Transcript of Sunday Special with Mike Benz, Rep. Andy Harris, Rep. Tim Burchett and Michael Knowles

Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.

Welcome to Sunday podcast. This is our chance to play for you some of the best moments from the radio show and some great interviews during the week that you may have missed. If you ever want to check out our show, go to bongino. Com, go to Station Finder and see what radio station we're on near you. You'll love it. I promise you. We put a lot of work into the radio show. Check it out. But before that, let me tell you about our sponsor. What you do online is not private, far from it. Data brokers are tracking and creating a profile of your online activities. In the US, they are legally allowed to sell that information to whoever wants to buy it. But there's a way to push back and hold on to your values, autonomy, and freedom, and that's with ExpressVPN. With ExpressVPN, 100% of my online activity is rerouted through secure encrypted servers, which makes it impossible for my internet provider to know what I'm doing online. Expressvpn also hides my IP address so data brokers can't use it to build a profile on you. Expressvpn is easy to use. It takes just one click and it works on all of your devices, phones, tablets, smart TVs, desktops, and more.

You can have it on up to eight devices at once, so you can give the gift of privacy and freedom to your whole family. Right now, you can get an extra four months for free when you use my special link. Go to expressvpn. Com/bongino and get four extra months of ExpressVPN. That's expressvpn. Com/bongino. First up today on this Sunday special, we talked with our DeepState PhD Specialist, Mike Benz, about the USAID scandal. He's probably forgotten more about this than most people know. You're going to love this. Check it out. This guy's social media feed is like a PhD-level course in Deep Deep state money flows, influence campaigns. He's probably forgotten more about it than most people know, but it's definitely worth your time. We have him on the show as often as we can. He's got a high demand schedule these days. You can follow him on X. He's at Mike Benz, B-E-N-Z. Z Cyber, and I encourage you to do so. Mike, welcome back to the show. Good to have you.

Dan, great to talk as always.

Mike, there's no one out there who's done more to uncover the deep state money flows in you. You can be humble about it all you want, but I think everybody's starting to recognize now that's true. It's why you're in such high demand for these shows. But this USAID scandal, I've been making the case, and I'll let you take it from here, that I think the biggest thing if we had to triage our concerns about it is that taxpayer money, very simply, was confiscated from citizens at the end of a barrel of a gun, which is what the IRS does. You pay it or else, or you're going to jail, and was then used to fund a lot of things, ideology, overseas LGBTQ UIA stuff. However, it was undoubtedly used to fund censorship and regime change, both abroad and here at home against populist movements. I see those as the top two most critical things the Democrats are freaking out about. What What are your thoughts on it?

Oh, absolutely. I think what you're getting at is that there is a difficult tango dance about the role of the money that the government takes from US taxpayers to spend on influencing the course of events in foreign countries in order to make pro US interests promulgate there. There's different schools of thought in terms of the morality or the efficacy legacy of those efforts. But the absolute drop dead, burn it down and salt the Earth around it, you cannot do activity is when that goes back and directly affects US domestic citizens And so the government is basically stealing their money in order to crush them with it. And this is what you saw in every single aspect of what USAID did. Usaid funded media institutions and then had those media institutions write hippies on US citizens. Usaid funded social media terms of service pressure groups in order to pressure the tech companies or pressure governments to pass laws on the US tech companies in order to censor the people who paid USAID to do that. Usaid funds the unions and those unions turn around and do protest movements and and organize violence effectively against US citizen in governments in the form of Trump.

Time and time again, USAID is supposed to support energy development projects around the world. They turn around, they fund Burisma. Well, that's basically the foreign policy pet project of the first family. Everywhere you look with what USAID does, they fund the drug networks that then get imported and you end up with Kensington, Philadelphia. They fund the Paramilitary military groups that end up turning around and having effectively being at war with our own military. I mean, you had a funny situation where a CIA-backed paramilitary in Syria was at war with a Pentagon-funded paramilitary in Syria. And USAID has this get out of OFAC free card where they can effectively fund terrorists as long as their contractors do it, which is why I always say, when it's too dirty for the CIA, you give it to USAID.

We're talking to Mike Benz. He's at Mike Benz, cyberbenz on X. Strongly encourage you to follow him. Again, PhD course in deep state logistics and how they work. Mike, I love how the media here, Margaret Brennan and these other weekend tool bags, how they're feigning ignorance about the fungibility of money. She was on with Senator Hagerty this weekend. We played the clip at the beginning of the podcast and radio show, and she's like, well, there's no evidence they're funding sex changes in Guatemala. If she just would have looked at usaspending. Gov, she could have actually seen it, but God forbid, the truth gets in the way. But I focused on that before. The unra thing is critical because she's pretending that the money that wound up in this UN Refugee Group, that the various reports and money trails that the fungibility of money, they got money, and then you used it basically to associate with a Palestinian-based terrorist groups. She's acting like it's not fungible. But this is the business model for USAID, isn't it? Give it to these NGO groups, wipe your hands of it, pretend you don't know nothing, and then what they do with it from there, that wasn't us.

That was them.

They did it. Plausible deniability. That has been USAID's role from the day it was And the fact is, as you look at these grant descriptions, they will be one-line grant descriptions for outlays of $50 million. And there's no way to get beyond that. Usaid blocks even its Senate Foreign Relations Committee Oversight Committee members, sitting senators from accessing the grant details and the trobes of classified documents that USAID sits on, because it is, when I said when it's too dirty for the CIA, give it to USAID, that is not a joke. That's not an understatement. That's not hyperbole. Usaid can do covert action without requiring the same presidential finding that's required to the CIA. So when the CIA wants to do a dirty deed, a covert action abroad, but they don't think the president will approve or even worse, it directly targets the president's international allies or even the president himself by proxy. They can simply walk over to USAID and have a USAID network carry out the logistics under the banner of humanitarian aid. So if they want to fund, if a rogue sell at CIA wants to support ISIS groups and the President of the United States wants to eradicate ISIS, then they can have USAID do humanitarian support in the region where they'll pay for the housing, they'll pay for the food, they'll pay for the munitions flows.

And then it's not a CIA covered action. It's just discrete democracy promotion that, oh, just so happens to go wrong being done by USAID. I can post an example of this from the first decade of USAID's existence. This was an under sworn testimony at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1972, when we were at in Vietnam and Laos in 1967, the CIA's mercenary army, back by this commander, Vinh Pao. It was USAID who paid Vinh Pao to purchase two CIA aircraft from Air America and Continental Air Services, which are two CIA proprietary airlines. This is all public and declassified. Nominally, in order to help economic development in the region that the CIA-backed paramilitary effective terrorist was operating. They knew that that was where drugs are being shipped out of the Golden Triangle. Basically, USAID bought them the airplanes to be able to retail the opium from the Golden Triangle to Vietnam in order to sell them in order to fund their own mercenary army. Usaid has been doing this since the day it was born.

Talking to Mike Benz. Mike, Jerry Baker has an interesting piece just dropped at the journal. Not a big MAGA guy, but that's fine. I read all kinds of sources, and he makes a really good point here. Something I addressed earlier, he just says a little bit differently. The Democrats are dying on this USAID hill, not because they really care about Guatemala and sex change operations. I mean, it is fit into their ideology, but that's not really it. What they're really defending is an unaccountable government, which is the collectivist, communist dream. When you're a communist, like most of these progressive, hardcore leftists are, and you believe in government controlling the means of production, one of the best ways to do that is to fleece taxpayer money and turn it over to the communists who like nothing more than the opaqueness of USAID funding and then use it to break down a merit-based capitalist constitutional Republic and populist movements around the world. They're dying on this hill to defend what I'm getting at is the unaccountability of the operation. It's not even specific things. That's what's going on here.

I definitely think that's part of it. There is another aspect of it that I think is parallel and on par with how sinister that aspect of it, which is that the cynical exploitation of race, gender, and sexual orientation, and religious cleavages within countries in order to selectively rig its internal politics. So the fact is, for example, it's not just the Democrats, the Republican wing of USAID and the National Down for Democracy also fund, for example, transgender dance festivals and in these woke, identitarian events in countries where those demographic groups represent an anti-government force, where we're trying to take down that government or represent a pro-democracy force when we are a a pro-government force, when we're trying to stabilize that government against insurgents. So, for example, a lot of these more radical extreme elements that will come from sometimes folks within the country's transgender community or folks within its radical Islamic, either extremist or terrorist cleavage or some religious extremists or racial identitarian movements are deliberately paid for, not necessarily out of a woke ideology, but out of the cold calculating understanding that when they do the baseline assessment or the strategic assessment for the region, they say, who's against this government and who's for it?

And they see, hey, the transgenders don't like this, the Russian government. That's how USAID ends up sponsoring places like Pussy Riott. You get Republican support for Pussy Riott. They would not want that thing necessarily in their own neighborhood, but it's useful to export and pump up and capacity build abroad.

I think we're saying the same thing. I may have said it before. You're always, of course, more eloquent than I am, but I got a few minutes left. But what I'm getting at is the... Yeah, but it's the name of a band, by the way, folks, in case you're the whole Pussy Ryan thing. I'm sorry. We're not referring to anyone's anatomy for a CZ purposes. Jim's looking at me, Mike. He's talking about the band.

This is sponsored by Hillary Clinton State Department in order to destabilize Russia from 2010 to 2012. It was a very high-profile diplomatic incident because they were organizing violent street protests in the name of radical feminism and LGBT causes.

Yeah, look it up, folks. It's the real thing. I can see it now. Jim's looking at me like, he knows what you're I'm not talking about it. What I was getting at before, and you said it again better, is this otherism. That Democrats, what I was getting at is they really don't care if you get a sex change or not. They don't care if you have nuts or you don't. In this case, I am talking about it. They don't care. That's not what it's about. What it's about is if they can find an identity politics group and use it to say to this pseudo victim class, Those guys hate you in the populace room, but therefore rebel against them. They don't a damn about your cause. As long as your cause, it's like the anti-antecommunist David Harvest approach, is against... That's the only reason they're doing it. Is that my answer? That's exactly right.

Look at what just happened here in America, where there was this big Democrat cause for decades about, you know, hispanics and how hispanics can be globalized as anti-Republican, anti-Trump force. And then you see the the Cuban population turn out in huge numbers for Trump in 2016, 2020, 2024. What does the Democrat coalition go around doing? They say, Well, actually, we shouldn't really include Cubans as part of a Hispanic. They're not useful as a... That subdemographic is not useful. That segmentation, strategically, is a big part of this.

Or Mike, what about religious minorities? Jews in the United States or ethnic minorities like Asians in the United States getting into college. They're like, No, no, they don't count, man, because they're white adjacent.

You're like, What the hell is white adjacent?

I got about a minute left. Take it.

Okay. I encourage everyone to go to DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, whatever. Go to the CIA world fact book right now type in any country in the world and what you will see is a breakdown exactly like that. Why does the CIA keep such detailed statistics of race, gender, sexual orientation, and racial denomination, Cleveland, which is in every country on earth? Because that goes into the baseline assessment or the strategic assessment in terms of what assets to build up in the country or what assets or what what chess pieces to take down in the country in order to achieve a particular operational goal. That religious cleavage point that's playing out in Ukraine right now, where you have the State Department basically trying to pressure Ukraine and even USAID sponsoring media organizations to pressure the Ukrainian government to box the Russian Orthodox Church and various things like that. But this is basically civil war planning that we do in foreign countries come home to roost in our own.

Mike, I got to run, but I'm throwing this out there. I saw you said last week, and I'm sure you got a thousand takers that you needed like 2 hours to go over this. When we open up our new studio in a couple of weeks, I'm happy to promote all your content. Jim will be there. You are more than welcome. I will give you the whole 2 hours. We can do a weekend podcast. It'll blow up. I got to run. Hey, that'd be epic. Thank you so much. You would be, man, because of you, not because of me. Mike Benz, he is at Mike Benz Cyber. You see why we have him on. You want a diagnosis of the deep state, go to people who know more than you. Here's my advice for you, folks, quickly. Always be the dumbest person in the room. What do you mean? Because if you're hanging out in a room where you're the smartest person, you're not going to learn anything. Always hang around people smarter than you. You will leave better off. Another great interview next, but first, let's get to our next sponsor. Folks, moink. You want some high Equality, delicious tasting meat that supports American farmers.

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Spelled M-O-I-N-K. Moinkbox. Com/bongino. Moinkbox. Com/bongino. Up next, we talk with Freedom Caucus member, Representative Andy Harris, about the spending bills that have become a big, big topic in the political space because of Donald Trump and John Thune and Speaker Johnson's agreements and disagreements about how this should work. You're going to find out how it works from a guy who's in the trenches. Check this out. I try to bring you the best guests and people who know what's going on at Capitol Hill. One of them, as an integral figure in the House Freedom Caucus, a guy I know very well known for a long time, a great Patriot. Congressman Andy Harris from Maryland. Congressman, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Dan, it's so good to be on the show with you. As you know, I'm a great fan of the show and your podcast.

Well, I appreciate that. We've been a great fan of your work. You have been a big supporter of the Freedom Caucus, the Tea Party Movement. You've been representing your district for a really long time. We go way back from when I ran in Maryland, and unfortunately, we didn't pull that victory out. I wish we had. But you have a really important position now with the Freedom Caucus. There is a debate, I think that's fair enough to say. I won't call it an argument, but a debate going on about, do we do, as President Trump would say, one big, beautiful reconciliation bill, or do we lead more, which I believe the House is leaning towards, or do we lean more towards the Senate side, both controlled by Republicans, where they think it's more tactical to do two bills and take a victory? I'm just going to lay out quickly what I What do you think should happen and tell me if I'm crazy or not. I think, congressmen, the momentum is there right now after the election between DOGE and all of the political capital President Trump has built. I think we go for it. We go for it now.

We go around the country, we do and we transform this government in one big legislative chunk. Where do we stand on that? What's going on behind the scenes?

Sure. The Freedom Cau position has always been we just have to do something right away. The President running out of money to do the work on the border that he needs to do to start the deportation of the criminal illegal aliens. We're agnostic whether or not it's one bill or two bills. We just need it to go and go quickly. Because like you say, we need to build on the capital that we have. We need to deliver the President a victory. If we can do it in one big, beautiful bill quickly, we're all for it. I think our philosophy has pushed the house along to where I do believe we'll probably get a bill out of the budget committee tomorrow, maybe. Then we'll start this process along.

Yeah, I saw that one of the numbers they're looking at for cuts. Hold on, let me get some water. You're a doctor, right? I may need you. I'm Excuse me. One of the numbers I saw in a Wall Street Journal column was they're looking at 4. 5 trillion in cuts. That's a big number. Is that realistic? Believe me, congressman, I'm hoping that happens. My issue with it is every time we talk about cutting some congressman, Republican or Democrat, it's bipartisan, you've seen it, is like, Well, we can't cut that USAID program for a farmer in Accra, Ghana, because he's buying products from this congressman's district in Iowa or Wisconsin. We're going to go bankrupt if we keep that up. Is there a feeling up there like, Hey, it's time to put these parochial interests aside and do what's best for the country? Because if they're not, this thing's going to die on the vine.

Look, I think you're right. The number for the 4. 5 trillion is actually the CBO estimate of what the tax cuts will cost. The number we're talking about for spending a reduction is like two and a half trillion or so. But But Dan, let's put that in perspective. That's two and a half trillion over 10 years. That's 250 billion a year. Our deficit's two trillion. Remember, Elon, yesterday at the White House, said we should cut a trillion dollars a year. The numbers we're even talking about and getting hesitation from some Republican colleagues is way below the number that we actually have to do because like you said, we're right. We had a vote on cutting USAID by 50% Not eliminating it, 50%, and a majority of the Republicans voted against that cut last year.

We're talking to Congressman Andy Harris from Maryland. You've been there. It's not your first term. It's not your first rodeo. You've worked your way up the ranks. You've sadly seen this for a long time. If I'm correct, you got elected right around the Tea Party revolution. I was in Maryland. I don't remember exactly the year, but that's generally the timeline, right?

That's absolutely right. It was a 2010 It was a Tea Party election. We went to Washington to cut the deficit and restore fiscal sanity. Just to remind everyone, the deficit at that time was 300 billion, only 300 billion. We thought that was a large deficit.

Right. Remember the stimulus package when we first crossed the trillion dollar deficit under Obama? We were like, This is the end of the world. My gosh, now it's two trillion. We're $30 trillion in debt. I think I'm saying Americans are like, Is there even a path to pay this thing down? But that leads to my next question. The Democrats up on Capitol Hill, and I'm not giving them political advice, I obviously want them to lose their ideological position is spend this into bankruptcy. I don't want that to win because I want America to win. However, fighting against this Department of Government Efficiency? Congressmen, you deal with Democrats all the time up on the Hill. Let's be candid. They're usually tactically smarter than this. Their ideology is ridiculous, but they're usually not this dumb. This is one of the biggest political losers of all time that I'm really shocked that they don't just come out and go, You know what? We like government, Social Security, Medicare, that's it. It's all great, whatever, their position. But yeah, there's some inefficiencies, and if we're going to have good government, we need to lean and efficient government. But it's not what they're saying at all.

They're calling Elon a Nazi, a fascist. This is an absolute loser for them in the long run.

I couldn't agree with you more. I hope they keep on fighting Doge. I hope they keep on talking about how we need to restore all the funding to USAID so that we can do transgender comic books. I mean, you're right. They are politically tone deaf on this, but that's good for our side.

It's great for our side. It's just shocking to me because It pains me to say it, but I engage in political real politic and not fantasy land. That's why I think the show does okay for people. When you went through the Tea Party, I'll give you a perfect example of how the is usually better at messaging. I remember seeing campaign ads against you when you first ran for re-election, and you may have put out a positive statement about the fair tax one time, which is a great proposal, a consumption tax in lieu, in lieu of an income tax. And the Democrats were hitting you on, Andy Harris wants a big tax. That's not at all what you can look it up. But the point is, the Democrats are usually better at lying than this. This is the thing where it's just Just come out and say, okay, Elon's right. Maybe a paper system that goes into a mine 200 feet below the ground for OPM that government employees manage by hand so we can't even get people to retire the right way. Maybe that's a bad idea. That's the thing that the same Democrat be like, Oh, okay, a little bipartisan agreement on that one.

This is a genuine loser.

No, they bought into the lunacy, and they're still with this attitude of, If Trump supports it, it must be bad. I think they forget what happened back in November. They forget that the American people actually view the federal government with a question mark, and they applaud what's going on. Again, look, as long as they want to stay tone deaf, I'm all for it. You go ahead. I'll have a discussion any day about whether or not we should, again, be doing transgender comic books with federal taxpayer dollars in foreign countries countries.

Right. Congressman Andy Harris. We're talking to Congressman Andy Harris from Maryland House Freedom Caucus. Congressman, one of the things that concerns me is you guys in the Freedom Caucus have been for a really long time fighting for some degree of fiscal sanity. I want to say in advance, I am absolutely on team House Freedom Caucus. This positive statement put an exclamation point at the end. However, here comes the buyer beware. We are not a majority of the majority in the House. I wish we were. It's sad we're not, but we're not. You've got a lot of swing state Republicans who will vote for any amount of spending as long as it makes them look good in their parochial district there. How do we overcome that? The House Freedom Caucus, there were even some rhinos in the news media who will attack you guys as if you're the problem when I think you're the only wing of the Republican Party speaking common sense. We can't just tinker the edges anymore. Does the Freedom Caucus have a plan here with President Trump and the MAGA crowd who are really interested in transformational change to win the narrative war?

Because, sadly, that matters.

Well, I think we won the narrative war with the American people. There's no question about it. What we need, like you say, for a year, for a decade now, it's our 10th anniversary of having the Freedom Cau. For 10 years, we've been talking about fiscal sanity. The real change now is that we have someone like, again, Elon Musk in the oval office yesterday saying, Oh, by the way, we should cut the deficit by $1 trillion next year, and the President nods in approval. The President, with us in the White House last week, came right out and said, Gee, why can't you guys just balance the budget now? We're finding all this wasteful spending. Why can't you do it? Practically, it'll take us a couple of years, but we have the oomph of Elon Musk and the President now behind what we've been calling for for a decade.

We're talking to Andy Harris. It's a bit of a wonky question, but to the audience, you mentioned something before, and you stirred my cerebral cortex here. Started thinking about this. It's a bit wonky, but you know what I'm talking about here. Can we eliminate the pernicious effects of this government scoring system? Because what you said before is accurate, that when these entities come out and say it's 4. 5 trillion in cuts, they count tax cuts as a loss to government revenue using this antiquated scoring system. However, congressman, as you know well, there is no evidence that that's actually true. When George W. Bush enacted that large tax cut, government revenue increased. You can go look it up, folks. I'm not making it up. When Ronald Reagan cut taxes, government revenue didn't go down, it went up. When Donald Trump cut taxes, absent COVID, the tax revenue went up. This is a real messaging problem for us. How How do we fix that so we don't have to deal with these ridiculous assertions like tax cuts cost the government money?

Well, you're absolutely right. When you say there is no evidence that that's true, there's actually evidence that that's false, their claims, because you pointed out the three instance. There is actually evidence that it's false. But the Congressional Budget Office, we've tried to reform it. We're going to try again. The Democrats will stop us because you do need to have 60 votes in the Senate to reform the Congressional Budget Office. But you're That's exactly right. They don't view history as it should be viewed, which is every time we've had a significant tax cut, it will result in increased revenue. Likewise, if we allow this tax cut to expire, the economic benefit will be horrendous. The reason why we're going to balance this on paper is because we are going to assume that by extending these tax cuts and by the regulatory changes of this administration and some of the deficit reduction. We are actually going to reduce the deficit and we are going to grow the economy. That is worth a lot of money. Growing the economy is worth a lot of revenue, as you know, because it happened with the first Trump tax cuts. Congressman, I got to- You understand the economics of it.

Well, I'm not a doctor like you're. The congressman is an actual medical doctor. I tried to get in medical school. I wasn't smart I'm not good enough. But I think I appreciate the compliment. But I just want to say in my not defense, you don't have to be smart to figure this out. What you just said is true. You can actually go to the Treasury's website and say, Jeez, what happened? And after Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush cut taxes, oh, look, government revenue went up. It's not a mystery, man. Just go and put government revenue by a year and look it up. That's what bothers me so much. You're a medical doctor. I'm not. It doesn't require any intelligence at all to go punch it in a website and look yourself. And they will still make this stupid argument that tax cuts are correlated with lower revenue. I'm glad you cleared that up, and I really wish we could clean up this damn scoring system because it's killing us. Congressman Andy Harris, can you come back with us next week and give us an update if you're available on what's happening with this reconciliation bill?

Because this is the biggest legislative item right now. If you have some time next week, we'd love to have Absolutely, Dan. You got it. Thank you for coming on. That's great. Jim, sign him up. Got it on tape. He is a very powerful member of the Freedom Cau, and again, known him a long time. Nothing to do with my spreadsheet Sheets outlook on stuff. But if you're going to get significant cuts, the gentleman you just heard is going to be a part of it because that Freedom Caucus is really coalesced around this idea of finally, finally getting some actual spending cuts for this bloated slob of a government right now, feeding at the trough of the American taxpayer. Another great interview next, but first, let's get to our next sponsor. Hey, one of my favorite traditions is choosing New Year's resolutions. We all get the opportunity, start the year fresh, set goals, tackle new challenges. This new year, I encourage you to learn something new. With Hillsdale College, they have more than 40 free online courses, more than 40, 40 free online courses. Learn about the works of C. S. Lewis, stories in Genesis, The meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church.

With Hillsdale College's free online courses, they're really incredible. I've been enjoying lately American Heritage. It examines the history of America from the colonial era to the present, including the major challenges to the founder's principles and great controversies in America's history, including the current crisis of progressivism. They have centered around the meaning of those basic foundational principles. These courses are self-paced, so you can start whenever and wherever you like. So go today to hillsdale. Edu/dan and enroll. There's no cost. It's easy to get started, and you'll get smarter by the day. You'll become a better debater, too. That's hillsdale. Edu/dan to enroll for free. Hillsdale. Edu/dan. Courses are great. Check them out. The Roman Republic one is fantastic, too. We talk with Tennessee congressman and frequent guest on the show, Tim Burchit. Never a focus group The Talking Point, guys, we address in the beginning. Check this out. I was scrolling through the internet and doing some show prep for later. Tomorrow, the podcast, it's a nonstop show prep cycle. I just enjoy, but I do so much. I saw this congressman. He's been on the show many times, congressman Tim Berch. He was on CNN doing what he does well, debating with a deranged left-wing lunatic who seems to be fabricating fictitious talking points by the Still, and he did a great job welcoming to the show, congressman Tim Birchard from the wonderful state of Tennessee.

Thanks for your time, Tim.

Dan, it's always an honor, brother. I can't say how much I appreciate you and you're putting the message out to America. We I thought we were on the cusp of losing our goddamn country, and you all just keep putting the truth out there, and it fails. Oh, thank you.

Well, you've been doing such a good job. I appreciate that you go on CNN. I know a lot of people have a different opinion, and they say we should boycott these networks. I think it's a mistake. You have a particularly valuable skill. You're a very good debater on TV. And unlike me, you're calmer about it, which is a good thing. I'm learning and I'm getting there. When debating politics, I get fired up. But she was making the commentaire, Pamela Brown, whoever it was, was making some ridiculous point, and I don't play the clip on my podcast tomorrow, but I have you here to talk about it directly. They have access, these Doge people, to these sensitive government systems. Now, number one, the only way to clean up government systems of fraud, waste, and abuse is to have access. But that's such a phony, fraudulent talking point. Nobody cared when the IRS and Lois Lerner were credibly accused of targeting Conservatives using IRS data. Nobody complained congressmen on the left or made a big political point out of the OPM hack by China, where my information was stolen, too. They don't really care about that. They They just care about the gravy train drying up.

That's exactly right. I said in committee, the gravy train is on biscuit wheels, and it's about to run off the track. That stick, it's going to get closed up. If you're from the north, get one of our good Southern people to explain to you how the gravy train and biscuits work. But anyway, all they're doing is attacking Trump, President Trump, and they're attacking Elon Musk. All of a sudden, it's wrong that somebody is wealthy in this country. Capital capitalism, outside of Christianity, capitalism has delivered more people from despair in this world than anything else. Our State Department ought to be more concerned about two things: promoting democracy and promoting capitalism, instead of drag shows down in Central America at taxpayer expense. It's beyond me. And the left has no... They have no argument, Dan. And all they're doing right now is just trying... They're chasing their tail, trying to see if something sticks. Currently, It's, Oh, abuse the billionaire, the billionaire, the billionaire. Well, that billionaire employs hundreds of thousands of Americans right now. I ran into Jeff Bezos at the inauguration, and I said to him, I said, I said, look, man, people were to run you down.

But the people in my area, over in Blunt County, they got a job at Amazon. And guess what they're doing? They're going to put their kids through school. They're going to buy a car. They're going to achieve the American dream and buy a house, and have some financial security. Because those billionaires that they run down, they're out there rolling the dice every dadgum day. It used to be in this country, we were about entrepreneurs and people that took risk. Now it's these little pantyweights that want to sit on the sidelines and wring your hands and talk about how awful we are.

You know what I love about you? Do you even have a focus group that sits around and tells you how to talk? I doubt it, because if you do, you ignore them. I really love that.

My old chief of staff, he was my chief of staff when I was first elected congressman, my press guy, he said, One thing I've never had to do is go behind Tim and say what Tim really meant to say was.

Right. My dad was an old World War- That's in a way unclear.

Yeah. My dad was an old World War II Marine, and Pelaloo, Okinawa, First Marine Division. My mama lost her brother fighting the Nazis. Mama flew an airplane during the Second World War. Kid Rock always says he's the American badass. Well, I got news for him. I was raised by the American badasses, and they didn't meant words. They were good Christian people, but man, they would call you out, and they believed in that First Amendment, Dan. I'm glad it's coming back in vogue.

Well, it reflects in your leadership style. We're talking to congressman Tim Burchit from Tennessee, frequent guest on the show. Congressman, Democrat hypocrisy is nothing new. I've argued over and over that they don't care about looking like hypocrites. They care more about hierarchy and staying in power. They don't care. They know the media will protect them from making two separate points. So I got two things for you here. Number one is, now all of a sudden, they don't like Elon and they don't like billionaires. They don't care about George Soros, though. Criticize. They love him, actually. They care, but they don't care about criticizing billionaire George Soros. Secondly, I'm sure you remember as I do, when Elon was a green champion for them through this electric vehicle car company called Tesla, they loved Elon. So nothing they ever say is true. They have based their entire political guiding ethos, their credo, that everybody's supposed to be on a front. Nothing with them is ever principled.

Nothing, as a matter of fact. Because right now, all they're doing is trying to get something that sticks, Dan. If you caught that DOGE committee that I'm on, that my friend Marjorie Taylor-Green put me on, and she chairs it. All they did was attack him, attacked the fact they kept billionaires, billionaires. I've gotten this group called Indivisible. It's a bunch of radicals, and nobody pays them any attention. They're very frustrated people. They were obviously picked on in school. Now they're getting even with the world, they think. One of their talking points is, Keep calling him a billionaire, keep saying billionaire. Apparently, they've got a focus group where that is a bad thing. I don't know about you, Dan, but I wouldn't mind being a billionaire. I'd be the most benevolent billionaire. That's the freaking American dream, brother.

That's what I think- If the Democrats, Congressmen, want to forfeit over some money to us and collectively make us both billionaires, I'm sure we would gladly accept. Nothing they tell you is true, but I I wanted to hit this talking point because you're up on Capitol Hill and you're dealing with this crop of people up there all the time. The Democrats, I think we can both agree, congressman Birchert, although their ideas are poppycock garbage and they're just misguided, their political tactics are typically better. They're very good at acting with a Borg, Star Trek personality because they're collectivists by nature. Hopey-changey. They're typically good at messaging and using the media. What I can't reconcile is this is such a loser for them, effectively backing government waste. That's what they're doing. The DOGE is pointing out clear examples of sex changes in Guatemala and other stuff. This is such It's an illusion to them. My theory on it is the gravy train has to be so good for them that they've made the calculus, and I like to get your input on this, that they got to keep the money even if it costs them their political jobs, because they will go down in the midterms if they pick government waste as a hill to die on.

I agree. But you got to realize these people that are Marxist and far left, they represent districts that are Marxist and far left. You've got all the working people have left some of these districts, and that's why the big push was for allowing illegals to be counted on the census in a congressional district. They'll never... They allegedly can't vote for them. But what happens is everybody leaves unless the ones that can't or they're on the government tip. So they're going to keep putting them in. There's like five to seven Congressional districts in California alone that would not be in Democrat hands. Look, they don't care what happens to the country. This is evident because of the $36 trillion in debt, every hundred days we have another trillion. All they care about is their little cut. And you'll get that 25, 30 % of far left radicals that somehow run a lot of our school systems and colleges and universities in this country, and they'll stay in power, and they'll just wait for another day. But they don't care. They'll run us into the ground till then. There's always the martyr complex, and they'll play that up very well.

They got these young kids that that never hit a lift, that they think they're entitled to everything and never have had to earn anything. They'll continue down that path. But America has woken up. Donald Trump is lit in a fire into this country, and you're right. All they got to run on is we're going to stand by raising your taxes. The average American pays at least 50 % in taxes if you take state, federal, and local taxes. And you're telling me we're taking $10 million dollars out of your pocket and given circumcisions in Mosean Beach. One even worse, East Tennessee, rural East Tennessee, Upper East Tennessee, and Western North Carolina. Until Donald Trump came into office, they were still without power. They were still without water. And the only person up there was Franklin Graham's group, and a Mountain Strong group, a group of folks I know that all volunteers. And we voted on in Congress, $100 million for a police. And I didn't vote for it because I said one of two things, they'll either steal it or misdirect it. Well, they did both. They sent $54 million to New York City to put a bunch of illegals in fancy motels.

And Americans are doing without combat veterans are living under bridges right now. And it's because of this crazy radical left that we've allowed to come into the Oval, that was in the Oval office for four years. And finally, America has woke up. But I'll tell you, we better be We better hold our guns because we got about 100, 150 days left of this because Congress will lose its nerve, both parties, because you know what's going to happen? Their wife and/or girlfriend who works for one of these agencies or works for one of these companies that profits from it, is going to get their gravy train cut off, and they're going to start derailing it. You will see them behind the scenes like they did to Trump the first time. So America needs to be paying attention. Unquestion.

Wait till they start getting into the Pentagon, Waze. They're going We're going to be Republicans, too. We're like, Well, not that weapons program. That's in my district. But we're going to be like, Hey, the Pentagon says they don't want it. Why should we keep paying for it? Congressman, I got a few minutes left, but I wanted to... You don't need any advice from me on how to talk on TV. You've had so many viral hits on CNN from being a good debater. I've argued you were a master debater. You have to say those words slowly. You'll figure that out later. But there are two things I think we should really, really focus on. Number one, even if you are- Hey, Dan, if you don't, the Democrats will be funding it down in Mozambique, so be careful. I mean, Bill Clinton, you get where I go with that. But that's a good one. You caught me off guard. I like that. See, this guy's good on his feet. But I got about a minute and a half left here that we should focus on, even if you are a supporter of unchecked entitlement programs that need reform, you're like, Social Security, forget it.

We should still make the point, even if you are in that direction, this money is being stolen from the same pot of money you're going to get. So even if we don't even look at Social Security, there is still a one pot of government money. The second thing is, they keep talking about, Well, you're robbing food aid from people in Accra, Ghana, whatever We're in the room. Okay, we're not robbing anything. People need food aid here. The United States comes first. I got about a minute left. Your thoughts on that?

100%. I remember when Reagan was in the White House and he cut a program that it cost to get a dollar in somebody's hand. So he cut that delivery service down and was still getting the dollar to the people, and the left hollered, Oh, he cut half the program. Well, yeah, he did. He cut the bureaucrats out. That's exactly what Trump What are you guys doing? You had a group of protesters in our meeting the other day and disrupted it. I'm sure they were paid by Soros or one of those guys. And they said, Oh, you're cutting out this thing for AIDS, and people that had AIDS. And they marched, and they screamed, and they were escorted out. And if they had just watched you or Fox or somebody, they would have known that Trump had not cut that program out. All they're doing is extreme. They're trying to scare the American public. If you got a no-show government job and you're not a member of the mob working at some construction site, allegedly, you're going to be out of work, out of a job you're not working, and for good reason. We've got to straighten this thing up.

We're 36 trillion in debt. Our great grandchildren cannot afford this. Too many people fought and died for this country. Just throw it away for these dirt bags. Let's take our goddamn country back.

I got to tell you, having you on the Doge, congressman Tim Burchit, I'm going to wrap this up. But having you on the Doge with Marjorie Taylor-Greene, the Doge Committee, is going to be a tremendous messaging asset. And please continue to go on these liberal networks. There's no sense preaching to the choir. You're doing a great job, and we really appreciate. I'm going to cover your hit with Pamela Brown, actually on tomorrow's show, too. So thanks a lot for coming on today. We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Dan. People in Tennessee love you, brother.

Love you guys, too, man. Love you in Tennessee. He's a good man. No squishes on this show. You know the rules. But I met him personally. Super nice guy. Remember when we did the show in Nashville, Jim? He stopped by and just a great guy. You do got some good people up there. That DOGE committee is going to be where it's at. That's where we're going to start really, really ringing out the inefficiencies that is coming. Another great interview next, but first, let's get to our next sponsor. Have you seen Seeing the news from some economists a depression, not a recession, depression by the year 2030. We could be in a perfect storm if Social Security and Medicare had a breaking point with the largest generation hitting retirement. Smaller workforce usually means a smaller tax base. Pair that with our growing national debt and rising cost of living, we can have a really, really big problem. What are you doing now to protect your family for the future? Well, gold has been a safe haven in hard economic times, and birch gold makes it easy to diversify a portion of your savings into physical gold.

Birch gold will help you transition an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold, and it doesn't cost you a penny out of pocket. Help protect your future today. Text Dan to 98989, and get your free info kit on gold and a copy of the ultimate guide for gold in the Trump era with a forward by Donald Trump Jr. There's no obligation, only information. I buy my gold from Birch Gold. You can trust them, too. Text my name, Dan, to the number 9899 today. Message and data rates apply. Finally, we talk with the Daily Wires, Michael Knowles about his viral debate with a group of LGBTQIABIOPC 2+1. I'm losing track of it all. Activists, it was amazing. Here we're. We love this guest. We've had him on the show many times. He has his own show, which is really wonderful, the Michael Knowle Show, which is eponymously named after him. Some of his segments have recently gone viral on X and other platforms. He engaged in a very respectful but substantive debate with a group of transgender activists about the issue. Some of the cuts are just amazing. We wanted to have him on to talk about that and the news of the day.

Michael Knowles, always good to have you back. Thanks for joining us.

Dan, thank you for having me. Always a pleasure to be here.

You were great on that debate. It's gone nuclear on X. Everybody's been sharing it. One, you have an asset I don't have in these debates. You're I get so angry at stupid talking points. Sometimes it's just hard to contain it. But you're debating with this activist there for the transgender cause about what a man and a woman is. At one point, the person you're debating says that they cite their lived experience somehow attacking you that you can't comment on these items and these issues. Your comeback was great. I have lived experience. I'm alive right now. But Just to sum up the question, I find it interesting these liberal activists will comment on all kinds of matters they have no direct experience with at all. Spying, law enforcement, guns, abortion, everything. But yet when you comment on males or females, it's not your lived experience.

It's a great observation, Dan. They're experts on everything. The minute we have a COVID vaccine, they're all mRNA specialists. Anytime there's any gun violence, they all know absolutely everything about But yes, whenever we question them, we're not permitted to comment. It's especially a silly point to make during a debate, because the whole premise of a debate is that there is such a thing as objective truth, and we can all perceive something about it, we can all reason about it and have ideas and persuade one another. If you make the claim that you can only speak about things that are within the purview of your direct experience, then what you're really saying is, We can't speak about It all. No one can have any debates, no one can have any conversations. Then what you're saying is that you can't have self-government because the whole premise of the self-government is that we can know something about the world, we can persuade our fellow citizens, and we can figure out how we want to live. Really, it's just a way to concede a debate implicitly, which I think is basically what these people did.

Yeah, and you were fantastic. I watched multiple clips from it, and I don't think there was a... Usually, there's at least one moment where there seems to be... I've debated a lot of people on my show live, and there's someone always throw some curveball at you, and it's not necessarily you don't know about it, but you just didn't see that coming because it's such a weird thing. There's no portion of that debate, and I encourage you to follow him on X Michael Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. It's worth your time. His show is amazing. But just watch, and you'll see how it's done. I'd like you to comment on this, and I may have asked you this before. Forgive me. I'm trying to be redundant, but my My theory on this whole LGBTQIA, BIO, POC, 2 plus, I mean, really, it just keeps... I'm not even sure. Yeah, I'm really not being disrespectful, but I just really don't know where it ends anymore, is that this is a really... This is another progressive proxy fight where it's just a war on objective truth. We as Conservatives, Thomas Sow calls it the conflict divisions. We have this worldview that there is objective truth, like you just said, and facts and data will help us get there.

Liberals don't like that because if there's objective truth, there are objective values. Everything has to be discretionary, and that's where government fills the hole. We get to treat people differently. We get to screw this guy over, screw that guy over. They need to have government be the arbiter and be subjective in how they treat people. They can't have simple facts out there. You ever see their war on math? It's the same thing with their war on gender. They know it's true. They're not stupid. They just can't have any objective truth out there. It's just a proxy fight for filling the vacuum with subjective government.

I think you're totally right about that. It is a proxy fight. Sometimes people will say, Why are we spending so much time talking about this relatively small percentage of the population. My answer is always, Look, I didn't bring it up. I'm not the one changing the laws and taking away women's bathrooms and the like. You guys brought it up. For a reason, because as you say, Dan, it is a proxy battle about something much deeper. I think there are two things going on with the left's obsession with LGBT. The first one is, I think that they want to get people riled up as pertains to their appetites. Sex is a really important part of human nature and always has been. If you can get people really consumed with all kinds of passions and lusts, they're not going to be in their right minds, and it's going to be much easier to manipulate them. I think that's the first little political objective that's going on. But then the second one, I think, is that because sex is so important to human nature, really what the left is doing is just waging a war, an attempt to redefine human nature.

You've seen this for hundreds of years. Perhaps most notably, the Jacobins, and later the Communists, said that they could redefine human nature. Marx, in the Theses on Feuerbach, I think it was in number 6, says that philosophy, up until this point, has sought to understand nature, but what he endeavors to do is to change human nature. When the left pushes this ideology that says a man can be a woman or something like that, what he's doing is not just trying to flatter a small percentage of society. He's trying to make a claim about human nature. He's saying, Look, if we can change a man into a woman, then we can do anything. Then we, through the power of the state and our leftist ideology, are omnipotent. We are going to be gods among men. There is nothing that you can do to stop us. That's That's an ideology that's much, much older than the rainbow flag.

Yeah. We're talking to Michael Knowles. He has his own show. You should check it out, the Michael Knowles show. It's fantastic. Michael, do you think that this Democrat hill to die on that they've chosen in the culture wars? The government wars, right now, they're choosing to die on the Doge Hill because they love government waste. That's how it usually winds up in their pocket, so they don't want the rock getting overturned. But on the culture war, it really seems like they're not going to let this go. I mean, they just got smoked in an election. You'd think there'd be some observance in the mirror of, Hey, we've got a problem here, but you just don't see it in mass. You see a couple Carville types coming out and saying, Hey, this was stupid. But I'm going to play a clip when we're off the air next with you and from this Alex Karp on CNBC. He was like, Hey, I'm a Democrat, but this is the Democrat Party committing suicide right in front of our eyes. I mean, do you see any introspection in the Bill Clinton Democrat Leadership Council era where they said, Hey, we got to cut this crap out and get back to good old fashioned American values within my party, or is it just the fallen on the sword thing?

I think you're definitely seeing introspection among the corporate and elite Democrats. You mentioned Alex Karp or even just Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or any of these billionaire masters of the universe who usually side with the Dems. You notice they were all lining up at the Trump inauguration. They're cooling it with the DEI policies and the LGBT policies, too. However, the ideologs are not giving up. I think it's because they can't. Their political program is one of maximizing individual autonomy, especially their own autonomy, and of really total control over all aspects of human life. If they come out all of a sudden after November and they say, You know what? Actually, we are going to respect national boundaries. You know what? Actually, we are going to respect respect the definition of marriage and family. We are going to respect parents rights and the rights of local communities and just objective truth. If they come out and say that, they will be conceding a major limit on their own power. I just don't see any way that the AOCs of the world can do that. You're going to have the Alex Carp and the Mark Zuckerbergs banging their heads against the wall saying, Guys, we're not going to win another election for 50 years if you keep this up.

But if you're a true believer, if you're a real leftist ideologue, and you've already They come this far. I don't really see how you turn around.

If you want to watch Michael's full debate, it's on an episode of a show called Jubilee, by the way. You can see the clips of it on X. Check them out, Michael Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Michael, I love your perspective. You're a very insightful guy, and we've been friends a long time on the current situation in Ukraine. One of your colleagues at the Daily Wire, Ben Shapier, I did this show about a year ago, and Ben and I had a good 10-minute conversation about this. It was interesting because when we took the time to listen to each other, I think we both found some value, even though we have a different perspective on it and what others had to say. The left doesn't do that. What's really frustrating me about this argument is it's become so completely emotional that it's devoid of reason logic and facts. The argument has become Putin bad, Zalinsky good, which is almost childlike, the argument. It's gotten to the point where you say something like, Hey, man, I'm open to the idea that we need international partners. We all live on this rock called Earth. But is anyone going to present an avenue and an off-ramp to this war that actually makes sense?

Because I haven't heard it yet. The first thing from Simpletons is, you're definitely a Putin puppet. It's just really distracting. Now with this news about Zalinsky and the rare earth minerals thing, I'm thinking to myself, Trump's the spreadsheets guy. He wants an answer. Nobody's giving it to him, and then they get mad at him for saying, Hey, man, produce the goods or get off the shot clock.

I totally agree, Dan. The propaganda has been so frustrating because believe it or not, I'm old enough to remember before the war broke out in Ukraine, I'm old enough to remember when even our liberal establishment media would point out that Ukraine is a very corrupt country. When the establishment media would point out that Ukraine has elements within its militias and military that are neo-nazis, that were actually booted off of social media platforms such as Facebook. Then the The moment that the war breaks out, all of a sudden we're told that Ukraine is the picture of a Madisonian democracy. It's basically the 51st state. Forget about all that Nazi stuff. Actually, if you don't support Ukraine now, you're a Nazi. I thought, Look, please. I understand it's a complex situation, but please respect our intelligence enough to recognize that reasonable minds might disagree. I think going back to the 1990s, you have very intelligent foreign policy thinkers like Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, all All saying that Ukraine needs to exist as a buffer nation. There's a role for buffer states. They can mediate between greater powers, and that it would be crazy for NATO, for instance, to expand into Ukraine, that that might lead to more war and more bloodshed.

When President Trump comes out and he says, This war never would have started on my watch, I know people think he's exaggerating or boasting. I think he is 100% right. There was one administration in the last 20 years on whose watch Vladimir Putin has not further invaded another country. One Bush, wasn't Obama, wasn't Biden, it was Donald Trump. Now you've got this war that has broken out because of feckless leadership, and you've got two possibilities. You can either continue the liberal American grand strategy of allowing Ukraine to be a meat grinder and hoping to kill as many Russian soldiers as you possibly can and sacrificing the young men of Ukraine to do it. Or you can say, Some years now has been enough, and we need to wind this down, blessed are the Peacermakers, because by the way, if we let this war continue on, it could spiral on beyond the guesses of our genius elite liberal class. You could be in a really serious regional or even global war. There's nothing bootlicking to Vladimir Putin about that realistic foreign policy. I think, happily, the adults are back in charge, and we're going to see a serious resolution.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. That was really unbelievably well stated. The simple minds are not on On our side, I am perfectly willing to concede that Ukraine didn't deserve this. Ukrainian people didn't deserve that. No one's saying that. No one's even mildly suggesting that. But treating this like, Oh, good guy, bad guy, and leaving out the big, bold bullet point that the guy's got nuclear weapons. I'm not saying it's got to dictate everything we do. It's just hopeless, naive, and stupid. I don't want to be told I'm a Putin puppet for recognizing reality. That's a real thing. Michael, you have a great show. You're my wife's favorite podcast. She loves you. You're the best. I love your show, too, because it's so well done. It's called the Michael Knowles Show. K-n-o-w-l-e-s. He's fantastic. Michael, thanks a lot for your time. Great job on that debate. Really, really good work. We appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Dan. Always great to be with you. I always say your wife has excellent taste in men, both podcasters and husbands. She does.

Thank you, brother. That well said. Michael Knowles, folks. Yes, she does. She loved. The show is amazing. He's a really, as you can tell, extremely intelligent guy, and both me and her are like magnets towards people who make us. I always want to be the dumbest guy in the room. Why would you want to be the dumbest guy in the room? No, I'm serious. If you're in a room with people smarter than you, you'll always leave smarter. Don't hang around with people where you're the smartest person in the room. You can only leave dumber. Am I right or am I right? Law of average, regressive to the mean. Hang out with people smarter than. Thanks for checking out the podcast. You can always listen on Rumble and tune into the radio show every day. Go to bongino. Com/stationfinder to find out where we're on, a station near you. See you on Monday. You just heard Dan Bongino.