The Dan Bongino Show - The Dan Bongino Sunday Special 01/21/24 - Sen. Mike Lee, EJ Antoni and some great rants

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

First up, we talked with Sen. Mike Lee about the border funding bill in Congress and potentially shutting down the government. Next, a Trump 101 on how and why he does what he does. Then we talked with EJ Antoni about the jobs numbers and inflation. Finally, DEI is going to get someone killed. Dan explains why. 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 Sunday Podcast. This is our chance to play for you some of the best moments from the radio show and some great interviews during the week that you may have missed. If you ever want to check out our show, go to Bongino.com. Go to Station Finder and see what radio station we're on near you. You'll love it. I promise you. We put a lot of work into the radio show. Check it out. But before that, let me tell you about our first sponsor. Hey, as we head to a presidential election year, one thing you can be sure of, 2024 will be tumultuous. How are your hard-earned savings fair? You already see the impacts of inflation at the pump, the grocery store, everywhere. It's eating away your savings. Wages aren't increasing fast enough. So how are you going to protect your savings?

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friend and uh one of the few good guys up there on Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, we don't have more of them. I wish we did. My old axiomatic truth still kind of resonates, which is most Republicans on Capitol Hill are really Democrats. However, no Democrats on Capitol Hill are really Republicans. But this guy's a real conservative. I like having him on the show. He always gives us the real skinny about what's going on. Senator Mike Lee, welcome back to the show. Good to have you. Thank you, Dan. Always good to be with you. Well, always good to have you as well, because you give us kind of the

gory details of what's happening up there. Can you give us an updated status about where we stand with this budget deal? Speaker Johnson and Chuck Schumer apparently had a deal. My humble opinion, it was a terrible deal. But what is your take on it and the potential for a CR? I saw you tweeting about it the other day. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. That was a terrible deal.

And I think that deal is not going to materialize. I've been meeting with Republican colleagues in the House and in the Senate and conversations with the Speaker and with others. And my hope, and at this point, my expectation is that that deal is not going to happen. They're going to replace it with something along the lines of a continuing resolution to take us to the end of this fiscal year. And under the terms of previously enacted legislation, that'll bring about some automatic cuts. As Russ Vogt, former Trump head of OMB, concluded yesterday, that is probably the best way to save the most money that is

reasonably achievable in this Congress. And I hope and now expect that's where we're going to end up. Talking to Senator Mike Lee. Senator, you know, you and I understand the hard politics of the matter here. We do not have the Senate, we don't have control of the Senate. We have a margin in the House that is so slim that if someone goes out, God forbid, with COVID or some kind of disease or death in the family, you know, we have no effective majority at all. So we don't really have a lot of political tools. But having said that, and you and I have addressed this particular portion of the argument before, I think that argument would have more traction with the voters that, you know, you work for and your colleagues work for as well. If the Republican Party had actually stood for something in the past and stood their ground, and sadly, the party hasn't.

We have just participated in this spending orgy, $34 trillion in debt, 3.4% inflation, now going up again year over year. They just haven't done it before. It's like a team that says we're going to get them next year and is 0-16 for 40 straight years. So I think you, more than most, understand that, that the voters are just frustrated at this point.

Like, yeah, yeah, I get it. You're just going to kick the can down the road. We've heard this all before kind of thing. Are you sensing that frustration with them? Absolutely. And it's with darn good reason. Every time, every single time when we could and should bring about significant reductions in spending, you hear some kind of convoluted excuse. One day it'll be one thing. The next day it's

that, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We forgot to mention another rule, which is that if we're voting during the period of a half gibbous moon and it happens to be a Thursday, then we're not allowed to cut. Sorry about that. Better luck next time. You know, it's terrible. Look, honestly, what we should be doing, we should be defunding part, maybe all of government until such time as Joe Biden comes up with a credible plan to enforce the border, secure the border or shut it down. I'm ambivalent as to whether that means all of government or whatever parts of government will convince President Biden to do his job, which is to enforce the law and to protect us as a country. He's not doing that. Instead, he's let in at least 10 million people that we know of, including about 300 known terrorists, a wide open border through which millions of people are being trafficked, benefiting international drug cartels to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year.

This is lawlessness. It is borderline treasonous and it has to stop. The only tool we have at our disposal is the spending power. And if we were true to our word, we would withhold some or all government funding for a period of time until he finds religion on this, until he decides that we are going to be a country. And gosh darn it, he's going to enforce the borders of that country. We're talking to Senator Mike Lee from Utah. Senator, I agree with you on the point about the danger of this open border. And I think this is another source of frustration, at least amongst the Republicans I talk to. And I talk to a lot between the Rumble chat and Facebook and callers to the show.

I interact with a lot of people every day. And they're kind of shocked because this is the one area, the open border, which is absolutely open. That's just almost tautological at this point, right? That there seems to be unanimity amongst Republicans, even some Democrats, you know, Henry Cuellar and others who have come out. Even Fetterman is, you know, shockingly kind of speaking moments of truth on this. So we have this unanimity that this can't continue. And yet again, it seems like there's almost nothing they can do.

They act like they have no power at all, when in fact we do, even though it's a slim margin, have one branch of the house. And I think that my question to you here is, can we just focus on that one thing right now and say, listen, we are not doing X with the budget. I know they keep saying it publicly, but they're not actually getting it done until this border is shut down.

We need MPP back the migrant protection protocols. We need title 42 and we want that wall money or we're not doing any, the public would be with them. The public would be with them. And that's why I've been trying to get support for that kind of effort. And again, we don't have to defund all of government. We could if we wanted to, and if necessary, we should. I think we could get there with something narrower than that,

defund this or that program, the White House toilet paper budget, the Department of Homeland Security's budget for this or that program, the White House toilet paper budget, the Department of Homeland Security's budget for this, that, the whole thing, or just the travel. I don't know. We can defund that unless or until they start enforcing the law. Now, that brings us to the next point, Dan, which is a related point to this one. You're going to be hearing more and more from a number of people in the coming days that somehow this lawlessness on our southern border is somehow the fault of the law they want the border enforced, then they've got to pay the price of admission, which is $106 billion, most of which would go to Ukraine. And with that, there will be this mysterious, yet to be written, still secret legislative text that will magically cause

the border to be enforced, even though we're not allowed to see it yet. And even though, as far as I can understand, there's no consequence to the administration if it doesn't enforce those laws. Now, this is the important thing to remember. All of that is built on a lie, a lie that says the border crisis is the result of a lack of adequate federal law. Sure, our border security and immigration laws are not perfect. Sure, they need to be retooled. But the president has more than enough authority at his disposal to stop all of this.

All of this started with and was ultimately traced back to manipulation of our asylum laws. Importantly, though, Dan, all of our asylum laws use may language, not shall, which means there is no one who has a statutory constitutional or other guaranteed right to being considered for asylum at any given moment. The secretary can say, you know, we don't have enough resources to incarcerate, detain, and evaluate the merits of the asylum applications one at a time. So I'm going to use my discretion with a may rather than shall language to say the asylum program is suspended until such time as we're in a position to enforce the border. That's all they'd have to do. They've had that authority all along, like Dorothy and the ruby slippers. This is there,

and they just haven't exercised it. And it's really frustrating to me that you've got Republicans, Republicans of all people, who seem to be unwittingly perpetuating the myth that all this is happening for lack of adequate federal authority and they're doing it uh playing right into biden's hands giving biden a ready-made excuse to blame the border security crisis on who republicans not democrats that's wrong so so senator to be clear because you just explained that rather succinctly and clearly but i just want to kind of double down for extra super clarity. You are a lawyer and a very good one. You have read these laws and the authority is clearly there

for the government to do and stop this infiltration at the southern border. You're saying it's written there in the law. The discretion is there. They just refuse to use it. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying. The discretion is there. it and anyone telling you otherwise is lying the discretion is there anyone who's telling you otherwise is incorrect whether they're lying or not depends on whether they know that they're wrong maybe they're just not smart enough they spend their all along

frankly the trump administration could have and should have been much more aggressive than it was had they just fallen back they didn't even need to go to Title 42. All they needed to do was to go to the asylum statutes themselves, which are all couched in terms of may, not shall. And that's what they should have done from the beginning. That's what this administration should do now. Instead, they're using this border crisis, which is resulting in the sexual enslavement of unknown numbers,

but huge numbers of women and children, in some cases men, to the tune of enriching these drug cartels by billions and billions of dollars every year. billions of dollars every year. They're using all of that crisis as leverage to extort Republicans into voting for one hundred and six billion dollars in foreign aid, most of it going to Ukraine. That is shameful. Senator, I got two minutes left, but let's let's try to end on a note of optimism. You and I both love this country. Let's say in this upcoming election, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley or a Donald Trump were to win? It seems pretty likely at this point, Joe Biden's in disastrous numbers in the polls, but not inevitable. Clearly not. I want to get out ahead of myself.

Can they on day one, given the amount of latitude and discretion you just indicated is there in the law, as you and attorney read, can they on day one at least stop the bleeding at the border? You're telling me they have the authority to do it. Can we stop the tens of thousands flowing into the country every day, creating this national security nightmare? They could do it. I'm not going to say on day one, because administratively and practically, I understand it may take some time to implement and carry out a new policy. But yes, they could do that.

They have the legal authority to do that. Once they make a finding, we can't process these, and it's a discretionary act, a discretionary authority anyway, and not a right. All they have to do is say, I'm using my discretion

as Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend this program until such time as I make a finding that we're able to process applications in a timely manner without letting our country be overrun by people we don't know from other countries who may have no legal right to be here. Senator Mike Lee from a state I adore, Utah. It is if you've never been to Utah, it is just an incredible state. I mean, you could take your camera out, take pictures all day driving down the highways. Thanks a lot for your time, sir. You know you're welcome back here anytime. We appreciate it.

God bless you, Dan. Take care. Bye-bye. God bless you, sir. Senator Mike Lee, one of the good guys. So, folks, that's the good news. And the reason I asked that question was deliberate. I've heard from many people who worked

inside the Trump administration who were friends of mine that they have the ability on day one, which the Senator was right. I mean, the implementation will take a little bit of time, but they have the ability on day one without any legislative input whatsoever to start enforcing the laws that are already there. So that's some good news.

We'll end on a note of optimism there. Up next, a little lesson on something I think you need to understand. But first, let me tell you about our next sponsor. With Omaha Steaks, you'll fall in love at first bite with their tender steaks, juicy burgers, air-chilled chicken, and more. For a limited time,

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the questions get exhausting about the Donald Trump why questions. Why does Trump do this? Why does Trump do that? It's been a long time. I've explained it over and over. I'm not saying frustrated with you. I'm not trying to sound like a jerk, okay? Some pretentious jerkwad.

They're more from people who just dislike donald trump and are looking for a reason to constantly play down his accomplishments the things he did you need to understand were discussed forever i'm going to give you the example i use all the time because there's a guy who's followed conservative politics for decades now you need to understand that i'd stop i'm explaining this wrong and I'm ticking myself off. There was a story once about these firefighters. I believe it was in Mann Gulch. These firefighters, they were kind of like smoke jumpers,

right, and they jumped in and there was this devastating fire. The story has a purpose, I promise, just hang with me. And these firefighters, tragically, many of them died. And one of the few survivors, maybe the only survivor of the event, was a new guy, which didn't seem to make a lot of sense. You would think the least experienced firefighter would be the guy who had perished first in this tragic, devastating incident. I actually wrote about this in my second book. It's a reason that's coming to mind right now. But the new guy lived. And in the after action report,

one of the things was a new guy, I believe hadn't completed the entire training or whatever it was. And he hadn't learned some of the habits. And one of the habits was you don't leave your equipment behind. So as these heroes fled the scene, a lot of them fled with their equipment, which slowed them down.

And I believe this new guy had dumped some of it and ran away and he lived. The reason I bring up that story and I wrote about it in one of my books was because I've seen this phenomenon before, having run for office. I bring a unique perspective to the show. I'm not the only guy who's ever run for office. Pete Hegseth on Fox ran himself. There are a number of candidates who do talking head commentary, but having run myself and then seen the inside of both a Republican and a Democrat White House, I have a unique perspective. And one of the things about politics, I think you need to understand in your attempt to understand why Donald Trump does X or Y is when you grow up in the political space, let's go through kind of a standard SOP for a guy who becomes president. You're a state senator or a governor or an heir to some political fortune or name. You become a state senator,

maybe a governor, maybe a U.S. senator senator then you run and you win the presidency um other people have had barack obama had that same route state senator u.s senator u.s president george w bush governor governor president um you've seen you know joe biden uh senator senator senator senator senator senator senator uh 700 years go by, runs for president, runs for president, runs for president, runs for president, finally becomes president. You know, Ronald Reagan, governor, governor, president. You know, this goes on for generations. Then you've got Donald Trump.

Nothing in politics, nothing, nothing, nothing, U.S. president. The thing about Trump is Trump hasn't grown up in this system like that firefighter story where they were taught this specific way, whether it was right or wrong. It's not meant to diminish anybody's heroism, this story. It was just an after-action report I had happened across. Donald Trump never learned in this, and I say learned with air quotes, how he was supposed to sell out in this political process. Folks, I've seen it.

I've seen it even in friends of mine who every single year they spend in politics, they become different people. You know, there are things on the, my life is an open book and you know that, but there are things I don't say on the air to you. And it's not because I'm trying to hold things back or be the cool guy. Look, I have knowledge. You don't, that has nothing to do with it. There were things I keep in a lock box that I know about people in politics. I don't mean to sound like cryptic, like, uh, you know, the national treasure, Nicolas Cage movies. I just, I've seen a lot of these people up close and personal and it's not pretty. like the national treasure, Nicolas Cage movies. I've seen a lot of these people up close and personal,

and it's not pretty. It's why I say to you all the time, politicians hate you. And the minute you digest that and use them as the tools they are to implement the agenda you want for your kids, you never will create a false God again. Don't fall in love with politicians fall in love with outcomes that is it and you will never be disappointed the thing about trump is he never

learned that system candidly it's why he got burned it's why it led to a lot of mistakes a lot of the mistakes in trump's first term were personnel mistakes can we all agree hiring people who were not really loyal to the mission. But Donald Trump did it because he was trying to take this Abraham Lincoln-like, and no, I'm not comparing him to Lincoln. I'm talking about a strategy. He was told to take this team of rivals type approach.

There've been books written about how Lincoln did this, how you hire your rivals so that they don't stay political rivals on the outside sniping at you you bring them in the nest it didn't work folks their hatred for trump overrode their loyalty to the united states and most of them turned on Donald Trump no one should pretend that didn't happen even the most loyal trump supporter he had to learn that because he never learned how to sell out prior it's sad he had to learn it was a mistake i'm confident having spoken to him and his team that that lesson believe me has been learned and you're going to get a whole different set of personnel next time or else i

wouldn't support him but he never learned how to sell people out along the way and he never had to cut deals to become say a state senator from a state rep and then from state senate to u.s congress he never had to cut a deal and going from u.s congress to u.s senate he never had to cut deals with people to get there so when he got an office he didn't owe anybody anything so when donald trump said i want to do this build the wall he sees people strictly as you would a publicly traded company. Now you may perceive that as cold. I don't want that, Dan. I want a president who, you know, read Milton Friedman and did all that. That's fine. That's fair. I love that. I love

that content too, but that's not Donald Trump. If you really want to understand him, he sees everything like a business. Is he a passionate believer in doctrinaire conservatism? Is he sitting there every day reading the works of classic conservative writers? Ladies and gentlemen, he's not. But he goes up to people, I know because I've been subject to some of these questions, and he says, you know, what do you think about what's happening at the border? I think it's a mess. We need to close it.

Yeah, I think so too. How do you think we should do it? And then he sees it as a spreadsheet in his head. Okay, this guy's convinced me closing the border's a good idea. I need assets to get there, just like I would need assets to develop a new product line for Trump Inc. Is this guy an asset or a liability?

Donald Trump is completely transactional with politics. That was a long intro to this. It took about nine minutes to get to this clip right here. Because a whole bunch of people messaged me last night. Oh my gosh, how is Donald Trump now on stage with Vivek? He said Vivek's not MAGA. Yeah. Because the day before he was running against them,

Donald Trump has a list of 10 things to do. Vivek was a liability running against them. So he said X. If that bothers you, you don't understand how Donald Trump works. It's perfectly okay that that bothers you. I'm not attacking you. Listen to you. I'm not attacking you. Listen to me.

I am not attacking you. You may say, well, I think that's unprincipled. He shouldn't attack him and then turn around the next day and say he's a great guy. Fair, fair. You win.

I'm not arguing the morality of it. I'm just telling you that's not how the man works. If you want to understand him, you'll listen to me. If you don't, you'll gaff this off. Then Vivek drops out and says, I'm going to endorse Trump. Okay, here's all he does in his head. Liability, asset, that's it.

No, yes, no, yes. Ladies and gentlemen, Mitt Romney in 2016 went in front of that foreign policy club and gave a half an hour speech how Donald Trump was going to destroy the world. Donald Trump wins the nomination. He takes him out to dinner. Everybody's like, oh my gosh, what a sellout.

I can't believe he's doing that. You're entitled to your opinion. When you understand Donald Trump is transactional. Okay, Mitt was a liability, now he's an asset. And he never holds, for a guy you think holds grudges, I'm telling you, he holds none of them. I wasn't surprised by that one bit. Can I use this guy for something?

That's it. I want to pass an agenda. Can I use Romney? That's all he was thinking. Here, listen to a fake last night on Jesse Wattershow on Fox. Check this out. I think that you guys may have seen some of the rally that we had Here, listen to a fake last night on Jesse Wattershow on Fox. Check this out. I think that you guys may have seen some of the rally that we had and the response was

overwhelming. And I think it's very clear who the Republican primary electorate is saying that they want to be their nominee. I ran to be that person. They sent me a very positive message. But the very positive message they sent to all of us is that Donald Trump needs to be the nominee of this party. And I think Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley would actually at this point do this country and this party a service by stepping aside to make

sure that we're focused on not only nominating donald trump but getting this country back and reviving those founding revolutionary ideals people were upset i i'm stunned like honestly folks even some Trump people. They were like, I can't believe we're taking this guy in the tent. Why? I don't understand why you can't believe. Oh, he said this about Donald Trump. Okay.

What's your point? So we should throw him in the scrap heap. Why? Because that'll help us. How? Because, yeah, you're're right i don't know folks donald trump's a transactional guy everything's a spreadsheet if that's not your bag of donuts that's not my bag baby that's okay but that's his bag now i said in the beginning the show, and I want to give you the beginning of this segment,

I'm sorry, when I was talking about the Mangold's fire story. Do you know how many people, Jim, you've been in this business a long time. You know it was doctrine in the Republican Party. It was axiomatic truth that you were never going to move the embassy to Israel and you were never going to move the embassy to Israel and you were never going to solve the Middle East crisis and get any kind of peace deal done

without solving the Palestinian crisis first. That was doctrine. It was dogma. No one even tried. Everybody would pretend, yeah, we're going to move the embassy to Jerusalem. And ladies and gentlemen, for decades, nothing happened. Not Bush, not Reagan, no one, nothing happened.

The embassy was over in Tel Aviv. Donald Trump went into office and he said, hey, I think we should negotiate some peace deals over there in the Middle East or some business partnerships over there. And everybody's like, no, no, you can't do that. Why? Because it's never been done.

Well, why? Because people said it can't be done. Well, I think it can. No, it be done. Well, I think it can. No, it can't. Well, I'm going to try. Oh, look, we've got some peace deals. And then he was like, I think I'm going to move the embassy to Israel.

I use this, there's a thousand examples of this, by the way. Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court justices. I could go on for days. I'm using this one because it's so simple. And if you understand Republican politics, you know the politics of moving the embassy to Israel out of Tel Aviv. You know that no one even discussed the Jerusalem,

I'm sorry, from Tel Aviv. It wasn't even discussed. It was like, I don't even forget, it's impossible. Donald Trump was like, why is it impossible? And people were like, because it's not possible. Well, why is it not possible? Because it's impossible. Well, why is it impossible?

Well, because it's not possible. Does anyone have an answer here? And Trump, who had never learned to hold on to all his equipment trying to escape the fire because he didn't grow up in politics and sell out over the years, right? Donald Trump was like, I think I'm just going to do it.

And shocker, folks, he did it. And everybody told him there's going to be a war. Dude, they're going to nuke the Middle East, Iran is going to go crazy when you do this, Saudi's going to shut off the oil, and what happened, the answer is nothing happened, nothing, and then when he killed Soleimani, they said, dude, you can't do that, you kill this guy, there'll be World War III in the Middle East, the place will be on fire. And what happened? Oh, the answer is nothing happened.

They launched a few crap missiles. Nothing happened. Because Donald Trump's transactional. I can't do X, give me a reason. And Y better be greater than X. If the reason Y is because it's impossible and you can't put a number on it and at present value, I'm doing it. The man thinks like a spreadsheet. If you don't like that and you want a guy who's going to give flowery speeches, Margaret Thatcher-like speeches, you got the wrong guy.

He's not your guy. He's not your guy. However, if you want the guy who's going to actually go out and do stuff, cut taxes, overturn Roe v. Wade with new justices, move the embassy to Jerusalem, he's going to actually do stuff, then he's your guy. And your choice is perfectly fine. That doesn't have to be for you. I only did this segment so you understand why Donald Trump embraced the fake last night, because he's transactional. You don't have to like it. You don't have to want it. But if you're really interested in understanding what makes Donald Trump tick, you listen to what I'm telling you, because I know I'm right. So I get this a lot too. Outside of him being transactional,

which I just covered, if you missed it, you can always watch it on the podcast. I think transactional is a good thing because I want people to handle politics like a business because businessmen get results and just give speeches. He's also a Queens guy. So when you're looking to understand the bravado and the exaggeration and the hyperbole. When you grow up in Queens, which is one of the five boroughs in New York City, I grew up probably less than 10 miles from where Donald Trump was. Everyone from Queens is born with this attitude and this penchant for exaggeration. And it's for a simple reason. It's not complicated. The Brooklyn and the Bronx kids have this air of toughness around them just because of where they're from. Look, I'm from the Bronx.

Everybody's like, oh, no, don't mess with that guy. The Queens kids don't have that. So they're always engaged in puffery. Look, I'm tougher than that guy because nobody takes him seriously. If you grew up in Queens, you know what I mean. But they don't have the money or the associated distinction of growing up in Manhattan. So even though Queens is middle class,

they've always got this sense of inferiority about them. Donald Trump grew up there. That's where all that comes from. Up next, another great interview, but let's talk about our next sponsor. Start the new year knowing you found the right life insurance and protect your family with PolicyGenius. I use them.

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If you want to understand why your wallet's getting fatter or thinner, especially in the case of Joe Biden inflation, listen to this guy, EJ Antoni. Check it out. All right, listen, folks. The economy, it's the economy, stupid. Famous words by Democrat activist James Carville allegedly said to Bill Clinton at the time. But it's true. It is the economy, stupid. Famous words by Democrat activist James Carville allegedly said to Bill Clinton at the time. But it's true. It is the economy stupid. And it's always been the economy stupid when it comes to reelection. So one of my favorite economics gurus out there is a guy you should give a follow on Twitter and social media.

His name is E.J. Antoni. He joins the show once in a while to give us his breakdown of where we are at the economy. So, E.J., welcome back to the show. Thanks for coming on. Dan, thank you for having me. Always a pleasure. So I want to take kind of a different track with you today. I follow you on Twitter. I really enjoy your commentary. You had discussed some of the jobs numbers recently, the ups and the downs. But we have an election year coming up. the ups and the downs.

But we have an election year coming up, and you seem to have really keen insight as to the numbers, if they're being kind of fudged or put lipstick on or whatever. I see the possibility for a couple of economic black swans that could upend this election this year. One of them,

and I'd love to get your take on it, is the potential of a corporate real estate crisis you know EJ you know as well as I do uh office space post COVID a lot of these uh people who are renting these office spaces don't show up anymore they don't have the money a lot of this stuff is uh is in arrears and going into default do you think that could turn into a crisis next year that could impact the election or is that one of those things we've got our arms around it, you sense a low likelihood? Oh, Dan, I think this is such a great point. I'm genuinely thrilled you brought this up, because this ties in with the banking crisis. The banking crisis was something that really

affected the small banks. Most of the big banks, the JP Morgans, the Wells Fargo, they were fine, but the small banks really got crushed in the spring. Their losses have been papered over by emergency loans at the Fed. The problem still isn't solved, though. Now, if you look at commercial real estate specifically, that's something that's predominantly done not by the big banks, even though they have much bigger balance sheets. It's mostly handled by the small banks, the regional banks. If you look at those commercial real estate loans as a percentage of those balance sheets from the small banks to the big banks, it's more than a three to one ratio. In other words, the small banks have three times as much of it as the large banks do.

So when you're talking about that asset class going bad, kind of like how we had the mortgage meltdown starting in 2005, you're talking about a crisis that's going to hit exclusively pretty much the small banks. What's that going to do? Well, it's probably going to help bring about the consolidation, quote unquote, that Janet Yellen keeps calling for in the banking sector. In other words, the only thing that can save all these small banks collapsing is when you have the big banks, the JP Morgans of the world, come in and swoop them all up with taxpayer money, of course.

Yeah, we're talking to EJ and Tony. Give them a follow on social media. Really, really solid on economics. EJ, a couple of other economic black swans I see. And the reason I'm bringing this up with you is, you know, I find it really strange. I read about in the politics space how Team Biden is almost taking a celebratory victory lap over the economy. EJ, they're like, oh, 2024 is going to be great. We had a soft landing. Inflation's under control. People are going to feel this real

wage increase coming up. And I'm thinking to myself, can they possibly be this stupid? That stuff may all be true. And I hope it does. I don't wish the economy bad. Of course, I want to see people suffer. But we've got this corporate real estate crisis. And another one is this interest rate arbitrage issue we're having right now with these banks that are holding these, if you mark to market assets, these assets that are basically hemorrhaging money. And the banks are forced to hold these things on the books. And the Fed is working this, you got to explain this to me, this BTFB, FP, and how is the Fed trying to basically paper over the banks, at least on paper,

losing a fortune right now? Well, basically, Dan, you have all these banks that have a lot of assets at very low interest rates. So that's things like mortgages that they sold during the pandemic at two to three percent. But now they have a bunch of liabilities at high interest rates. That would just be things like deposits. A lot of banks right now are desperate for deposits. And so they're paying four or even 5%, sometimes more. So the problem that you can immediately see is you have negative cash flow. Your assets are bringing in low rates of interest.

Your liabilities are paying high rates of interest. So what do we do? Well, the Fed basically said, hey, look, give us all the money from those bad assets. Or rather, we're going to give you all the money for the bad assets. You use that as collateral on a loan, except that we're not going to value it like it's a bad asset. We're going to value it at par, meaning we're going to make believe, we're going to play pretend here that that asset is still worth what it was when you originally created it, which obviously isn't the case.

And so the problem here is that the Fed is basically legalizing the exact type of behavior that they're trying to throw Trump in prison for by saying that he overvalued Mar-a-Lago. The Fed is explicitly overvaluing these financial assets, except I guess when the Fed does it, it's okay. So the problem here is that what the Fed has essentially done is they created systemic interest rate risk. The banks got on the wrong side of that trade, and now they're trying to paper over it by pretending, oh, nothing's wrong. But there's a few problems here. First is that those loans only last a year.

When that year is up, which those loans are going to start coming due this March, the banks are going to have to repay them. What are they going to repay them with? They had to use all the money from those loans to pay depositors. The money's gone. Once you take those loans out, you have a ton of these small banks that are now going to be insolvent. But the really crazy thing that the Fed has done now, because they're doing such a bad job with managing interest rates, is that a large bank, it doesn't really work for the small

banks for technical reasons, but for the large banks, what they can literally do now, Dan, is they can borrow from this emergency facility and then just turn around and park that money at the Fed because they're just, you know, the Fed pays interest on reserves. So they can borrow money from the Fed, give it right back to the Fed, and the rate the Fed pays them will be slightly higher than the rate they're paying the Fed. So at the same time, the small banks got completely crushed by the Fed screwing around with interest rates. Now the big banks are actually able to make money off of it. EJ, we're talking to EJ and Tony. EJ, that sounds to me like a straight up Ponzi scheme. I mean, it's so bizarre. So the big banks, just so I'm reading you correctly,

get to basically take a loan from the Fed for cash that they effectively then loan back to the Fed at a higher interest rate than they have to pay the loan back on. I mean, that sounds to me like tooth fairy money, like free money. Well, what's the catch? That's what confuses me about it. What's the catch? Oh, the catch is that there's always unintended consequences, right? There's always some failout. So it may not sound like a lot when you're talking about an arbitrage of like 40 basis points, that's only going to be 0.4%. But when you're talking about trillions of dollars in bank reserves, hundreds of billions of which are going to qualify for this arbitrage move. You know, that that's nothing to sneeze at. So what's the fallout?

Well, the Fed is paying this this money out of a checking account with the zero balance. In other words, creating money in real time as it pays the banks. This is quantitative easing. This is money. time as it pays these banks. This is quantitative easing. This is money creation. Wait, wait. So, EJ, just so we're clear, we're still in an inflation crisis due to the expansion of the money supply without adequate

productivity to sponge up the money. We're still in this crisis. Granted, it may not be as bad, relatively speaking, but we're still there. And as a, quote, fix to this, the Fed is effectively creating new digital money to pay this phantom interest rate on this easy free money arbitrage

to a bunch of big banks that the left says they hate. If any of that's wrong, stop me in my tracks, please. I wish I could, Dan. That's pretty much where we're at. I mean, this is Arthur Burns 2.0, the Fed chairman in the 1970s, who I mean, just he messed up so badly, right? Declared victory on inflation

too early and then put his foot back on the gas and gave us the runaway rates at the end of the 1970s. Right. And we dealt with it for a decade. EJ, we're talking to EJ Antoni, economics guru. Follow him on Twitter. I really enjoy his commentary.

You had some comments about the job numbers that came out last week. The job number is a top line number. If you just read the top line number, you're thinking to yourself, gosh, this isn't so bad despite all of Biden's regulatory nonsense and insanely awful policies and inflation issues and whatever. That's not a bad number. You know, the U.S. consumer and entrepreneur seems to be doing OK. But when you dig into the numbers, E.J., you notice some stuff.

Number one, a lot of these numbers from past quarters keep getting revised down, which seems to be a pattern now. And secondly, a lot of these jobs are government jobs, which, you know, if you've ever read Broken Windows Theory, which you have, of course, and can understand completely. These are not net positive, you know, value adding jobs that I'm not suggesting the people who do them aren't good people, but that it's money sucked out of the economy to pay back into the economy. They're not they're not necessarily productive endeavors. So the job numbers are not as fantastic as the Biden team is pretending they are. Exactly. A hundred percent. You know, and when you're talking about

how many of the months last year were revised down, July is literally the only month that didn't get a downward revision. So once you account for all those monthly downward revisions and then the big annual benchmark downward revision, you literally just revised away about one quarter of all the jobs that we initially thought we had gained. And you're right, a lot of the jobs that we're gaining are government. In fact, that's the second biggest growth sector in terms of employment for 2023. And you just can't sustain a three to one ratio, which is basically what we have now of private sector growth to government growth, because you need to take tax revenue

from all of those three additional private sector jobs. You need to take tax revenue from them to pay for that one government sector job. That three to one ratio, that's not big enough. You need, you know, there's a lot of different studies on this, but the smallest one I can think of shows you need a 10 to one ratio, whereas a lot of people believe it's actually much higher than that in terms of how many private sector jobs you need just to support a single government sector one. So yeah, it adds to the top line number and it sounds great at first, but it's not sustainable. And we're talking to EJ and Tony. EJ, I got about two minutes left. You know, Herb Stein famously said, what can't continue won't.

And I think the question a lot of folks like me who follow economics, but don't have the depth of expertise you do, is how far in debt and annual deficits can we go 30, 40, 50 trillion before this black Black Swan event happens? And are we close to that moment that you could see something potentially in this election year now, a market crash or one of those things we talked about before that really shakes up the entire global political scene? Well, I think we started to see it already a little bit last year, Well, I think we started to see it already a little bit last year, but we keep having the Federal Reserve step in to try to calm down the bond vigilantes so that they can't have their way.

We like to talk about the Fed, how it's nonpartisan, it's apolitical, they're data dependent, blah, blah, blah. Let's just be brutally honest here for a second, okay? Jerome Powell was the guy who, when he was up for renomination, kept interest rates below 1% despite inflation running up to a 40-year high and promised a 75 basis point hike. That's just off the table. As soon as he was renominated, he delivered four of those in a row. Let's put to bed this idea that they are not somehow affected by politics. And the brutal honesty here is that we're in an election year, and there's just no way the Fed is going to allow any kind of credit event in 2024. They're going to do everything they can to kick this can further down the road. The problem is when you do eventually have that kind of credit event or whatever the case may be, it makes it that much worse.

Yeah, it does. E.J. and Tony, as always, we really appreciate your expertise. Thanks for spending some time with us. No, Dan, my pleasure. Thank you for having me on it. Absolutely. Folks, he's great. Please follow him on social media. You won't regret it.

This is important stuff. You know, James Carville's line, it's the economy, stupid. I don't like Democrats, not a huge fan of Carville, but he was absolutely correct. And we are right now, as EJ just explained, we are teetering on the edge. Corporate, real estate, interest rates,

loans getting ready to default. Is it going to happen in the next year? I'm not wishing economic harm on anyone. I'm just saying we are a hair's width away from a major economic disaster that could completely shake up this entire election. You just got the deets on all of it. Up next, a rant that may save your life. But first, our next sponsor. Here's a great New Year's resolution you can actually keep. Whether you have three minutes in the morning or 30 minutes, keep your face wrinkle-free. Introducing Gen90, the new instant wrinkle treatment from GenuCell Skin Care. Gen90 can help instantly reduce the appearance of wrinkles anywhere you use it,

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free shipping on all orders. That's G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com slash Dan, Genucel.com slash Dan. This DEI is going to get someone killed. They're going to D-I-E. I explain why here in this next segment. Take a listen. Folks, this DEI stuff is going to get someone killed. It probably has already. The only reason I say it's going to get someone killed. It probably has already. The only reason I say it's going to get someone killed is because I don't say things without any hard evidence to back it up. And although I find it highly likely and likely probable that this nonsense, racist diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense, because it is racist. Remember, employment positions are zero-sum. If you hire someone based on skin color and not on merit,

you've taken away a position from someone else. Liberals are busy Googling right now, zero-sum, on their favorite left-wing search engine, Google. What does zero-sum mean? It's true, right? Not just hirings, but promotions. Folks, the reason this DEI stuff

has so many Americans pissed off, Jim, you ready to go here? You ready to go on this? Because I'm telling you right now, it's going to... You sure? Just about everyone in our listening audience here of 8 million plus people either has been a victim of,

has a child or a daughter, a child, son or a daughter, a friend, or knows someone who's been a victim of this. Folks, this is real. Now, there's a couple things we need to talk about here. Because it's the morally correct thing to do. And what I really hate about this is,

what does Gutfeld call it? The two boxes thing or whatever uh it's a great line he's got where the prison of two ideas thank you jim see jim this guy's great gutfeld's got a prison of two ideas where you can only have one of these two things it's a it's a trick liberals pull to make human beings believe that they're not intellectual creatures let's not fall into the prison of two ideas here. Can we all agree that the country has a sordid history with race, right? I mean, that's just a fact. That happened. The fact that innocent human beings had to suffer

the indignity of water fountains and kitchen counters labeled colored while everyone else had the white section and they were not equal well nonsense happened obviously the stain of human slavery happened both in the united states and around the world i love how by the way people who claim to have a knowledge of history conveniently leave that out, doesn't make it, and by the way, it doesn't make it any less worse in the United States. It's just a historical fact. Sadly, we were not the anomaly. All of that is true.

It's also true, racism's a very real and pernicious thing. I mean, when you think about it, if you were to pull yourself out of any preconceived notions and pretend you were some space alien from Pluto who landed on Earth, you would say to yourself, you know what? I take that back.

Let me start somewhere different. I'm not a Star Trek guy, okay? So Star Trekkies in the Rumble chat on Facebook, Trekkies, if I screw this up. Let me start somewhere different. I'm not a Star Trek guy, okay? So Star Trek, he's in the Rumble chat on Facebook. Trekkies, if I screw this up, correct me. But there was an episode of Star Trek once where there were these beings and they had like a white and a black colored face and some of the paint was on like the other side

and they like hated each other. They're like, no, no, that guy's got the black coloring on that side of the face. And the whole point of the episode was to point out the silliness of racism. I only remember it because someone showed it to me in a clip one time on like a Dailymotion channel and was like, look at this. This perfectly describes the stupidity of racism.

But think about the situation in reverse. If some Star Trek-like being from another universe came here and they were like, wait, you don't like that guy? Why? Because of the skin stuff? What is like wait you don't like that guy why because of the what is the skin stuff what is that but i don't know i don't understand again knock all your preconceived notions out pretend you were naive to this and you're hearing it for the first time well what's wrong with the the skin stuff what does that mean yeah yeah the here's the racist talk so he's black

so i don't i don't like him why that you know stuff what stuff you know the the skin what about it you see how a space alien would be like you sound like kind of a moron can all agree that's real still happens thankfully in the united states it's ebbed significantly and it's a wonderful thing i find it interesting is the fact that when de jure racism in the south ebbed significantly the place became more republican that should say something to you for all those people who the southern strategy really what's the southern strategy to make a less racist place more republican as i was you sure southern what kind of strategy is that for racists? Let's make it less racist?

Having said that, ladies and gentlemen, there is no path out of this with additional racism. Now, the fact that that's even a remotely controversial point, and believe me, it is. I'm telling you by saying this there are liberals listening to this show who are right now taking a leak in their depends right now they need to be changed with a wipey because they believe this that the only remedy to pass discrimination is future discrimination some of you see what i just did there

jim knows what i just did he's like it sounds like you just quoted someone that's because i did i quoted who did i quote jim you know yeah yes yeah you are a good man he is correct ibram x kendi who was one of the left's icons on the race issue that's actually a quota his no no that really happened. You can go look that up yourself. So he's recommending more discrimination in the future and he thinks it's going to fix the discrimination of the past. There is zero pathway

by which alienating another generation of human beings who've done nothing wrong based on their skin color or lack of coloration in their skin. There is no scenario by which discriminating against them lessens discrimination going forward in the future. that's the reason this DEI stuff is cannibalistic by nature, will eventually burn itself out, as I've stated over and over with my cannibalism theory of the left. Because as growing numbers of people tire of this, the left is going to have to invent new victim classes. And they can't invent new victim classes ad nauseum without taking from other people claiming they're the victimizers.

All right, Dan, you're getting too deep. No, I'm not. It's very easy to understand. The left claims they're in it for minorities, right? The left believes there are two classes of people and only two this is the stupidity of it there are the whites and there are the minority groups whites are the majority the whites have power they believe through critical theory the precursor to critical right race theory that the white male patriarchy is the source of all power. That all knowledge that emanates from it is a construct of said power and should be questioned. And then they believe everyone else are the actual literal Excel spreadsheet minority groups and they're all the victims. The problem is that was such a ridiculous premise on its face that when the math didn't add up and minority groups, Jews, Asians.

People with dark skin from other places around the world outside of Africa and elsewhere came to the United States and succeeded. It defeated the leftist narrative that every minority group was a victim of the white male patriarchy because every minority group isn't. And the weird thing is, it seemed to be that it was only minority groups that were subjected to the same liberal rulers who were telling them they were the victims of the other group. Sounds like a problem you see you have to understand the why about the left you have to get your hands around you have to get your arms around it and bear hug the left to really understand them

the left fears merit and loves the idea of dei hiresires, not because of race. It has nothing to do with race. If the left really cared about diversity, equity, and inclusion based on race and cultural identity, they wouldn't be warring against the Asian community right now to keep them out of school spots they earn. It has nothing to do with minority status. It has everything to do with attacking merit. You see the left, the collectivists, the communists can never acknowledge merit as a tool because when they acknowledge merit as a tool, they have to acknowledge success is largely not always. There's a lot of luck, a lot of inherited wealth. I'm not naive to that, but success, especially in the United States and relatively free countries and constitutional republics, success is largely due to grit and hard work. The overwhelming majority of people who are successful, who've made it into that wealthy $500,000 and above club, have done it because of an idea, taken a chance others didn't take.

But as soon as the left acknowledges that, they have to give up on this idea that societal structures are the cause of everybody's pain and there's a victim victimizer class because it gives the victim a way out, which is just a simple one. Just go work hard. So when people ask me,

well, Dan, why would the left that flies on planes themselves, why would they be interested in pilots being hired based on something as silly as skin color or political ideology or whatever it is, rather than skill knowing they could die too. Because ladies and gentlemen, as I've been warning you about the left for a long time, the idea of the system collapsing on top of them

is never real until it imposes on them real material costs. The left exposes themselves to danger with their ideas every day no they don't yes they do ladies and gentlemen leftists in leftist cities were the ones calling to defund the police as criminals preyed on them every day don't tell me that they did they think rationally their idea of rationality is allegiance to this faith, not science, and this faith is this DEI structure. And if it burns the whole place to the ground,

until it imposes at their kitchen table a real material cost, nothing will change. The left will defend DEI neurosurgeons, secret service agents, military folks, pilots, until the damn plane is ready to hit the ocean they're flying in.

It's my, when is it bad enough theory. Folks, Jim and I lived through it, Mike as well in New York, where every year New York City, pre-Rudy Giuliani, got worse and worse to the point that your life was in literal danger. If you got caught in largely left-wing neighborhoods run by left-wing governments, there was a significant chance your car would get stolen or you would not get out of there without a beating. And it didn't matter. For three and four decades, they kept voting for it because their allegiance to this religion of liberalism overpowered their ability to rationally maximize their own condition. It is when and only when, listen to me, turn up the radio, only when those costs come home and plant themselves on the kitchen table of the leftists directly, that the leftists will wake up and decide that Giuliani was a better option than Dinkins, the liberal mayor of New York. DEI is going to get people killed.

The shame of what I'm about to tell you about this is we're not even close to uprooting this root and branch and getting back to a colorblind society based on merit and mutual respect and love for people's God-given rights, which is, by the way, a completely uncontroversial position if you're not a freaking psycho, loser, imbecile moron. If you are, in fact, you think that's weird.

And I can't help you because you're a moron. And I don't talk to morons because it just makes me dumber. The shame of this whole thing is a whole lot of people are going to be killed and lives are going to be destroyed before people wake up and realize, my gosh, we really took that wrong fork in the road. Thanks for listening to Sunday podcast. We always appreciate it. You can always check us out on Rumble at 11 a.m. Eastern time daily at rumble.com slash Bongino for the podcast and on the radio show. You can listen from noon to three Eastern. Check us out, Bongino.m. Eastern Time Daily at rumble.com slash Bongino for the podcast. And on the radio show, you can listen from noon to 3 Eastern. Check us out, Bongino.com.

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