First of all, FUUUCK you!
(Sorry, Dan, I was just quoting you.)
A little backstory here: Ex-House GOP candidate Dan Bongino, who recently lost his Florida primary after going totally ape shit on Politico reporter Marc Caputo in an f-bomb tirade to end all tirades, is angry because I continue to write about how foolishly he has handled himself in recent weeks.
The pin that unlocked his inner hand grenade?
It was a question from Caputo concerning what he’s doing in Florida in the first place. Formerly a Secret Service agent, Bongino previously ran for Congress twice in Maryland and lost. He moved to a town that is 100 miles outside the district he wanted to represent. Palm City, Florida — we eventually learned — is where he lives because his wife has lupus and wanted to be closer to her family.
Nothing sinister there. But Bongino insisted this is why he unloaded on Caputo.
“FUUUK you! …Go fuck yourself you piece of shit,” he said in a recording published in Politico. “…You don’t know why I moved to Florida, you motherfucker! Fucking coward!” Bongino said, adding that Caputo lacked the ‘balls’ to run for office himself. He went berserk and became threatening, saying, “You will rue the day you lied about me.”
I made a snide comment about politicians using personal issues for political gain. Bongino didn’t like that and threatened me with his knuckles.
But I’m not alone.
On Monday I published a story about Bongino ripping WaPo‘s mustachioed Dave Weigel and other “ill-informed, biased media personalities” over the long weekend.
In a recent podcast, he physically and emotionally threatened Weigel, Caputo and me.
And suddenly I’M the clown?
In a piece for Conservative Review published Monday, Bongino — who is now officially a professional political loser — announced that he’s finished with electoral politics.
“I’m officially done with electoral politics,” he wrote. “I gave it my best shot in this, my last run for political office, and my best shot wasn’t good enough.”
He also defiantly blasted the media.
“Seriously, who anointed these people the guardians of socially acceptable opinion?” he wrote. “Why does their opinion matter? If I can accept my shortcomings in electoral politics and move on, why can’t hopelessly biased media types recognize their own failures and engage in some necessary self-reflection too? Most reasonable, thinking people outside of the media/Hollywood/academia bubble will acknowledge that a significant portion of the media personnel in print, online, and broadcast and cable news have a left-leaning bent. This left-leaning bent leads them to tell a story, not the story.”
Bongino’s complaints against the media stem from a tweet by Alexandra Glorioso, a reporter who works for the Naples Daily News.
Her tweet suggested that Bongino was low in contributions in the district. Filings refer to FEC filings in which candidates report donors who contribute more than $200. Bongino reported one contributor from the district. He maintained he had more than one contributor. But factually — Glorioso is right. Bongino may well have had more contributors, but they were not itemized — hardly a reason to condemn the reporters who coverered his race or claim that they have a liberal bias.
Bongino was asked simple questions. The fact that he wouldn’t answer them doesn’t mean the media was lying or that there was any “left-leaning bent.”
“The story they aim to tell is one where good-hearted liberals institute a series of public policy proposals designed to create a fairer and equitable society to protect us from rapacious capitalists and conservatives. This is the story told to them in journalism schools and repeated within the corridors of their media work environments.”
Except Caputo, who lives in Coral Gables, is a registered Republican. He also never attended J-School. He learned on the job and from his dad, Phillip Caputo, who was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team for the Chicago Tribune that uncovered mammoth voter fraud in the DEMOCRATIC 1972 primary in Chicago. Caputo’s reporting on election scams has resulted in three federal convictions: 2 Democrats and one Republican.
Caputo has no kind words for Bongino.
“Dan Bongino can’t tell the truth,” he told The Mirror. “He habitually lies. His lack of integrity stands in inverse proportion to his penchant for spinning falsehoods about decent, honest and hard-working reporters. The facts show that what the Naples Daily News wrote is accurate. There’s a reason Bongino couldn’t answer my simple and direct questions: Because I wouldn’t let him lie and worm his way out of it. So like a wannabe gangster, he hurled invective at me instead.
“Unfortunately, Bongino has parasitically lived off of politics because his media pals enable him. With their cover, he has used his quixotic campaigns for federal offices to further his agenda by pandering to a dim-witted, ignorant audience of exceedingly misinformed troglodytes. The guy is a scam PAC made flesh. But as the old saying goes: A fool finds a greater fool to admire him.”
What’s more, I attended journalism school at Northwestern University as did Weigel. While I can’t speak for Weigel, no one ever said anything remotely like this. And my Daily Caller colleagues do not routinely encourage me to push liberal policy proposals.
Bongino absurdly insisted that Caputo illegally recorded their phone call. Reality: Caputo told him on Twitter that he was going to record the call and asked for his phone number. Bongino then consented to the call by emailing his phone number to Caputo in response to his public notice that the call would be recorded.
In his Conservative Review story, Bongino also railed against Weigel, saying, “Expecting to find some profound life experience commensurate with Weigel’s big mouth and arrogant attitude, I looked up his bio, but I’ve yet to uncover anything significant that should give Post readers the confidence that his opinion is worth more than the cheap paper it’s printed on.”
Asked about Bongino’s comments, Weigel, who called him a “lying, pathetic loser” on Twitter after Bongino lost his race and was reprimanded for it by his superiors, played nice.
He told The Mirror: “In all seriousness, I hope Bongino finds success and satisfaction in his career as a pundit. He’s interesting when he draws on his lived experiences; in my humble and obviously unbiased opinion, he’s less interesting as a media critic. Anyone can lob rocks and broken bottles at the media. The stories that make me happiest are the ones that force me out of the comfort zone, talking to people who surprise me. I bet he’d like that, too.”
Bongino, meanwhile, has advice for the conservative movement: Bankrupt media organizations.
“Here’s my advice for members of the conservative movement: To remedy this ongoing problem with media bias and outright clownery — bankrupt them. These sad excuses for journalists, as much as it pains me, still have a platform to spew their venom. And when we take away the financial incentive to produce their garbage, they’ll be forced either to find donors to stay afloat or close up shop.”
He also suggested that people stop donating to their colleges and universities until they promise to teach “ideological diversity.”
Listen up, Bongino. If you’re so sad, please give me your address so I can send you some cupcakes and Kleenex tissues.
Lastly, if you have any guts, I’d be happy to go on your podcast.