-as-incompetent-after-the-munich-security-conference-bad-look-for-our-country/ Hmm… Why Is NAACP Suing over FBI’s Raid on Fulton County Election Office? https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/naacp-sues-over-2020-presidential-election-records-fbi-seized-in-fulton-county-georgia-5982679?src_src=partner&src_cmp=BonginoReport WOAH: Politico Just Admitted Non-Citizens DO VOTE in Our Elections https://townhall.com/tipsheet/amy-curtis/2026/02/17/politico-non-citizens-voting-is-rare-n2671432 Sponsors: Carshield - https://carshield.com - code: Bongino Birch Gold - Text Dan to 989898 Bon Charge - https://boncharge.com - code: Bongino Blackout Coffee - https://blackoutcoffee.com/bongino - code: Bongino Brickhouse Nutrition - https://BrickhouseNutrition.com/dan - code: dan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All America all the time. Sit down, buckle up, and get ready for the Dan Bongino show. Hey, my sincere apologies. As you know, I try to be punctual if you're five minutes early, you're 10 minutes late. However, we wanted to make sure that everything was perfect for the interview. We're just doing some sound and everything like that to make sure the sound and the audio was absolutely perfect for it. We're trying to get it there. So, you know, when it's a podcast, this isn't, you know, cable news or things like that

where there's this big, heavy structure to this show. This is kind of a conversation between you and I. So forgive me. I always try to start close to on time every single day, plus or minus, you know, 30 seconds or so. So that one is on me. Got an interview with FBI director Cash Patel today. We're going to talk about a lot of things, trans violence, Antifa, the national security threats, violent crime, the reforms that went on over there, public corruption cases.

got all of it, but I do want to talk about opening up the show today, Bob, the Antifa threat, because an article came out yesterday, and it's going to describe to you perfectly how the Libcomi class covers up for outright criminality. Outright criminality. It's not just that they're covering up government misfeasance. They cover up malfeasance and criminality, too. And you'll see in this article I'm going to put right on the screen right out the start of the show how they don't care if you get hurt or anything else happens. All they care about is the damn narrative every single time. I'll ask the director about it later too. Let's get right to it. I don't know about you, but my car basically is my office half the time. I'm always in it. Between commuting for work,

driving to meetings and squeezing in weekend trips to see family, I'm putting some serious miles on the car. The more you rely on your car, the more you start thinking, okay, listen, what happens if something goes wrong with the car. That's exactly why I have Car Shield. I needed peace of mind. Honestly, I wish I'd signed up sooner. Car Shield gives you 24-7 roadside assistance, courtesy towing, and rental car options at no extra cost. They work with ASC certified mechanics nationwide. Their plans are month to month, and the deductibles are low, which is huge when you're already stressed. They've been doing this for 20-plus years. They protect over 2 million vehicles and boast a 96% customer review rating. Make a decision your wallet will

love with Car Shield. Do it today. Car Shield is offering our listeners 20% off with the B-O-N-G-I-N-O at CarShield.com. Visit CarShield.com for some peace of mind. Lock in your 20-26 protection today and protect yourself from expensive car repairs. Again, go to CarShield.com. Use code Bongino for 20% off. Nice. Very well done, guys.

Perfect timing. So there's a reason, folks, that the Lib-Commi media class, although I just said the same thing three times, wants you to believe that Antifa is an idea. Now, I know you're probably thinking, yeah, they're just a distraction. Yeah, of course it's a distraction. It's all of the stuff you're probably thinking.

But there's an actual reason for this. I bring this up because I saw an article pop up yesterday at MSNOWW, which is what we'll be calling it from now, pun intended on. MSNOW had this article by the absolutely hapless Brandy Zadrosny, who amazingly has a 100% success rate of failing, is incredible. That's really hard to do. That's a perfect batting average of failure. And in this article, they're going back again to the idea that Antifa, given the spate of Antifa arrests, is an idea. But there's a reason they're doing it. They want these Antifa folks.

Let me stop. First, the left has always had shock troops on the street. When you look at collectivist, socialist, commies, throughout modern human history, They have always had a group of shock troops on the street to read honestly to beat the shit out of you if you speak up that the left loves that stuff. They've always had their shock troops on the street. They've always used violence to shut you up when they can't steal your money through collectivism. The problem they have in the United States is we have federal laws and states probably have them too against organizing criminal activity. RICO statutes for racketeering. If you organize to conduct criminal activity in the name of some group, whether it be La Cozenostra or Al-Qaeda, they can use these statutes.

It is not legal for you to organize. You could organize a Boy Scout meeting. You can't organize a freaking terror attack or a rackets operation. You can't. So the left needs Antifa on the street for their shock troop operation, and they love it as an intimidation fact. if you speak out against them. And they want to take advantage of all the benefits of organizing, money, social media exposure,

hey, show up on this corner and beat the crap out of some aga people. They want to take advantage of all of that, but they don't want to pay any criminal penalty for their shock-true people on the street. So they say, well, it's not an organization. It's an idea. You get it? I say this because I forgive me if I'm wrong, send me the clip.

I'll play it if you guys have it in the chat or elsewhere. If anyone else has said this in the media, I don't want to steal their idea. I haven't heard it yet. That's the reason. It's not just a distraction and all that of other stuff. Yes, that's true. They want to organize while avoiding criminal penalties for organizing.

So the left will come out there and constantly say things like Antifa's just an idea. Again, why did I bring this up? Here's MSNOWW, Brandy Zadrosi. She knows exactly what she's doing here with this bullshit here. This just came out. Federal investigators hadn't previously focused on Antifa for good reason, according to this guy she cites the DOJ's former counsel for domestic terrorism. Antifa has always been construed as more of a politics or an activity of radical opposition to the far right,

as opposed to an actual organization. Brzezioski told MSNOWW. It's strange credulity notes. The headline is pieces. Trump wants to prosecute anti-fascist as terrorists. This Texas trial will test his power. Folks, in Prairieland, Texas, there have been upwards of it, and again, I'll address this with Director Patel later. there for this with that attack, there have been upwards of 20 plus arrests for Antifa-related

activity and violence there. The left is freaking out because if the prosecutions and convictions roll through as the process starts to just wrap up on this case, they're in a world of trouble because they're not going to be able to take advantage of their criminal organizations and the use of money, money flows and everything like that. The president is dead said on cracking down on criminal organizations and acting violence in the street to further some political ideology. Zadrosny knows exactly what she's doing here.

The left will cover up any amount of apporing criminal activity as long as it advances their cores or scares the shit out of you into silence. I want you to remember this, in case you missed it, we played it a couple weeks ago. This was the former FBI director who didn't take this stuff seriously.

Putting out there into the political ecosystem, because this was a political bullshit statement to provide air cover for the shock troops. This wasn't a statement from a professional law enforcement officer who knew what he was doing. This is Christopher Ray talking about Antifa, implying that, oh, it's just an idea. This is how we're looking at.

No, no, no, no one's looking at that way now, not in this FBI. Check this out. We look at Antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization. To be clear, we do have quite a number of properly predicated domestic terrorism investigations into violent anarchist extremists, any number of whom self-identify with the

Antifa movement. And that's part of this broader group of domestic violent extremists that I'm talking about. But it's just one part of it. We also have the racially motivated violent extremists, the militia types, and others. We changed all of that. We went in there and dumped all of that bullshit stuff that he's talking about now. And we refocused them on these. groups that are clearly, I mean, one of the guys just locked up recently, put up that Bill Malugian tweet, had a shirt on, I'm Antifa. No, you're kidding. No, I'm not kidding. You can see it yourself. I thought it was just an idea. And this is the Ray thing you just heard, Christopher Ray, make no mistake. Went out there into the ecosystem because it provided air cover for

politicians like Joe Biden and others who wanted this air cover because they don't want these people off the street. Here's Joe Biden in the debate arguing with President Trump during their back and forth. Again, implying somehow that Antifa is just an idea because they want these people out there. Violence is their coin of the realm. Check this out. He's got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right wing problem. This is a left. This is a left-wing I direct this is a left wing. I'm a white supremacist. Antifa's an idea, not an organization.

Oh, you got to be kidding. You see what happened? You see how that worked? Ray gave them the air cover to go out and allow them to organize out there without any of the penalties of organization and organizing criminal activity? It's not an organization.

It's just an idea. Again, I haven't heard anybody explain that before. And in over the past year, breaking all that down and looking at it like the organization, it claims it is, is the only way to stop them from praying on innocent Americans and the spate of violence happening with them now. It's not just there, folks. What spurred me to talk about this yesterday is this recent episode, again, of trans violence.

Another thing during the past year, I'll address with Director Patel again later. But they weren't looking at this at all. This is a very real and tragic phenomenon. That's resulted in all too many homicides. and violence, whether it's Nashville, Minnesota, Nassimus at Rhode Island, this latest tragic news story. But the Democrats, the liberal media,

their commie buddies, and their useful idiots, will cover this stuff up. They will do anything to avoid you looking at the problem. They want you to treat a sore throat when you're dealing with a cancer. They don't want you to deal with the problem because the problem, at least in the case of the shock troops with Antifa, is useful for them

because it's meant to intimidate you. from going in the streets and exercising your right to assemble too. They always needed the shock troops. The trans, their focus on the trans issue and they're ignoring of trans violence is a totally different issue. It is a cover-up of criminal activity on their part, but it's for a different reason.

Democrats need you and the liberal media need you in boxes. They will create a box. It doesn't matter what it is. Union, non-union women, black, white, Jew, Muslim, Catholic, whatever. They will put you in the boxes and they want you all apart. Now, keep in mind, you may not put yourself in that box. You may be Catholic or Jewish or whatever it is,

but you just see yourself as an American, a mom, a dad, whatever it is. You don't, you practice these things, this religion, but you don't identify as that exclusively. They want you in these boxes. That's why LGBTIQIA 1 plus 2, they keep adding all of these categories. The more categories for them, the better. Because then they can put you in a category, whatever that is, LGBTQIA, 2 plus 1 spirit, whatever it may be, they're going to tell you how much the Maga crowd and Republicans hate you in that category.

So they need to expand the categories. But when the categories, they start to expand, start to look like they're causing a problem, i.e. giving cross-sex hormones to kids in the developmental phase of their lives. They can't cover that because then the category blows up in their face. Watch this. This is CNN about the latest episode of trans violence. And there's a certain word that's left out in this. They start with an interview of one of these young men who was there, witnessed. Check this out. It's up against the door and this tries to try to stay safe down in there. But no, it was very scary. Police say the Shooker took his own life and apparently was targeting family members. The Potoxet police chief said one person in the stand. try to disarm the shooter and help end the attack.

Interesting how they leave out all the details, man, and address. I mean, that's kind of important, is it not? I told you, folks, these people will cover up for any amount of criminality, whatever it is, as long as it advances their ideological ends. Just freaking tell people the truth, man. It's not hard. I mean, you're in the journalism field, right? Your entire job is to give people a data set of facts and inputs

so they can produce an educated output. If you screw up the inputs, the output's always going to be a mess. That's why nobody trusts institutions anymore. The media did this. Just tell the truth. This is the Dem's calling card. As long as something works for them, criminal or not, make it go away. You see it with the Save Act.

I'll get to that in a minute too. Voter fraud is a crime. Cheating in elections is criminal. You cannot go and steal someone's ballot and vote for them. You would think this would be a bipartisan enterprise out there like, hey, we want free and fair elections. Why do people not trust institutions in the process? Because the Democrats are vigorously fighting any measure of voter integrity at all, despite the fact you got to show a freaking ID to buy like an allergy medication in your local Walgreens.

And you wonder why people don't trust institutions. You guys know this Nick Shirley, this entrepreneurial young independent journalist out there who busted open to Minnesota. story? Well, he's got another video out. This one about voter registrations. We've seen it. And folks, this is another one of those videos. You would think the Democrats and the media people would be all over this. Like, wow, this looks like a real problem. People aren't going to have faith in elections if what he's putting out in this video is even remotely true. Check this out. Because she's 100 years old and she voted last election from here. I just want to make sure you're not 126 years old. And do you think it's possible like

illegal migrants could be voted? Do you know where the ballots might have gone? Like for 108 people, you know, that we're registered here? When it comes to fraud, most people think about money. However, there's another potential massive fraud story taking place in America, one tied to the most consequential system in our country, which is our voting system. This has to do with everything about who runs the country and how elections are actually controlled. And if we don't have voter integrity, what even are we?

And there's one state that is the breeding ground for potential voting fraud, and that is California, where it can take up to one month to count all the votes, no voter ID, and millions of ballots are cast by mail. Folks, one month, it's not an election, okay? That's a recipe and a witch's brew for fraud. A month to count ballots, are you shitting me? That is not a uniform standard across the country. That's a California thing.

They isolate you from the truth. This is how they cover up all criminality, whether it's an Antifa operation, voter fraud, massive fraud inside a government, which we saw in Minnesota and elsewhere. They cover it up through the gaslighting process. Lie about it, lie confidently, lie often, and isolate you from the truth. They isolate you from the truth like you saw in the CNN clip by isolating out and leaving out key facts of the story. So your inputs are wrong. So the output's going to be all screwed up. again that's why nobody trusts institutions anymore you saw this massive fraud in minnesota and

now they're freaking out because AI is going to be transformative when it comes to government over the last year i i dealt with uh we had a doge guy who'd come around and take a look and it was one of the best things we ever did there's been a culture change thanks to this president and the efforts of uh Elon and the doge the government efficiency that did not stop by the way There was a culture-changing government. I saw it and it's freaking the left out. They are absolutely panicked about this because as these Doge guys went in and looked at this stuff

from an outside perspective, they were like, why the hell are we doing this again? Like nobody does it that way in the private sector. I think we cut out something like $300 million in expenses, which is not small, you know, it's not so a couch change you'd find in the couch. It's a good amount of money and there's more to come. Here's our FK talking about exactly this,

how HHS, ladies and gentlemen, Can you imagine the fraud in Medicaid and Medicare going on right now, given the Democrats, they don't want to do anything about it. The Democrats love the fraud because they need the welfare state. The welfare state keeps people latch to the government, you know what, and keeps Democrat voters happy and satiated. Here's RFK talking with Theo Vaughn, talking about how they're going to implement AI within HHS. folks, this is going to induce panic on the other side of the political aisle as Americans.

And by the way, they're opening the books also to a lot of the HHS health care spending for people to start to take a look at this stuff. Wait till you see the amount of fraud that went into this. This is going to absolutely blow your mind. Minnesota is just the beginning, hat tip Nick Shirley and others who were on top of that. Again, a case we worked on there for a long time. Check this out. They've started out with Medicare.

We're using AI. and we're using AI which can detect the fraud. You know, it can tell us whether this guy who we're paying has been convicted of fraud before. And we shouldn't be paying them again. And it will be telling us every aspect of his business that we need to know to understand whether it's fraudulent. So we're going to save just this year tens of billions of dollars in eliminating fraud in Medicaid. And they used to pay it under the Biden administration. The system was called pay and chase.

So if they sent in a fraudulent invoice, even if we knew it was, the HHS knew it was fraudulent, they would pay it. And then they would put the inspector general to go claw it back. And of course, it wasn't there, but they, so they never recovered anything. Oh, I see. Now we're not going to pay them anymore. If they're fraudulent, they're going to get, they're not going to get a check. we're going to save tens of billions of dollars just this year, and we're going to save hundreds of billions over annually from now on.

And that's because the AI is keeping track of that? The AI can spot the fraud. Got it. Can you imagine none of this was being done before President Trump and Bobby Kennedy and HHS, before the administration swore in? This wasn't being done. You would have fraudulent vendors billing over and over again, and outside of some criminal predicate.

A lot of it was just paid, and they would chase it later. Can you imagine running a private business this way? We have a company here, Bongino, Inc. Say you got a vendor, whatever, a painter. It places it in the studio here. Paints the studio, right? You pay him $5,000 to paint the lobby of the studio.

You give him the $5,000, he never shows up. A month later, hey, you're going to paint the studio? Yeah, I'll paint it. It's going to cost you $5,000. I already pays you the $5,000. No, you got to pay me again. That's what the government does. That's what the government does.

And you've got the other side of the political aisle covering up all this stuff because, again, they don't give a shit about national bankruptcy, crime rates, anything like that. They care about protecting their enterprise first, the acquisition and abuse of power. You see it with the SAVE Act, too. The SAVE Act, you saw that Nick Shirley video, would stop a lot of this massive balloting issue we have across the country. We know mail-in ballots are subject and rife with fraud. We know it.

I've shown you the New York Times article over and over. The New York Times themselves back in 2012, Adam Liptack, wrote a piece about how error and fraud rates are a real problem with mail and ballots. It's obvious why. If you're showing up at a polling location, you have to show up. If you're not Dan Bongino, you have to show up in person as someone else pretending to be me. You're probably on some video system somewhere.

You have to sign. It's going to create some problems. Is that impossible to cheat? But it creates problems. Mail in ballots, someone mails. a ballot to your house, you can go steal the mail if you know the person say older and infirm. You steal the ballot. You hope they don't notice. You just vote and send it back in and sign. No one's going to know anything if no one complains about it. That's why you get rejection

rates and fraud. This is not complicated. We need the SAVE Act. The key to getting this SAVE Act passed, this is critical. And I know Mike Lee, Senator Mike Lee's been all over this. We need to bust this filibuster, folks. The filibuster has become an artificial obstacle to passing any legislation House over to Senate on the Senate side. Philibuster's Senate specific. However, once it gets passed from the House, it doesn't matter. Everything dies in the Senate. If you were going to filibuster, meaning you're going to create this 60-vote threshold, filibuster used to have to go on the House floor and talk. You can talk forever. I forget how long, what was it long as my 60 days or something like that. But you can talk forever. But you're going to have to sit up there and you guys are

going to have to talk your way through this and you're going to have to shut down everything over not wanting voter integrity. I'm sorry. This just like threatened to filibuster and it shuts everything down. It's total bullshit. That's why we can't get anything passed. I mean, the Democrats, as I've shown you in the super cuts are going to bust a filibuster anyway, they've already said it. So the least we can do is make them sit down there on the floor and talk. Talk the whole time. Senator John Thune addressed this yesterday. He doesn't seem too keen on the idea of enacting it. We'll see. There's no other way to get this thing passed. Folks. You want to save the country. I know the clip won viral us on the show the other day talking about the SAVE Act, but we've got to do

something. If we don't move on this SAVE Act, forget it. People are going to lose faith in institutions and the Republic revolves around fidelity to a common cause. The documents don't mean anything if people don't believe in them. Here's Thune commenting on this yesterday and the opportunity cost of time on the floor. Check this out. Exercising or triggering a talking filibuster has ramifications, implications that I think everybody needs to be aware of. So we will have those discussions, but that's obviously ties the floor up for an indefinite amount of time with not only unlimited debate, but also unlimited amendments. Okay. I, listen, I don't see any other way. If we don't establish vigorous

voter integrity measures, knowing everything that's going on in California and elsewhere, I don't see how to reestablish faith in institutions. I don't. I don't, there's no easy path out of this. You know, I talk about it often, you know, level 10 problems in government when I was there, how there's a shitty answer and a shittier answer. That is everything at the president's level, everything. I get it. Yes, there's going to be unlimited amendments. The Democrats, when they'll inevitably at some point take control of the Senate and the House. Yes, they're going to get to past stuff too. The problem is in this game theory operation we're working here is that Democrats have already threatened to dump the filibuster. So they're going to get to do all their stuff with 51 votes

or 50 plus the vice president if they own the White House. And we're not. They've already said they're going to do it. And their obstacles to doing it were two senators, Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who are no longer in office. The only one who even might object, and I'm not even sure he would and when they put the squeeze on them would be fetterman. They're going to change the rules. We might as well beat them to the punch on this. By the way, you guys remember the Ministry of Truth? Remember the Ministry of Truth?

What was their name, Nina Jankowicz? Nina Jankov. You remember the Ministry of Truth? Oh, my gosh. That story, man, that thing. You talk about pissing me off. That story got under my skin. It's back.

Well, it's not back, but people are back. Important story update coming up for you next. And again, Director Patel coming up in a little bit. Hey, a lot happened when I was back in D.C., like gold jumping over 60% in the past year. Listen, everybody's straight with you. I'm feeling pretty good about buying gold from Birch gold right about now. And I'm really grateful her back as a sponsor.

A lot of you know the story. I never wanted to endorse a gold company. Paula convinced me. She said she's a huge believer in gold. I like gold. I was like, yeah, let's get in. I like Birch. But as I got to learn more about the diversification of my portfolio from

Burge Gold, I started buying gold from them. and I became a huge believer too. I am now. I like to buy gold. It's a good hedge for me. There's freedom and diversification. And Birch Gold, BIRCH, is the only gold company

I choose to do business with and have for a few years now. I encourage you to learn for yourself. Text my name, Dan, to the number 9-8-9-8-9-8. Birch Gold will send you a free info kit on how to convert an eligible IRA of 401k

into an IRA and physical gold. That's right. Own gold in a tax-sheltered account. Again, text my name, Dan, to the number 9-8-9-8-9-8-9-1. and see if owning gold is right for you. Birch Gold, B-I-R-C-H, text my name Dan to 9-8-9-8-9-8. Message and data rates may apply.

Our next sponsor is Bone Charge. When I moved to D.C., one of the first things I asked was the red light therapy blanket from my friends at Bone Charge. Why? Because I'm arthritis everywhere, and I'm always in pain, and it sucks. And the only thing that works for me is is red light therapy. I talk about it all the time. If you've ever met me out in public,

and you've asked me about life hacks. First thing I mentioned is red light therapies. It's the only way I've avoided surgeries or more of them at this point. I'm a big biohacker on this. This is one of my go-toes. Bone charge is a global leader in premium wellness innovation, grounded in science and driven by purpose. They created solutions that fit easily into any lifestyle,

which is why their products work for me. Paula loves the red light masks. She uses it for about 10, 15 minutes every day. The red light face mask is lightweight, portable, contours perfectly to your face. looks so young, plus it's suitable for all skin types and can support a more youthful complexion, smoother skin texture, and more. That's why she looks like she's still in her 20s. If you're ready to feel better, it helps me with my joint pain enormously. I'd be lost without it.

If you're ready to feel better, go to bonecharge.com and use code Bongino to save 15% off, the red light face mask and there are other products as well. Again, that's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E, Bonecharge.com, and use code Bongino to save 15% off on your red light mask and their other great products. The statements of products have not been evaluated by the FDA. Products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure,

or prevent any disease or condition. I would. I'd be lost without that. I do a leg workout. My knee swells up like crazy every single time. I need a knee replacement. Really, really bad. I needed it a year ago. The doctor's like, how are you walking around on that thing?

I don't know. It's just, I'm getting it done. Just do it, like the old Nikey has used to say, right? Speaking of isolating people from the truth and gaslighting, how media people like to leave out key facts and input so you produce a faulty output. That's why half of America thought Joe Biden was seen out, was not seen out, didn't have spaghetti for brains. They isolate you from the truth.

And one of the ways they wanted to isolate you from the truth during the Biden and Obama years was to implement this de facto and sometimes de jure a censorship. You remember all the fact checkers and all that bullshit we had to deal with? You still see some of it, but man, it was bad under the Biden years. And I got to tell you, the first couple years of President Trump, they were attacking him too. Remember the fact checkers and all that stuff? The opinion checkers, that was all bullshit. The only reason I bring that up is you remember the Ministry of Truth, all of these stories?

They had this, what is, disinformation governance board? I mean, Orwellian by nature. They were going to have this board that was going to go out there and kind of combat disinformation. But disinformation, don't know some of those headlines. This information was whatever the government would have said it was. here's a Bridget Johnson Homeland Security. DHS standing up Disinformation Governance Board led by information warfare expert.

What the hell? How does that sound? I mean, these stories get worse and worse and worse. We cover them. What is the DHS Disinformation Government Board? Why is everyone so mad about it? The only reason I bring it up is there's a potential appointee to the FISA court.

And this is a big deal. The FISA court is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts that are, listen, it's a powerful weapon. and FISA spying tools. One of the people that they're suggesting be appointed as an advisor to the court is this lady. And you see she was just at a hearing up on Capitol Hill and had to face some tough questions over this.

Folks, be very careful about this stuff. You don't want people, you know, sensors over there working on the FISA court. That could result in real, real trouble for free speech and you're right to speak out. Check this out. And so I find it kind of rich that you're here expressing concerns about First Amendment concerns about anything a federal district court judge said this was the biggest affront of the first amendment

in the history of the United States of America, this censorship enterprise that the Biden administration engaged in that you were a big part of. We would be remiss to not at every point point out the people who were involved in this, who would trample individual rights in this country, their ability to speak their mind because they thought the government should decide what the truth was. And this country was founded on the principle that that's not the case, that individuals can make up their own minds. So hopefully we never go down this road again. But you ought to be ashamed of yourself for your role in this. Damn right, we never go down that role again.

Folks, you know how powerful these FISA tools are? You want people on there associated with the disinformation governance board with scary Poppins and that disaster? I don't know how many times I've got to hammer this in the three weeks I've been back. I'm not scared of a ton of stuff. a pseudo-bravery thing. It's just I don't spend all day panicking about every single threat all the time. You triage what you're worried about

and you move on. But one of the things that scares the shit out of me is government after what we went through. With the Biden years and the Obama years and the censorship and the fact checkers and the takedowns and people getting arrested for thought crimes, you're seeing it right now in the European Union.

You're seeing it in the UK. And with government surveillance tools, only growing in power with technology and AI. Ladies and gentlemen, this problem is only going to get worse. And I'm talking worse in a geometric manner, not an arithmetic one. This is going to grow exponentially. It's going to be a real problem if we don't cut this off now. I saw this video, this Hayek video yesterday, and it talks about the knowledge problem. This is the problem with hate speech, air quotes, when people in government get to categorize what hate speech is, when the disinformation governance board, you know, the whole scary Poppins routine.

When they get to categorize what hate speech is, there's a knowledge problem. The knowledge problem in government is a collective small group of people getting to decide what's going to offend the population of 300 million plus people. There is an asymmetry there. Knowledge is best dispersed amongst the population rather than, you know, coagulated there with a bunch of people in the swamp telling you what's best for you. Listen to this piece and it the nails this. This is really important.

This is why I like to pull like Friedman clips and things like this once in a while. This, this is conserving, really good. This is what conservatism is about. Conserving, great, timeless ideas. Check this out. The socialism assumes that all the available knowledge can be used by a single central authority.

It overlooks that the modern society, which I know prefer to call the extended order, which exceeds the perception of any individual mind, is based on the utilization of widely dispersed knowledge. And once you are aware that we can achieve that great utilization of available resources, only because we utilize the knowledge of millions of men, it becomes clear that the assumption of socialism, the central authority, and command all this knowledge, is just not correct.

Folks, the knowledge problem is the core of everything we believe in as conservatarians. You know, I'll use a quick example I've used in the show in the past of a baseball card, price in a baseball card. You know, I used to like Glenn Davis. He was first baseman for the Astros and played for the Mets later. But, you know, I used to collect baseball cards. The price of that card, if you were to put that on, say, an eBay, anyone interested in that card can go there and bid.

Someone who's got knowledge, like, hey, I really like this guy. I saw him working out in spring training. He's going to have a great year. say you're an investor in cards. You may think, hey, I've watched them, but I think this guy's going to do really well. That card's going to go up. I'm going to buy it. When you have a bunch of disinformation, information warfare specialists in D.C.

who claim to have knowledge you don't. I don't care if they've got a PhD and neuroscience or whatever it is. Hey, I can price that card better than you. You can't price that card better than the collective wisdom of crowds. That's why capitalism works and socialism fails every freaking time. It's a knowledge asymmetry that can never, listen to me, never ever be solved. You know, yesterday was five years, speaking of truth, advocates for conservatism, timeless advocates. Yesterday, February 17, 2021, five years ago, we lost the legend.

Rush Limbaugh. While we're on the topic of truth, I thought this was the perfect way to sum this up. Here was just a quick reminder of President Trump acknowledging the greatness of one Rush Limbaugh before he passed. Check this out. Almost every American family knows the pain when a loved one is diagnosed with a serious illness. Here tonight is a special man, beloved by millions of Americans

who just received a stage four advanced cancer diagnosis. This is not good news, but what is good news is that he is the greatest fighter and winner that you will ever meet. Rush Limbaugh, thank you for your decades of tireless devotion to our country. Man, I think we all miss Rush. Folks, I feel like recently with all the division in the party, some artificial, some real, you know, I say all the time. People say, oh, well, X, you know, Twitter isn't real life. No, it is real life. There are real divisions out there.

There are people who don't like people within the party and people who don't like people outside the party. And that's real. Some of it's artificial. There is a lot of bot-driven stuff. There's some foreign influence that goes into that. But it's not all fake and should never be dismissed. But gosh, it seems like with the loss of Charlie and Rush,

like we had bridges between separate factions within the movement. It feels like a lot of that's gone away. And I think before the midterms, It's really important. We reconcile a lot of that. And we segregate out the artificial bullshit from the real stuff and address the real stuff, sit down, have a powwow about it, and move forward so we don't lose power to a group of lunatics before the midterms who are going to impeach this president and make the next couple years of your life

if they take back the House and Senate, the worst you've ever seen. Everything is happening now, whether it's inflation, finally getting under control, the GDP growth, the low tax rates, whether it's, It's zero illegal immigration, migrants emitted into the southern border, the shutdown of the border, the crime rates. All of that stuff is going to stop. We've got to find a way. We don't have to sit there and give each other back rubs and all that stuff.

We don't even have to like each other. But we've got to find a way as a collective team and a movement to get past some of these problems before the midterms, folks. We're going to get smoked. And I really wish, you know, Rush was there to provide that kind of bridge and that it, you know, that antenna, everybody could kind of get the signal from. I had this time slot on the radio for, what was it, three and a half, four years or so, before I left to go serving the FBI.

And it was the greatest honor of my life. But I'll tell you, and I'll say again, I always just felt like, you know, I don't belong there. I felt like that spot, I don't know. You can't have radio silence for three hours, but if you're ever going to have it, like he deserved it. His last show, I didn't know it was his last show, and I was sitting there and I remember I was, I just worked out or something, and I was sitting there in the shower listening on my phone. And I'm like, damn it, if I had only known that was his last show, I would have sat down and so intently taken in every word of it. Miss you, Rush. The opposite

of truth, folks, and on the other end of the spectrum, the opposite of truth is bullshit. There's a lot of bullshit going on in the other side of the aisle. The race for 2028, the presidency is on. Of course, the midterms race we're in the middle of right now. And this Munich conference and the implosion of AOC, I don't want to make this an AOC as AOC Mombami show all the time either. You know, really advertising the stupidity makes us all collectively dumber. However, it's relevant here.

I got a Mondami clip, too. I hope to get to about New York because it shows you, again, the hypocrisy of these. This is what you voted for up in New York. It's my hometown. I'm ashamed people voted for this. Now they're shocked. Oh my gosh, Mondami's going to raise property taxes and all this.

Of course he was going to. He's a socialist. What do you think he was going to do? You think he was kidding? He told you what he was going to do. The problem is Democrats are getting nervous. Democrats are getting really nervous. Remember I, and the reason I'm talking about this now is there are real schisms in our party.

Some of it again is artificially inflated and some of it's real. There are very different approaches about what should happen in Iran. You know, what should happen about foreign aid? What should happen with tax cuts, how they should be partitioned. There are very different on abortion. You've seen some of these arguments play on public. And that's okay. We're not the party of shutting people up in our own tent.

We're not. I hope we get past them and can come to some agreement before the midterms. But folks, the Democrats take some solace in this, are having the exact same problems. This is not a Republican-only thing. The Democrats are in a world of pain right now because their top-tier candidates for 2028, AOC, Newsom, and Kamala Harris are fatally flawed.

Kamala Harris got smoked by President Trump. Newsom's got California to worry about. I mean, what's he going to run on? California's so great, everybody's leaving. The Democrats, I'm telling you, are in a panic. Talk to any, if you're a very, if you're a problem, friends with a Democrat operator in D.C. who's not a lunatic, they will tell you exactly this. They leak it into the newspaper all the time. Various outlets. They're worried, too.

AOC's performance at the Munich conference was a total disaster. I think there were some people hoping and praying on the far left Bernie Sanders wing of the party that she wouldn't go there and humiliate herself in the party. None of that happened. It's gotten so bad now that even some Democrats are, like the New York Times and elsewhere, are starting to think, hey, we got a problem with these lunatic candidates with these national aspirations. Check this clip out. It takes a major screw up for the New York Times to put in their story about AOC that she had, I think they said it was a stumble or something. It had to be a really bad stumble. She has no feeling in her bones about Taiwan. She just thought, well, I'll go with a memorized answer. And I don't think,

I don't think even the Democratic Party will make somebody the nominee if they can't answer that question. She didn't go with a memorized answer. Democrat strategist Dan Turrentine here. It was a reminder of is, you're now on the big stage. Her team hyped her appearance. She froze like a deer in headlights. And this tough assessment from a veteran New York Democrat strategist, here's the quote,

it was a beauty pageant to show that she had some shit. chops about international issues and she showed a complete lack of chops. He goes on to say if she runs for president, quote, she's now given the opposition tons of ammunition to destroy her. Again, this isn't me speculating how Democrats are engaged in internal warfare too. It's Democrats openly talking to media outlets about how they have their own problems. This is not to minimize our issues. Again, I understand there are very real schisms within the Republican Party. You have different wings here, too, the Libertarian wing, the MAGA wing, you've got the old

school conservative wing, you've got the doves, you've got the hawks, you've got isolationists versus interventionists. These are very real debates. Just, again, take a little bit, a little bit of a break and realize the Democrats are going through this exact same thing. Do you guys really want to be the party of intellectual lightweights like AOC, these, these neo-socialists out there and Mamdami, or do you want to be the party of the Southern Democrat Bill Clinton model that won two terms? They're having the exact same fights. And they're having these fights

out there in the public while dealing with these, I'll give them charismatic figures who can talk to talk. And that's what scares them. Because they've got these people in a trance. Like AOC has these young folks. She's got to, folks, she don't, I'm telling you. I'm telling you. you're like don't underestimate this woman. She has a massive following on social media outlets and TikTok and elsewhere where a lot of young folks who may not be as knee deep in the policy wankery as you and I are who are like, wow, that sounds great. Everybody's going to get everything all the time.

We're going to get rid of the rich people and give it all to poor people and everybody's going to be equal and are like, yeah. How do you think this mom-dami guy got elected? But now the chickens are coming home to roost. We tried to warn you about my. mom, Dami. And I gotta tell you, I'm getting to the giving zero F's portion of my life. Again, I feel like I've lived like 10 lives. This may be 11. I'm like a life nomad. But I really am. I'm at that portion now where you do your thing, if you know what I mean.

Some of you are at that point yourselves. You learn to filter out signal and noise and you just do your thing. It's that line from the natural. We all live two lives. The one we learn. learn from and the one we live after that. I'm in the one we live after that life. So I'm sorry, but to the New Yorkers who voted for this, I don't wish ill on anybody. However, you brought this on yourselves voting for this absolute clown. Here he is up in here, basically threatening New Yorkers, not with violence, obviously, but he's threatening New Yorkers that if the governor doesn't raise taxes on the rich, which, wait, keep, put this up first, millionaires have already evacuated New York in mass

because they have some of the highest collective taxes in the country between state, federal, and local, right? Look at this. New York had 12.7% of the nation's millionaires in 2010. By 2022, the most recent date available,

they know New York's share had shrunk four percentage points to 8.7%. And I'll bet it's even more now. It's years later. Capital is mobile. People leave. They're not going to sit there and let you steal their money. This is irrelevant to Mamdami,

who doesn't believe in math. He has the knowledge problem. He's smarter than you. You're too stupid to work and live in his city. Therefore, he should take your money and reallocated. We warned you guys up in New York and ladies, and you did it anyway. And now he's threatening if they don't hike taxes

on the wealthy folks who create jobs there, causing mortifully that he's going to hike your property taxes, which is going to kick you square in the, freaking balls. Wait till I show you the numbers, though, after, see how outrageous. Notice he never mentions government spending being a problem. Knowledge problem. He deserves your money. He'll give it out how he sees fit. Check this out. I know that for those who have watched budget after budget, it is tempting to assume that we are engaging in the same dance as our predecessors. Let me assure you, nothing about this is typical. That's why our solutions won't be either.

There are two paths to bridge this gap. The first is the most sustainable and the fairest This is the path of ending the drain on our city and raising taxes on the richest New Yorkers and the most profitable corporations. The onus for resolving this crisis should not be placed on the backs of working and middle class New Yorkers. If we do not fix this structural imbalance and do not heed the calls of New Yorkers to raise taxes on the wealthy, this crisis will not disappear. It will simply return, year after year, forcing harder and harsher choices each time. and if we do not go down the first path, the city will be forced down a second, more harmful path. Faced with no other choice.

Faced with no other choice. Bro, you can just cut the ridiculous amount of government waste you know exists in this unbelievably bloated New York City budget. Listen, for all the liberals listening, maybe showing some numbers and comparisons will kick you in the chops and you'll wake up a little bit. Here's how much money New York City is spending. Key, put up the budget in New York City first.

I just put this in the Google machine, so you can't accuse me of using some right-leaning outfit. As of early 2026, New York City is managing a massive fiscal challenge with a budget previously pegged at around 115.9 billion for fiscal year 2026. That's a population of what? About 8 million people in New York? So just to be clear, liberals, I know math is hard. Put on, get the dunce cap off.

New York City, about 8 million people, spends about $116 billion a year in the budget, okay? Now, people are moving out of New York City, millionaires and other folks, and they're moving to places like Florida. I wish that weren't the case many times. You're conservative, welcome. If you're liberal, please don't move down here in New York, Florida.

We don't want you. Nobody wants you down here. No one. It's a free country. I can't force you to. stay out, but I'm begging you, please, nobody wants you. Why do I bring up Florida? Keep those budget numbers in mind. This is the entire state of Florida with over 20 million people. Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, has proposed a $115.6 billion budget. The entire state.

What about 2.6 times the amount of people is New York City. And Mom, Domani, He's like, we have no other choice, but to kick you in the balls and raise your property taxes yet again. You asked for this. You know, you could just pay up voluntarily. Why are you waiting even for Mondami to raise your taxes? Just pay up voluntarily. You love this stuff, this socialism bullshit. I have FBI director, Cash Patel coming up in just a little bit.

So stand by for that. We'll talk about the national security picture and other FBI reforms. We'll talk about a lot of stuff. It's going to be an interesting interview. I'm happy to have them on. But showing you again how this waste is ever. You're telling me, Mamdami, New York, the mayor of Chicago, Pritzker, the governor, you're telling me these people can't find any bloat.

I just played for you that RFK clip with Theo Vonne. RFK's not even a conservative running HHS saying, hey, listen, we have this pay-and-chaise system. There's probably billions of dollars in waste here paying fraudulent accounts and then chasing them down later. Can you imagine what's going on in a place like New York City that's spending as much as the entire state of Florida and then saying, hey, we want more? Here's Senator John Kennedy with Russ Vote, who's doing an amazing job at OMB, trying to get rid of just volumes and volumes of the government waste hidden everywhere inside the government, little pockets. I believe me,

I had this experience. You got to go find this stuff and rip it out. No one comes up and goes, hey, my program is wasteful because they're getting paid. You've got to go find it. Here's Senator John Kennedy on money that was spent on LGBTIQIA 2 plus one advocacy programs in New York City. No, Uganda. I'm not kidding. Check this out. You're getting rid of $5.5 million to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex advocacy in Uganda. aren't you? Yes, sir.

I can't believe we're arguing about this. I can't believe we're arguing about this. PEPFOR, we're not denying life-saving care to anybody, are we? No, then $10 billion would remain for that funding. Folks, and the worst part about this is as governments, whether it's Momdami's in New York City or the federal government under prior administrations that weren't so leisure focused on getting rid of a lot of this waste for LGBTQIA 2 plus 1 Ugandan advocacy programs.

As you spend money through government subsidies, the government taking money from Dan and giving it to program X, what you do is you wind up raising the prices for a lot of these items as well. So in other words, when the government subsidizes things like electric cars and gives, I don't know, say $3,000 per person in some kind of a tax credit dollar for dollar, it shouldn't be surprising that the company selling said cars raise their prices by $3,000. Because it's air quotes free money. And then when the government starts to pull those subsidies back, magically a lot of these

prices come down. It's like, this is never, I can't believe it. It's called arithmetic. I bring that up because Peter Schiff, he likes Cole too, had a really great tweet about this on X. He was talking about how these things. SNAP programs, these food stamp-based programs. Peter Schiff had a great tweet about this.

How when the government pays for things, it artificially inflates the price. It's the third-party payer problem. He was talking about SNAP benefits, throw that tweet up, how a lot of these junk foods that now PepsiCo spent $2.8 million last year, you know it's lobbying to keep junk food eligible for food stamps. He talks about how they're now cutting prices because that some of the government subsidies have dried up, but go to the end of this. where he talks about, folks, remember this.

This is, tattoo this on your brain, as I say often. It's important you understand this. Consider this same pattern. Government money goes in, prices go up. It plays out everywhere, college tuition, health care, defense, and every other industry with a guaranteed government buyer. Federal spending is nearly a quarter of the entire economy. All of it inflating prices.

All of it eroding your purchasing power. Amen. amazing that when the Democrats, the only time they ever complain, they always complain, I was spending too much money on this, we're spending too much money on that, we're spending too much money on health care. The only time they complain is when the money is,

is when there's a big footprint for the federal government, and it goes to private sector stuff. When it's an education, do you ever notice this? Here, I've given this example before, but it's really important. Shows you how full of shit they are. When it comes to education and the money winds up, in teachers' unions, pockets, and back in Democrat coffers, you can never spend that. We're not spending enough on education.

Yet when it's health care and hospitals and doctors and pharmaceutical companies get them, we're spending too much. Either way, the government should not have such a massive footprint, because it raises prices regardless. He don't want to do anything about it. You're going to see AI, however, clean a lot of this up. if you get folks like President Trump and others, Doge folks, Russ Vote and others in there are no MB

who are committed to using these AI tools. But folks, there are going to be some downsides to AI. You got that Schumer video? This is the guy, not Chuck Schumer. This is this guy, Matt Schumer. He wrote this viral post I mentioned the other day about AI. I only bring this up because I believe what he's saying here about AI and the job environment.

Elon's echoed this too is accurate. There are going to be a lot of people, who are working on a keyboard now in a computer who are very smart, whose jobs may be in jeopardy. That's a problem. We don't want to see people lose their jobs. However, creative destruction, it happens all the time. Shumpeter's famous creative destruction story where, you know, new jobs are created due to the destruction of other jobs in a new value-added economy. It's always painful. The problem with AI we're going to have is this stuff typically happens slowly. The industrial revolution, electricity, coal power, this stuff, it took a long time

for it to kind of move its way, its tentacles throughout the economy. AI is happening at lightning speed. AI is building AI now. There is going to be a massive economic dislocation. Here's a warning. Do not let the liberal Mamdami narrative, however, that AI is going to cost all these jobs sucker you into supporting this universal basic income.

Oh, the government is going to have to pay people to do nothing. Bullshit. People will always find something to do. You're building in an assumption there that human beings are naturally lazy. I don't buy that. We will always find something to do. Always. We'll figure out ways to create value.

We always have. Who the hell knew they needed a smartphone 30 years ago? You didn't even know what existed. Someone thought of that. We will always think of things. That's what we do. Do not get suckered into this argument. The government's going to have to pay people to sit around and do nothing.

Bullshit. The Democrats are, using this, this massive dislocation argument to get basically universal government welfare. Here's this guy Schumer on an appearance talking about he's not wrong here, how there is going to be a deep impact on the job market. Check this out. By the end of this year or the end of next year, it is extremely likely that AI will be able to do any task that a human can do on a computer at least as well or possibly better than a human. Now that doesn't mean, this is the reason not to panic, that doesn't mean it's going to take your job overnight. It just means that it's

going to be possible for the AI to do this. In terms of your job, it really is situational. It depends on what you do, the industry you're in, the regulations you're facing. The question is, how soon will it actually diffuse through your industry? So that's a question each person needs to ask and answer on their own. He's not wrong. There is going to be some economic dislocation and some of it may happen very fast because this thing is building itself in this iterative process. but don't get suckered into this universal basic income thing. You pay human beings to do nothing, they will do nothing. You don't pay human beings to do nothing.

They will do something. The evidence of this is throughout human history. No exceptions. I got director Cash Patel coming up in just a few minutes. However, I do want to get to this last video because this deeply impacted me. Folks, you're obviously aware of a very, very, very, serious problem with illegal immigration that's been happening over the course of decades. That's like, hello, Captain, obvious.

The problem reached a crescendo under spaghetti brains, Biden, who basically just opened the border. You all saw the videos, liberals, don't try to bullshit people. Fox had that drone camera down there. There was just lines and lines of millions of people over the course of months coming into the country, many of them completely, totally unvetted. All we got was bullshit from the Biden team. that we're big people at the border. We're trying our bet.

You weren't trying anything. What we needed was a change of president. President Trump gets into office and like on day one, it slows to a trickle. But you know, I'm, listen, I'm just a regular guy. I'm not like, I don't know, some like Avengers superpowers. Microphones are nice and great. And I appreciate you all like the show to the 89,000 people watching right now. I always appreciate my audience.

Thank you. But these problems impact me too. This was a story from the county I live in, Martin County, Florida. We have a really excellent sheriff down here, John Boudensai. This just happened not far from where we are right now, where an illegal is just listen to his take on what happened with this guy and a woman at the beach. It's pretty horrifying. This stuff impacts everyone.

This guy included. Check this out. When he was finally told that she was still alive and asked if he had any remorse in the whole scenario, his response was, no, I don't feel nothing. That was his response. No, I don't feel nothing. That cold response, investigators say came from Saeed Hernandez-Gonzalez, accused of a random, brutal attack on a stranger at Stewart Beach near Tiger Shores.

Deputies say late Thursday night, the victim was walking alone on a call with her sister when a man came up from behind, ripped her phone from her hand, threw it into the ocean, and dragged her into the water. She punched him. She grabbed his groin area trying to get him to release her. He said he just held her down until she went limp, at which point he thought she was deceased and he let her go. He stated, I thought I could not stop right now because I had gone too far.

So he continued choking her until she stopped moving. Again, I have a family too. this stuff is happening all over the country. Now do you see why you're never going to get a sympathetic year? They're like, oh, my gosh, a lot of people just want to come here and work. Great, there's a process for that. Follow the freaking rules. My wife did.

It's not complicated. The process is not great. It's government, but it's not prohibitively difficult. It may take time. You're not going to get an ounce of sympathy from me for supporting the cause of illegal immigration. They say, well, a lot of people don't commit additional crimes. They committed one crime to begin with. Entering the country illegally, you have to go into a port of entry.

You don't get to bypass the rules. I saw that yesterday. And, you know, I was listening, but I wasn't really watching. I'm like, oh, gosh, that's Sheriff Boutenstein. What the hell happened? And I think this is, that's not far from here. All right, going to take a quick break. And I'll get to Director Cash Patel of the FBI.

We got a lot to talk about. So stand by for that. Today's show also brought to you by our friends at Blackout Coffee. It is my go-to coffee, hot, cold, love it. Blackout coffee. We got our own Bongino Army Blackout Coffee. We love Blackout Coffee. Quick pause here.

I want to tell you about something we actually built together with a company. I love Blackout Coffee. Long-time listeners already know this. Blackout Coffee is the official coffee, the Bongino Army for years. Now we made it official with a collaboration roast of her own. This is a Bongino Army roast. It's a medium dark, roasted coffee for bold flavor and a heavy body. Then amped with them.

Extra caffeine there helps me with the show. Strong without being bitter. Powerful without compromise. Powerful. And let me be clear about this. I don't put my name on things lightly. I drink Blackout. You know I love it.

Didn't meet my standards. Wouldn't exist. Period. Simple as that. Blackout coffee is American-owned, roasted right here in the USA. Absolutely delicious. Without the corporate wokeness,

just quality and values. that actually align with this audience. And they're proud of it over a Blackout coffee. They're proud of that. Go to blackout coffee.com slash Bongino. You get 20% off your first order when you use code Bongino, B-O-N-G-I-N-G-I-N-O. That's Blackout Coffee.com slash Bonino.

Code Bonino. Thanks, Blackout Coffee. Really appreciate it, helping us get through. I am not a morning person. For those of you who know me, some of you in the show here, they're like, he's not kidding. Blackout coffee helps me get through that.

A next sponsor today is the only way to lose weight isn't just to inject yourself once a week. There are other options now. Here's the reality. Weight loss injections work because they help control blood, sugar, and shut down appetite so you eat less. It's really not complicated. That's the mechanism.

There's no mystery there. That's what lean, L-E-A-N was created to do. I used it. I had some weight to lose myself. My joints were getting a little bit beat up, lost about 28, 30 pounds or so. Lean replicates the benefits of weight loss injections without the needles.

Lean, LEAN, was formulated by doctors to support healthy blood sugar and help reduce the spikes and crashes that drive nonstop snacking and cravings. But lean goes a step further. Lean helps your body turn fat into energy, so you burn it instead of storing it. No prescriptions, no needles, works. I use it. Paula uses it too. Visit Brickhousenutrition.com slash Dan.

Use promo code Dan to get 20% off. Give it a try. Try the mirror test. Take a before and after mental snapshot. You'll see what I mean. Give Lean a try. Go to Brickhouse Nutrition.com slash Dan and use promo code Dan. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA.

The product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. It's not a substitute or alternative for care from a health care provider. I'm really happy to welcome to the show today. My good friend and current FBI director, he's got a lot going on, so I appreciate his time. Director Cash Patel. Cash, welcome to the show. Good to have you. Dan, we miss you.

And congratulations on the relaunch of your epic show. America needs it. Well, thank you. I appreciate it, buddy. It was great to work there. I was really proud of the work we put together in the past year. And, you know, spoke to the president about it. He was our first guest.

I'm happy to have you on. Let's get right to it. There was another episode up north of transviolence. You know, when you and I were over there at the FBI, they had not specifically produced a good, deep analytical product on what is in this outbreak of trans violence. We've seen, whether it's in Minnesota, or Nashville. But as you know over there, there's a limited number of FBI assets. There's about,

you know, 38,000 employees. You know, you got to triage your threats. This is a real threat. We've seen it over and over again. And it's important that we produce a product to see what's going on here and analyze the core of this problem. Well, look, you hit one of the things that we reformed immediately in our first year, Dan, which is intelligence. Intelligence drives operations. And if you refuse to believe the actual intelligence because of the media narrative that used to politicize the FBI, then you're going to get it wrong every time. And what do we do? We looked at the facts and the evidence. We saw a stream of violence related to transgender ideology that led to unfortunate deaths and assassinations. And we took action. Yeah, we did. And also on another related topic,

Antifa. You know, I covered earlier in my show today and in yesterday's show how the prior FBI director and the prior president Biden and even Obama had played down the Antifa threat. It's an idea. You and I know that's bullshit. It's not an idea when when actual action follows the idea. There was an action product that resulted from said ideas. Also, you know, with the Prairie Land investigation and others, there's been actual action to take down and dismantle this entire ring of people. You're right. We set out to actually activate intelligence-based operations. This includes Antipa. And Dan, you know this. How many people were arrested related to Prairland? We're over two dozen federal arrests. We're in the middle of federal trial in five of those

defendants this week again in Texas. 19 people have been convicted for acts of violence related to Antifa. It's in the indictment. You don't got to believe me or you. Everybody can go read the public indictment. And it didn't just. happened there it happened in cop city in georgia where we had to go rearrest everybody because the state authorities couldn't get their act together to produce the enough enough information to take that to trial so we did and it's not a creation or manufacturing of information it exists it's just a willingness that you and i and this building's new leadership took to say we're going to look at the facts that exist we're not going to try to make up facts that don't so we can serve a political

narrative and wait till you and i know you know this but wait till you see you see what's coming in the next month or two on the funding streams related to this you and i had launched a serious investigation we had said these organizations don't operate alone don't operate in silence they operate with the heavy heavy stream of funding and we started looking into it and guess what dan we found them director your thoughts on this i i covered earlier in the show that there's a reason a lot of these politicized, weaponized, bureaucrats tried to avoid talking about Antifa as an organized group of threat actors.

What they wanted to do is they wanted to have all the benefits of organizing money, publicity, the ability to use social media to tell people to show up and throw rocks and bricks. They wanted to have all of that, but they didn't want to face the legal penalties. You know, being an attorney and now being on the FBI side, the investigative side,

that the government forbids that type of criminal organization through RICO statutes, Vicar, and other things. So they want it one way. They want to organize and use it. But then when it comes to saying, well, they're organizing it for this purpose. They say, oh, no, that's not an organization. It's just an idea. Now, listen, they are retreating and backtracking through a wall that they used to be able to

break through under prior administrations because no one held them accountable. And now, after the first year that we reestablish how this. place how this building how this lead premier law enforcement agency actually operates and goes after not just threat actors overseas and those who are willing to do harm to american lives but those who cause violence here in america and use the guise of politics to delete that violence we're not going to tolerate that and these groups like antifa and anyone else involved in these rights across the country and involved in paying for them in any way shape or form this fbi thanks to what we stood up over the last year has made significant headway under the NSPM 7 process in looking at those who

funded these streams and are starting to arrest people who used their funds to incite violence in the guise of political peaceful protest. You know, Director, one of the things you did early on is to establish, you know, what they call in business school like B-Hags, big hairy, audacious goals, right? You put these four principles up on the home screen for everybody's computer every day. They had this like, you know, National Dog Day stuff going up, which was nice and cute, but that's, you know, it's the FBI. Let's go get bad guys. One of them's crush violent crime, the other on the National Security Front, protect the homeland.

So on the crush violent crime front, when we got in there, there was a heavy focus on a lot of things. The FBI has a lot of responsibilities. But you had said early on, listen, if the Americans don't feel safe in their neighbors, I don't give a damn where you live. Chicago, Tuscaloosa, it doesn't matter to us. Then we're failing at our job. Like, that is national security, the ability to walk out of your house

and go to a bus stop, without your kid getting mugged or stabbed or having some drug slinger. And we reprioritized. That led to, under your leadership over there, with President Trump at the top and the AG support a historic drop in violent crime, not just the lowest levels we've seen in modern American history,

but historic percentage drops, too. It's really simple. You go and get bad guys off the street. You and I both agreed on this. You know, listen, I think you and I did a pretty good job. You know, it really isn't hard when you focus them on the bad guys. Well, it's not hard, Dan. As you know, as an 1811 and a former police officer,

it's not hard to do the job you signed up for if you're allowed to do the job you signed up for. And President Trump in this administration backs law enforcement and gave us the resources at this FBI and gave us the autonomy in you and I and running this building to remove the red tape to remove the unnecessary approvals and to get a thousand extra agents that's what we did dan we put a thousand agents into the field from washington dc we permanently permanently removed them from the national capital region and sent them across to every single field office and what did that do it allowed people to hit the streets and investigate crimes and it led to this and i know you've seen this but this is one year in the making of true historic reductions in crime and you're talking about a

20% reduction in murder rate. You're talking about a 32% increase in fentanyl seizures, enough to kill 150 million Americans. Dan, you're talking about four top 10 arrests in one year, but as soon as you left, I had to add two more. So now we're up to six. You know, I couldn't let it stand at four. So in one calendar year, we arrested six of the FBI's most run of fugitives in the world. You know what I'm talking about. I was busted my ass on that one. But, you know, I was like, hmm, you know. Hey, good job. You know, once I saw it on the news, I was, I was proud of you and the guys. No, no, you laid the end.

Just just, you got to let you know. Those six go to you. You lay the groundwork for it. You work quietly behind the scenes. I'm just telling you. And look, I think the audience should know. I can't even, I can't even memorize these. I look at these every day and it's just hard to believe.

490% increase in those who prey upon our children. 490% increase in arrest by the FBI. The FBI under the last year, twice as many increase for violent crime from 24 to 25, twice as many arrest. That's unbelievable, Dan. These numbers are truly historic. And that was the foundational tectonic shift, you and I put into place in the FBI to let the cops go out there and be cops. And this is what happens.

One of the things I know I've heard you emphasize a lot in interviews, and I try to hammer home, too, is it's not possible without the leadership of a president who allows. allows you to work. Now, you've worked for, you know, in the D.C. atmosphere for a lot longer than I had, you know, I was a secret service agent, but I was not a political actor in any way. You kind of just observe it like a fly on the wall. But when you have someone breathing down your neck every five minutes, micromanaging every decision you make, rather than allowing you to go work, the president, he's a spreadsheets guy, is I want the homicide rate and a crime rate down. He's not going to sit there every five minutes and micromanage every decision. If you're acting appropriately, within the bounds of the Constitution, following the rules, and engaging in the process and getting it done, he just wants it done. But him allowing us to work, especially after early on,

the success is a Viper, Operation Viper, the Violent Crime Operation in Tennessee. He saw the results and said, guys, we got to expand this nationwide. There's no reason we can't replicate this in cities across the country. I think you just hit upon the brilliance of true leadership in what President Trump said to you and I. He said, go reduce violent crime. time, go defend the homeland, stop children from overdosing, and let's protect our children online. Those are some of the priorities issued to us. But he didn't say this is how you do it, go do it, and I want it done this way. He gave us the priorities.

You and I said, Roger, that boss. That's what the administration and the American public voted for? And then what do we do, Dan? You engineered operations like summer heat and Viper, and we went to places like Memphis and D.C. And elsewhere. And we saw a 60% reduction in the homicide rate in Memphis in the the first three months that the FBI was on the ground there. We've been replicating that in city by city across the country.

We've been focusing on Indian country, which has not gotten the attention it should have. We've been focusing on every piece of crime that has been ignored historically. And what else did we do? We put new leadership into the field that subscribe to this leadership and this administration's agenda because that's what happens. And that's what the American people voted for. And for the FBI, it just means letting good cops. be cops, and we let them go out there and arrest the bad guys. And when you arrest, Dan,

I don't remember the number, but I think it's 68,000 arrests for the FBI last year alone. I think that's twice as many as the year before. Cash, let's do some myth busting here, because there's a lot of unfortunate BS out there in the media. Now, everybody, you know, knows they have an agenda that's fairly obvious. But you see all these catastrophic apocalyptic headlines, you know, Patel's FBI made the country less safe. Oh, okay. I don't understand what your data is to back that up. CT arrests, counter-terrorists, Arab, counter-espionage arrests, Arab,

violent crime arrest, you just said, not only up, but up dramatically. The national crime rates, the lowest we've seen in recorded history. The homicide rates, the lowest, I think, since 1900. Who even knows if they had accurate data back? Maybe the lowest ever. I mean, it's just, these are really insane numbers, especially when you consider the multitude of ways now

and threats evolving that people can hurt and maim and harm each other, that these crime rates have plunged. So listen, you're entitled to your opinion, and I will vigorously always protect the right to freedom of the press. But you should at least bedrock it in some facts. What are they, I don't understand what they're basing that on outside of their own animosity towards the Trump administration. That's it. It's animosity towards this administration and anyone who actually effectuates to get it done. I mean, just think about, we just got to hit pause for a second, Dan. Why is it that we had such an explosion in crime to deal with in the first place?

Because the prior administration did not prioritize fighting crime and instead allowed an open border policy and an open crime policy to infiltrate our communities. Dan, when you have 100,000 Americans dying of drug overdoses in one year, that's not a small problem. That is a crisis. And if it happened under any other administration, they would be blaming said administration. But instead, President Trump gets elected, this FBI comes in, addresses the four years of failure in weaponization of law enforcement, reprioritizes to go after the espionage actors, to go after the terrorists, to go after the narco-traffickers, to go after the murderers, to go after the child rapists and the human traffickers. And we were up double digits, if not triple digits, on every single one of those categories. So the questions has to be asked, how did this happen?

Well, it happened in the prior administration. The answer, this administration under Trump and this FBI and this Department of Justice delivered historic results. And the only way you can argue with that is if you have political animosity because there is no lying in these stats. There is no lies in these statistics. We literally showed people coming off airplanes doing operations, doing things in this FBI participating in everything from Maduro to Ryan Wedding to Abbey Gate capture to the Benghazi attack capture. we have not stopped because we set this Bureau on a trajectory that it has not seen in decades. You know, and it's interesting being outside and the other side now reading kind of, you know, you know, the whole cornucopia of media coverage about what went on there.

And then you see, you know, one side saying, well, we haven't seen a focus on public corruption. And you see the other side saying there's been too much of a focus on public corrupt. I'm serious, you've seen it. You're like, well, one of those is obviously not true. I mean, the FBI is always going to remain focused on public corruption. Just you and I, and I know you going forward with Ray and Bailey over there, are going to continue to focus on rooting out, root and branch public corruption. You had the Letitia James case, the Comey case, the Bolting case.

You've got the Kathy Hockel Stafford case. You've got the Gavin Newsom Chief of Stafford case. You got the New Orleans mayor. There was that police department case we had. I mean, these were really serious cases. But, you know, being an attorney, these things take time. You know, we're not the Department of War. We just don't engage in, you know, kinetic action.

This is a law enforcement operation that has to build cases over time. But in one year, there's been a lot done. And like I said, one of those stories has got to be a myth because they're both saying they're both saying opposite things. Well, it just goes to the theme that we've been talking about about the mainstream media. They've been saying two things the entire time. Well, which one is it? Because they both, as you said, can't be true.

If what they're saying is true, then we're lying. about the arrest you just listed off. If what they're saying is true, then we're lying that we arrested John Bolton and indicted him. If what they're saying is true, then you and I and the FBI are lying about the dozens of police officers we arrested for a multi-year public corruption scandal down in the southeastern portion of the United States and everybody else that you're talking about, then which one is true? And so I think the media, and you would know this better than I, at the core of it knows how successful this FBI has been. And they hate that it's this FBI that delivered it and not the prior administration's FBI.

And I truly believe that that is the reason for it. Because when you and I traveled around the country, what happened when we went to towns across America? I know it happened to you. People came up to us. Moms and pops came up to us from every town, every corner we went to and said, thank you to you and this Trump administration for keeping our kids safe and keeping our murders off the streets and keeping the drugs out of our communities and letting our children have a safe environment to grow up in.

I heard it over and over again. It's not something you and I personally did. It's what this FBI delivered while we were leading it, and we're going to continue to do that. Yeah, you know, that's why I say to folks all the time. You know, I don't like people say, well, Twitter X, it's not the real world. This is the real world. People have real opinions.

I understand that. But I'm just telling you, and I mean it from the bottom of my, you know, sometimes broke it hard, man. I did. I traveled around. I never heard anything but good news from people about the progress that was being made. Of course, there's a lot to fix. No one's suggesting everything's done.

There's a lot more work to be done, as you know. I was explaining to the audience in my first show, how when actors are at your level in the government, you know, when people are principals and deputies and a cabinet level or cabling kind of cabinet kind of equivalent positions, everything's a level 10 decision, cash. A level 10, meaning there's a part in the language, but a shitty decision and a shittier one. Because if it was, if there was a good decision to be made, someone else made it. And then when those decisions, that's every day. I know you know this because I would knock under your door and you'd be like, what now?

And I'd be like, here we go again. Like something else will come up. But I just want to put into perspective for folks out there. When that decision can't even be made by me, it goes to you. When it doesn't go to you, it goes like to the president's desk. He's dealing with like level 11 decisions. And that's the thing in D.C. That's why the batting average isn't always going to be a thousand.

There's no good call to be made or someone else would have made it. There's just really tough decisions where, you know, there's a shit call and a shittier call. And listen, that's what we signed up for. That's how it rolls. Look, yeah, these are difficult decisions, Dan. That's why you volunteered to jump back in. It wasn't just going to be, hey, we're going to do this job. It's going to be super easy.

We're not going to have to make any hard decisions. And we're not going to have to combat a press corps that has largely been biased and full of inaccurate reporting. But we made those decisions collectively in the best interest of the nation. And if we hadn't, then none of this would be true. None of this would be possible. If President Trump had made the hard decisions to allow us and give us the resources that we need and to back the blue and law enforcement and to prioritize working with state and local authorities, then we wouldn't be able to do what we did. But you're right. We had a lot of hard That comes with the territory of the job.

But once you look outside of the cauldron of Washington, D.C., and this is one of the things that, you know, I'm trying to remind myself of every day. Outside of here, there is a different America than the one that lives in the national capital region. And I try to remind myself every day when making those difficult decisions that you talked about that we make on a daily basis that we are making a decision collectively for the rest of America, not just for the minority of people that are living part-time in Washington, in D.C., pulling the levers on Capitol Hill and such. Cash, I know you're busy here, so I'll wrap it up with this, but I think this is the most important question. You get the President's Daily Brief, the PDB every morning.

It's called the PDB because they briefed the president, but the principles across the IC and elsewhere do get access to that, and you get pretty much everything the president gets in that item. I'm not even allowed to say how the delivery mechanism, but you know. When you're getting that brief, yeah, it told me that day one, when you're getting that brief, the threats now, when you see the president speaking about things like a bigger footprint in Greenland and the Donroe doctrine of hemispheric dominance in this part of the global hemisphere, the president's basing that on a threat you see every morning. And these threats are not the threats from the 60s. You have things that are out there in the media, attacks on the grid, typhoon. You have. potential, you know, EMP attacks. You have hypersonic missiles. You have threats from space, underwater, everywhere. The president, you, uh, Rackcliffe, Tulsi, you're seeing that every single day. Some of the stuff you see in the media, it's, it's amazing to watch an 18 year old

journalist with no experience anything stuff, critique a lot of what the president's doing without any of the background to see why he's doing it. They're fair to do it, freedom of speech, but when you see it from the other side, it makes a lot more sense what he's talking about. And Dan, you know why it's called the president's daily briefing? Because the president decides what are the intel priorities in that briefing. And President Trump has decided what intel priorities, agencies like the FBI and CIA, are to act upon. That type of leadership is what has led to the historic reduction in crime. That type of leadership is what led to us capturing six of the FBI's top 10 most wanted fugitives.

That type of leadership got us, the Abbey Gate bomber and the Benghazi bomber, on top of the six. That type of leadership, Dan, you know this, enabled us to do the Maduro operation, which the FBI played a role in, and all these other operations, most of which we can't talk about, but that type of leadership led to a 35% increase in espionage actors by this FBI alone. And what the president doesn't get enough credit for is he's the one that directs the intelligence in the presidential daily briefing to set the priorities for this FBI to act. And this FBI is able to act because he has the foresight to see what evidence, what Intel needs to be actioned and what evidence and what Intel is garbage. And he has the audacity, and I think rightly so, to call out some of the false reporting that's in this or some of the mediocre reporting, which is why we have, and we don't have time to talk about it today, but you know this. We've reformed the Director of Intelligence. That's rolling out this year.

We're sending a thousand more personnel out into the field to support the staff and support operations. but it's intelligence driven. We started the program talking about Intel, and it's a good place to end the program, but the president's daily briefing is directed by President Trump, and that's what led to the success. Those reforms are really important.

I don't think a lot of information is filtered out yet, the reforms you made structurally to the FBI and the Intel front after obviously the abomination of crossfire, those are really, really critical. Those are gonna institute some guardrails, but without good people in charge, as you know, guardrails are just, you know, people can jump over him.

Director Patel was a real honor to work for you. I really appreciate it. Thank you for allowing us to work, you know, summer heat, the dropping crime. The country's a lot safer, and I really appreciate you taking the time. Hope to have you back. Dan, I'm glad to be back, and I just want to let your audience know this historic year. Obviously not possible without President Trump, but definitely not possible without you as a deputy director. We missed you, and we're glad you're back on the air, though, and we'll look forward to coming back soon.

Thank you, my friend. Director Cash Patel, the FBI. Folks, thank you so much for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed that interview. Good to get some insight. Obviously, you have to be careful about some of the things we talk about. However, I think it's really important to get the perspective from people across government on what's going on.

The threats as they evolve. Make sure you subscribe to the show. Rumble.com slash Bongino. Rumble.com slash Bongino. It is free. Click that subscribe button. Check us out every day at 10 a.m. live. You can watch On Demand.

And any time, be sure to check out Haley and Vince as well. Rumble.com slash Haley, rumble.com slash Vince at 8 a.m. And right after my show today. Also give us a follow on Apple and Spotify. We really appreciate your time today, folks. I'll see you back here tomorrow at 10 a.m. Hey there. I'm Vince. I'm Haley Karina.

Host of Vince. Host of scrolling with Haley. You can always catch my show right here. Right here on the Vonjutor Report channel. Live 8 a.m. Eastern Weekday mornings. No weekdays. And if you miss it, no worries. The show will always be right here.

and anywhere you find a podcast. Thanks for watching.