Are The Walls Closing In On Obama? (w/ Victor Davis Hanson) | Episode 92

26:58Dan Bongino:Without the intelligence community, we wouldn't have discovered it. Do you think the intel community, by the way, has low confidence in that assessment? has an agenda to try to dismantle parts of the intelligence community. I mean, this form of taunting hostility. Whether you're a super liberal Democrat or a very conservative Republican, you should be against dismantling the intelligence community. Yeah. All right. So there was Chuck Schubert mounting a defense of keeping the intel community around because you should be scared of them. That was the position that he took as the leading Democrat in the Senate.

27:29Dan Bongino:He said, you mess with them, they will hurt you. They are very upset at Trump. So Chuck Schumer in a candid moment was describing the viciousness of the intel community. Oh, we've seen it. We've seen it. We know what that looks like. And now we're looking at the people who are on top of the structure to try and fight back. One other for you from that time frame. When President Trump became the nominee at the Democrat National Convention, then Senator Harry Reid, in a clip that's now going viral once again, said that the intel community should actively work to lie to President Trump, which, of course, we now know that's exactly what they were doing.

28:13Dan Bongino:Here's Harry Reid suggesting it in public. And what I've suggested, if now because he's the nominee for the party and he gets his entitled briefings from the CIA, for example, I told I said publicly, give him fake briefings. Pretend you're briefing. Don't tell him anything that you don't want to get out. But as a Republican nominee, isn't he entitled to get those briefings? Give him fake briefings. What does that even mean? It means he'll tell him stuff. He won't know the difference. You're basically telling the intelligence community to lie to him. No, I'm not going to lie to you, but I just don't have to tell you everything.

28:47Dan Bongino:I'm not going to lie to you. I just don't have to tell you everything. Give him fake briefings. Where did we start today? Remember? The presidential daily brief. The one that said Russia did not aspire to get Trump elected, didn't meaningfully meddle in the election at all, that the election was decided fair and square, that Trump won on the merits. They refused to tell the Trump transition team that in December 9th of 2016 in the presidential daily brief. They were following the guidance that Harry Reid gave them. Lie to him. Lie. Lie by omission, whatever it takes. And then President Obama led an entire operation, these disclosures now show in order to salt the earth for the incoming president of the United States, what Tulsi Gabbard calls a treasonous conspiracy.

29:39Dan Bongino:What to make of all of it? We'll ask our next guest. Victor Davis Hanson is here. We're going to have a lot to discuss with him all ahead on this edition of Vince. Glad you're with me for it. Let me see here. Hey, I want to tell you about Bone Charge. Great sponsor of this program. Bone Charge is awesome. They've got this infrared sauna blanket that they sent me. I love this thing. I never had a sauna in the house. Now I have an infrared sauna blanket and it works wonderfully. It's great for muscle recovery, detoxification. Pretty good actually after a workout, get the sauna in. It's great. It's been a total game changer for me in my life.

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32:27Dan Bongino:All right. I'm very proud to say joining us right now is the senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a man I've turned to many times over the years, and I'm very grateful for our conversation today. Victor Davis Hanson is in the house. Sir, good to see you. Good to see you, Vince. Great to have you here. I want to get just your impression. You've been talking relentlessly through the years about the way the left has schemed to take down President Trump and stop his progress. What do you make of Tulsi Gabbard's many disclosures this past week? Well, I think all of them, and I mean by that Comey, Clapper, and Brennan, have so much culpability that this is sort of the coup de grace.

33:09I mean, if you take Brennan, for example, he lied under oath and told the House Intelligence Committee that he had no idea what the dossier was when he had already consulted it. He lied to the Senate and said that the CIA did not tap into Senate staffers. He lied again when he said that there was no collateral damage with these predator drone assassinations along the Afghan border. He lied. He was one of the 51 architects of that crazy intelligence authority that said that Hunter's laptop was Russian information. Then there's Clapper. He lied and said, you know, the NSA didn't spy and he said i gave the least truthful answer uh he called donald trump a russian asset a russian puppet he also was one of the 51 of course comey pled amnesia of 245 times the house intelligence committee he did the crazy 86 47 rock whatever that was a threat to trump and he leaked a classified or maybe just a confidential but it was probably classified conversation, private conversation with the president to the New York Times via third party.

34:18And remember, he also lied to the president and said, you're not an object of an FBI investigation when it was already... So these people have so much culpability that I think that finally people just got frustrated and said, they're rogue people, they're out of control, they go on cable news. They had used until recently their clearances to wink and nod that they had knowledge that they didn't have. So they're kind of a group of scoundrels that tell you the truth.

34:47Dan Bongino:They absolutely are. We're hearing a lot of legal conversations right now about how to go after these guys. The phrase that Tulsi Gabbard keeps using is treasonous conspiracy. The president of the United States has said treason. We've heard, of course, this idea that maybe we'd use RICO statutes and conspiracy charges against them. But, you know, as I think about the big picture here, and I know you always do, we've seen a lot of people pursued by the left for being involved in so-called conspiracies that were fraudulent. General Flynn had his life completely upended by the lies that are now being fully revealed here.

35:25Dan Bongino:We saw January 6th defendants who were charged as being a part of various seditious conspiracies without any basis that looks anything like this. It does seem the facts are very much on the side of holding these people accountable. Yeah, I would look at especially things, and you'd have to be cognizant of the statute of limitations, but I would be very cognizant of things that they testified under oath. They have a bad habit. Even Andrew McCabe, the interim FBI director, remember he, on three or four occasions, lied to federal authorities about leaking, and he should have been prosecuted. I don't know why the first bill bar let him off, but once you let these people off, they continue that continue to lie, you know, all the time.

36:11Clapper's a very interesting person because he's on record as saying that they wouldn't have even used the intelligence authorities to go after the president-elect Trump during the transition if it hadn't been for Barack Obama that shocked them and said, you know what, you really got to do this. That was a really damning admission. And so we'll see what happens. But it's very ironic. They're saying that they have to lawyer up as if that's something that they haven't done to Donald Trump for nine years.

36:44Dan Bongino:Yes. Yes, indeed. What do you make of the media's reaction to all of this? I was struck. I was struck by the fact that they basically ignored Tulsi Gabbard going through the weekend or downplayed whatever she was disclosing. But when President Trump sat in the Oval Office and accused Obama of treason earlier this week, I knew instantly this is how the media is going to finally start talking about this story. And sure enough, it's been wall to wall. Of course, they're attacking Trump for using the word treason to describe this. But what do you think of their behavior in the midst of all of this?

37:15Well, I mean, they don't really have any credibility because when they tried to get Trump off the ballot in 25 states, they raided Mar-a-Lago. They impeached him twice. They tried him as a private citizen. They indicted him in state, local, and federal courts. 93 indictments. They all cheered this on. They thought it was great. And a lot of us at the time said, be careful. You're creating precedents that's going to boomerang because you have more legal exposure given what you did than Donald Trump ever did. And that's exactly what's happened. I think they're very frustrated because they created the very precedents that put them in legal jeopardy because we had never raided a president's home.

37:52We'd never impeached the president twice. We'd never used the investigative authorities to investigate ex-presidents. We never tried to take them off the ballot. We never impeached them twice. They did all of that. And now they're looking and saying, well, he's a fascist. He's a Nazi. But no, you destroyed all of the guardrails. And now it's sort of schadenfreude or karma or what comes around goes around. And I think that's why they're so angry. That and the fact they have no political power, no House, no Senate, no White House, no Supreme Court. And they're very frustrated.

38:25Dan Bongino:Yeah, for sure. And then as far as the media is concerned, I saw on CNN yesterday, Jeff Zeleny is a reporter who he is as soon as Tulsi Gabbard was done speaking, they come back to CNN. And Jeff Zeleny says that we shouldn't even cover this as a network. We shouldn't dignify everything that just came out of the mouth of the director of national intelligence. But I went back and I looked, Victor Davis Hanson, and I saw that Jeff Zeleny relentlessly breathed life into the Trump-Russia collusion claims for the last decade. He's been doing that like crazy, and he's not alone, is he? No, he was one of the worst.

39:02But you've got to remember, when Trump first was elected, people like Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times, Christian Anonimpoor, Jorge Ramos, they all came out and said, journalism as we know is not working. So we're going to have to be biased, but there's nothing wrong with being biased and prejudiced because this guy represents an existential threat to the republic. And once you do that, then everything is okay. And they destroyed their credibility. They were on record of saying there's no such thing as, not just there is no such thing, there should be no such thing as a disinterested media.

39:37And so no one really believes them anymore. They were the ones, if you look at it in the long range, that created the entire podcast like this one. Before they lied and destroyed their reputation, they had audiences. And now they don't have audiences. And the conservatives are dominating a new genre. And I think that's getting them upset because, you know, some of these podcasts have more audiences than all of them put together. And I think they created it by the distrust they sowed.

40:07Dan Bongino:That's right. Yeah, no, people are looking for answers. because they weren't getting them from the media who were lying to them over and over and over again. Okay, so in terms of the account, going back to the accountability question for a moment, one of my concerns is, like, I have a lot of faith in a bunch of the people who are in the administration. I have faith in the president. You know, it's why I keep voting for him. I have faith in Tulsi Gabbard. I think she's demonstrated that she's sincere and really getting after this. She was the victim of the intel community. She was the victim of Hillary Clinton's venom.

40:37Dan Bongino:and now she's in a position to do something about all of these injustices. I also have faith in Kash Patel and Dan Bongino because these guys both are obsessed in particular with this subject and have for years dedicated their lives trying to bring it to a conclusion. I'm concerned, though, about Pam Bondi. I'm concerned that the prosecutions, I'm not yet convinced that she's going to be tough. Either help me feel better or give me your assessment of whether or not you think the Justice Department is fully on board here. Yeah, it depends. That was true, certainly, of the Trump first term with Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr.

41:14And part of that reason was that the people within the Justice Department, three or 400 attorneys, were actively opposing the Attorney General. I don't know to what extent they have recalibrated that department and there are people in there that are fair minded and they're not just as, you know, the Bruce or type people that we saw the first term. But that makes a difference. And we'll see. One of the things, though, I think they've got to, I'm a little worried with the Epstein thing and this thing and other things that they've got to get the message out that we've never seen things that are going on in the economy.

41:54$15 trillion of promised investment, low inflation, good job growth, absolutely no illegal immigration, no problem with military recruitment, the trade war that didn't happen, the stock market at record highs. These are all, I think, sensational news, and they've got to get that out because ultimately the midterms are going to hinge on that.

42:19Dan Bongino:Yes, I think you're right. Well, let's talk about the successes then for a moment. What climbs to the top of the list for you? I will say on a personal level, I, of course, voted for a great economy and I'm glad we're headed in that way. And I voted for a secure border. And man, I tell you what, on that one, I'm shocked by how effective they've been. I was hoping they would get close. They didn't just get close. They locked that thing down tight. What are you measuring as the big success here? Well, I think you're absolutely right. That's the biggest success. One million, nearly a million self-deportations.

42:52And they put to rest this myth that you had to have comprehensive immigration reform, which was a euphemism for amnesty. But here at Ground Zero in southwest Fresno County, you can see the difference. The Fresno Bee, the McClatchy liberal newspaper, is lamenting that ERs and medical facilities don't have enough people now. In other words, that only citizens now don't have to stand in line. This is terrible. And you can see it's already making an effect. The military recruitment, I think, has been underestimated. We were told by our Pentagon grandees that you could not get 50 ,000 recruits. We were short.

43:30They were too fat. They used drugs. They were in gangs. There's too much competition. Trump comes in, changes the whole DEI nexus. The ads change and basically said, you middle class rural people who die at double your numbers in the demographics in Afghanistan. We want you and we're going to stress. And that was amazing. They've already met the recruitment and that was not supposed to happen. May was a very strange month. We were told that all revenues always go up in May and debits always go down. So the fact that we had a surplus in May doesn't matter, but we hadn't had one in eight years, not since 2017.

44:07May was actually a month when the federal government took in more money. And we don't know the effect of$15 trillion coming into this country in the next two years. We do not know the effect of these tariffs because it seems like some of these countries were making so much money, there was a magic number that a 10 % or 15 % tariff they could live with and not increase prices. as a price as the cost of staying in this market so we don't all these things are new and you know taxes on endowments taxes on remittances all this stuff we don't know what's going to end up at the end of the year but there's a good chance with the you know green green lighting uh federal leases doug bergam talking about three weeks to get an energy lease rather than two years uh getting rid of a million illegal aliens most of whom had some sort of state or local support that's a great cost saver and so we there's all i guess it's three 360 degrees all these things are happening and many of them have never happened before nobody can really calibrate the the effect of them

45:13Dan Bongino:yeah and it's also as you point out hard to appreciate how much success there's been because there's so many so much success in so many arenas on the tariff thing i've found it interesting that all of the establishment economists and especially the people who hate Trump, were all rooting against this to begin with. They were claiming that calamity was ensuing, was going to come. And now they're all scratching their heads. What is going on here? Why aren't we seeing prices rise? And yet the Treasury is taking in, they say, over$50 billion already in tariff payments. There's been a lot of success there and a lot of people who are eating crow who were straight up saying it was going to be a disaster.

45:52Yeah, I went back and looked at the March news division accounts in the Wall Street Journal. It was amazing. They said we were going to have a stock market collapse. We were going to be in a recession. The trade war was going to give us stagflation. Job growth would collapse. None of that happened. And there's no explanation why they were wrong. But again, Scott Bessant just said, I could not believe what he said. He said if things were to go as they are now, we could get a third of a trillion dollars in tariff revenue. The Wall Street Journal keeps saying, well, that may be true, but it's going to hurt GDP.

46:26But so far it hasn't. So you get the impression that these countries like Germany or Japan or especially China were making out like bandits. They had maybe a 20 or 30 percent profit margin coming into this market, our consumer market, with not letting us in. And now maybe they're making 10 percent drop and they're eating they're eating the tariffs and not raising their prices because if they do, they won't be competitive. So they haven't spread inflation like we were assured they would.

46:55Dan Bongino:Yeah, no, that's been that's been fascinating. OK, also, you're a student of foreign policy. I just want to move to that arena for a moment. The president did launch those strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. he has established what appears to be kind of a tenuous peace between Israel and Iran, a ceasefire of sorts between them. He's having trouble bringing a conclusion to the Russia-Ukraine war right now. He's frustrated, it seems, right now a lot more with Putin than previously, but he's certainly frustrated with both sides of that equation. How do you grade him and his efforts here? He's very good in the Middle East.

47:33He really threaded the needle. He was able, the MAGA people got angry at him, but he was only in Iranian territory 35 minutes. The left got angry, and no sooner did he destroy that infrastructure for five or ten years, then he declared a ceasefire. Then when they did that ceremonial performance art attack on our base in Qatar, he just, he didn't reply. He said, they didn't do it. We knew they were coming. They had to get it out of their system, make Iran great again. It just shocked everybody. And so right now, Iran's safety depends on the mood of an American president or an Israeli prime minister.

48:10They have no air defenses. They have no air force. They have no navy. They have nothing. They don't have a nuclear. So, you know, it's pretty strange when we go into Iranian airspace, we have to ask the permission of the IDF to go in. So I think that's the biggest revolution we've seen. And the Arab community, the moderate Arab regimes wanted us to do this. and they wanted Israel to do this, but they didn't want to say that. So I think you're going to see a lot of movement. The Ukraine thing is interesting because Trump thought that he had a special knack for dealing with Putin because Putin had not invaded any other country during the last four administrations.

48:48He had not invaded during Trump's administration, but he had the other three before and after. But I think now Trump, it might work out well for Trump that he can say, I was the only one that lamented the million and a half casualties. I'm sick of the human costs. I tried to deal with Putin, but you can't deal with him. And at some point, Putin, I think his problem is he's got a million Russians dead, missing, or wounded. And he's got to explain to the apparat in Russia that it was worth it. And apparently, just reifying the fact that he got us Crimea, he already did, Donbass, he already did. they never were going to get in NATO.

49:25He's going to say that he kept him out of NATO. He doesn't think that's enough, maybe 50 or 60 miles beyond where he was. So that's that they're going to have to find a DMZ somewhere. But I think that's the point. And the more pressure that's put on Putin, I think the more likely he will he will see that he has no choice. His economy is really starting to hurt. And he's lost too many Russians for nothing.

49:50Dan Bongino:You know, the president has had a lot of success in getting Europe to carry more of the weight here, though, too, because the United States had carried everything virtually. There was the Europe was doing something, but not not to the level that it should have been given how approximate the threat was. And now Europe, five percent GDP being expended on military now. That's a this is a massive change from the relationship that the European countries had with President Trump in the first term. Yeah, it was when he came in, only 6 % were making their 2014 promise to pay 2 % of GDP. And then now it's 24 of the 30 have already made the two, the others, except for Spain and Canada, will do it very shortly.

50:34The 5 % will be interesting because I like the idea they promised, but when you look at their economies, their energy costs with this crazy that basically they have a new green green new deal uh methodology and you look at their open borders they got 16 of their population in places like france or germany of illegal immigrants many of them hostile to to the west and then in addition um their energy costs are about double r's so it's it's you just and they have a fertile fertility rate of about 1.45 less than 1.5 and you wonder how those economies are going to spend if you go to from two to five percent five percent you're talking you know a trillion dollars or two trillion dollars I hope they can do it but even Canada is only spending 1.37 of GDP one point closer to 1.4 and they don't seem to be able to do that they're talking about that well how can we spend another 50 or 60 billion dollars so I hope that they're not waiting Trump out, that when he leaves office, they're hoping for a Democratic president and then they'll backslide.

51:49But for now, it's good news.

51:51Dan Bongino:Well, President Trump told him, you don't have to spend any money, just join the United States and we'll keep doing what we've always done. We've protected you. Victor Davis Hanson, really appreciate you. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today. Thank you. All right. There he is. Victor Davis Hanson. Always great to get from him. And yes, Sneaky Gemini points out that VDH, like RFK, knows details about everything. Yeah, he does. He does. He literally knows everything. Let's bring in someone who knows everything. Victor Davis Hanson. He's perfect for that. All right, let's see. I've got some very, I got some Epstein stuff to hit.

52:27Dan Bongino:We mentioned Epstein in the interview. The judge denied yesterday the release of the grand jury documents that the Trump administration is seeking. They want to get various grand jury files out about Jeffrey Epstein, the judge, refusing to do that. The big piece yesterday, though, that the media is going gaga over is a Wall Street Journal piece that says the Justice Department told Trump in May that his name is among many in the Epstein files. Done, done, done. What? His name is among the files? Are you telling me that Donald Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein at one point? The evidence on that question is abundantly clear.

53:16Dan Bongino:Of course, they knew one another. The president, of course, has acquitted himself really nicely in his relationship, whatever that was, with Jeffrey Epstein, because, let's see, he banished Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, kicked him out because Epstein was harassing the daughter of one of Mar-a-Lago's members. A lawyer who represented a ton of Epstein victims said that the only person who produced the most helpful contributions to his efforts was Donald Trump. I called Trump and I said, hey, will you help me? He goes, I'd give you anything you need. What do you need? President Trump got on the phone and helped him out.

53:52Dan Bongino:President Trump has, of course, condemned Jeffrey Epstein. And yet the media are desperate for a distraction. They're desperate for a distraction from all of the Obama revelations that are coming out. And so they're trying to cook the books against President Trump. They're trying to make it seem like something vile happened between President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. That's the game plan. Don't fall for it. They say when Justice Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a truckload of documents related to Epstein earlier this year, they discovered Donald Trump's name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials.

54:31Dan Bongino:In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting at the White House that his name was in the Epstein files. OK, what does that mean? Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn't a sign of wrongdoing, the Wall Street Journal eventually admits. They say the official said it was a routine briefing. It covered a number of topics, and Trump's appearance in the documents wasn't even the focus. Oh, so this is a story about nothing. This is a story about nothing. Now, it has the media up in arms. There is a tweet yesterday in the midst of all of this that came out from the Miami Herald reporter who was the beat reporter on the Jeffrey Epstein story to begin with.

55:24Dan Bongino:She said, her name is Julie Brown. She said that this is much ado about nothing. Nothing. Julie Brown writes that Trump's name, along with many other names, was on Epstein's plane logs, his name in his black book phone directing. And his name was on phone message pads seized by police from Epstein's Palm Beach home in 2005. All of these have long been a part of the federal investigation into Epstein. So the idea that Trump's name would be in the files is not new. And having your name in the files in and of itself doesn't implicate him in any wrongdoing. That's Julie Brown. Now, in fact, these this attempt to turn it into a scandal for Trump is so ridiculous that even Morning Joe over on MSNBC today is making the case that there is really no reason to think this is damaging for President Trump.

56:17Dan Bongino:Take a listen. Here is Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough this morning saying, yeah, OK, whatever. You know who else is in the Epstein files? John Kerry. Now listen, what does that mean? John Kerry's name is in the Epstein files. There's a million people's names in the Epstein files. Now listen. John Kerry. What's Kerry doing in the Epstein files? Lurch himself. You know, old Botox face is in the Epstein files. Well, now I'm curious. What did Jeffrey Epstein do? Let's start a whole. Sorry. What did John Kerry do? What did John Kerry do? Let's start a whole news cycle on that question. Let's get to the bottom of Kerry's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

56:56Dan Bongino:Love to know more. Love to know more. But that's the position that they're taking over on MSNBC. Finally, let me point out what should be abundantly clear. If there was actually derogatory information about President Trump, if that's the point of the quote cover up that the left wants you to pretend like is happening, if that's the case, well, then why didn't the Biden administration release that information? you know they would have. In fact, the Washington Post straight up this past week said, if there was actually damaging information about Trump, it would have already leaked. The Washington Post declared, there is no damaging information about Trump in this.

57:37Even the Washington Post, of all places.

57:41Dan Bongino:All right, I got a big radio show coming up today. We've got the 12 to 3 nationwide, the Vince show. You can find your local listings on that at thevincshow.com or just watch us. We do it live on Rumble, rumble.com slash Vince. Always so good to have you with us. Best damn audience and media.