New York Times best-selling author and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino explains in this exclusive interview that the GOP failed to battle President Barack Obama’s fundamental transformation of the country, and now we are feeling the consequences.
In his popular podcast The Renegade Republican, as well as in this video interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation, he blames Republicans who lost the party brand out of self-interest and crony capitalism for the transformation. Bongino explains that breaking trust with the base in both political parties started this anti-Washington rebellion.
Naming the battles promised but not waged, Bongino lists: Obamacare, executive amnesty, the Cromnibus, the debt ceiling, Balanced Budget Amendment, school choice, DC Opportunity Scholarships and the Environmental Protection Agency.
“The reason people are in open rebellion, and make no mistake they are, is not that we lost the battles. It’s that we never fought them,” he says. Even with all the evidence mounting, Republican leaders and the establishment continue to be deaf to their part in causing this revolt.
“They understand, we’re a boat at sea now. We are not moored anymore. We’re in open waters and nobody can see what’s ahead. We always had that lodestar, being the Constitution, that there was a no-go area that was always that star. If we navigated to it, everything would be ok and we’d get home. It’s gone. We’re just out to sea. No one knows the destination. No one knows when the sharks are coming, when the typhoon is coming and that’s why people are scared,” Bongino explains.
A passionate advocate for free markets and less government, Bongino is a popular speaker and guest talk radio host for several national programs. He’s so passionate to “get the government to have less control over your life.”
The activist left, he says, has America at a tipping point since it is “actively advocating the use of physical force for thought and speech suppression.” He continues,“they control language,” and their mere accusations and epithets stop civil discourse.
Citing his appreciation of Thomas Sowell as a pragmatic, succinct intellectual, Bongino refers to a favorite exchange on welfare between the conservative and economist Helen O’Bannon. Bongino decries government’s so-called efforts to help people, saying, “It has actually kneecapped them.”
In this 31-minute video interview, Bongino explains the dangers lurking with presidential candidate Donald Trump’s trade policies. Protecting American jobs with tariffs, he says, will raise prices on all Americans, while starting a trade war.
As a former cop and federal agent, Bongino finds Obama “profoundly disappointing” in his support and defense of law enforcement — even former President Bill Clinton, he says, had a “Sister Souljah” moment. “It is a total disgrace,” Bongino decries.
As for young people turning to Sen. Bernie Sanders and socialism, Bongino gets energized, saying they “do not understand what socialism is.” It is the “government control of the means of production, not economic liberty.” Describing a generation dependent on phones and iPads, he says, “If you own private property, you are not a socialist.”
His podcast started less than a year ago, and has become one of the top 50 news and politics podcasts in the world, likely to reach a million listeners by June of this year. The 41-year-old ran for Congress in the predominantly-Democrat state of Maryland, won on election day but lost when absentee ballots were counted later.
His latest New York best-seller book, “The Fight: A Secret Service Agent’s Inside Account of Security Failings and the Political Machine,” further explains D.C. games and how they impact the American people.
For more on Dan Bongino, find him on his podcast at Conservative Review, where he is a contributing editor, or on his blog. He has over 104K likes Facebook , while his Twitter account @dbongino has 35K followers.
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