← The Dan Bongino Show
The Dan Bongino Show
Are We Really Being Told The Full Story? | Episode 190
01:00:21
Manhunt for the Brown University shooter reaches a critical point; Tensions with Venezuela escalate; and more information about the drug boat strikes emerges.
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Hey, everybody. Welcome to Vince on a Wednesday. Great to have you with us today. We've got a very big show. The president of the United States just announced that we have a complete and total blockade of an entire country going on. And if you're like me, you probably wonder yourself how does this affect my life? What does this have to do with me? I'm glad you're asking that question. We're gonna explore that in just a moment. I'm gonna give you details that the media are definitely not giving you about, about what's going on in Venezuela. That is ahead on the program. Also, additionally, we've got these boat strikes we've been doing. The United States has been and Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, they go over to the United States Senate to give an update on all of that. I've got the details there, what the senators are saying about that subject and how ridiculous these Democrats continue to be. Also at Brown University, the hunt for the gunman continues. And the Brown University staff, well, I think we are crossing from incompetence to cover up. I'll explore the details. That's all ahead on this edition of Vince. Also, Rachel Bovard joins us. We'll talk about the latest in the United States Senate and why you and I are trying to so aggressively browbeat them into submission to save our country. That's all I had. We've got a lot to get to. You already know the name Blackout Coffee, by the way. Blackout coffee, which powers up this show in more ways than one. It's probably the official coffee of all of us here at Silverlock. There is a reason for that. It's bold, it's unapologetic. It's America first coffee. It's roasted fresh right here in the United States, not grocery store junk. Blackout coffee delivers rich, high quality roasts that actually taste like freedom. And now you can set it and you can forget it. With auto refill and recurring delivery, this means no more running out, no more watered down backups, just your favorite roast. No delivered fresh on your schedule. Pick your favorite roast and how often you want it delivered. And not only do you get a discount, but you also get double the rewards and free shipping right to your doorstep. You do. And it's a delicious cup of coffee. I drink my coffee black and I love blackout coffee. You will, too. Here's what you do. Go to blackoutcoffee.com Vince. Use the code Vince. That's V I, N C E. You get 20% off your first order. Amazing. Whether you're into the bold dark roasts, flavored coffee or even instant. Blackout's got your back. Real coffee, no compromise. Blackoutcoffee.com Vince, get yours now. Okay, here's the thing. I just asked the chat, if you're listening to the podcast, I asked the chat as we were about to get the show started, does everyone want me to address the Susie Wiles Vanity Fair thing from yesterday, from Tuesday? And I got pretty overwhelming yeses. We got some nos, but we got some overwhelming yeses. So I'll give you my quick rundown on this story if you'd like. And here's what I'm thinking about all of it. So yesterday morning, the New York Times, I said Vanity Fair, but let me start. The New York Times runs a derivative piece, like a condensed, heavily distorted recitation of the Vanity Fair interviews that Susie Wiles has apparently been doing over the course of the entire Trump administration. She did 11 of these things with a guy called Chris Whipple, which is a hilarious name, but she was talking to this guy pretty candidly. And in her candid conversations with this Vanity Fair reporter, she said a couple of things, including that she said that President Trump has an alcoholic's personality. Now, that got drilled down to just that quote. The New York Times delivered it as, oh, he's got an alcoholic personality. Susie Wiles crapping all over President Trump. And they made it seem like she was just completely out of control and she hated everybody around her and she was shit talking the whole administration. That was the frame up from the New York Times yesterday. But if you spend five minutes actually looking for the details on all of this, you begin to realize that the New York Times had really distorted what the hell Susie Wiles was even saying. And Vanity Fair, for its part, was also trying to imply that there was some sort of underlying drama going on between various members of the administration. Susie Wiles, the president, J.D. vance, Marco Rubio. It was all kind of one big wrap up smear. And insofar as Susie Wiles has any culpability here, it's in talking to Vanity Fair. Nothing that she said in these interviews. And by the way, she's not denying any of the quotes. Nothing that she said is actually controversial or crazy or worth throwing a shit fit over. In fact, it was all fine. I have some quibbles, a couple policy quibbles with her. I'll get into those in just a moment. But for the most part, it was totally fine. Certainly the interpersonal stuff, I wasn't scandalized by any of it. The worst thing is that she talked to Vanity Fair. Who gives a shit about Vanity Fair? Why are we even talking to these useless, dried up, shriveled, feckless, dangerous in the past, certainly, and useless publications who have no bearing on the average American. It's like kind of like an old way of thinking. It's like, why don't we suck up the Vanity Fair? Maybe they'll give us glowing coverage. They're not going to give you glowing coverage. They took a bunch of shitty photos of you, put them online, and then tried to crap all over you after you gave them rampant access. How many times do you have to get smacked by these evildoers before you realize they're never going to play ball with you, they're never going to be nice to you, and you're never going to come out looking even fair, Forget good, even just given a fair treatment. So stop talking to Vanity Fair. That's the sin in all this. But the rest of it, it's a joke. It's a joke. It used to be in the old days, a decade ago or 20 years ago, if you had an interview that didn't go well with Vanity Fair, oh, no, it could actually signal the end of your political career. You'd have to be like, getting your resume together, get your cardboard box, carry everything out of the office. Nowadays, it's a total joke. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Yesterday, the whole Trump administration rallied behind Susie Wiles. They're like, she's great. She's actually kind of holding the whole thing together. She's been a wonderful chief of staff. And as Don Jr said yesterday, while so many other Republicans were abandoning Donald Trump after the 2020 election, Suzy Wiles didn't. She stayed by his side, she fought with him, and she helped get him across the finish line in 2024. Susie Wiles is loyal to President Trump, and in turn, President Trump is loyal to her. Yesterday, President Trump said he's perfectly fine with Susie Wiles. He's very happy with her. They met yesterday, they talked, and everything seems to be going great. And God willing, it continues to be the case. But let me dwell on some of the big items for a moment. The quotes that everybody's obsessing over this whole thing that Donald Trump has an alcoholic's personality. What do you think she's talking about? What do you think she's even talking about? Donald Trump doesn't drink. So the media are pretending, obviously, like, Donald Trump is a total drunk. That explains why he's so crazy. No, it doesn't even make any sense. That recitation of facts. So once you actually start looking at the quotes, here's what you learn. Susie Wiles was reflecting on the big personalities that she's known throughout her own life that would include her own father, the famous Pat Summerall. Most of us know him by his long time existence and work in the booth, in the football booth alongside John Madden, the legendary Pat Summerall. Pat Summerall was an alcoholic. She grew up with an alcoholic father. And fortunately for Pat Summerall and their family, the final two decades of his life, he was completely sober. He was able to conquer that particular issue in his life. But he was a big personality, is what she was explaining to this interviewer. She was trying to open up her heart. She was explaining the way she thinks about the world. And she said that alcoholics tend to, especially when they're drinking, have these grandiose views of what they can achieve, these sort of unfettered views of the world and what they can actually accomplish. And if you've ever encountered somebody like this, you know exactly what she's talking about. But here's the difference. When she says Donald Trump has an alcoholic's personality, she's not saying he's a drunk, she's saying that he similarly has limitless views about what he's able to achieve, except he doesn't drink. So you get someone who is literally incapacitated by their drinking, saying ridiculous grandiose things, versus a guy who has limitless thinking, who's not a drunk. He's not a drunk at all. In fact, he has spent his life using that limitless thinking to achieve great wealth for himself, great success for himself. And he's now turned around and he's using those skills for the rest of us. So what was really going on was Susie Wiles was just being plain spoken. She was talking to you like talking to that reporter as if he was her friend. Like the kind of thing you might say in your kitchen over a glass of wine as you assess what it's like to work for President Trump. And by the way, if that's the worst that she said about him, the real story is that Susie Wiles actually thinks very highly of Donald Trump. She wasn't crapping on him. In her most candid moments, she was saying that he's a man with limitless thinking. It's actually a compliment for the guy. So the whole thing has been turned into something that it's not is basically the point that I'm making. And Vanity Fair, for its part, in the way that they distorted this too, they described a moment where J.D. vance was having his photos taken, and he says to the photographer, I'll pay you $100 for every person who you take a photo of who looks shittier than I do. In other words, like, make everybody else look crappy. That was J.D. vance's joke. And then he goes, and if it's Marco, I'll give you $1,000. Vanity Fair described that as, quote, underlying tension being revealed in the administration. Now, I don't know what world these idiots, but here's the world that I come from. If I tell a photographer, hey, will you make sure that all my buddies look shittier than I do, would you do that? What is that? Well, one, it's self effacing, suggesting that I look shitty to begin with, and two, it's ribbing. It's just giving your boys a little bit of shit. That's the whole point. These humorless idiots write it down as if it's a sign of drama in the administration. Now, is there gonna be disagreements, and perhaps very vocal disagreements going on between people inside of any administration? Yes, these are a bunch of alphas. These are type A personalities, all showing up to work every day with perhaps in some cases small, but also big differences of opinion about the way to get things done. But they all work for the final decider, the one guy, the guy you elected the President of the United States. And that's the way that guy has to forge ahead. We live in a world where there's way less drama in this Trump administration than there was in the first one. So while everybody's trying to, like, create drama like Vanity Fair in the New York Times, the rest of us, we should be laughing it off. It's stupid. And you and I both know, how many rodeos have we been through now? We both know that we are literally one truth social post away from the media, moving on to the next thing and pretending like it's the smear or the scandal that's gonna take down the Trump presidency. So again, AJD 1063, I hope that you're not talking to me because that's a dumb opinion. Stop making excuses for unforced errors. I'm not making excuses for any unforced errors. I started my conversation by saying Susie Wiles should not have talked to Vanity Fair. That's the mistake here. But the rest of it, the lasting consequences, it's bullshit. It means nothing. It means nothing. Literally, everyone's gonna move on. The people who love Trump and the people who hate him, everybody's gonna move on. I've seen this too many times. I have a Vulcan, like, assessment of the way these things go. It's all very stupid. It's all completely stupid. Also, apparently Susie Wiles said in the quotes that J.D. vance is. What did he say? What did she say? She said he's been a conspiracy theorist for a decade. And J.D. yesterday goes. He was in Allentown, Pennsylvania, yesterday. And he goes, conspiracy theorists. You're damn right I'm a conspiracy theorist. The only things I'm a conspiracy theorist about are all the things that end up being real conspiracies. He says, and boy, do we have a lot of evidence for that. You know, Trump Russia collusion was a complete hoax. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was, of course, the source of the virus. You know, the masks don't work. There's, you know, the jab doesn't stop transmission. You know, the jab actually has, in many cases, terrible consequences for people. Oh, he's a conspiracy theorist. At this point, if you don't theorize about the conspiracies that are being done against us, you have not been paying attention to the conspiracies that have been done against us. So Good. Good for J.D. vance. That's it. All right. Calypso Bike says let's. All right, then let's move on. And because Calypso Bikes is the producer of this program, we will now move on. Thank you, Calypso. All right, so here's the thing that we get. So I said to you a moment ago, we get. We're one truth social post away from everybody going hysterical about something else. Well, sure enough, we got a truth social post. We got a truth social post last night from the President of the United States about Venezuela. And of course, the media are going apoplectic, apoplectic about all of this. And here's what the President said. You ready for this? I'm gonna break it down for you. Cuz I think people need to understand what the hell's going on in Venezuela. Our media have no idea, by the way. Like, we've got all sorts of people in the legacy press. What is Trump talking about? He's just making stuff up. He's really. He's making stuff up. All right, let's assess it. Here's what President Trump said in the truth Social piece. Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before. Until such time as they return to the United States of America. All of the oil, land and other assets that they previously stole from us. You got that? Oil, land, other assets that they previously stole from us. Dwell on that. All right, we'll get back to it. The illegitimate Maduro regime is using oil from these stolen oil fields to finance themselves. Drug, terrorism, human trafficking, murder, and kidnapping. For the theft of our assets and many other reasons, including terrorism, drug smuggling, and human trafficking, the Venezuelan regime has been designated a foreign terrorist organization. Therefore, today I am ordering a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela. The illegal aliens and the criminals that the Maduro regime has sent into the United States during the weak and inept Biden administration are now being returned to Venezuela at a rapid pace. America will not allow criminals, terrorists, or other countries to rob, threaten, or harm our nation, and likewise will not allow a hostile regime to take our oil, our land, or any other assets, all of which must be returned to the United States immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. All right, so here's the reaction we're seeing today. And I saw it immediately last night after President Trump posted this. He posted this 646 Eastern Time. And going into last night, into the evening, I can't tell you how many legacy media idiots I saw posting online. President Trump is making this up. Venezuela hasn't taken anything from us. What land did Venezuela take? What oil did they take? What is he even talking about? He's so crazy. Get him out of there. The guy's a nut job. And as usual, they're either ignorant or they're lying, or some degree of both. And here's what's going on. The United States built Venezuela's oil industry. Let me repeat that. The United States is responsible. US Industry is responsible for building Venezuela's oil industry. That is true. But these days, the United States does not control what we built. Why is that? Did we sell it off willingly? Did we give it to them as a gift? Did we say, hey, we're just gonna walk away from the largest proven reserves on the entire planet? Hundreds of billions of barrels of oil have been found. Is that what we're doing? No, that's not what we did. In fact, as you know, the former Communist leader of that country, Hugo Chavez, and now Nicolas Maduro, his understudy, have, over the course of the last few decades, been stealing from us. So when the President says they were stealing, they were literally stealing from us. How did they do that? Well, if you go back to, for instance, 2007. Let's go to 2007. 2007, when you still have Hugo Chavez in charge. Check out this headline at the time. This is from the Record online. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips and had to pull out of their Venezuela oil projects. Why is that? Well, the US oil giants Exxon and ConocoPhillips decided that they were not going to sell majority stakes in their Venezuelan oil presence to the country of Venezuela. In that case, Hugo Chavez was demanding, you want to stay in my country, you have to sell the majority of your company's operations here to us. We will take, not just sell it, we're gonna take majority ownership of it. So that way we can collect the profits of your work, of your efforts, of what you built. We want the profits was the position that Hugo Chavez took. So they began to steal it. They stole it. And so Exxon and Conoco said, we're not interested in that, we're not doing that. So they moved out of the country entirely. Exxon and ConocoPhillips said, We're getting out now. Chevron did not. By the way, Chevron gave up a majority of the control of their operations in Venezuela to the Venezuelans. They made a decision to give up huge portions of their operations rather than give up all of their business in the country. But they did it under duress. They did it with a gun to their head. So Chevron was forced to give up a ton. And then ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil, they just left the country entirely. And when they did, they left their contracts behind, their oil drilling behind, their infrastructure behind. And Venezuela seized all of it. They stole it. They stole it. So after we built it, Venezuela stole it. That's what happened under Hugo Chavez. Additionally, this happened again under Nicolas Maduro. Maduro also has seized oil assets from oil companies based in the United States, American oil companies, including in 2013 when Maduro seized oil rigs from a Houston based company called Superior Energy Services. They have a state oil monopoly. They steal everything from us. And finally President Trump is saying, we're gonna do something about this. So insofar as, like the media are pretending like this doesn't happen, this is a total fiction. They haven't taken anything from us. That's not true at all. It's entirely true that the Venezuelans, led by Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, have been stealing what we built and they didn't. That's just the truth. And so that brings us to kind of the point of the President's remarks. Now what is the President doing, excuse me, what is Venezuela doing with the ill gotten oil proceeds that they're stealing from us? Well, the answer to that is they're funding terror, they're funding the drug trade, they're using their oil industry to supercharge and underbid us, by the way, supercharge some of the biggest adversaries we have on the planet. You know that 80% of Venezuela's oil exports go to China? 80%. So the Chinese are all over South America. They're definitely in bed with Venezuela and they're taking massive amounts of oil exports directly from that country, which again is under sanctions from the United States. That if for those of you playing along at home, you'll be reminded that's also true from Iran as well. Remember, Iran sends 90% of its oil exports to China. So China is the reason that these horrific regimes who are continuing creating chaos on our planet, often at the expense of the United States of America, specifically China, is the reason that they continue to be supercharged. So if you're wondering what's leading to this, well, there are a whole bunch of things leading to this moment. From the sanctions to the Chinese influence over Venezuela, to the President trying to restore order, especially in the Western hemisphere, to the drug trade, to the trafficking, to the cartels. President Trump is sincere about this. And now the Navy is surrounding the country of Venezuela and the President just announced it now. I've got more on this in a moment. Cuz I do want to talk about, you know, what the hell is going on with American energy right now and what is the administration saying about this? We got a big address from the President of the United States today. I think this is a big opportunity for him to lay a lot of this out. More on that in just a moment on this edition of Vince. But listen up. For a limited time, Patriot Mobile is running their red, White and Blue Friday promotion. And here's a little secret for you. You don't have to do this on a Friday, but it is an amazing deal. Your once or your chance to get a free smartphone just for switching to America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. It's a brand new phone, absolutely free while supplies last. For over 12 years now, Patriot Mobile has defended faith, family and freedom while giving you the same or better premium coverage on all three major US Networks. Unlimited data, mobile hotspots, international roaming, they do it all. When you switch, you don't sacrifice quality or service. Hundreds of thousands of people have joined the movement to help support a company that believes in the first Amendment, the second Amendment, the sanctity of life, our veterans and our first responders switching so easy. Keep your number, keep your phone, or even upgrade to that free smartphone today. Their 100% US based team can activate you in just minutes. Go to patriot mobile.com vince or call 972-WATRIOT and use the promo code Vince. Now don't wait. This limited time offer ends on December 31st. That's Patreon mobile.com vince or call nine seven two Patriot with the promo code Vince. Join me and make that switch today. By the way, Stephen Miller is weighing in this morning on what's going on. I like Stephen Miller because he's smart and very capable of explaining what the hell is happening in our country right now. Miller said the following. He said American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Created it its tyrannical expropriation. Expropriation is a fancy word for theft. The tyrannical theft of our stuff was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property ever. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs. Which leads me to what the President of the United States should do tonight. President Trump has announced that he has an address to the nation this evening at 9pm it is incumbent on this White House to explain all of this as carefully and as clearly as humanly possible. And I think it's gonna take multiple people. President Trump obviously has a very blunt presentation. He's just gonna state flatly the most basic recitation of the facts. He's very good at it, great communicator, great at, I think, winning people over. So he's gonna be really important to this mission. But tonight he as he's talking about looking back at this last year and then looking forward to the next. I think it's incumbent on the President and the White House to really carefully explain why is it that the United States Navy is surrounding an entire country right now and blockading the oil that's going in and out of it. I think Americans deserve a really clear request from our leaders that we all buy in to what's going on. That's really critical because I know your instincts are like mine, which is we've arrived at a place where we're suspicious of the use of our military by any party. We want clear answers on how this directly serves the American interest. Now, I've pointed out this is the theft of American goods. This is the theft of American industry. That is true. President Trump is not lying about that and all of this has been used to finance some of the most dastardly and despicable things that have happened to the United States of America. And as we know from US History, it is important that we have control of the Western Hemisphere. We can't allow China to have a foothold all over South America. We can't allow this chaos to continue. We need to bring stability to our hemisphere as the Monroe doctrine for the 21st century and President Trump seems to be enforcing it. But you and I can't be the only ones who are thinking like this and talking about this. And so I think it's important that the president use tonight to explain really clearly what's going on. And then beyond that, send the guys out who are great at explaining it. Send the Stephen Millers out, send the J.D. vance's out, send the Energy Secretary Chris Wright out, send Pete Hegseth out. Just get just. And Caroline Levitt, who could forget Caroline Levitt, deploy the field and just get everybody out there and making sure that the American people are bought in. That's really, really crystal clear. And we'll see where this goes from here. What one other thing on energy, and then we've got so much to get to and I'm hoping I can fit it all in today. One other thing on energy, right now, energy prices are relatively low, are relatively low. And that's for a number of reasons. President Trump has kicked down all the regulatory barriers to American energy production. That's been a huge thing. It's been great for the American energy industry. But another facet of this is President Trump has not gotten in the way and in fact has kind of encouraged all the oil producing countries around the world that we're working with, in particular the Arab countries, to keep producing vast quantities of energy to export all around the planet because President Trump is trying to bring energy prices down entirely. Now, I'll tell you, for those of you work in the American energy industry, this is not, ironically, as much as President Trump is not getting in the way in a regulatory way, ironically, it's also put a damper on the profits of the industry, the energy industry. And with oil, with barrel prices getting down to around $55 a barrel, you know, you talk to oil energy experts and they're like, well, it's better if it's in between like 60 to $80 a barrel, because if it is, you're generating profits, you're covering your expenses, you can drill new wells. It creates incentives to actually pursue more energy production. So we're in an interesting moment. What's happening right now is President Trump is encouraging both American energy production and also international production. He's also doing that. And the reason for that, I think you and I can kind of instinctively tell, is he's trying to bring down energy prices as low as possible because he knows that that's gonna supercharge the rest of the economy. The cheaper the energy is, the more the rest of the economy will be stimulated. Does that mean the energy industry is gonna kind of take it in the shorts for a little bit? Potentially. Potentially. But the long tail expectations are if the whole economy starts skyrocketing as a result of these moves, both bringing down the cost of energy and bringing down the cost of the dollar, which President Trump is trying to do, especially by replacing Jerome Powell coming on coming up next year. If he can do those things, he thinks he's gonna be able to stimulate a lot of capital investment in the United States. It's gonna require a lot more energy consumption and that'll be a boon in the long run to the American energy industry. So he's trying to pull off kind of a perfect landing, don't you think? The idea is like he wants to stick this landing and he's moving as aggressively as possible to do that. So this conversation about energy that we're looking at right now, which includes Venezuela, to be clear, is very much all keeping in line with President Trump overall goal to stimulate the American economy to unseen levels. He's trying to attract investment, trying to get energy prices down, try to lower the price of the dollar, get a whole bunch of capital investment going into the next year and wham, bam, thank you, ma'. Am. The whole economy skyrockets. But to do this, it's not simple. This is complicated business, folks, and President Trump is trying to attack it on all fronts. So in case you're wondering what the hell's going on here, that seems to be what's going on here. That's my best assessment. We've got more ahead on the program. We've got. I wanna get to what is going on at Brown University. I think we are moving from a situation where these are like the incompetent Keystone Cops to they are actively covering up details of what happened at Brown University this past weekend. There is a cover up going on. Can you smell it? I can smell it too. We're gonna explore. Why are they doing press conferences. Have you noticed how stupid these press conferences are? Every time they open their fat sucks. They have nothing to offer but way more skepticism about what the hell's coming out of their mouths. So we'll explore that in just a moment. Before we get there, this mission of trying to fix up the country really matters, too. Rachel Bovard's gonna join us in a second. We're gonna chat with her about what's going on in the United States Senate. Because the filibuster still continues to be a barrier to saving our country. The blue slip continues to be a barrier to saving our country. And candidly, and most importantly, we have a number of United States senators who call themselves Republicans who are huge barriers to fixing our country. Rachel Bovard knows all about it. We'll talk to her in just a moment. All ahead on this edition of events. I know it's busy. I know we've got a lot to get to, but we try and pack it all in. We really do. You know, Christmas used to mean something very simple. Remember the simple thing it meant? It meant the birth of Christ. 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So with my discount Code Vince show, you can get their best selling Dream powder for just 39 bucks. Go to shopbeam.com Vinceshow today. Beam is wonderful. Great product, delicious and a great sponsor of this program. Also, thank you to Bone Charge for supporting our program. The Bone Charge Infrared Sauna blanket is my specialty. I love this thing. I've got a sauna at home thanks to the Bone Charge Infrared Sauna blanket. And Allison loves the red light face mask. My wife adores this thing. She wears it each and every night. And it's been these things have been huge game changers for us. Very easy to use. Very easy to use. I wrap myself up in that infrared sauna blanket. I let the infrared heat work its magic. It's created a huge difference for me. I relax better. I rejuvenate. I feel so much better. And then Allison loves the red light face mask because it does a lot of good things for your skin. It helps improve the texture, reduces inflammation. She's seen fantastic results. It's just like having a mini spa treatment right in our house. And now's a great time of year to do what we're doing. It's currently the Bone Charge holiday sale. So you can save a massive 25% off. Just head to bonecharge b o n charge.com and your 25% off code will be automatically added to your order. The sale's going to end on the 31st of December, December 31st, 2025. So hurry. Don't miss this massive chance to save big on your favorite Bone Charge products. Bone Charge is just wonderful. These statements and products have not been evaluated by the fda. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. Yeah. Nate the Great asks me. Nate the Great, Never late. That's a great screen name. Asks me question for Vince. How about this guy that they're scrubbing his online activity? I'm getting to it. Nate the Great Never late. We've got some details for you on that. He's talking about what's going on at Brown University. Brown University is like, literally erasing entire web pages right now, not answering questions, not giving us any details, and deleting things that already exist on the Internet. What the hell is this exactly? We'll talk about it. That's ahead. But first, Rachel Bovard is here with us today. She joins us from the Conservative Policy Institute. She's got a lot of experience in the United States Senate, and we turn to her oh so frequently for information on what the heck is going on in the Senate. Rachel Bovard, great to see you. Merry Christmas.
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Merry Christmas, Vince. Thanks for having me.
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Okay, so President Trump is pounding the drum again this week. Get rid of the blue slip. J.D. vance, pounding the drum again. Get rid of the blue slip. And we just heard John Thune say a couple days ago, in light of all of this, yeah, we're not doing that. We're not getting rid of the blue slip. We're not doing it again. For people who maybe have not been checked in on this conversation a ton, the blue slip, it just gives Democrats veto authority over any US Attorney or federal judge pick in their own states, which is insane, and we shouldn't be doing that. How do you assess the current state of play in this fight? Do you think we're reaching a level that the Senate's gonna start taking this seriously?
- [34:41]
B
You know, I think so. Mostly because I've never understood after you've nuked the filibuster on the executive calendar. So you've gotten rid of the filibuster for all categories of nominations from Cabinet officials, the Supreme Court judges, up and down on the ledger, yet you are going to, like, die on the Hill of preserving the blue slip, which isn't even in the Senate rules. It's a custom. It's a tradition. It's never made any sense to me. The only way I think you could defend the blue slip is if you still had the filibuster. But you've gotten rid of all minority rights on the executive side. Right. For nominations and things like that. So why do you still have the blue blue slip? It's made no sense to me, but Senate Republicans and even some Democrats continue to defend it, which, again, you've already knew the filibuster. Why are you dying on the Hill of this tradition, this custom where Democrats are using it now to actually stymie the Trump agenda. If you want accountability for everything that's happened, if you want accountability for Arctic Frost, for Jack Smith, for all this stuff, you have to have US Attorneys that are being blocked by the blue slip process.
- [35:46]
A
So there's a defense of the blue slip and the filibuster, by the way, that I'm seeing emerge right now on the right. People are saying, look, Vince, if we get rid of the blue slip, if we get rid of the filibuster, it's irrelevant because we don't have enough Republican votes anyway to achieve these things. That's the dirty little secret. We don't have enough Republican votes. We've got Susan Collins, we've got Lisa Murkowski, we've got what's his face, Thom Tillis. We've got all these people who are getting in the way of us achieving things. So getting rid of the blue slip and the filibusters, irrelevant. My sense of this, Rachel, is okay, at least we get them on the record. I mean, step two is get these guys on the record. You want to vote against the Trump agenda, You want to vote against the American people? Let's get you on the record instead of just hiding behind the filibuster and the blue slip.
- [36:33]
B
Yeah, I actually agree with that critique on the Legislative side. When you're talking about the legislative filibuster, I think it's a strategic question.
- [36:40]
A
You.
- [36:40]
B
You nuke it when you have the votes to do the transformational change to make sure Republicans never lose power again. Because that's what Democrats say they will do with it. Right? We know what they will do if they nuke the filibuster, because they've said it. They will add Puerto Rico as a state. They will add D.C. as a state. They will overturn election law. They will pack the Supreme Court. They will lock in their power base, and Republicans will never win again. I want us to have that power, right? So in my mind, I agree with the critique. We don't currently have the votes. You know, when I talk to people, what would you do if you nuke the legislative filibuster? They say, oh, we could pass the SAVE Act.
- [37:12]
A
Really?
- [37:12]
B
Because Mitch McConnell has been sitting on that in committee. Mitch McConnell is bottling up the SAVE act, which, if people are unfamiliar with it, requires proof of citizenship to vote. For some reason, Mitch McConnell finds that offensive. So I actually do think it's correct on the legislative side to say we probably don't have 51 to do anything that we want to do. But the blue slip is separate from that. Right? The blue slip is simply about putting these nominees on the floor. And I think you have a much harder case to make that Republicans wouldn't support U.S. attorneys, wouldn't support enforcing the law by filling these slots. So I do think it's a much harder case to make on the blue slip side. I see these as separate questions. And again, I find the blue slip so much harder to defend because you've already nuked the filibuster. On the executive side, there is no filibuster for confirmations anymore. So why are you standing on custom and tradition once you've already gotten rid of minority rights?
- [38:06]
A
I'm sorry, but two things. One, on the filibuster, if we can dwell on it for a moment, I'm pretty convinced at this moment that it doesn't matter what Republicans do. Democrats are gonna blow through it the second they can. They tried before. And the fact that we saw. Who is it? Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema got in the way. They got drummed out of the Senate as a result of that. So I think Democrats have made it really clear what they intend to do the filibuster, the second they have power over it. So I don't really know why Republicans are wasting any more time on the clock. Even if they don't have the votes. But the other side of this is, okay, Mitch McConnell's being an obstructionist in committee, but John Thune can still upend that. If he wanted to, he could force that to a full vote in the Senate. And yet Thune is a barrier to success for the rest of us right now. Are they really that wedded to the institutionalism? Do they really think that the world after Donald Trump is gonna return to kind of. The American public doesn't pay attention to the activities of the Senate. They just get to do their handshakes and go on their merry way. They really think that that world is coming back.
- [39:09]
B
Yes. I say this, you know, having again, spent a lot of time with these senators behind closed doors for years, that is how they treat it. All through the Biden administration, that was what the conversations in the Republican conference were like. They never talked about Donald Trump. They never talked about the base of their party. They really do think that, you know, not. Not every Republican senator, but a good portion of them think that, you know, once we get through this Trump moment, we can just go back to business as usual, which is transacting with Democrats, you know, making decisions for big corporations, all this stuff. There's a lot of them that really do think that, you know, people forget the Senate, in many ways, is a lagging indicator of the rest of the country. And a little bit of that is by design. Right. The founders kind of set it up to be slow that way, but it has really become a problem, I think, for a lot of these senators that they try to just wait out the base of their party. They can just wait out this moment because the centrifugal pull of this town is still Bushism. And there are people that made their careers during that administration. They have done very well for themselves. And, you know, all the incentive structures around them want to go back to that. So there definitely is that, you know, portion of Senate Republicans that do think that this is just a period of time they have to get through, and then everything's gonna snap back to normal.
- [40:23]
A
Yeah, I mean, look. But the reality you mentioned, talk about the founders and what they set up in the United States Senate. And if we could dwell on the two things you and I are talking about, the reality is, like, they weren't there for the majority of the existence of the Senate. The filibuster was not certainly the silent filibuster, nowhere near the majority of the Senate. That's only a recent invention in the last few decades. And the blue slip is only an invention of the last century as well. So the majority of our country's history in the United States Senate did not include either of these things. And both of them are pretty theatrical and flagrant. Let's see, barriers to us getting our country back together right now. Maybe if you'd asked me a couple years ago, I would have probably been in the camp of saying, well, let's be careful. I don't want to give Democrats any weapons that they shouldn't have access to. But I think we've reached a moment where I think it's Pollyannish to think that they're not going to seize whatever they can the moment they have access to the levers of power.
- [41:20]
B
Well, let me give you this food for thought as well. The filibuster as it exists has always been part of the tradition of the Senate. The Senate rules are actually built around endless debate. What's different is the silent filibuster. And that's what you talked about, this reaching 60 votes. That's the cloture rule, and that was instituted in 1917. The Senate Rules up until that point and continued still today, always provided ways to get around the filibuster. It just requires a lot of hard work. It requires all senators to be on the floor to present a quorum. It requires them to wait out Democrats to force them to speak. Right. The traditional talking filibuster. Senate Republicans at any moment could be forcing Democrats into this position. And I think that was what was so frustrating for many of us, watching the government shutdown. Democrats shut down the government and then looks like they went to Club Med. Right. They faced no consequence for doing that, when in fact, John Thune and the Republican Conference could have forced consequences on them. Trent Lott, a former majority leader in the Senate, used to say, there's only two rules in the Senate, exhaustion and unanimous consent. And you only get to the second when you reached the first. You have to force physical consequences on a filibustering minority. We've just never seen that drive, that level of discipline and that oomph, you know, for better lack of a better word from Senate Republicans. And I think that's what so frustrating.
- [42:40]
A
What needs to happen right now? What would you, if you could, if you could make something happen right now in order to try and force this issue, what would it be? I mean, should. Should President Trump bear down on the Senate right now? We're as far away from the midterms as you can be right now, but it's getting closer. And if we Have a lot of Republican infighting leading up to the midterms. That won't reflect well on the party should the fight happen as we speak.
- [43:01]
B
You know, I think the blue slip, you know, protecting is kind of indefensible at this point. All of the lawfare that's continuing against Republicans or the lack of accountability for it now hangs on Senate Republicans. And I putting laying that at their feet is appropriate on the filibuster. You know, if I were the White House, I would simply say, no more laziness from you. I expect you to extract consequences.
- [43:21]
A
You.
- [43:21]
B
You need to use the levers of power in your institution to force Democrats to the floor to speak. No more excuses from John Thune. No more excuses from the Republican conference. They have the ability to do this. For whatever reason, they seem to gaslight the White House and tell them they can't do anything. I would full measure. I expect the full measure of what you can do. Otherwise, you're at fault here. Everything lies on you.
- [43:44]
A
I have a theory as to why some of these Republicans are keeping the blue slip in place. They don't want Donald Trump to prosecute James Comey or any of these other people. They don't want that to happen because the thinking is that this will be a political drag on Republicans if Donald Trump's administration is seen as pursuing retribution against people who don't deserve it or something. In other words, like it'll be a political drag. But what did people vote for? What did people vote for? We voted for. I was just gonna say accountability. Like this would be delivering what you and I fought for, which is a restoration of justice in our country.
- [44:25]
B
No, that's exactly right. If you wanna see a drag on the conference, you wanna see a drag on Republicans. Don't do anything.
- [44:31]
A
Yes, right.
- [44:31]
B
Continue to do this. Don't staff up these critical posts and, you know, get to the end of four years and say, what has been done? Who has been held accountable? Because that kind of accountability and catharsis is exactly what the basic specs. Because they've just seen tyranny. They have just seen tyranny and no one has gone to jail and no one has been held accountable. You want lack of turnout in the midterms? Give them that over and over again and that's what will happen.
- [44:54]
A
Don't deflate the people who sent you there. My God, why do we have to give this advice from here? It's so crazy, I can't even believe it. Rachel Bovard, thank you, as always, for giving us clarity on what the hell's going on in our country? Specifically the Senate, as always, thank you very much.
- [45:09]
B
Of course. Merry Christmas.
- [45:10]
A
Merry Christmas to you. The great Rachel Bovard from the Conservative Policy Institute with, by the way, a reminder that the filibuster is not in any way. The silent filibuster is not really the barrier here. It's always, of course, it's Republicans. Of course, you get to the bottom of it. You're like, oh, you actually have options. You're not using them. Yeah, show up. If all of these Republicans showed up to the floor of the Senate and forced the Senate to conduct normal affairs, they win. But they refuse to do that. They refuse to do it. So in the meantime, the rest of us are left trying to browbeat them into submission. And, boy, I tell you what, you know what? Republican senators, not all of them, but you know what a lot of Republican senators, the establishment types, don't like the fact that we're talking about this at all. The fact that we're exploring how do your rules work, exactly. How can we actually achieve something for this country? How do we get accountability? The fact that you and I are having this conversation, infuriating to them. Good. Let's do more of that. Let's do more of that. Okay. Let's explore what the hell's going on at Brown University. It's crazy story. Crazy story out of Brown. So over the weekend, of course, killer walks into an economics classroom and kills two students, including the vice president of the College Republicans and an Uzbek national who's there studying to become a neurosurgeon, wounds nine others and then just leaves, Leaves. He left. It wasn't one of these, like, you know, shootings that. Waiting for the cops to get there in a barricaded situation, shoot out with the cops. The guy killed human beings and then just left the classroom, suggesting that he was on a mission of some kind. And then he left. And then we get the world's crappiest video footage in the pursuit of trying to find this guy. And so yesterday, we keep getting these, like, burps of new video footage. These are from various neighborhood cameras. Why is it Wednesday? Why is it Wednesday of this week, Tuesday of the week, yesterday? We finally get this stuff for. For an attack that happened on Saturday. Here's the video footage from Tuesday. Cut four. Providence, Rhode Island, Police releasing this camera footage. Watch. You see the guy walking past these various homes. He's dressed in. We thought it was an all dark kind of black jacket, but now with a little bit of higher Quality. It kind of looks like a brown jacket on the bottom, black on the shoulders. That's clearly a fat dude walking around. He's got his. He's kind of like a winter hat on. He's got a Covid mask on. Meandering around at times with his hands behind his back. And he just. He was just outside, you know, just outside the Brown University, walking around in the nearby neighborhood. And so a lot of community cameras capture this footage. This is, it's true, higher quality footage than we had before. We had grainy silhouettes before, but we don't have the guy in custody. And these press conferences, have you noticed how useless they've been? They've been utterly useless. Yesterday, one of the idiot reporters asked, you see the COVID mask on this guy? One of the idiot reporters in the room? It's not just government officials who are idiots. There was an idiot reporter there yesterday who asked, how can locals who are trying to find the suspect distinguish between the fat guy and. And an ICE agent who might be wearing a mask? Are you serious? I've never seen an ICE agent that looks like that. Here's the idiot asking the question. Cut five thing that can be differentiated between this person and an ICE agent who would be masked up, walking through town and not be approached by the police in the same way this person was. Again, we've worked really hard to build the trust of our community here in Providence, and I'm telling you that that phone number, 401272, 3121, rings in this building and is answered by Providence police and or FBI. Those are the agencies that are processing, running down and investigating any relevant information. And we urge folks, if you have relevant information, to please use that phone number. I'm sorry, what? That wasn't even responsive to the question. The question was idiotic, and the answer was mindless. The question was, how are people gonna be able to tell the difference between an ICE agent and a murderer? What? Get out of here, dude. What a waste of everyone's time to equate those two things. And then the mayor, Mayor Smiley was just like, people should call the phone number. You're useless. You're utterly useless. And then here's another one for you. Why is it that all of the camera footage that we're getting right now is just from the neighborhood? It's just from people's houses. What about at the school? Doesn't Brown University. How much would people pay to go to Brown? Brown's an expensive college. How come the campus doesn't have usable Cameras at all. What's that all about? Cut six. Why are there no useful cameras in the whole school? Reporters demanded to know yesterday. Cameras in the hallway. But they don't show the suspect. Or Brown is not releasing them. Or you're not releasing them to us. How does a multi million dollar school not have a bunch of cameras in the hallway? So let me try to explain that. So as President Patson knows, there was a major addition put on that building within the last five years or so. That is a modern building attached to a much older one in the back. So it doesn't come as a surprise to me at least that there are cameras in the newer part of the building and there is video footage. Okay, so there's the back part of the building, old part and front part, new part. This is occurs in the old part. I. Forget it. Just enough. Enough. Just forget it. This is so stupid. I can't even handle it anymore. Oh, it's an old building and cameras didn't exist when they put the old building. What are you talking about? Install cameras? How many places old buildings have installed cameras? I mean, the cost of a camera is virtually nothing relatively. The school has ridiculous amounts of money. Oh, we didn't have cameras installed because it's old. This is idiotic stuff. How about just say if there really are no cameras there for whatever reason, this is stupid. They should have had cameras there. That. We're changing that immediately. How about actual answers? What is wrong with these people? Here's another one. The president of Brown is another idiot. Her name is Christine Paxson and she was asked yesterday, why didn't the emergency sirens go off at the school? Why didn't the emergency. The school has emergency sirens. It's called the Brown siren program. Why didn't the Brown siren program go off during the shooting? And she doesn't even know her campus's own policies. But that doesn't stop her from confidently being wrong. Listen to this. You believe that Brown had the precautions and safety measures in place before the shooting that were appropriate and necessary?
- [52:12]
C
I do. And in fact, I'm glad you mentioned the sirens because I think there's been some misinformation about that. We have two security systems that we can activate in time of an emergency. One is a system that sends out text messages, messages, phone calls, emails. And it was activated within minutes of the incident. Those messages went out to 20,000 individuals. So all alerts. We also have a system of sirens. There are three sirens placed across campus. Those get activated when there is a broad scale Emergency. And we want people to rush into buildings in the case of an affluence, active shooter. Activating that system could have caused people to rush into Beres and Holly. So that's not a system that we would ever use in the case of an active shooter.
- [53:06]
A
So just to follow up.
- [53:10]
B
It does.
- [53:10]
A
Say on the website when it was launched that it is for an active shooter.
- [53:15]
C
It depends on the circumstances and where the active shooter would be. But you don't want to ever get people rushing into buildings that might be the site of an active shooting. That's my understanding.
- [53:26]
A
Go ahead, sir. My understanding. Aren't you the president? Shouldn't you know, by the way, she's just making shit up. These people are a waste of oxygen. She's just making shit up. The reporter was right, by the way. On the Brown University website, they literally have a section of the website where it says examples of emergencies where the Brown Siren would likely be activated include hostile, intruder, and in parentheses, active shooter. So the university's own policies are that when an active shooter is killing people on campus, the Brown siren is going. By the way, what a weird name for a siren. The Brown Siren. I know it's the name of the school, but come on, come on, what the hell is this? She doesn't even know the policies. Yes, the active shooter siren is supposed to go off. It did not. So the school. Did the school screw up? Yeah, literally everything. It screwed up literally everything. And then there's this. You know, Brown University is actively erasing various web pages right now. I'm surprised they didn't erase that one. They're erasing web pages. Speaking of their website right now. What? They are erasing all references to a guy on their campus called Mustafa Karbush who is associated with the Free Palestine movement and LGBTQ stuff. Here's open source intel they wrote about this. They said all references to somebody called Mustafa Karbush are being removed from Brown University's website right now. Archive profiles describe Mustafa as a queer Palestinian activist and a third generation Palestinian refugee before they were taken down. And it says, meet our student assistant, Mustafa Karbosh, 27 years old. He's a first student. Well, excuse me, I'm gonna. I just said. He. Let me just read it the way it's written. Mustafa Karbush, 27, is a first year student considering concentrating in international and public affairs and anthropology with a focus on the Middle East. They are a third generation Palestinian refugee, born and raised in Lebanon, attaining a scholarship to attend UW Maastricht. They have Led and continue to help with community building initiatives and social change roles. They are fond of bringing their lived experiences into academic spaces and participating in engaged scholarship. They are highly moved by questions of indigeneity, justice and inclusion and particularly interested in the intersection of queer studies with Palestinian studies. Holy shit. This guy's right out of left wing central casting. Mustafa is also currently the cultural programming coordinator for the Global Brown center and on the E board of the Arab Society. So all of this has been removed from Brown University's website. It's all just being erased. It's being memory hole. George Orwell is very busy right now at Brown University. Now what is this? Why are they erasing all of this information about this dude from their website? So yesterday a reporter asked that question, why are all these web pages being taken down? And the president of Brown acted like she had no idea. Here's, here's cut 8. The Brown University president being asked this question. Some web pages for students or faculty and taken down. Is that a response to any external threats? Anyone in the community?
- [57:14]
C
We have been working very closely with law enforcement to provide them with all of the internal to Brown information, information that they need to do this investigation. It's their investigation. They're the professionals. So we're providing information. We're not in the job of reviewing it for them. I know nothing about webpages being taken down as part of this. It's the first I've heard of it.
- [57:39]
A
It's the first I've heard of it. Didn't know anything about it. I'm sorry, who runs this university? You have no idea what your university policies are. You have no working cameras in any of your hallways. You have no idea that people are taking things off your website. How about you get somebody up to the fucking podium who knows what they're talking about? How about these idiotic press conferences stop until somebody answers some damn questions? Because from where I'm sitting, this doesn't look like mere incompetence. It looks like a full blown cover up being operated at Brown because they're concerned about where all of this is leading. Maybe they know exactly what this guy yelled. It certainly seems like it. They're pretending at this hour like they don't. Well, he yelled something. It's part of the investigation. How about just telling us what he yelled? But no, they don't tell us. Instead they leave it to mystery. And they say, here, use this grainy footage and see if you can find them without any other descriptive details. Well, what if we knew what he said? What if somebody knows this guy's ideology and you start describing and you're like, oh, yeah, I know a guy like that. Hell, he looks exactly like the guy. But no, instead of giving us more information, they just leave the rest of us to wonder. So now we've gone nearly what we're getting on a week where we know nothing except we see some shitty footage of this dude and we're all supposed to catch him. There's nothing. And then you're erasing all this stuff from your website. Now, Brown University, insofar as they're saying anything about any of this, they're acting like they're saying, well, what's happening is there's a community member who's being doxed. They released a statement last night after the president gave that idiotic response. There's a community member being doxxed right now. And we don't want people being doxxed. It creates, you know, irrevocable harm. You understand? You yanking a website down only increases our suspicion about that guy's role in any of this. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say that guy was the shooter. That guy was the shooter. I have no idea. I have no idea. All I'm telling you is that guy's out of left wing central casting. We just saw a Republican get gunned down in the middle of a classroom. It sure looks like very high probability that she may have been the target of all of this. They're refusing to say what this person yelled, presumably because they're trying to cover up some sort left wing extremism that was uttered by the killer and they don't want people to know about it. And then they act like there's just no way for us to know any information about any of this. No, I'm assuming, and I think rather safely, you are covering something up right now. Not just that you're idiots, and you're definitely idiots, but it's not just that. We'll keep tracking. And I got the big national radio show going on today. We'll do that at noon Eastern Time. Thevinceshow.com for your local listings. You can watch us on rumble rumble.com Vince and then I'm back tomorrow with another, another big show right here on the Vince Podcast. Man, we've got a lot going on, I'm telling you. Thank you for being a part of it today. We'll get to more tomorrow.