Dan Bongino rubs it in after surprise FBI appointment

Justin Baragona, The Independent

In his first broadcast since he was shockingly announced as the next deputy director of the FBI, MAGA podcaster and lemonade aficionado Dan Bongino grew emotional as he thanked his audience for their support before turning to his critics and letting them know he got the last laugh. A former Secret Service agent and New York City police officer before launching a right-wing media career, Bongino also insisted during his Monday podcast that despite his current career as a pro-Donald Trump firebrand, he would have no problem doing the “nonpartisan” work expected of an FBI leader.

“This is hard for me,” Bongino said at the top of his show as he appeared to hold back tears. “I’m going to accept the role — proudly — as the deputy director at the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Folks, it’s a lot to walk away from.” The former Fox News host went on to tell his viewers that “it’s going to be a pretty wild ride today,” letting them know that he’d apprise them of the future of the show while also detailing how he came to be the No. 2 at the FBI. Spending much of his broadcast thanking his family and production crew for the success of his show, he praised the “Bongino Army” for making him one of the top political podcasters in the country. At the same time, Bongino defended himself as being qualified to take on his new FBI role and dismissed criticism that he would politicise the bureau on Trump’s behalf.

“I want to address something too. I know the New York Times and others, of course. All of the attack pieces have started already, which is fascinating from these two, who were on the wrong side of the truth when it came to the collusion hoax and others,” he exclaimed. “I don’t think they understand what it is like to commit to service. Not partisan service, but service.”

He continued: “I get it, if you are a political opponent of mine that has been involved with proudly celebrating the weaponised justice system, you don’t understand how a guy like me, who discusses partisan content in an opinion show, can go and do a questionably nonpartisan job. I’m going to ask you a simple question — have you seen what I did before I came here? I’m committed to service.”

Making sure to heap praise on his wife, who he noted had been with him through his different careers and health scares, he brought up his transition to political punditry following his unsuccessful runs for public office. “We’ve been through the launch of a podcast 11 years ago, and everybody laughed at us,” he stated. “They’re not laughing now. They did! They actually laughed at us.” At the end of his broadcast, Bongino told his audience that while Monday’s show would not be his last episode, he would be wrapping up “sooner rather than later” and that he’d be sharing updates in the near future.

As far as Bongino’s claim that he will rise above partisan politics in his new job at the FBI, a bureau he has never worked at, it was less than a year ago when he tweeted that “the cold civil war” that “scumbag commie libs” are pushing for will “end really badly for them.”

Bongino said that “liberals are not ready for what comes next” as it may have been “revolutionary cosplay with them,” but “it’s all real now.” It is this bombastic provocation from Bongino that has prompted critics to sound the alarm about his rise to a top law enforcement position.

“But Bongino is one of the last people you’d select for such a role if your intention was really to run a nonpartisan bureau,” Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz recently wrote. “He is an inflammatory partisan who has declared that ‘owning the libs’ is ‘my entire life right now’ because they are ‘pure unadulterated evil’ and has fawned over Trump as ‘an apex predator’ and ‘the lion king.’”