2021 American Political Scene

[JRT]

How Dan Bongino is building a right-wing media empire on his own terms

30 December 2021
All Things Considered
National Public Radio

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Dan Bongino has worn many hats. In the '90s, he was a police officer, then a Secret Service agent. He ran for Congress three times, failed all three times, then pivoted to right-wing commentary. Now he hosts one of the most successful radio shows in the country on which he questions vaccine mandates, stokes fear towards the left and drums up support for a Trump campaign in 2024.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE DAN BONGINO SHOW")

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: From the NYPD to the Secret Service to behind the microphone, taking the fight to the radical left and the putrid swap - you're listening to "The Dan Bongino Show."

KELLY: Dan Bongino and the huge right-wing platform he is building are the focus of a new piece in The New Yorker. Evan Osnos wrote it, and he's here now. Hey there.

EVAN OSNOS: Hi there.

KELLY: So Bongino, he's on air now every weekday, noon to 3. This is Rush Limbaugh's old slot. How does a typical "Dan Bongino Show" go?

OSNOS: Well, it generally starts in a state of high agitation. He's very angry in his presentation, and I think that is sort of the dominant aesthetic that one gets as they listen. And then he kind of walks through a range of topics that are - would be described as current affairs. So he'll talk about the pandemic and vaccines. He's fiercely opposed to vaccine mandates. He calls masks face diapers.

He goes also into questions of politics and also into elections. And he talks about the 2020 election as, to use his words, rigged. And he doesn't go so far as to say that he thinks it was stolen, but he reminds his listeners or encourages them to see ways in which the system is not to be trusted.

KELLY: There will be people listening who have never listened to Dan Bongino, who've maybe never heard of Dan Bongino, so I want to quote a line from your piece - "in recent months, according to Facebook data, Bongino's (ph) page has attracted more engagement than those of the New York (ph) Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal combined." It's incredible. How influential is he?

OSNOS: He has tremendous reach in his world, which is to say the people who listen to him are very devoted to him. And then people who don't know much about him know almost nothing about him, which is really a reflection of this period in our media culture when we do live in these very separate spaces, but even more so than it was, for instance, 25 years ago and the rise of Rush Limbaugh, who had a slightly larger footprint.

In Dan Bongino's case, I mean, he - it's partly what he does on the radio, it's partly what he does in his podcast and on a television show on Fox, and it's also what he does on social media. And he's very effective at figuring out what is going to get the social media algorithms, like Facebook, to promote his work. And so as a result, he has been able to reach a huge number of people that I think would surprise any of us who don't otherwise have reason to listen to his show.

KELLY: Yeah. It sounds like one of the questions you set out to answer in interviewing him and reporting this piece was whether he actually believes a lot of the stuff he says on air; you know, the comments that face masks are face diapers, that - he talked about the FBI and CIA and that they tried to rig the elections in 2016 and 2020. Where did you land on this? Is this stuff he actually believes? Is it in the service of ratings, of profits, what?

OSNOS: Well, what he has created is extremely profitable. He makes a lot of money by selling ads on his programs. I mean, if you listen on the course of an afternoon, he'll sell ads for shotguns, for steaks, for mattresses, for holsters. And in between all of this, he is promoting his political message.

KELLY: He's just swapping back and forth between the ads and the headlines and the analysis and all of it?

OSNOS: Literally going back and forth. Sometimes he'll pause in the middle of a polemic about the vaccine in order to read an ad for a particular product. He tacks back and forth between selling a gun and selling this canard about vaccines. And for some number of Americans, there comes a point at which the boundary between those two ideas is hard to discern. And that's dangerous as hell.

KELLY: I'll note the headline of your piece - "Dan Bongino And The Big Business Of Returning Trump To Power." What's the endgame?

OSNOS: In the medium term, the endgame is to promote Donald Trump's candidacy as a potential president again. And he's very clear about that on his show. He says, I hope Donald Trump runs in 2024. And he says that's partly because he thinks he will, as he put it, clean house in the intelligence community and elsewhere.

But the larger endgame is that he is seeking to undermine the credibility and the authority of existing media industries, you know, frankly, things like radio and television and magazines. And what he's creating is an alternative set of platforms. He wants to create his own kind of Twitter, his own YouTube because, as he says, as long as we're playing on the other ones, they can kick us off, and he doesn't want to be subject to that kind of pressure.

I should say, at this point, this is really sort of more of a pipe dream because these are small. But the idea is giving pause to a lot of folks who believe that his ideas are dangerous because of his commitment to create not just content but an infrastructure to carry it.

KELLY: Well, and what you're describing is a platform, a machine, that sounds like it would have legs no matter what Donald Trump decides to do or not do in 2024.

OSNOS: That's part of the business, is he's saying, look, I am tying myself into the customers for the Trump idea, but I also want to exist beyond that. And, you know, he is a person who recognizes Trump may not succeed. And he, you know, makes a point to flatter Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who might be a potential Republican candidate.

And at the same time, I think fundamentally, this is about what he once called on a video stream the product. And the product is a podcast, a radio show and a set of political ideas that are determined to challenge the consensus view on masks, vaccines and the integrity of American elections.

KELLY: What surprised you in reporting this piece, as someone who knows the media world very well, has worked within it for years?

OSNOS: I think I was surprised by how much the ideas that Donald Trump represented when he was president are being carried on and amplified and really are almost stronger today among his followers a year after the events of January 6 at the Capitol than they were then. I came away, frankly, very worried about the future of American politics and our political stability because the ideas that animated people at the Capitol on that day are alive and well in many ways on the airwaves. And that's not going away.

KELLY: Evan Osnos of the New Yorker. His new piece is titled "Dan Bongino And The Big Business Of Returning Trump To Power." Evan Osnos, thanks.

OSNOS: Thank you, Mary Louise.

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...

[zraver]

All he says about vaccines are: A talk to your doctor and make the best decision for you about them.

B: he got vaxxed and boosted (cancer survivor) and it did not work and he ended up with a breakthrough case serious enough to require monoclonal antibody treatment.

He absolutely believes in building out a completely seperate infrastructure away from liberals. Everything from commenting on the difference in U-Haul rates going to and away from Florida and Texas, to getting away from the censorious Left on social media. He owns/ is an owner in Rumble, Locals and Parker iirc. He thinks conservatives should completely decent of any involvement with liberal states or instatutional and let them stew in their own progressive juices. He tells conservatives to pack up and move to red states and tells liberals to stay out in the messes they made.

He detests political violence. He calls it a redline you cannot take back ( I agree).

He absolutely scorches Leftist media 5x a week on radio over the bias, misinformation and lies. However unlike say Hannity who often doesn't have any proof to his wilder claims. Dan backs every assertion up. He says, "I show you the receipts", and tells his listeners to go look for themselves.

His pacing is aggressive, but if that's stichk or bring a kid from the Bronx I don't know.

[TopHatter]

Opinion: Donald Trump Is Not Going To Prison
If Donald Trump runs for president again in 2024, Robert Palmer, a 54-year-old Florida man, will still be in prison for assaulting U.S. Capitol Police officers during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Palmer, who was sentenced to 63 months, has received the longest sentence of the more than 150 defendants who have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the storming of the U.S. Capitol. He was just one of the hundreds of Trump supporters who rushed law enforcement in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election.

After losing to Democrat Joe Biden in November 2020, Trump spent weeks promoting the lie that the election was stolen from him, culminating in the attack the following January.

Trump incited the riot that left five people dead and dozens of law enforcement officers injured. But while countless people are facing consequences for what they did that day, Trump still hasn’t.

Instead, in a darkly ironic twist, Palmer and countless others will watch behind bars should Trump launch his next presidential bid.

The punishments for the insurrection have ranged widely. Texas real estate agent Jenna Ryan, who famously said she “definitely” wasn’t going to jail because she has blond hair and white skin, received 60 days. Paul Hodgkins, a Floridian, was sentenced to eight months in prison for entering the Senate chamber. Hundreds of people have been charged with various crimes, so there are more sentences for defendants on the way. But one year later, it’s becoming increasingly likely that Trump will not be held accountable.

I’ve heard this question from Democrats in my life and seen tweets from large public interest groups: Why isn’t Donald Trump in prison?

The answer is simple: People like him rarely end up behind bars.

As his supporters languish, incarcerated, Trump’s inner circle will continue plotting to finish destroying what’s left of American democracy.

It seems as if the worst thing that’s happened to Trump as a result of the insurrection is that he’s been banned from Twitter. Although it’s still early, Trump is still leading among Republicans as a choice for the 2024 presidential nominee. And, more important, according to an AP/NORC poll, only 30% of Republicans believe the U.S. Capitol insurrection was “somewhat” violent, despite the multitude of videos depicting just how much violence occurred that day. Republican lawmakers are either busy promoting the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, keeping quiet out of a desire to keep their office or, in the case of Rep. Liz Cheney, being ostracized for embracing reality. Are these the conditions under which Trump is supposed to face consequences for his actions?

Here’s how the criminal justice system really functions in this country. Marginalized people, such as people of color, poor people, and religious and gender minorities, are more likely to be swept up in the system. Black people are more likely to receive life in prison and death sentences. Those with fewer resources often face harsher punishments due to insufficient counsel. Meanwhile, whiter and wealthier people often receive more lenient sentences if they are charged at all.

Many of the people facing charges in the insurrection are awaiting their day in court at the federal jail in the District of Columbia, known for its harsh conditions. Trump supporters see the insurrectionists as political prisoners, but nonetheless they don’t seem too concerned about the conditions under which they are held. Aside from some camera-ready moments from Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), when they inexplicably linked horrific conditions of the jail to critical race theory, conservatives have paid scant attention to their actual state of incarceration. Instead, the GOP machine is working to change voting laws to circumvent that pesky problem of not having enough votes to win an election outright.

During his inauguration speech, President Joe Biden vowed to combat right-wing extremism, music to the ears of the people who had just witnessed the horror of Jan. 6. But, of course, that’s easier said than done. Congress, for its part, has been engaged in an investigation of the insurrection, and though many more details have been brought to light, it’s unlikely to end in the imprisonment of the former president.

The issue at hand is that there isn’t a precedent for this type of crisis. Before Trump, every outgoing president graciously accepted a loss and peacefully handed over power because that was simply the norm; it’s what every president did before him. As a result, we’re ill-equipped to handle norm-breakers. I guess the Founding Fathers, beloved as they are to many in the U.S., forgot to write into the Constitution what to do when a president incites an insurrection.

It’s important to remember that Trump going to prison would be a long way from solving the country’s current problem. A prison sentence may not even stop him from running for president, and there are plenty of Trumps-in-training waiting in the wings who would be more than thrilled to carry the mantle.

The damage he and his ilk wrought on our democracy is here to stay. It’s better to embrace the obvious. Donald Trump is not going to prison. But at least he can’t tweet.
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[TopHatter]

Op-Ed: Today's right-wing conspiracy theory mentality can be traced back to the John Birch Society
If you’re looking for the roots of today’s bizarre conspiracy-and-anger-driven politics, you need to look further back than the presidency of Donald Trump or even the rise of social media or talk radio — back to the accusatory, inflammatory, wild-eyed rhetoric of the John Birch Society in the 1960s and 1970s.

It’s beginning to fade into history, but the John Birch Society was once the most formidable anticommunist organization of the Cold War era. Named for an American army captain killed by Chinese communists, it was founded in 1958 by Robert Welch, a North Carolina-born candy magnate. (His company created the caramel “Sugar Daddy” on a stick.) Most Americans learned of the society after March 20, 1961, when it was widely reported that Welch had called former President Eisenhower a communist.

It was an outrageous and ludicrous assertion, but Welch was just getting started in weaving his tapestry of paranoia. He saw communist conspiracies lurking in colleges, high schools and the government.

Fluoride was being used to enervate Americans in advance of the coming communist occupation, he said.

Welch also called the civil rights movement a communist conspiracy.

Welch’s conspiracies fed postwar America’s growing suspicion of government and its belief in cover-ups in high places. He had particular influence in California, which played an outsize role in the growth of the John Birch Society.

With epicenters in Orange County and Los Angeles, California’s “Birchers” were instrumental in helping to ensure Richard Nixon’s gubernatorial loss in 1962, Barry Goldwater’s Republican presidential nomination in 1964 and Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial victory in 1966. Several California members of Congress were Birchers, including Reps. Edgar Hiestand and John Rousselot, who both represented parts of Los Angeles County.

As the years passed, Welch’s theories grew wilder. He eventually concluded that communism was just another name for the conspiracy begun by the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776. He also said that the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderbergers (a group that sought to foster dialogue between Europe and North America) were the puppet masters of U.S. foreign and economic interests. The society also called for the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations and for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.

In the 1970s, the John Birch Society became even more influential. Despite a widespread belief that the “responsible” right of William F. Buckley had purged the conservative movement of the Birchers, Welch was never excommunicated. His style of American conservatism remained potent.

In those years, Welch broadened the society’s focus by opposing abortion, high taxation and sex education — issues that propelled the Reagan revolution. Bircher Lewis Uhler was instrumental in passing Proposition 13 to reduce California’s property taxes in 1978.

All the while, Welch continued to press his extreme theories.

In the 1970s, Americans began receiving some confirmation that perhaps conspiracies weren’t really as rare and nutty as they seemed. In 1973 and 1974, Watergate demonstrated that a president could secretly abuse his constitutional authority. Americans learned that more government officials had spied for the Soviet Union and had worked with mobsters in an unsuccessful effort to kill a foreign head of state. The CIA turned out to have conducted LSD experiments on Americans. After a while, anything seemed plausible. Over the years that followed, the number of people who said they trusted the government plummeted.

Welch is important today because, beginning in the 1980s and continuing on, his world has become ours. The depth of his influence on the transformation of the Republican Party — and therefore on America — has never been fully appreciated. His style of politics remained extremely potent after his death in 1985.

Reagan espoused conspiracy theories, such as his claim that Gerald Ford staged assassination attempts against himself to win sympathy votes. In the 1990s, partisanship became more central, ideology more crucial. On the radical fringe of the far right, private militia members armed themselves to the teeth. Both major parties, they claimed, wanted to end American sovereignty. After the sieges at Ruby Ridge and Waco in 1992 and 1993, the militia movement grew even more conspiracy-focused.

It was only a few years later, in 1996, that Alex Jones started his conspiratorial radio show “The Final Edition.” Jones asserted that the government had planned the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995 and had plotted to murder the Branch Davidians in Waco. Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton were in a similar vein. Hillary covered up the murder of Vince Foster, Limbaugh suggested.

On the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, Jones declared that “all terrorism that we’ve looked at, from the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City to Waco, has been government actions.” By 2006, at least one-third of Americans thought their government had either planned the attacks of 9/11 or allowed them to happen. And conspiracy theories began to thrive on new social media sites: Facebook. YouTube. Twitter. Facts went unchecked.

Tea party members argued that a conspiracy of globalists had caused the economic downturn. In 2012, Donald Trump tweeted “an extremely credible source ... told me @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.” By 2015, Trump was running for president.

And so it continues. Welch-like logic and Welch-like rhetoric have taken over much of the right with false myths that tempt the weak mind. More than two-thirds of Republicans still don’t believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. The QAnon conspiracy theory — which holds that Democrats in the so-called Deep State undermined Trump to cover up their child-sex racket — has at least one adherent in Congress.

Millions of Americans won’t take vaccines to prevent COVID-19 because they don’t trust science.

Today, all of us are stuck on the roller coaster of Robert Welch’s political imagination, and we can’t get off.
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[JRT]

McCarthy says he will kick Dems off committees if GOP takes House
11 January 2022

California Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy vowed during an interview with Breitbart to remove some Democrats from their committee appointments if the GOP takes control of the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

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[JRT]

'What a moron': Dr. Anthony Fauci on Senator Roger Marshall after heated exchange
11 January 2022

After a heated exchange with Republican Senator Roger Marshall over Dr. Anthony Fauci's financial disclosures, the top U.S. infectious disease official could be heard muttering ‘what a moron’ on a hot mic.

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[TopHatter]

YouTube temporarily suspends, demonetizes Dan Bongino's channel

YouTube took action against conservative commentator Dan Bongino’s channel Friday, suspending it for violating the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy and demonetizing it for at least 30 days.

The weeklong posting suspension stems from a video where Bongino said that masks are “useless” in stopping the spread of the disease.

YouTube’s COVID-19 policy specifically prohibits content denying the effectiveness of wearing masks, which the vast majority of the scientific community agrees reduces the risk of infection.

The video was Bongino’s first “strike” under the policy, resulting in a one-week suspension from posting.

If the Bongino account violates the policy again within a 90-day window, a two-week suspension would be applied. If a third violation were accrued in the same timeframe, the channel would be permanently removed.

YouTube also removed Bongino’s channel from its Partner Program, which allows users to monetize their content through advertising, on Friday for “repeatedly violating” guidelines on harmful and dangerous acts. A company spokesperson declined to specify what remark triggered the removal from the program.

Bongino, who currently hosts shows on Fox News and Fox Nation, will be able to reapply for the program in 30 days if the underlying issues that led to the removal are addressed.
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It's almost like these lowlifes want to prolong the COVID agony for their shee..., er, listeners.

Maybe Bongino should start a talk show on OAN? Oh, right....