Needless to say: the winning continues. From the Oval Office or the Daytona 500 President Trump is making monumental strides for the American people. In this episode, I'll discuss the latest highlights out of the White House along with the, all too predictable, media's outrage. The GOP’s DOGE Test ‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs Make No Sense Focus group: Arizona swing voters to Trump, Musk: Keep it coming Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What political strategies are discussed at the start?
Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
I don't know how many times I got to say it. Snapshots and soundbites, folks. That is what politics is. You want to build political power. You have to create kind of what they call now in the influencer business, a brand. For the record, I freaking hate it when they say that. You got to build your brand. I just can't stand it because it seems like... one of those dopey buzzwords.
Oh my gosh, build your brand. But politics is no different. The way you build a narrative around yourself, like the media has been building around liberalism forever, is by pictures and quick soundbites. Why am I bringing this up at the beginning of the show? Because this weekend with President Trump was just an epic masterclass in the snapshots portion of that.
This guy knows what he's doing, folks. Nothing's done by mistake. That, and man, did we not call it with Mags? Who am I talking about? Anyone in the chat know? Margaret Brennan at CBS is, I cannot believe the amount of training she's putting into the Dopey Media Talking Head Olympics. She gets the bronze in record time. Folks, she's ready to move into silver, I think, quick.
I'm not ready to make that bold of a decision yet. But in case you missed what happened this weekend, we had the worst Margaret Brennan CBS moment ever. You've got CBS defending German crackdowns on free speech. And then you've got Margaret Brennan on CBS basically suggesting or implying that the Holocaust was caused by free speech. Is that for real? Did you really say that?
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Chapter 2: How did Trump utilize media and branding effectively?
long story, but our good friend, producer, Jim from the radio show, ladies and gentlemen, let's just in advance, send him our love and prayers. He did have a pretty serious accident. I'm not kidding. It's not a joke. I wish it was unfortunate, but he fell off a ladder and busted himself up pretty bad. He's okay.
I told him to stay home today, but he insists on doing the radio show, which I can't talk him out of folks. He's a big boy, but he can show you the text. I was like, please do not come into work. And he wants to because he's a tough bastard, that guy, man. He's like ready to rock and roll, right? But he violated the golden rule of the Dan Bongino show. He violated the don't get dead rule.
Folks, if you're going to go up on a ladder, be very careful. And the degree of careful you need to be
exhibit going up on a ladder it directly corresponds to the amount of years over the age of 30 10 years over 30 extremely careful 20 years over 30 you better freaking be like level 100 careful 30 years over 30 you there's no reason for you to be on a ladder i don't care if you're starving to death and there is an orange hanging from a tree with a banana you don't go up there you just because you go up and just die anyway you might as well get another few minutes and starve a little slower
There's no reason to be on the ladder. The poor guy, we feel bad for him. Send your best to Producer Jim. He will be there today. And just so you know, I asked him for permission to use this in the beginning. And of course, Jim is always game. So all our best to Producer Jim. So a quick weekend update for you. I didn't do too much this weekend. Folks, snapshots and sound bites.
Kids, that's all that matters in politics. If you're going to build a political brand, a political longstanding movement, you have to get people on your team. You have to build a narrative, a brand, a story around who you are. This is just a hard reality of how, you know, hardcore politics works. You have to build an image around you. Reagan did it. George W. tried it. Barack Obama tried it.
Remember the Hopey Changey posters? But I'm going to tell you something. Nobody has the political skills in the last 30 or 40 years that Donald Trump has. This is just some of the imagery from this past weekend. First, here's Donald Trump, the famous Daytona 500, which I've been to, which is amazing, by the way, if you ever get a chance to go.
Here's Donald Trump, as you can see, flying over with Air Force One. This is just... Again, the snapshots of this are just, they become iconic quickly. You've got a crowd of Donald Trump supporters cheering as this beautiful plane that represents the United States of America and the presidency flies over. Snapshots. Do not underestimate this stuff. If you do, you're making a big mistake.
One of the reasons Barack Obama had such political success on the other side of the aisle is him and his team understood the whole branding exercise. You remember that poster, the multicolored, hope-y, change-y poster? Everybody remembers it. What was that? The answer is nobody knows, but the left loved it. It helped build this brand. Like, look at this guy. He's bigger and larger than life.
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Chapter 3: What controversy involved CBS and Margaret Brennan?
I know you guys will figure this out. Come on, chat folks. You guys got this. Someone say it. All right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yes. Matthias Powerbomb. Big evidence. You're damn right. I'm going to make a big statement like, hey, man, listen, there are massive powerful beings on Jupiter getting ready to annihilate the Earth. You better freaking produce some big evidence to back that up, right?
Big evidence. Receipts. Yeah, same thing. Big receipts. Same. You guys get it. I love you guys in the chat, ladies. You're so on the ball. You're going to make a big statement like that. You better produce something. Folks, there is correlation and causation in variables. You know, people get more colds in the winter. They are correlated. They're not causal.
It doesn't mean that the cold weather causes colds. It doesn't. Your nasal passages are just more dry, and people touch them more, transmitting bacteria and viruses to their nose. It's not the cold weather that does it. Everybody who jumped in a cold plunge would be sick every day. Am I really explaining this? This is so obscene of a statement.
Free speech was one of the causes of Nazism and the Holocaust? This is... This is so sociopathic and insane that you wonder like how there's even 30% of the culture left that even takes the media seriously anymore. 70% of people I saw in a poll don't listen to the media. Who are the other 30%? Folks, you know, we are the media now. I can't say that to you enough.
And I say it because that is a big statement, but it does have big evidence. And big evidence is this. This show has the biggest live stream audience in the United States by far. When you combine us, Bannon, Charlie, Shapiro, the other right-wing shows out there, Mark Levin and others, we are the media now because we have a reputation for producing receipts. We just do. I said to you...
About three weeks ago, when the lawfare started, when the Democrats started suing Donald Trump over every EO and everything he did, that the Democrats were walking into a trap. I wasn't trying to be... you know, faux excited about it. You know, sometimes you get kicked in the nads and you're like, that didn't hurt. Oh, and you're dying on the ground. You want to pretend you got one over?
That's not what I'm doing here. The Democrats are seriously walking in a trap because of two reasons with all these lawsuits. I hate to kind of relitigate this, but it's important because this next clip, you're going to see I was right. The Democrats are even starting to realize they're walking in a trap.
Number one, Donald Trump is getting paid to toss, not just shake the apple cart, but toss it over. He's paid to be president, execute, and fix the mess. He can sit here and do this all day at no cost to you whatsoever, only a benefit, because that's what he's paid to do. The left has to pay. Legal teams, lawyers, time, money, they have to pay every single time they sue.
So Donald Trump is suffering no loss here at all, money-wise or time-wise. The left is taking a huge opportunity cost of their time. Number two, they are going to lose a good number of these lawsuits. And as they lose... And the courts say Donald Trump can do X. Donald Trump can do G. Donald Trump can do Y. Donald Trump can do B. It is going to solidify the power of the presidency.
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Chapter 4: What are the legal challenges faced by Trump?
But the media would have made it up and past Republicans would have let them go. Playbook mentions a few names of people you may know, you may not. He's like Donald Trump's take was we like this guy. He's a conservative. He's a MAGA guy. He's a patriot. You know, maybe they made mistakes in the past. Maybe they didn't. But we're not letting them go no matter what.
They are not letting the administration, Mike Flynn people this time, General Flynn, they're not letting it happen. And what's starting to happen is the media is realizing that the more time they waste on one person, like, oh, my gosh, we're going to get rid of Pete Hegseth. Well, that didn't happen. Now we got to move on to RFK. Well, that didn't happen. Now we're going to move on to Tulsi.
That Donald Trump is not going to fold. And as each person gets up and dances, Pete, Bobby Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Kash Patel, hopefully this week, what's happening is you're now becoming the minority because there's no one left sitting down laughing at the person dancing. They're all dancing with you. You saw it this weekend at Daytona. Let me tie it back to the beginning of the show.
Republican presidents in the past really weren't that popular, folks. Let's be honest. Maybe Reagan was, but, you know, George W., even candidates like Romney, even McCain, they get booed at big pop culture events like this. Not now. Donald Trump has everybody dancing with him, and the left has become castrated.
They just don't have any narrative-enforcing powers anymore because they've lost the power of snapshots and soundbites. Why? I played to you Margaret Brennan in the beginning. I mean, just a tragically stupid clip. Her even making and implying that free speech has anything to do with the Holocaust is so obscene of a statement. And to watch the media
CBS embarrassed themselves with people like Margaret Brennan on the air. I'm not suggesting anybody get fired. I don't care, folks. Boycott, don't boycott. It's up to you. I don't care. This stuff actually makes for great show content to show you what not to do. CBS, it didn't end there. I'm sitting there last night. We had a really long weekend. I had taken my daughter to her party.
I didn't get into it in a weekend update because, you know, it was just a pretty good birthday party. You know who I ran into, by the way? This is so crazy. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get off track, guys, but... I took my daughter. It was not to Disney. It was to, I don't go to Disney, but it was to a different park. And I'm in the park and I've got my daughter and her friends.
So it's me and my wife watching basically seven 13 year olds. I hear Bongino. And I think it's, I don't know, someone who watches the show, watch Fox. We had a lot of supporters there. I said, hello. It was Vivek Ramaswamy. I'm like, what the hell are the chances I run into you right here? So, but we can get back to it. But I was tired this weekend because it was a long day.
It was like a three-hour ride coming back and forth. So I'm sitting upstairs in my little TV room thing, whatever, with Paula. And I'm watching 61 Minutes last night. And this segment, folks, is, I'm really stunned at what I'm watching. So you got Margaret Brennan attacking free speech on CBS in the morning. And in the night, CBS runs a segment on 61 Minutes. This actually happened.
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Chapter 5: How is cancel culture being addressed by Trump?
You want big government change? It's going to require big courage. And a lot of these lawmakers, they just don't have it. Folks, I'm telling you, the $7 trillion government budget, you can probably chalk up 10%, 20% of it to fraud... unnecessary government actions, unnecessary weapons programs. Here's Caroline Leavitt in the White House press room. She's done an amazing job in just a month there.
Talking about massive fraud, potentially in the trillions, in our entitlement programs between Social Security, people getting it who aren't entitled to it, pun intended, Medicaid, Medicare, trillions of dollars in potential fraud there. The Democrats don't want you to see any of this because every dollar of government spending is good spending to them. Check this out.
Just for a second. Earlier, the subcommittee headed by Chairman Marjorie Taylor Greene, her and her staff discovered $2.7 trillion in improper payments to Medicare, Medicaid, overseas, to people who should not have gotten it. Some of this room might have missed that press conference. Can you? elaborate on what the president is thinking at this point.
Well, again, that's another example. There's a very long list of the fraud, waste and abuse that Doge is identifying on a daily basis. Elon Musk also talked about yesterday about Social Security payments that are going out the door for people who are no longer with us. Unfortunately, I would say that is certainly fraud.
Folks, there are massive amounts of fraud. I'm applying the Bongino rule to a lot of this because there's going to be some things that look like fraud that aren't because government databases are so poorly kept. But there's going to be other massive instances of fraud in these programs. Ladies and gentlemen, the government doesn't have any real incentive to clean up its payment system.
It's Milton Friedman's fourth way to spend money. The worst way to spend money is the fourth way. You have tons of it. You can spend your own money on yourself. You can spend your own money on other people. Other people can spend other people's money on themselves. And the worst way, number four, other people can spend other people's money on other people.
If it's other people's money, you don't care about the cost. If you're spending it on other people, you don't care about the quality because you're not even buying anything for yourself. In any program that runs by those people, By that particular logic skeleton, there's no way you're not going to get massive amounts of fraud. Now, I'm begging the Republican senators and congressmen who know this.
If you do not shrink government now while we have the political momentum and capital and the snapshots and the soundbites and this bull in a china shop in the White House, if you don't do it now, we are never going to do it. And you are going to have walked us into it from a de facto to a de jure bankruptcy. And I'm not having it. Here's my last thought on this topic from Kim Strassel.
I got a lot more show for you today, including Rachel Maddow promoting another hoax, folks. I mean, this woman's record of factual inaccuracies is just incredible. But Kim Strassel wrote a great piece in the Wall Street Journal, the GOP's Doge test. Remember, Democrats will defend any amount of government spending. It's the Republicans I'm worried about. She notes it's already happening.
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Chapter 6: What international issues related to free speech are highlighted?
You acting as well like Donald Trump has no authority to control payouts the United States government makes within the executive branch is like suggesting a CEO has no authority to fire people within Ford Motor Company. Can you imagine, I give this example all the time, is this the argument you're making, leftists? Donald Trump can't fire, hire, pay or not pay anyone in the executive branch.
Is that the argument you're going with? So just to be clear, we find out someone within the United States government has been stealing money and fraudulently paying out money to political cronies. You're telling me Donald Trump has to continue to pay this person in perpetuity and allocate the funds? Is that what you're telling me?
You guys are going to get this if I give you a winky, winky, nod, nod. I see it on the screen. This is Donald Trump here making the argument. Jim, you too. Here's Donald Trump making the argument that he has the power to make government more efficient and hire and fire people and determine if this government wastes fraud and abuse and combat it. This is Donald Trump.
This is what the left objected to. Play that cut.
One of the commitments that I made to the American people was that we would do a better job here in Washington in rooting out wasteful spending. We don't need to wait for Congress in order to do something about wasteful spending that's out there. Cutting waste, making government more efficient is something that leaders in both parties have worked on.
We haven't seen as much action out of Congress as we'd like, and that's why we launched on our own initiative.
That's Donald Trump. That's Barack Obama. It sounds like he's saying the exact same thing Trump did. The difference is, you know, I'm going to tell you for one of the few times, Barack Obama is actually correct. The president of the United States does clearly have the power in the executive branch to weed out waste, fraud, government abuse, criminality, corruption.
He absolutely, you guys okay over there? He absolutely has that, but he was knocked over the desk. That's that power. Now, the government doesn't have the power within the executive branch. Barack Obama, Donald Trump, George Bush, whoever it is, doesn't have the power to go over to Congress and demand they fire a bunch of staffers because they don't like their politics.
But clearly they can manage the executive branch. You see why it's so easy to be a conservative? When you're consistent, Obama's right. He had the power to do that. He's saying the same thing Trump said. The left, if we could have AI'd that and made that Donald Trump saying those exact same words, that's what I should have done.
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