Transcript of Fight, Fight, Fight (Ep. 2634)

We know— we know his wife's name. Not everybody knows that. Some people just want to, you know, eat pizza and wings and watch the game, right? That's not us. So last week was tough. It was like it was the Super Bowl, or like the mini Super Bowl, and our team lost. Why did I start early today, by the way? I see some of you in the chat because I've got a ton of stuff to cover. It was an incredibly fascinating news weekend, and I've got a lot to get through. But I got out in the real world this weekend, and I have a couple of thank yous.

First, for you, and then for a couple of people I met. And it reminded me again that, you know, although you and I are enmeshed in this every day, we still have a country to save, and a real world to live in, and a job to show up to, and a kid's baseball or volleyball game to go to. We still have obligations to our parents, to our neighbors. Not every single thing is DC elections about politicians. And I was reminded too that despite the warnings that we should all give up, go home, forfeit your country, the flag behind you that brave men and women fought, died, and bled for, lost eyes, limbs, arms, legs, their lives, came home in boxes— forget it.

Throw it out. I'm not doing that. And ladies and gentlemen, we still have two-thirds of the government. There are three branches: the judicial, the legislative, and the executive. We still run the executive branch with President Trump. We still have pretty healthy, although not perfect, representation in the courts, including the Supreme Court. And for two more months in the lame duck, we still have the House and Senate. But we've been in far worse.

A couple of thank yous at the beginning. Let me get to this first. Someone this weekend gave me something that I just can't take, and I gotta find you because I gotta get this back to you. I just can't take it. It was incredibly nice. I'll tell you what I mean in a second. Hey, something's happening across America right now. People are waking up. People are waking up to the reality. They're being prepared, which I've discussed often, is not optional anymore. And they're taking action. In fact, my Patriots have probably seen an unprecedented surge in Americans coming to them for emergency food.

So obviously, like, that's why we were lower on some of these things. So we were number eight. Congrats to Steve Crowder, who I think came in number seven or something like that. But good for him. Also, PodTrak came out. We were number 14 in the country. Thank you so much. I genuinely appreciate you guys taking this journey with me. It means the world to me. And again, I will never forget who got us here. So big hat tip to the Bongino Army. Thank you again. Folks, so I was out this weekend, and so many people came up to me.

I'm just telling you, like, I— for every 10 people, one person comes up and says, "Hey, you know, I don't like this or I don't like that." That's pretty good odds. So I met this guy. His nickname is Frankie. And I give him one of my coins. I saw him with a Milwaukee Brewers hat on. And he came over and he was— I was having an adult beverage, celebrating my winnings. And what? What's so funny? And the guy comes over and we're chatting. And I wind up giving him one of my FBI coins because he was just such a nice guy.

I mean, really, unbelievably nice. His family too. And he says, "Listen, I've been holding onto this for years. It's his coin. He was a Navy chief." And he gives it to me. And he's like, "I'm not leaving until you take this." And I didn't want to take it, man. I so respect people in our military. Like, I elevate them above everyone else. Everyone else. Like, there's like— outside of my family, there's like God in our military and law enforcement. I can't take it.

So Frankie, if you're out there, I gotta get you your coin back. I was so touched. But genuinely, it's for you. So thank you to Frankie too. I'll never forget who got us here, folks. It reminds me that there is a real world of amazing patriots and heroes out there that deserve defending. Sometimes people make bad choices. I believe Tuesday was not only a bad choice, but a horrendous choice. But we've been here before, and revolutions happen quickly. I told you this. The country picked Barack Obama twice.

In the first election, when everybody thought there was a transformational shift in U.S. politics, it's all over. Republicans go home. Barack Obama built a new coalition. They wrote books about it. You will never win an election again. Thirty days later, Rick Santelli at CNBC started the Tea Party revolution, and Barack Obama lost more seats than President Trump lost now. Revolutions happen fast. And one thing about President Trump— he's got two more years— is he is a no-BS guy. He just is.

That gets thrown around a lot, that term, and people don't mean it. He was on 61 Minutes with Ross Duthat, if that's how you say it. I'm sorry. I know who he is, but I may be saying his name wrong. Whatever. It's not intentional. But he was on with Ross Duthat. He gave an extensive interview on 61 Minutes. And one thing about President Trump is he's got two years left with massive executive power. He's got two months left with the House and Senate if they get their asses back to DC and get something done. And we've got a relatively favorable court system of somewhat constitutionalist judges, sometimes.

Here he is on 61 Minutes last night. And folks, I gotta tell you, whether you love the guy or hate the guy, at least he doesn't BS you. "Hey, do you like your enemies?" Like all these, "Oh, I love my—" He's like, "No, I really don't." You don't have to like his response, but you're going to get two more years of this, and it's going to be right in your face for all the people taking a preemptive victory lap that the president's finished. They said the same thing about other presidents of both parties, and they finished strong. Check this out.

People go to DC, say they're going to do something, and they do the opposite. President Trump ran on public safety. He ran. He said many times he was not comfortable with Iran having a nuclear weapon. He has said multiple times he was going to close the border. And even on issues I am not fully aligned with him with, he did not lie about it. Tariffs. You knew what you were getting. Correct. Why am I saying this? Because, ladies and gentlemen, revolutions in politics happen fast.

I told you, Obama was elected and sworn in 30 days later, the Tea Party revolution started, and two years later, he was totally wiped out. Completely wiped out. Revolutions happen quick because people don't like being lied to. He's not going to BS you. He doesn't have a mask to wear. However, the Democrats, you think you elected on affordability, the economy, my wallet, my healthcare. I'm telling you, you got rug pulled and hosed.

I'm going to prove it to you. You would rather be lied to. Vote for us, we're Democrats, we're going to fix the economy and affordability. Okay. They're not doing any of that. Matter of fact, it rarely even comes up in post-election interviews at all. Folks, revolutions happen quickly. It's been less than a week since the election. Here's some early polling. Open Source Zones and Exit Count. I like to give— you should check them out. You can follow. Here's an Atlas Intel poll just before Election Day and all that about the 2028 presidential primary.

Rubio 45, JD 32, DeSantis 4.5, Tucker Carlson 2.7, Trump Jr. 1.4, Ted Cruz 1.4, Glenn Youngkin 1.1. Marco Rubio, at least in this poll, out about 10 plus points. But the Democratic presidential primary, I want to warn you, do not sleep on this guy, John Ossoff, down in Georgia. He gives me kind of political heebie-jeebies just like Obama did. He is a very charismatic, young, kind of good-looking messenger.

He speaks moderately while acts liberally. He is a mask wearer, unlike President Trump, and he's a liar. AOC in second with 17%. But Ossoff is that kind of charismatic messenger you should be concerned about. The Trump endorsement, by the way, will be huge. Revolutions happen quick. Presidential election season is here. I'm still getting over last week. There's no time for that. There's no time for that. Dust off, everybody.

Dust off. The feet, the fell on your butt, whatever, arms. Dust it off. No time. It's over. We're going to fix it now. It's over. We're going to fight. We're going to fight. We're going to fight. The president's still in charge. He got shot in the head. They tried to shoot him again in West Palm Beach. They've tried to kill the guy. They've tried to bankrupt the guy. They've tried to put him in jail. We're not done. He's not done. He's out there giving interviews to people who don't even like him right away. Nobody's done.

Nobody. And I'm certainly not done either. Not a chance. We have been here before. Ten times worse. You know how many people I told this this weekend who came up to me at the blackjack table? One guy came up to me, "Look, I have freaking bodybuilders. Like 300 pounds. Tattoos everywhere." He's like, "Hey, man, love your show." I'm like, "Man, I use the same stupid joke all the time. Sorry if I've ever said to you." I'm like, "Your nickname isn't tiny, I guess." I know. Corny and stupid. I didn't know what else to say. I had a glass of wine. I was like, "Dude was jacked." And he's like, "Is it over?" I'm like, "It's never over."

What do you mean over? I need you to look this up. The old poet Aeneas, who said, "An enemy is not vanquished until he considers himself so." Think about what I just said, or Aeneas just said. I'm just citing. You consider yourself vanquished, then yes, it's over. I don't. And either do after 15 minutes, 38,000 people who've tuned in. That's a big audience 15 minutes into the show. Sounds like 38,000 people don't consider themselves vanquished either.

We fight to the last man, just like the boss did. He could have given up. He knew they were going to bankrupt him again. And folks, how do I know that this is going to end poorly? Because the Democrats are unhinged. They're doing what President Trump did not do. President Trump ran on an agenda. Some people didn't like that agenda. He ran on closing the border, understanding full well that even a lot of businesses that may traditionally vote Republican were going to be pissed because a lot of their cheap labor, in fact, had to go away and had to be deported.

He understood that, or else he wouldn't have done it. You think he's dumb? He understood doing what he did in Iran was not going to go over well with a bunch of people who, I don't know how to say, didn't care about a nuclear weapon in Iran or didn't believe them. I don't know. I told you, I value people's opinions on the matter. Be careful with our military. But he did it anyway. He did not lie to anyone. He ran as a public safety guy, crushed violent crime. That stuff happened. The Democrats ran on your wallet and affordability, and I promise you they're going to do none of that.

There is a now generational contrast opportunity in the next two years with President Trump in charge to say, "I'm not crazy like these lunatics. They ran on the economy. Look what I did on the economy versus what they're proposing." Here, receipts incoming. This is my block I'm going to play forever. I thought this was about affordability. It was not. It is about stealing your healthcare. But I love my healthcare. My brother's in a union up in New York. He's like, "You think they're coming after my healthcare?" I don't think.

I know. How do I know? Because they say it. Here is Bernie Sanders, who is going to extract a pound of flesh for everyone. Hat tip, Peter Sullivan on X. Bernie's calling for a, quote, "immediate first step." Justin, is that a delayed first step? It does not. I thought the first step was affordability, Justin. It isn't. Okay. Here's Bernie Sanders' immediate first step. Lowering the Medicare age to 55, which will promptly bankrupt Medicare even quicker. Add dental hearing and vision to Medicare, which will absolutely blow up your tax bill.

And guarantee coverage to every kid to age 19, basically wiping out anything close to preserving what you call Medicare now. And he wants to use reconciliation, i.e., just 51 votes to pass them. Here's Bernie on the issue. I thought this was about affordability. This is about inaffordability. Check this out.

All of this can be accomplished with 51 votes in the Senate through the reconciliation process.

I'm really sorry you got rug pulled. I am. People get suckered all the time. But it's time to wake up and listen to what's in front of your face. They're kicking you in the nuts with exactly what they're going to do. I told you this is the opportunity for a generational contrast where we can show how crazy what they propose versus what they plan on doing versus what President Trump proposed and what he actually did. Look at it. He was the economy president. He ran as a businessman. Look at the jobs numbers. You don't have to believe them.

It doesn't really matter. Here's at Delta One. US Jobs Report smashes expectations. Employers added 165K jobs in October, triple the 59,000 expected. Non-farm payrolls, unemployment went down to 4.1%. Private payrolls up, wage growth up. September payrolls, the last revised, up another 60,000 jobs. Who do you think did this? The Democrats? Talking about canceling your private healthcare? Who do you think did this? They're not even sworn in yet.

There is a generational contrast opportunity. Lunatics versus sanity. Talk and rug pulls versus results and honesty. Again, they keep talking about prior to the election. Oh, we're running on your wallet, the economy. I'm sorry you got worked. We had a thing in Queens. Play a basketball. Come on. Shoot a nice three. Drain it in their face. Justin, you're a basketball player, you're tall. Like the form there. Elbow up.

Don't laugh at your own jokes. Here's Ro Khanna. I thought it was about affordability. We get in there. Impeachment. Definitely impeachment. Because it worked so well the 47 other times they tried it. Some of you will get that. Check this out.

You've convinced yourself that's just a week after, less than a week when he did that interview. Folks, you got worked if you voted for these people. Again, I'm sorry because it's going to kick you in the ass too. I live here too. It's my country too. I'm really sorry you got worked. The Attorney General is taking note of this, by the way, these endless threats. Not the impeachment. There's a process for that. But Alyssa Slotkin and others threatening basically to deprive people of their civil rights to engage in a political process by threatening to investigate them.

So if that doesn't bother you, if that doesn't bother your viewers, then we really need to kind of wake up in this country because it certainly bothers me.

You think I'm making this up? Here he is again. He is not kidding. You will comply. I promise. They will extract Socialists like Bernie Sanders from this Democrat majority a pound of flesh from every member. They will terrorize their own members if Medicare for All does not get a vote, which means for all, which means your healthcare plan, if the Sanders bill passes, is done. That will lead to inaffordability, as you now have to get a backup plan for the crap government plan that's going to be shoved down your throat like ippicac syrup.

Check this out.

There is no time. There is no time for sitting back and nursing wounds. Remember when the kid threw a little dirt in it or whatever? I don't know what the hell they did when we were kids. Put some Robitussin in it. That's it. It's time to get back up and go back to work. I don't know how we even survived. We used to drink out of the hose. They say now it's full of chemicals. That was our thing. Remember you used to wipe your hands on a disgusting towel rack in the McDonald's? I remember McDonald's by me on Cooper Avenue and Cooper and Myrtle, the intersection, for those who grew up in Glendale, Queens.

They had a bar soap thing in the bar. Imagine that bar soap was disgusting. How did we even live? There were no cell phones. You'd leave the house in the summer. 8 o'clock in the morning, go play Wiffle ball, Sponge Bottle, 10 o'clock at night. I don't even know how I ate. All I remember was like I got an onion roll with butter on it. That's what we did. Folks, these people on the left, you got freaking worked. They are so full of it. I got one more and I want to move on to something important.

Separating the celebrations from our enemies. I told you this. There is a difference between people who pretended to be on our side, the Folex MAGA people, celebrating and being critical. Criticism is not only good, but welcome. I mean, we didn't win on Tuesday, so something went wrong. Good, valid criticism, I hope, will get us in a better direction on messaging, on comms. Celebrations just tell you what I've been telling you for a while. There are people out there you should treat no different than Democrats in the media.

They just hate you. Stop pretending they like you. They're telling you they hate you. Matter of fact, some of them told you to vote for this guy, Al Sayed. Now, proving to you that these people are totally full of it, completely full of it, one of Al Sayed in Michigan, the new Democrat-elect this guy, his history with the Muslim Brotherhood, which he now thinks is funny, a freaking terror group will be sitting in the United States Senate in less than two months. One of his big staple issues was this foreign aid stuff.

We give it at Israel, and people are like, "Yeah, get rid of that, man. Foreign aid. Israel." Whatever stance you have, it's a republic. You're free to argue all you want. Frankly, I don't think foreign aid is a good idea either, unless it strongly benefits us in the public safety space and we can prove some track record of success. I'd make the strong case to you that a lot of foreign aid is, in fact, wasted. However, I'm telling you the truth. Al Sayed lied to you.

He said it was all about foreign aid. Here he is on an interview now, now that he's past the election. "Oh, yeah. Oh, your foreign aid is great." Matter of fact, USAID, USAID, which President Trump has largely defunded, he wants to get all this money back so USAID can give it back to foreign countries. I thought he ran on the opposite. Justin, he said the Jews, Israel, foreign aid, and everybody got suckered foreign aid. He just lied to you in his own words.

It's all about foreign aid. Yeah, it's all about bringing back foreign aid. He just suckered you because he mentioned the Jews and a bunch of people fell for it. Sorry. Check this out.

Can Congress get funding back to the poorest and the most disadvantaged people on the planet?

I'm not your enemy on a foreign aid issue. I'm here to tell you that to Al Sayed, the argument wasn't about foreign aid. The argument was, "We don't like the Jews, and buy my argument that foreign aid should be wrapped up." He just said the opposite. I'm sorry, Rug. You got rug pulled. Now he's talking about bringing back USAID, which funds a bunch of non-governmental organizations overseas, which actively work against the United States.

I don't want to check it out of the library. I'm not selling you a book. I don't borrow it from a friend. I download it from the internet. I don't even care. My book, Follow the Money, the first chapter, Insane in Ukraine. Just read the first chapter. You haven't got to read the book. Borrow it from a friend. Get it from I promise you, I'm not selling you a book. I don't need the money. I don't care. Just read the first chapter of my book, Follow the Money, and you will see how devastating US support pre-war Ukraine was in going against and working against the United States.

No one's going to debate me. I wrote a freaking book about it. That's not the point. The point is they all lied to you about everything. Foreign aid, Israel is the worst thing ever. What about foreign aid? Oh, that's the greatest thing. It's awesome. Sounds like you're not making a foreign aid argument. Sounds like you're making it the Jews, J-O-O-O-S argument. What you're doing. You know that's what you're doing. Please stop faking it. And I'm sorry, but a lot of people got hosed. Oh, no, I was voting on foreign aid. No, you weren't.

No, that'll definitely ask you correct. I'm sure giving money to USAID, good point, Justin. It's going to do a lot for affordability and gas price. It's going to do amazing. Now, I told you, we have to separate people who are celebrating. They're not our friends. Treat them like the liberal media and the commies. Forget it. You know who they are. We're not going to waste a ton of time. We've already addressed this over and over, okay? And there's nothing working people like yourselves want to hear less than a bunch of podcast bros fighting each other, okay?

Really. You have kids to worry about. That's why I don't waste a ton of your time on this. Separate the celebrations from criticism and analysis and necessary discussions about communications failures we had. How do we know there were communications failures? Because we got smoked on Tuesday. We got smoked on a bunch of lies. We lost to a party that is the inaffordability party, that is the inflation party. We lost to them. So clearly, we had some kind of communications failure and breakdown with some of these candidates and elsewhere.

I'm not running, man. They ran. Something broke. This is why I say, though, we cannot learn the wrong lessons from this. I've lived through this before. When Mitt Romney got smoked, granted, a terrible candidate by Obama in the Obama re-elect, I told you, I was sitting in a group of conservative activists. Many of you know. It wasn't some secret group. It was conservatives who meet to talk about conservative stuff. They were like cabal of conservatives. Mother Jones wrote some piece about it.

Folks, I've said to you a thousand times, nobody I respect or follow is telling you and should ever tell you, "Oh, shut up on Iran." No, God forbid. When it comes to deploying our troops into combat, never shut up. Never shut up about any issue that involves blood and treasure. All I ask is that we analyze it and come to an answer that helps us move the ball and don't get bogged down in Folex MAGA people changing their position every five minutes, depending on where the wind blows.

President Trump and his team had to make hard decisions. Now, obviously, it's a valuable discussion to talk about how we communicated the goals in Iran. It is an extremely valuable discussion to have because it was not an insignificant portion of the electorate that voted on the issue. I believe it's been overstated, the importance of Iran, dramatically, but it's not irrelevant either. There are two valuable sides to this. But I want to play this for you again because, folks, listen to what I'm about to tell you. Bookmark it, cut it, snip it, whatever you need to do.

Polls are not a substitute for leadership. I'm sorry. You know exactly where I'm going with this. Polls are not a substitute for leadership. People in that cabinet read the exact same intel I did. Polls are not a substitute for leadership. I want to play this for you. I played it before. Hat tipped the dogs this weekend. One big overall miss. Felt kind of bad. My niece goes to Ole Miss.

Rebs got banged up pretty good this weekend. But I'm just going to mention too casually that the Auburn Tigers defeated the Georgia Bulldogs. I'm just throwing it out there, but okay. Here is Kirby Smart, the coach. But this is serious. I want you to listen to this on leadership because there are things people know and know it's not trust me, bro. There are things you just can't say for a reason. Active intel channels would get burned. The country would be put in danger, but you'd be vindicated.

Yeah, you'd also cause a very dangerous, perilous national security situation. Sometimes you have to make decisions that people won't fully understand, but you got to do them anyway. Check this out.

And number three, you will be misunderstood and won't always have the opportunity to defend yourself. Those are three costs that come from being a great leader.

They go, "Oh, the communications were awful all the time." No, folks, they weren't. There was a coordinated effort against you to make you believe that this was just done because President Trump was bored on a weekend. Even if you do believe the polls, and you are one of these people who I don't need to be a leader. I just follow polls. The polls are you're overstating how the Iran war played into this too. Here, here's a Marina Medvensi. Again, I'm just bringing the receipts. You're entitled to whatever opinion you want on the matter.

And I encourage you to speak up and speak out on this. Marina Medvin, foreign policy, the war, Israel, none of that lost the election. And if the right keeps lying to themselves about the real reasons we lost, we're not going to win the next ones either. Here's a compilation of the poll data. See for yourselves. Chart via Justin Hart. Here you go. Here's the actual data below. It wasn't irrelevant. It played a role. But those of you telling me, "Oh, it was the one decisive thing that screwed everyone over." Here, how many people called this Pacific issue crucible their vote?

Republicans' government corruption, 45%, 63% of Democrats. Damaging. Cost of living, 58% Dems, 36%. Immigration, 27% Dem, 47%. The Iran war, 45% Dem, 20% Republican. AI data centers, 29%, 16% Republican. Their single top issue, here's the list. The economy, democracy, immigration, healthcare, foreign policy below that, crime below that. Folks, these are just the numbers.

I don't love the numbers sometimes either. I wish street crime was a bigger issue. You know, it was my entire life for the last year was reorienting the FBI to combat violent crime model. It wasn't. It just wasn't a huge issue. I think we've been so successful as a country at crushing violent crime due to broken windows policing for a long time that even though we dropped it to unprecedented numbers, I think people just it was like a fait accompli. Like, "Yeah, we're already doing a lot on crime." That's fine. You're entitled to vote on what you want. But listen to me.

Polls are not a substitute for leadership. Play that. I just wasn't part of the show, but good call. Here's President Trump again. Let me just hark back to the beginning of the show. Him on 61 minutes. Telling you honestly, "Hey, don't you like your enemies? You could get a cheap pass to do it." And he's like, "No, I don't. I'm not going to lie to you." Here he is again, knowing what he knows, saying, "Hey, we lost, but I had a lead.

And I'd do it again." Check this out.

The argument is that we should have waited for a massive Iranian terror attack, a 9/11 style or Pearl Harbor type attack that cost thousands of I'm not kidding. I'll show you in a minute. And then President Trump would have had public opinion on his side, and maybe we could have salvaged the election or something. That's f-ing insane. We could not wait for that.

Now, there's an irony there, and some of you see where I'm going with this. Just like Al-Sayed, who ran against foreign aid to Israel, and then the second he won the election, flipped his stance and said, "Hey, foreign aid is great, just not to Israel." So it wasn't about foreign aid. It was just about Israel. Just be honest about it. The very same people telling you that, we should have waited for another Pearl Harbor, and then the American people would be galvanized. Do you notice they're using the exact opposite argument when it comes to Israel?

Again, is this an argument about the United States? It's incredible. The real MAGA crowd, we get accused sometimes of supporting another country first. Yet our policies are about America and how they can help us. Your policies are all about Israel. You're the ones obsessed with this country the size of New Jersey. You. They're using the exact opposite argument. Do you believe the Israeli government? They saw the signs on October 7th. It did nothing. You just said the exact opposite about the United States.

Did you not? Please tell me you get this. Go read their tweets. What argument is it? Let a terror strike happen because it's good for public support, which is crazy? Or when a terror strike happens, like in Israel, everyone needs to go. I don't know. Which one is it? Just tell us what you're arguing. I can't debate someone who takes both positions. Which one am I debating?

Now, for those of you, I'm going to get to this more in a second. I'm going to show you. Receipts incoming. In case you think I'm making this up. Man, that's crazy. No one's talking about that. They are. Yes, the communications on it were not great. However, people out there saying the administration's position was never clear why we did it. Folks, I'm sorry. It was. Maybe it should have been done better. Maybe it should have went out. Maybe they should have done a bigger prime time address with more specifics. We lost on the comms front, period.

Because yes, the Iran war was a fact. I think they're exaggerating it, but taking the other position that had nothing to do with it is silly too. It's ridiculous. Don't talk to people like they're stupid because that's how they're going to treat you. I'm here to give you both sides of an argument, and you decide. So it makes this show different. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This is back in March, a long time ago in political time. In March, I want you to listen to the argument he makes, and I'm going to give you some details I'm comfortable giving you about why this decision had to be made now.

Here he is talking about it. Whether you agree with it or not, Rubio is not lying. I'm going to prove it to you too because another senator, who's not necessarily always a friend of the administration either, on the Republican side, said the exact same thing. Check this out.

They're attacking hotels. They're hitting not just military bases. They're attacking our embassies directly. They're attacking facilities that have nothing to do with war or with military. And that's a weekend Iran. That's in Iran despite years of sanctions. Imagine a year from now or a year and a half from now, the capabilities they would have to inflict damage on us. It's an unacceptable risk, especially in the hands of a regime that's run by radical clerics. The Ayatollah is a radical was a radical cleric. That entire regime is led by radical clerics who don't make geopolitical decisions.

They make decisions on the basis of theology, their view of theology, which is an apocalyptic one.

They're making the argument here that they were putting together essentially a ballistic missile shield around their program, which we had a window to act or not. Once that window was over with, the consequences of taking out their nuclear program would have been casualties 100 times what they've been so far. They've been limited. Every casualty is a horror. But they have been limited in this kinetic action against Iran. Now, you think I was making that up about this alternate theory that we should have waited for Pearl Harbor?

I'm not. This is Homan Jenkins addressing that exact issue. And again, he's not a huge fan of the Trump administration's communication on the Iran war. This isn't like some butt kisser here at all. Quite the opposite. Homan Jenkins, Trump outran his leash with the Iran war. Notice, he's discussing the same theory I told you was out there. If there had been a 9/11 or Pearl Harbor and the American people wanted and demanded action, of course, the story would have been different. But this wasn't the case here.

And Mr. Trump knew it. He didn't try rallying the country to his war. He knew he wouldn't be able to. But he did it anyway. You think he did it because he wanted to lose the midterms? You think he did it because he wanted to see a bunch of Republican states get destroyed at the ballot box? I'm asking you a question. Why do you think he did it? You think he was bored on a weekend eating a double cheeseburger and he was like, "Yeah, let's just go take out Iran"?

Rubio is telling you what happened. I'm telling you what happened. Senator Kennedy is telling you what happened. He is. Ladies and gentlemen, receipts incoming. Because both of those arguments cannot be true. That you think the Israeli government failed their citizens because they failed to see October 7th. Fine. If there were systemic intel failures, vote them out. But it's weird how you're making the exact opposite argument here. Oh, we should let the same thing happen here because the polls would be better?

You understand, if you're making those two separate arguments, you're a fraud. Just like other podcast bros were like, "Man, Iran's trying to assassinate our president. Assassinate the president. We should drop a nuk on them." Actual words summed up. And then when we found out they were quickly rebuilding their nuclear stockpile and had a potential to build 10 to 11 nukes and surrounded with ballistic missile shields and drones, the whole story changed. Which story is true? The answer is none of them.

You're just making up a position. Polling is no substitute for leadership. Here's Senator Kennedy on Theo Von telling you the exact same thing. And quote, he says, "I saw the intel that Rubio told you." You don't have to like it, but at least they're telling you the truth, unlike these other frauds. Check this out.

And if you try to stop us, we're going to destroy the rest of the Middle East." And by the way, our missiles can now reach London and Parish, Paris, and Germany.

Did we skip that one? Remember the Schumer cut? Oh, I didn't get to it. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Sorry, it's my own rundown. At least they're not lying to you. I'm going to play. I'm going to go a little out of order. I'm going to play that next. I want to show you exactly what I mean. You were entitled to say, "So what? I'll let Iran build a ballistic missile shield, a drone shield around their nuclear facilities. Let them take control of the strait, start a regional war in the Middle East, explode gas prices to $47 a gallon.

And then the American people, it'll poll better, and then you can go to war." You're entitled to say that. I completely disagree. But again, it's just weird how you use the exact opposite argument when it came to October 7th. It's almost like it's not an argument at all that you're just rug pulling people. Let me show you what I mean in a second with Schumer. The Democrats don't have a message on the Iran war other than we should lose it. That's their only message. Quick break, last break, and I'll show you what I mean. What size is your digital footprint? It's probably bigger than you know.

The second they flip the switch on a nuclear device, they don't care. Schumer basically said it. He can't even answer the question like, "Should we win this thing or not?" Check this out.

You're talking about a mixture here. You want to talk about a witch's brew? Here's the thing Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, and Senator Kennedy were talking about. Folks, the intel was not wrong. The intel on the Iraq war was pretty horrendous. I ran for office against a lot of what happened over there. I'm not taking any lectures from people who never put their name on a ballot. NeoCat, me and NeoCat, that's hilarious. That is so dumb. I mean, anybody can go out on the internet and look up how I've spoken about foreign interventions.

You were looking at a ballistic missile shield around a program where we would be under global blackmail by the Iranians in the strait forever. Their professed interest in missile technology, other missile technology, which we do not have a great defense against, was a prescient, present, and dangerous threat. Their lethal plotting to try to kill President Trump and other political leaders in the United States was a source of endless global instability if their plan succeeded.

Their drone program to basically own the strait just through cheap drones that would enough just drop a couple of grenades on a tanker. The insurance costs would explode. Gas would go through the roof. Combine that with the Iranian regime's desperation to stay alive and their disgusting, grotesque, death to America ideology. And ladies and gentlemen, we can argue all we want about the comms, and we should. Maybe the communications weren't great on it.

I think the evidence is there. The polls weren't great, although not as dramatic as everybody tells you. But the end goal, I'm not letting a 9/11 happen, folks. I did a year up there, the year I could do. And I'm going to tell you something. I don't care if this audience, I mean it, if the audience drops to five listeners, me, Justin G, Andrew, Josh, and Jasmine, whatever, five or six, I don't care.

If you think I was going up there and reading polls on the intel I was reading, and I was going to let your kids get murdered in a 9/11 style attack or a Pearl Harbor style attack or a hypersonic missile strike in a year because I was afraid of coming out and being somewhat unpopular, you can take that and shove it right up because you're crazy and you don't know a thing about me. And I'm telling you right now, the president wasn't doing it either. Here's Marco Rubio again, repeating just the other day.

That other clip was from March, repeating the same clear and concise comms on this issue. Him, the president, others. Would we do it again? Yes. Would we change the comms? Yes. We changed the process. I think a lot of the delays and the stops definitely didn't play well with the American people. Don't put a timeline on it and don't stick to it. I get that. But here he is again on leadership being painful sometimes. Polls are not leadership. Leadership is leadership. Check this out.

So I think the president took on something that other presidents have failed to be. And sometimes when you do the right thing, I don't know if it's popular or not, but it's the right thing to do. And presidents are like to do the hard things, sometimes difficult things, but necessary things.

No, I mean you're actually crazy. But Dan, it dinged your reputation. I just told you I don't care. I don't mean I don't care. It doesn't bother me. I mean, I don't care. Obviously, I don't care because I don't care enough to change my behavior because I know we did the right thing. I'm absolutely certain. If I cared about that opinion enough, I would give you the cheap lines. Maybe we should have waited for 9/11.

Everyone would have been behind us. Could have looked like heroes. That's not leadership, man. I gave you both sides of the argument, however. Now it's up to you to decide. This is the receipt show and the true show. I never tell you how to think. I just give you the information to process it yourself. Here are the inputs, form and output. You heard all of that? Rubio, Kennedy, me, Schumer, and you're still convinced we should have let them construct a nuclear weapon?

You're entitled to that opinion. I think it's wrong. You think I'm wrong. That's what the Republic's about. But this show gives you both sides. I want to give you both sides of another argument going on now too. Folks, if you're on X and social media as much as I am, and I'm on it a lot, a show prep takes a long time. For every hour of content, it's probably close to four or five hours of preparation if you're doing it right. If you're just lazy, it's no prep at all. But I send stuff all weekend, all morning, all night.

There's a bunch of folks out there, including Van Jones. This is going to surprise you. Van Jones, who is a Democrat, was an Obama guy. But Van Jones occasionally will say something that makes a lot of sense. I'm not a big supporter of Van Jones. I don't know him. I don't think we've even ever met. But this went pretty viral this weekend. It was Van Jones, I think he was on CNN, talking about this influencer war and how they use social media to basically rug pull the American people and get them to believe it was all about affordability when, in fact, it wasn't.

And people on the Republican side are like, "Look, man, the Democrats are so good at this." I'm just telling you, I'm going to give you both sides of this. And both sides are this. Are influencers really influencing you? Or are the influencer days numbered as people wake up to the grift? Folks, I'm leaning more towards the latter. I don't buy any of this. This is Van Jones, I think, selling himself, engaged in massive exaggeration for effect. Maybe they had some effect in certain places.

My humble opinion, I don't believe it. Now, the results, they won. They definitely won. But they had, in many cases, I think, a group of candidates who just rug pulled people and got people so pissed off, I'm not sure the social media ecosystem had the effect Van Jones is saying it does. I heard the same thing. The exact same argument was used to say Donald Trump stole the election through Russian Facebook ads. And that was crap too. Check this out.

88.8 million hit on Twitter, X, every single day. And 185 million Facebook hits every single day. And they never figured it out. The Republicans could not understand it wasn't bots. It was actual human beings. The most effective online organizing campaign called the American Accountability Network flew under the radar screen. Never been told.

I'm telling you, I think he's engaged in hyperbole. They want to sell this product again. They want to seem important. Here, I'll bring in a totally different receipt on this. Folks, my humble opinion on the matter, where do you stand, Dan? I think the days of influencers influencing people's decisions are coming to an end. Why? Folks, we've been at this now for, I mean, Twitter's been around, what, 10 years plus? People now are starting to see that a lot of what they see on the interweb, social, TikTok, Snapchat, and elsewhere is crap.

It's paid for. There's a whole big argument on X this weekend about it. People are smart. This is treating voters like they're idiots. I think some people just saw gas prices go up and voted for a change, not realizing the change was back to high gas prices under the Democrats. Here, I'm going to throw a random clip I found. Hat tip, it was a gummy on X who put this up. Here's a guy. He works for a company or owns a company that produces like a Shirley Temple mix or a margarita mix or something. He's like, "Hey, man, we got this post from, what is it, Kylie Jenner, who probably has like 4 trillion followers, you know, one of the Jenner ladies."

He's like, "I thought my company would just blow up." He's like, "I didn't get one single Amazon inquiry." I'm just telling you, folks, the days of influencers with no life experience whatsoever telling you you're too stupid to think for yourself, "Let me be your surrogate brain," they're over. Van Jones is way overstating that. Here, check this out.

We don't say stupid. We can't back up. People are exhausted of the influencer class with no life experience whatsoever telling you how to think about things. That's a totally unrelated marketing opportunity. But what he said is accurate. Four or five years ago, when people didn't understand a lot of this was a grift and paid for, they were like, "Oh, wow, that's cool." And a product sold out in a minute. Those days are over. You have to build credibility with an audience.

It's why I thanked you in the beginning for keeping us constantly up there. Do you know how many times people are pushing us to? We get all kinds of DMs and stuff. Talk about this, talk about that. We'll talk about what we want. What I think this army of listeners out there is interested in to more effectively develop outputs based on proper inputs. No one's going to tell me what to talk about. And there's no amount of money you can pay me to tell me what to talk about either, ever.

Even when what we have to talk about doesn't pull well because polls are not leadership. Listen, one topic I want to bring up today too. A lot of folks are asking me my opinion about the shake-up at the White House over the weekend. Chief of Staff Suze Wiles out, Steve Miller in. He gets promoted from Deputy Chief of Staff to Chief of Staff. Here was President Trump discussing the matter, saying, "Hey, after the election, we got to make some changes." Not at all uncommon. Happens in every presidency.

I wouldn't over-exaggerate the importance of this or not either, but check this out.

And I think the President considered that a valuable asset. But it's ultimately, as I said to you, after the shake-ups happened early, Pam, Tulsi, and others. And I'm not suggesting some of them may have been pushed out, some of them may have left. I don't know. I'm not in the President's head. I'm just telling you, the President is the President. He was elected. I served at the pleasure of the President and so did everyone else. And when he wants to move on, he's going to move on. And that's how he rolls. He's loyal to the American people. I think Steve Miller is going to be an excellent pick and I think he's going to work out great.

That was a big show today. It was a big crowd too. It was 47,000 people. So thank you all for tuning in. And again, thank you for Pod News, PodTrak. Really appreciate the Bongino Army always showing up every day. Make sure you check out Sean's show at what? We don't have a winner today, do we? No, no winner today. I didn't want to forget the comment of the day. But ripped someone off. Someone's got a shot at $1,776. How do you win? Join the Rumble chat every single day. rumble.com/bongino or download the Rumble app. It's free. If you're picked for the comment of the day, once a week we pick a winner.