The Dan Bongino Show - The Democrats Are Moving the Goal Posts Again # 930 (Ep 930)
Episode Date: March 6, 2019In this episode I address the outrageous shift in tactics in the continued witch-hunt against Trump, and why these tactics will never work. I also address the reasons socialism and big government spen...ding will never work.  News Picks: Great news, new Attorney General William Barr will NOT recuse himself from the Russia probe.  The Democrats are all-in on police-state tyranny.  Christian baker Jack Phillips is 2 and 0 against the state of Colorado.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wonders why we can’t just print our way out of debt.  Tax refunds are up in 2019 as another silly liberal talking point collapses.  The absolutely brilliant Thomas Sowell returns.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denies breaking FEC laws.  Copyright Dan Bongino All Rights Reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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get ready to hear the truth about america on a show that's not immune to the facts with your
host dan bongino all right welcome to the dan bongino show producer show how are you today
and rip roaring ready to go baby hey rip roaring so i have a surgery after this so i'm uh
respectfully asking everybody in my audience you know know, I love you all to death.
You mean the world to me as I do the show for you.
Just say a prayer for me if you don't mind.
It's not a major thing.
I don't want to be dramatic,
but I have to go under again for the, gosh,
seventh or eighth time Joe and I were going through
our list of medical maladies.
Got to have my elbow cleaned out.
I have a bunch of what they call loose bodies in there.
I don't know if that means like aliens.
Like remember Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger, like a quaddo pops out of his head. I have a bunch of what they call loose bodies in there. I don't know if that means like aliens. I'm like,
remember total recall Arnold Schwarzenegger,
like quaddo pops out of his head.
Maybe I have like a quaddo in my elbow, but I can't straighten my left arm.
So I'll show you on camera.
That's all.
It straightens my,
my left arm.
So tomorrow I will show you the results.
Hopefully it'll be a little straighter.
I got to get a bunch of bone spurs taken out as well.
So I'm going right after my show today. Joe's like, well, my wife was like, how do you feel? Are you a little nervous about. I got to get a bunch of bone spurs taken out as well. So I'm going right after my show today.
Joe's like, well, my wife was like, how do you feel?
Are you a little nervous about something? I'm like, nah.
I'm good. The doctors are really,
really competent, super competent guys.
So I'm excited. All right, let's get to it. Enough about
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Okay, getting right to this.
So yesterday, I didn't get to this.
I should have.
A new attorney general, thankfully, William Barr, who we have in there, was confirmed,
is now acting as the attorney general of the United States announced this week,
that he will not recuse himself from the Russia probe.
My gosh, finally some sanity up there.
As I've said to you repeatedly, I don't want to pile on sessions, but the worst decision he ever made,
Joe and I frequently brought up, was to recuse himself when there was no
reason to do so from the Russia probe.
The Democrats set him up.
They set Sessions up and he fell right into their trap, which was by far the worst decision
he made when he was the attorney general.
So now we have an attorney general in there that can finally get a hold of the Justice
Department.
Now, I want to bring up something critical here, because Barr wrote a piece, an opinion type piece, a brief about where the Democrats were going to go next.
They were going to go to obstruction when collusion fell apart.
He wrote a piece before he was the attorney general.
Follow me here, because the logic he uses in this piece to knock down the obstruction charge
is unassailable.
And when I give it to you,
you're going to see how stupid
what the Democrats are doing is
and where this will lead
to the potential collapse of the Republic
as we know it.
So just to get out there,
the lead,
what we're talking about in advance,
Barr, listen,
Barr wasn't the perfect choice.
I agree.
There were some issues
some people had with him.
But remember one thing about
Attorney General Barr. Joe, he's had
this position before.
He gives exactly zero
you figure
out the word. It's a family friendly show
about what people think of him.
He is not trying to. He's been the
Attorney General before. If he gets
canned tomorrow or
gets attacked by the Democrats tomorrow, he is a guy, he doesn't care.
He doesn't care.
He's had this position before.
You need a guy in there right now willing to do the right thing who is not concerned about Joe running for president, being a U.S. senator afterwards, power, donations, jobs.
Barr does not care.
Is he the perfect candidate?
No. Stipulated and and acknowledged i get your point a lot of you emailed me some problems you had with bar fine i get it i'm
telling you from the russia probe the hoax the witch hunt perspective there's no better guy to
have in there because bar doesn't care what they think he is only going to do what's right. Barr knows this whole
collusion investigation is a big hoax
and a witch hunt, and he knows
it's designed to take down the Trump administration
and overturn the results
of basically a duly elected
president, Donald Trump, winning. Donald
Trump will be the first president in American history
impeached for the crime of winning a presidential
election. So here's what Barr
wrote in general.
The Wall Street Journal has this today in an op-ed column where they cover how this is going down a very dangerous path.
Representative Jerry Nadler, as Joe and I had predicted, you know, a year ago almost,
they were going to move from collusion onto, well, the president obstructed justice, which
is basically impossible given the fact pattern that they have.
Now, Nadler's premise, and we debunked it earlier last week based on statements by McCabe, Comey and Jim Baker, lawyers at the FBI, who refuted the idea that Trump had obstructed their investigation.
But on principle alone, Nadler, the Democrat hack going after the president is wrong.
So I want to be clear what we're talking about.
Whereas last week, the obstruction charges against the president, Joe, you know, we refuted
them based on the statements of Jim Comey, who alleges in a memo that Trump asked him
to investigate people in his satellites.
He thought there was something wrong.
That doesn't sound like obstruction.
That sounds like solicitation.
McCabe, who gave a congressional testimony under oath and said there were no efforts,
that's a quote, to obstruct his investigation. And Jim Baker, a lawyer at the FBI who informed
this that Trump wasn't even informed he was under investigation. So how you can obstruct
an investigation you weren't aware of is nonsensical. I want to move from that to the
overarching principles of how constitutionally speaking, there's no way, given the fact pattern of this case in the Russia probe, that Donald Trump could have possibly obstructed investigation.
Here's a quote from the Wall Street Journal today.
If a president commits a legal act but can be accused of a crime because of his motive, then any presidential action can be called
into question based on the accusation of a motive.
Ladies and gentlemen, think this through logically.
Again, I'm asking you to use logic.
I know this is tough for our liberal friends who listen to the show because you're so passionately
and virulently anti-Trump.
I'm asking you to think reasonably for a moment.
If the president commits a legal act, let's put meat on the bone, Joe, firing Jim Comey.
Joe, you and I are not constitutional lawyers, but we're not stupid either.
No, we're not.
One of the powers of the presidency under the executive branch is to fire subordinate officers.
Yeah.
Joe, is Jim Comey subordinate to Donald Trump or does Donald Trump work for Jim Comey?
Man, Jim Comey was working for Donald Trump, daddy.
Yeah, it's not hard to figure out.
Comey was a subordinate officer in the executive branch.
Donald Trump has the constitutional authority to fire for any reason he deems fit.
Jim Comey.
That's a perfectly legal act.
Now, I'm not suggesting to you
that these decisions are all smart politics,
although I think the firing of Comey absolutely was.
Sometimes the firing of subordinate officers
may be bad politics, Joe.
They may be bad optics.
They may not look good.
They may reflect poorly on the presidency.
But they are not illegal.
They are, in fact, the constitutional delegated duties of the president of the United States to choose his subordinate officers.
So what the article in the journal is saying, which a lot of you need to understand for your liberal friends arguing with your liberal friends,
stand for your liberal friends arguing with your liberal friends if we're going to use the president's motives to allege a crime then do you understand that this could be done for any
president for any decision ever right right right i mean think about it joe yeah let's say the next
president god forbid is a democrat let's say it's uh bernie lines Bernie. And Bernie makes a foreign policy decision to re-engage on a higher level with the Cubans,
to drop all sanctions, to drop everything, to re-invite the dry foot policy to everything.
We're going to fix everything with the Cubans.
Bernie says we're going to change everything.
They are going to become our new partners on a level like the Five Eyes.
We're going to share intelligence with them.
Listen, Bernie Sanders, if he was the President of the United States
and the Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to order his subordinate officers to do that.
Can we arrest Bernie Sanders for that?
No.
Now, you can try to impeach him and allege a high crime and misdemeanor,
which they may do for Donald Trump, but you're not going to get him.
But it's not a crime to do it.
Now, granted, I used an extreme example to show you that we have remedies for that.
There are constitutional remedies.
The remedies are impeachment and the next election where you can vote Bernie Sanders out,
which if he were to embark on a policy like that would most assuredly be voted out.
But you can't point to his motive and say, well, Bernie Sanders is a communist and a traitor to the United States.
And that, in fact, is a crime.
And we will look to arrest him.
You can't indict a sitting president.
You can't point to motive.
Now, if Bernie Sanders, Joe,
to give you a different example,
if Bernie Sanders were caught on videotape
as the president of the United States
taking a million dollar cash bribe
from a Cuban officer to do the same thing,
that's a different story.
That is not a legal act.
The president acting as a commander in chief
and making foreign policy decisions
is not criminal.
It may be stupid.
It may be bad politics. The president of the United States taking a cash bribe underneath the table is in fact an illegal act. That is a legitimate allegation of a crime. If it were to happen,
we need to understand this distinction. Likewise with Trump. If there were an allegation out there,
Joe, that Trump had taken a $2 million cash bribe to fire Jim Comey by a competitor for Jim Comey's job who wanted to be the director
of the FBI there's absolutely no question there would be a criminal investigation likely an
impeachment and an indictment after the president leaves office because a sitting president cannot
be indicted according to OLC guidelines doj guidelines now he can't
do you understand the dangerous path we would be headed down if motive were used as a reason
to charge crimes on a sitting president you could joe you could say that about anything
you could say well the president's motive for you know seeking denuclearization talks with
kim jong-il's because somewhere down the future,
we think he may want to build a Trump Tower in North Korea.
You don't know any of that.
You have no idea.
You're just making that up.
You're fabricating charges.
Folks, this is a danger.
This would be the collapse of the republic
because you could create and fabricate motives
for every decision the president made.
The tax cuts bill. The tax cuts bill.
The tax cuts bill. The president's motive
was to save himself money on his taxes.
Impeach him. Crime.
Lock him up. Call the thug police.
It's not a crime.
Yeah, exactly.
You would be essentially
it's a great way to frame it. You would
be policing things you can't possibly
understand which are the internal machinations of a president of the United States.
You don't know that.
As long as he's executing his legal duties, no matter how ill advised you believe them to be, they are not, in fact, crimes.
And you cannot impugn.
Well, you can impugn it, but you cannot use the motive as evidence of a crime.
I wanted to get that out there because there's a lot of confusion about it. People seem to not
understand this, that they're confusing the two. Oh, his motives were to protect himself against
the Russia probe. You don't know that. You have no idea. And even if you did, even if you did,
that motive for him doing it when he pursues a legal act, you cannot use it as evidence of a crime.
You don't know that.
You have no evidence of actual criminality there.
They say, oh, well, he told Lester Holt about the Russia thing.
He simply said the Russia thing was on his mind.
I wouldn't have said it, but he did not say he fired Jim Comey because of the Russia thing. And by the way, even if he did fire
Comey because of the quote Russia thing, it's still not illegal.
He may say he handled this investigation poorly. He's a subordinate
officer. He can give him the boot when he wants.
Okay, second story. So the power of capitalism,
Joe, this immigration story is me fascinated.
I told you that I thought Trump won on the immigration fight. And I know I got a lot of
emails. There's this guy, Paul, who emails me negative stuff every day. That's fine. I read
the emails. I put it out there for a reason. He seems to hate Donald Trump. This guy got worked.
He's a loser. He's the worst ever i'm like
all right whatever man i don't i don't even know what you're talking about anymore but i still read
your stuff so email away um i told you i thought he won on the border battle especially with the
funding the reason for that is uh just to quickly reiterate this point before i get to the uh before
i get to the the uh the uh the the the coup de grace here trump Trump, the money he got,
he needed $5.7 billion
to build that 200 miles of border wall
that the border security experts
in CBP and elsewhere
had told him were critical.
So just to get the lead out in front,
the CBP went to the president
and the border authorities,
ICE and others,
and they said, listen,
we need this specific
200 plus miles of border
secured immediately.
This is where there's a real crisis and an emergency.
They got an estimate on that to be $5.7 billion on that price tag.
The president got some money.
He got about $1.6 billion from Congress.
He took some more money from treasury funds that were taken,
the treasury impoundment funds,
funds that were impounded due to criminal activity,
and he got some other money from the military construction budget.
That left him around $5 billion before there was even a declaration of the emergency
and the emergency money was needed.
Now, I want to make that point clear because as the president said himself,
his ace in the hole was he spending this money sequentially.
In other words, Joe, the congressionally allocated money first no dispute about that the treasury forfeiture funds
no real dispute about that the military construction funds next no dispute about that
and then there were going to be the disputed funds from the emergency um the emergency declaration
i had said to you over and over that the president,
who's a pretty darn good deal maker,
agreeing to spend that money sequentially
kind of screwed them over
because the Democrats can't sue
about money that hasn't been spent yet.
And Joe, by the time they spend
the emergency declaration money,
the president is going to be
potentially two years down the road
because he's already spending
the other money first
and it's going to take a while
to finance that. Now, how does this fit into the story we saw yesterday you see where
i'm going with that joe by the time he gets to those funds they can't sue until he starts spending
them that's going to be way way down the road potentially into the 2020 election or realize
right and we did this so it was a genius order the order how it counted was about a week and a
half ago uh when you get a rundownown it's important you understand that but yes and because he again the president was knocked oh he lost the you know
he took an l on this he did not lose he didn't lose we're not golden caffing the president either
i'm just telling you he had the money they're going to spend it in sequence now there's an
interesting story yesterday about this uh this guy it's in the washington examiner it's in the
show notes a company a private company power of capitalism we love it comes forward says hey listen we can do
the 234 miles of border you need for 1.4 billion how great would that be so now even better if he
winds up taking this and of course there, it's a more complicated government procurement process.
I don't want to be hyperbolic than just saying, hey, we'll take it.
But if this company is right and other companies can match that bid, think about it, folks.
Not only will Trump have won by spending the money in sequence, therefore they can't sue him for the emergency declaration money
because it won't even be spent yet until the other border is built.
declaration money because it won't even be spent yet until the other borders built we may get the 200 miles of border we need that wall now for just the congressionally allocated 1.5 1.6 billion they
gave them which is going to be spent first in other words if that happens and they can match
that spending there will be no lawsuit because the 200 miles of border
we need will be spent before you even get to the mildly disputed money, the forfeiture funds in
the military construction budget. Now, I can't attribute that entirely to Trump because this
company came out yesterday after the negotiations were over and said they could do it. But wouldn't this be a major slap in the face to the open borders Democrats
if this 200 miles of border gets built with money, Joe?
They allocated from Congress and the emergency money is never needed at all.
Now, wouldn't that be special?
How about that?
How about that?
Wouldn't that be great?
Now, on a serious note, this crisis at the border is getting a lot worse.
Some astonishingly bad numbers.
This is what that guy Paul had emailed me about, and he's not incorrect.
The crisis at the border is getting worse.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's no longer any question amongst serious, rational people
that what's going on at our southern border is a national emergency.
No question.
Now, you can dispute, and we should, the power of the executive to reallocate funds.
I think that'll go through the courts if we ever get to it, as I just said, the allocation of the funds.
You cannot dispute effectively the president's power to declare an emergency declaration
pursuant to the 1976 National Emergencies Act.
There's no question about that.
What the president's being sued about for the emergency at the border is the allocation of funds,
not the declaration of an emergency.
Now, after the numbers that came out yesterday, again, there's no longer any serious dispute about what's going on.
February, Joe, 76,000 apprehensions at the border, at our southern border, up 30.
I know you, I was waiting for you. You always go, oh, anytime I make a point that it's, he border, at our southern border. Up 30.
I know you.
I was waiting for you.
You always go, oh.
Anytime I make a point, he goes, oh.
He reminds me of Andrew Dice Clay, Madison Square Garden, back in the 90s.
Oh.
Remember?
Oh, yes, I do.
76,000.
Folks, I live in Palm City, Florida.
I don't know the population of the town I live in i love it down here i have no idea but i'm gonna guess it's not 76 000 people and you know it's not really a
small town like a decent amount of people live down here 76 000 people were apprehended in february
up 31 i'm asking you our liberal friends to tell me with a straight face how this is not a
crisis at our border. If we had 76,000 people a month apprehended at our border, can you imagine
how many got through? We're talking probably about tens of thousands of people who are in
our country illegally getting through every single month. Folks, this is a national emergency.
There's no question.
These numbers are absolutely staggering and horrifying.
All right, moving on.
I've been at this a while now,
and one of the guys I really adore, the people in the movement,
I mean really adore, who's changed my life. I've never met him, and I'm not really a sappy in the movement. I mean, really adore who's changed my life.
I've never met him. And I'm not really a sappy kind of guy. I never take pictures with people
or anything. I mean, I think we have a couple of pictures with the POTUS and everything,
but that's different. But I see people, I run into them in green rooms and stuff. And
I'm never like, hey, can we take a selfie? I don't know. I just don't really care. I've taken
a few, very, very few, usually at other people's requests.
It's not my thing.
But one guy I really like is Thomas Sowell.
Thomas Sowell is one of the great thinkers of our time.
He was a disciple of Milton Friedman.
He's an economist.
I believe he's at the Hoover Institution over at Stanford University.
He's just incredible.
He's written books that have changed my life.
The most powerful book I've ever read is called vision of the anointed by thomas soul i can't recommend
to you in strong enough terms i have no financial interest in his books at all by the way zero
uh but vision of the anointed will change your life it's an older book it's not new it's been
out gosh for decades but it really breaks down the ideological underpinnings of the left uh
you know the socialist central planner left and how basically nothing they will do will ever work
the socialists because it can't work it's a fascinating fascinating book again i can't
recommend it up but he has a new book out and thomas saul appeared on uh with i believe it's
david asman on fox business the other day And Sol has a way of distilling things down,
whether it be on this latest call for reparations,
which we addressed last week, or the wealth tax.
This is a seven-minute cut.
We took just two shortcuts.
I can't play a seven-minute cut on the show.
You'll tune out.
But I took two cuts from his interview with David Asman.
And the first one is Asman asking him about this call by these radical far leftists running for president right now, Kamala Harris and others included, for reparations to Americans who they believe were the descendants of slaves.
An economically unworkable, irrational program.
I explained this last week.
The program mechanically would never, ever work.
You giving money to other people who are descendants of people who unquestionably moral,
ethical and human crimes were committed against, but not to them. And you had nothing to do with
makes no economic sense. So Sol was asked about this and play this cut. Here was his answer.
You know, another economic myth is is one that you
expose in the new edition of your book, Discrimination and Disparities, that that all
disparities, economic disparities in our economy, et cetera, are due to discrimination, that that's
the sole course and therefore they have to be addressed by economic policies. The most recent
fad is is reparations for slavery. How do you respond to
that? Well, this is one of any number of one-factor explanations as to why everyone doesn't have the
same outcome. A hundred years ago, it was genetics. In other times and places, it was exploitation.
But again, these are ideas that sound plausible.
But when you do research, you discover that everywhere you turn, there are a thousand reasons why people don't turn out the same.
It goes right down to the family. In the first chapter of this book, I point out that the firstborn has higher IQs than his siblings.
born has higher IQs than his siblings and later life earned has more achievements.
Among astronauts, for example, of the 29 astronauts in the Apollo program that put a man on the moon, 22 were either the first born or an only child.
Now, if you can't get equality among people born to the same parents and raised under
the same roof, why in the world would you think you're going to get it among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof. Why in the world would you think you're going to get it among people who've had such different
histories and cultures around the world?
Now, Sol is a genius.
He is one of the finest thinkers of our time.
And he gave, obviously, a deeper answer to the question about reparations.
But the answer, I want to just dig into that a second and get two quick points
soul is great and he has this thing called you know the then what right so then what and he
and he mentioned it he says well one factor explanations whenever you're arguing with your
liberal friends and they bring things up like reparations you're thinking you should be then
well then what well okay well how are we going to do it well are you going to take money from
people who say or say a wealthy black family, right?
There's money taken from them or given to them.
And then I asked you last week,
what if you came from, say, Jamaican heritage
and not essentially African heritage?
What if you came here after,
what if your parents came here just recently
and weren't victims of slavery in the United States?
They get paid too.
Is it strictly based on skin color?
So he talks about these things called one-factor explanations.
He relates it to a larger topic of inequality in society.
But it's important.
You should always ask your liberal friends, and then what?
And then stop, stop.
You can't let them stop at the first-factor explanation.
He had a better way of explaining it.
He was a clip we used to play on the show often.
It was back in the 70s.
Soul's on a show, on a television show, with this Pennsylvania bureaucrat who heads their
welfare department, Helen O'Banion.
You can look it up on YouTube.
It's fascinating.
And she talks about how women on welfare, how we need to support them, and how Pennsylvania
and how the state budget, we should give them money.
And Soul asks her a fascinating question.
Okay, well, why are you starting the story in the middle?
Let's start the story at the beginning of the book and ask,
how did they get on welfare in the first place?
And he hits on it in his answer there when he talks about largely this is due
to a lot of family factors, families being broken up.
Like there's not one factor here.
So that's first, ask the then what question.
And then secondly, it brings up another point.
For government to equalize all of these factors, are you first born?
Are you a minority status?
How were you treated growing up?
Did you have two parents?
Did you get the proper nutrition?
Did you get all of these factors that can lead to different outcomes in life?
We can all agree, right, Joe?
Sure, man.
People who have better nutrition probably had better life outcomes than people who didn't.
People who grew up with a mother and a father in a household probably grew up with different
outcomes than a single parent.
I know.
My wife and I both grew up in single parent households.
It's tough, okay?
There are so many factors.
He brings up this point that there's no way to control for all this and the logical
extension of that which he addresses in many of his books is and Hayek addresses it and Milton
Friedman as well as in order to equalize outcomes at the back end in other words well you may have
failed because of this this and this and we're going to institute a government policy to bring
you up it requires Joe that you treat people unequally.
Right.
The great irony of government equalizing outcomes
is it requires you to treat people unequally
because you can't control for all those factors.
Think about what I'm telling you.
This is a critical point.
It is the ultimate endgame failure of liberalism and socialism.
You will never be aware of the struggles Joe's had.
you will never be aware of the struggles joe's had joe with little joe and his son and and and his jobs and working and you i i know joe well i probably am aware of about two or three percent
of joe's struggles and how he got to i have no idea i can't control for all of those the government
if i know joe well and i don't know, the government has an even
lesser idea.
So to take from Joe
to give to someone else
who makes less money than Joe under the
guise of equalizing outcomes, how do
you know the money you're taking from Joe to give to someone
else who makes less than Joe, that the guy's
not going to go spend it on drugs and the
guy's poor because he's
a drug addict? The answer is you
don't know that. You can never know that. You can't control for those outcomes. That's where
when you read Soul's work, you see, that's what he's talking about in this piece. Yeah. That you
can't possibly control for all these factors. You know, an example Joe and I used to use,
because I love Soul, we've used this quote so many times,
is, you know, let's say you got this guy, he's really, really poor,
and then you got this guy really, really rich.
The simple-minded, one-factor liberals would be like, well, it's obvious.
We should tax the guy who's rich and give some money.
He doesn't need all that money, and we should give it to the poor guy.
And then when you start saying, well, and then what?
And you start digging through the factors, you find out that, well, the poor guy and then when you start saying well and then what and you start digging through the
factors you find out that well the poor guy was rich and he blew away his inheritance partying
on on bad business investments and the guy who's rich now we're taking from was poor came here as
an immigrant started a belt factory made a bunch of great belts, worked for 20 years, and finally was bought
out last year, and now he's worth a million dollars.
Now it's fair to take his money and give it to the kid who was born rich and flushed it
down the toilet?
You may say, well, of course that isn't fair, but that's not, you know, we don't know that.
Of course you're, that's why the government shouldn't do it.
I don't think I like your tone.
For the government to equalize outcomes,
they have to treat people unequally.
The guy who worked
his whole life to make his million dollars
and grew up poor, worked his whole life
to pay off a guy who
flushed his money down the toilet. They're being treated
unequally.
Alright, let me play this
second cut from Soul. This was a great
appearance yesterday. This is Thomas Soul again on Fox Business with David Asman.
Talking about a wealth tax redistribution and other things.
And Saul, again, no one says it better.
Play that cut.
...love to throw out there is the wealth tax,
is that there are too many wealthy people that in order to redistribute income,
we don't want to take away all wealthy people.
We don't want to bring back the guillotine,
but we need a wealth tax in order to cut into some of their riches. What do you think of that?
Well, I think that's one of the biggest fallacies, because the most fundamental kind of wealth is
human capital, which is inside people's heads. And you can't confiscate that. Any number of
countries have forced people out of the country,
they've expelled them or driven them out,
and wouldn't let them take their wealth with them.
And when they did that in Uganda, for example,
the Ugandan economy collapsed.
The Asians who arrived destitute in Britain,
you know, within a number of years, they were prosperous again,
whereas the
Ugandan economy never recovered. If you can't confiscate the most fundamental wealth,
the case for doing it means nothing if you can't do it. Folks, this is one of the more profound
things. And Sol repeats throughout his works, his writings, his speeches, his seminars, a lot of his YouTube clips.
This is an idea Sol brings up often.
You can control and confiscate capital.
When I say capital, Joe, I mean tractors, factories, business assets, computers, hard
assets, real estate.
You can do that.
And communist socialist planners will do that because the communist,
the essence of a communist and a socialist is the government control,
the means of production,
the means of production, how we produce our economic output are those factories are that,
or the real estate,
the computers,
the phones,
you can confiscate that,
but you can never confiscate an idea.
Soul talks about this so beautifully and so often.
And I hope, I know this show,
we're digging a little deep into the economic philosophy material,
but it's really important.
You cannot confiscate an idea.
And think about that.
It's not just that you obviously can't confiscate an idea.
And when I say an idea, Joe, I mean the idea that, let's say, the Japanese,
they had just when they started doing enhancements in their production capabilities,
they invented a lot of procedures like just-in-time,
where restocking of your shelves and things like this,
you wouldn't hold a lot of excess inventory,
which would tie up your capital.
That was an idea.
Um,
the idea,
and I was reading it when I was in business school about a certain company
that found out a way to design their warehouses,
to be able to transport and import more products into the warehouse by using
an X-based design.
So the trucks would have more surface area
to load and unload their products
rather than the traditional square.
It was genius.
It was an idea.
An idea that led to incredible enhancements
for that company and the ability in their logistics
to take in and export products.
You can't confiscate an idea.
An idea travels with you.
So Sol's point that when these countries implement these confiscation government planning and heavy taxation processes where we're just going to tax your stuff to death or confiscate it outright, fine.
People move and they take their ideas elsewhere because you can't lock up their ideas.
They're lodged in their cerebral cortex. They leave with them and they take that
idea for an X, a warehouse shaped like an X to another country where those warehouses become
more efficient. Their economies produce more stuff, making the people wealthier.
One more thing about an idea. Joe, what is it about an idea that is different tautologically from material goods, capital goods?
An idea can be reused, Joe, over and over and over and over.
There's no scarcity to it.
Now, that's not the case with a Caterpillar tractor.
Now, that's not the case with a Caterpillar tractor.
Say you're an agricultural business and you have this, you know, $10 million piece of equipment that's going to work on your field.
That equipment has a lifespan.
Right.
Maybe 10 years, maybe 20.
After that, you have to buy a new one.
There's a lifespan.
It's not usable.
Number one, it has a lifespan. Number two, again, this is common sense, but liberals have a hard time with this.
It's only usable in one place at one time.
It can't clone itself.
It's only usable in one field in Wisconsin.
You can transport it to Georgia, but then it's not going to be used in Wisconsin.
That's not the case with an idea.
An idea can be used everywhere.
The idea of not keeping excess inventory in a factory and learning just-in-time production
methods.
The idea of building your warehouse in an X layout rather than a square to increase
the efficiency of the trucks coming in and out.
Those ideas can be used again and again and again and again and again.
Now, again, there are patents and things like that.
There are some ideas like software codes that can be patented and things like that.
But I'm talking about the big ideas, Joe.
Logistics change.
Things like electricity.
Someone thought of this.
Wait, maybe if we could get a current into a wire.
They changed the world.
You will never, ever contain these ideas
and this is where the ridiculous
absurd silly socialists and their tyrannical
communist buddies always go wrong
you can try to plan control and confiscate people's means of production
they are going to take their ideas and they are going to go
elsewhere and he makes a fascinating point there
Idi Amin and the Ugandans another tyrant and they are going to go elsewhere. And he makes a fascinating point there.
Idi Amin and the Ugandans, another tyrant,
when they took over the economy, people left.
They stole all their stuff, the Ugandans, and they left.
They took their ideas, went elsewhere.
And you know what, Joe?
They became rich and wealthy again somewhere else because they just took their ideas elsewhere.
I really wish people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and socialist Bernie Sanders,
Breadlines Bernie, would understand that.
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that's right it'll be all gone okay i have a great story in the show notes today. Please, folks, if you don't mind, subscribe to my email list.
We really appreciate it, at Bongino.com.
If you click the drop-down menu on the homepage, it says subscribe.
We will send you these articles in your email box every day.
I promise we will not spam your inbox, okay?
But these articles are really good.
I have one today by CNS News.
articles are really good i have one today by uh cns news and it it's um it's about the doubt how liberals are basically hypocrites on financing bigger government and how the author of it's a
great piece joe because i love categories and uh what do they call them uh listicles and in the
business they call them listicles like people who do lists so the author of the piece puts together
a list of the four types of liberals
that want to expand government into like Greek-like status, like Greek big government,
so we could go bankrupt quick. And he has an interesting in the piece, he has this little
chart in there that's fascinating. Paul, if you could throw it up, that'd be great if you could
find it in a piece. I didn't tell you before uh there's a family operation here my wife said will you tell me this stuff before the show sheesh he has this little chart it's simple
um it says uh people who want to finance greek-like big government like sane people don't do it and
then he has another branch like irrational people here's the four it's really great he has the four categories of people who want to blow up the
government so category one he has class warriors and their way of doing it financing greek-like
big government united states is the whole tax the rich tax the rich that'll do it so he breaks that
down it's a great piece and he says listen there's there's just not enough money for that we've said it on the show repeatedly uh i showed you how taxing the rich at the rates alexandria ocasio
cortez and people like julian castro running for president at the 70 to 90 percent marginal rates
will raise according to their estimates between maybe 200 and 400 billion over 10 years
now you may say wow that's a lot of Number one, it won't do that because people,
the rich people will take their ideas, Joe,
and take them to another country with a lower tax rate,
which is what happens every time we do this.
But even if they were to stay and actually pay those tax rates,
which won't happen, Joe, the 200 to 400 billion over 10 years
is just a little short, Joe, a little bit yeah just a little short
uh considering that uh ocasio-cortez's programs the green new deal and others will cost 93 trillion
so joe 93 trillion 200 billion 93 trillion 200 billion it's not even cool we're not even in the
ballpark so yeah the number one category of g-like expansion of the United States government,
the class warriors, are just mathematical idiots.
And they're just basically lying to you.
They say tax the rich because they know people think, well, that won't affect me.
No, it will.
It will basically collapse our economy because, as Thomas Sowell said in that clip before,
and I can't emphasize enough, people who are wealthy and successful have ideas.
It is those ideas which have financed the explosive growth in our economy.
Ideas like the iPhone.
Ideas like 3D printing.
It is people who have later become wealthy off those ideas, who have invented those ideas,
who have led to the dramatic expansion of jobs and prosperity in our economy.
Engaging in the politics of envy.
Oh, we should get those people.
It's just stupid.
And frankly, I think it's immoral.
These people worked for their money.
Did everyone work for them?
No, but it's just immoral and frankly stupid.
Okay, second category,
if people want to finance massive Greek stock up in the United States,
the Keynesians.
They're not the Keynesians for some liberal. liberal yeah i engaged in a debate with a liberal once who was trying to quote keynesian
economics called the kinesians maybe you should call it the right thing for us it was john maynard
keynes not keynes just saying i don't mean to sound like a snob but if you're going to cite
the guy's economic principles you should probably know how to pronounce his name. From the planet Kinesia. Yes.
That's good.
That's good.
We should have a shirt made up for our store on the website.
We haven't thrown that out there in a while.
All proceeds from our store go to charity on the website, by the way.
From planet Kinesia.
Bullet points to from planet Kinesia.
So the Keynesians want to just borrow the money now uh keynesian economics is a largely
debunked discredited theory eponymously named for uh now long since past economist john maynard
keynes and the idea was we should drive interest rates down uh very low uh via the the borrowing
and spending of money uh that basically the driving down of interest rates
would incentivize people to marginally consume
rather than save.
Let me explain that in kind of non-wonky terms.
If interest rates are high and you're a saver
and you have assets and money,
say you have a million dollars.
Right.
If interest rates are high, like 8% or so,
Joe, that's a healthy interest rate.
You can make a lot of money.
Yeah, man.
You put a million dollars in the bank at 8%, that's a lot of dough, folks.
That's tens of thousands of dollars racking up into your bank account every single day.
Keynes' theory, which again has largely been debunked, was we need to incentivize people
to consume on the margin.
He called it the marginal propensity to consume because he believed it was the spending of money
that would generate economic activity.
And he's not wrong on that front.
The problem is it's a one-sided,
as Sol said again in his piece,
one-factor view of economics.
If people don't save, Joe,
then there is going to be no money
for people to borrow
to build their businesses,
to build the productive capacity
and the products
people consume later you can't view consumption the buying of stuff computers hot dogs telephones
whatever without viewing the production side of it too you can't consume joe in other words what
you don't produce does that make sense yes you have to have people in fact this isn't hard folks
i'm not trying to be like, trying to scare
you with complex economics, this is simple
stuff. So where Keynes went wrong
is, he wanted to push
interest rates down very low
vis-a-vis government borrowing
and policies
like that
to incentivize
people to not save their money and
therefore spend it. And that's great.
Spending money is great.
But savings is important, too, because it gives people a capital base to borrow money and finance the production of the stuff we want to consume.
Make sense, Joe?
Yeah, man.
Big time.
You have to build a computer before someone buys it.
And Keynes was short-sighted on that front.
it. And Keynes was short-sighted on that front. Now,
the problem with endlessly
borrowing and printing money using the
United States government printing press and the borrowing
of money from other countries is
eventually you get debt levels so high
that sooner or later countries
figure out that are lending us money
that we may not get paid back.
And then what happens?
The effort to lower interest rates to make
saving unpalatable
no one wants to save money if it's one percent they'd rather just spend it
the problem joe is borrowing money to drive those interest rates down eventually does what
leads foreign countries to say wait how much money is the united states borrowing exactly
well they borrow 22 trillion 22 trillion i'm not lending them a dime and then what happens
in order to get countries to lend us money you have to do what you have to raise interest rates
and say to those countries okay we'll pay you 10 if you lend this money i want 15 because i think
you're going to default you get my point joe yeah the very effort to print money and spend money
under keynesian principles to lower interest rates to very effort to print money and spend money under Keynesian principles
to lower interest rates, to get people to not save and spend money, ironically leads to interest
rates going up in the future as people stop lending us money because we're going to default.
It doesn't work. It backfires. So category two, the Keynesians, that's debunked too.
Category one, the tax the rich people,
debunked,
there's not enough money there.
The rich don't have enough money
to finance this
and they'll just leave.
Category three,
this one's a good one.
He calls this the honest libs,
the honest liberals.
There are,
yeah,
which is very rare.
I have yet to meet one,
candidly speaking.
I don't know
an honest lib out there
when it comes to economics.
And he says, the way to do this and finance big government is to soak the middle class
and again being honest about it there may be enough money not to finance 93 trillion of the
green new deal over 10 years that's an absurd amount of money that works out to be roughly
65 000 per household uh in addition to what you're paying now the money's just not there
but if we were to tax the middle class through something like a vat a value-added tax at the
point of purchase um you may find a decent amount of money you could probably find tens of trillions
over 10 years the problem is why are you may say well why aren't the liberals just honest why don't
they just say that because joe the bulk of our society that votes are middle class Americans.
When you look at the breaking down into fifths of our income categories,
lower income, lower middle, middle, upper income, and then the wealthy,
that's how we break it down into those categories.
The bulk of people are in the middle class.
Well, those are also the bulk of Joe.
Voters.
Yes, voters.
So the reason liberals aren't honest and say,
hey, well, we can finance at least some of the Green New Deal
by taxing the middle class
is because the middle class are the ones that vote for them.
And they know they'll get no votes
if they tell middle class people,
hey, by the way, your taxes are going to go up $40,000 a year.
So category three, the honest libs.
What's the problem with that category?
There are no honest libs.
That's the problem.
Of course, the Keynesians, we have the interest rate problem.
Class warriors, there's not enough money with the rich.
Finally, he addresses the modern monetary theorists, category four, the MMT people.
And this is where we get to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez. Again, I keep bringing
her up because this is a very dangerous person
right now, folks, speaking about
her ideology.
She proposed the preposterous idea
of, well, we have the monopoly on
the Federal Reserve on our Federal Reserve notes
and our currency. Why don't we just print the money?
And the modern
monetary theorists,
this guy just discredits them completely. That's basically their bedrock principle.
Well, we can just print it. Well, Joe, what's the problem with that? Well, I've given this
example on the show many times. Ladies and gentlemen, when you print money endlessly,
the money you have now is worth less. Let me give you just a quick example. Ironically,
from John Maynard Keynes himselfes himself yes the guy i just told
you whose economic theories have been discredited who understood in the long run the dangers of
endless inflation maynard canes uh john maynard canes had said what let's say joe you wanted to
spend uh roughly you know 25 of the economy okay right the government that is so of the economy. Okay. The government, that is.
So say the economy is $100.
It's a small whatever.
It's a small town.
And the government says,
we're going to spend 25% of what we're worth,
$100, the entire town,
on government services.
All right.
Now, there's two ways to do it.
The first way is the obvious one.
You could tax your citizens at a rate of,
effective rate of 25%.
Okay.
And hope they pay.
And then you would get 25 from
the town of the hundred dollars of productive capacity now there's a second way to do that too
the second way is the modern monetary theorist the let's just print the money people and what
do they say they say well we can just print 30 additional dollars so now you have a hundred dollars in production capacity in this
small town the government there small town government a just prints 30 extra dollars
and spends it everybody say great you don't have to tax the citizens this is wonderful
we print the 30 we just go spend it on the roads, whatever we want to do, and nobody gets hurt. No, ladies and gentlemen, you do get hurt.
That $30, by the way, is roughly 25% of $130.
Ballpark, right?
So it's still 25% of the economy.
The problem, ladies and gentlemen, is now you have $130 chasing the same $100 worth of goods that are produced.
Meaning what?
The price of everything goes up.
So say that economy produces 100 chairs,
and you had $100 in that economy before they printed $30.
Each of those chairs could have fetched the dollar.
100 chairs, $100.
Now, you have $130 chasing, Joe, the same 100 chairs.
The economy's not worth $130.
They just printed the 30, which means every chair's price is going to go up
as more circulating money chases the same amount of products.
Meaning what?
Everything just gets more expensive.
This isn't hard.
My gosh, this isn't hard. Ocasio-Cortez, they could just print more expensive. This isn't hard. My gosh, this isn't hard.
Ocasio-Cortez, you could just print the money.
So no value added at all.
We're not going to add any value.
We're just going to start printing money.
Ms. Cortez, aren't the prices of everything going to go up as the money you print starts chasing the exact same amount of products?
I didn't really think that one through.
Of course you didn't.
You're a Democrat.
You never think things through.
So read the piece. It's really good. It breaks it Of course you didn't. You're a Democrat. You never think things through. So read the piece.
It's really good.
It breaks it down into these four categories.
It's excellent.
Very, very well done.
And confront your liberal friends about it.
But the chart is great.
Rational people who want to expand your Greek government.
Chart A, don't do it.
Chart B, here are the four idiots.
Here are the four categories of idiots who want to do that.
It's worth your time.
All right.
Final story of the day.
On a really positive note, yesterday's show did really terrific numbers.
I appreciate it.
And by the way, my wife wanted me to bring something.
I am so sorry about the audio quality.
That is 100% my fault.
My wife and Paul put a lot of work into this.
And the microphone microphone we have two
mics this mic the re20 if you go and listen to yesterday's show that joe puts together the audio
show on itunes or soundcloud the audio quality is peerless it's joe does a great it's it's great
but if you watched on our youtube channel yesterday the audio quality was was horrible
it sounded like we were in a tin can.
I have a little lav mic below this. You can't see it on camera. Let me show you how I do it.
Yeah, go ahead.
Look at that. You see that? Can you see that?
Yeah.
And I keep it attached to this thing. It fell, and I didn't notice, so it sounds like on yesterday's YouTube, we're in a tin can, but we still got 40,000 views. You can hear the show.
It's not horrible, but it's not up to snuff.
So our apologies, but we wanted to get the show up.
So Paula's like, please tell them that wasn't me.
That was you.
It was.
It was 100% my fault.
But today's quality should be pretty good.
But that's why we have it.
I like to put you behind the scenes.
We have two separate microphones.
Okay.
Final show of the day.
Yesterday, story of the day.
Excuse me.
Yesterday, we discussed, hey, make a scene.
It's time to make a scene, folks.
I'm glad you liked that.
The show did incredible numbers yesterday.
Really.
We were kind of surprised when we woke up this morning.
Don't take it anymore.
To the parents of the kids in Arizona who wore MAGA hats to school,
who got that principal on tape and held a rally outside of school,
God bless you.
Good for you.
I'm with you.
So is everyone in our listening audience.
To that kid in the Berkeley campus that got punched in the face,
and now we find out today that his alleged attacker now is being charged
with a very serious felony, put that kid in jail.
Don't accept any plea for this.
Do not let them plea it out.
Someone rips a MAGA hat off your
head, call the cops. Have them arrest. Don't let it
go. Follow them all the way down the street.
Get them on video. Humiliate them forever.
Make them subject to
YouTube infamy for the rest of their lives.
Make a
scene. I said yesterday my grandmother used to tell me in church growing up, don't make a scene. Now of their lives. Make a scene.
I said yesterday, my grandmother used to tell me in church growing up,
don't make a scene.
Now it's time to make a scene.
Well, Jack Phillips made a scene.
Who's Jack Phillips?
Jack Phillips is a Christian baker in Colorado who says,
listen, I'll bake a cake for anybody they want,
but I will not put a message on that cake that conflicts with my religious beliefs.
Good for you, Jack.
God bless you, brother.
Because Jack Phillips went through a lot.
Jack Phillips was harassed endlessly, not once, but twice,
by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
They attacked him.
They attacked his business.
And instead of not making a scene, Jack fought back all the way to Supreme Court,
and he won in a 7-2 ruling that he does not have to put a message
about a gay wedding on a cake
that he can make a cake,
but he is not going to put a message
that conflicts with his religious beliefs.
This is not about gay marriage, folks.
This is about the freedom of religion in this country.
Don't let them fool you on this.
So they came back for Jack Phillips again, Joe,
even after he won his 7-2 ruling in the Supreme Court.
Because what did I tell you yesterday about liberals?
You can split the country into as many conservative places as you want.
They will never stop, folks.
We must remain the United States because it's never, ever going to stop.
You doubt me?
They didn't stop for Jack Phillips.
Jack Phillips won in the Supreme Court,
and they came and asked him to make,
into his store again,
and asked him to make a transgender cake
with a message on it he disagreed with.
Jack Phillips made a scene again.
Good for Jack.
Jack threatened another lawsuit,
which would have went right to the Supreme Court again.
And Jack would have won again.
And you know what happened, Joe? We found out yesterday, I have the story in the Daily Signal
today. The Civil Rights Commission in Colorado, who was harassing this patriot, finally backed
down. Because you know what happened, Joe? They were going to be held personally liable.
Personally. These people on the Civil Rights Commission for harassing him.
Ladies and gentlemen, you sue the living out of these people every time you can.
They harass you.
You make them personally pay.
You put meat on that bone.
You put their skin in the game.
They want to harass you and hide behind the veil of government bureaucracy.
You take their house. You take their house.
You take their assets.
The time for not making a scene is over.
God bless Jack Phillips in this fight.
You're a warrior for the cause.
Your name will go down amongst religious patriots in this country,
and people will remember you for something more important.
Good for you, brother.
You fight on. We're with you. All right, important. Good for you, brother. You fight on.
We're with you.
All right, folks.
Thanks again for tuning in.
I'll be back with you tomorrow.
Maybe the, I don't know how my left arm will look.
We'll see.
Let's see how, here it is.
So everybody get a picture.
There's a microphone.
Let's see.
I'm not making a muscle, by the way.
Like, hey, look at me.
Where's the, where's the, it's that way.
You know, that muscle thing.
That is, look, look. It's, there you know that muscle thing that is look look it's there you
go no muscles there but let's see how swollen it is tomorrow i'll show you my left arm that used
to be a joke growing up in queens hey uh where's the park it's that way the guy's like struggling
to make a muscle look at my check that out so we'll see how swollen is and let's get a measure
because i won't be able to work out my left arm for a couple weeks.
It'll probably be like a string bean by the time next week comes.
But my doctor's an awesome guy.
Love the guy.
So God bless his hands today.
I hope everything goes okay.
I hope things go well, Dan.
Thanks, brother.
Yeah, Joe's got a big heart, man.
I appreciate that.
You're welcome.
All right, folks.
Happy Ash Wednesday.
Go out, get your ashes today for all you Christians out there,
and I will see you all tomorrow.
Thanks for tuning in.
Really appreciate it.
See you all.
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