Bongino Weekend Report - Week of 09/14/26

The Dan Bongino Show

Dan Bongino delivers a satirical yet pointed analysis of the AI panic sweeping the nation, contrasting it with political commentary on Kamal

Key takeaways

• AI fear-mongering is reminiscent of Y2K hysteria, with both overreactions rooted in misunderstanding rather than facts.

Main topics

• AI regulation and public fear
• Kamala Harris's commentary on AI as emblematic of policy incoherence

Notable quotes

"Thank the Lord Almighty, that's not the case." – on Kamala Harris potentially being in charge during AI crisis.

Conclusion

Bongino argues that while AI presents real challenges, fear-driven polic

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:17) America all the time. On the side of freedom and liberty, your voice of hope and truth is here. The Bongino Report, PM, with Dan Bongino. Speaker 1 (0:32) Holy Moses, I come back from the weekend. We're back on radio. Speaker 1 (0:37) And it's like all hell broke loose about AI, tech. I go back and it's like Reverend Kane. Remember Reverend Kane from Poltergeist? We're all gonna... What did I miss? Jim, did I miss? Did I miss something? Speaker 1 (1:02) In case you don't know where the show is going to go today, we are going to do something revolutionary. And if you don't sense or hear the dripping sarcasm in my voice, I'm sorry, I may have done that wrong. We are going to rationally and reasonably process some information that came in last week about AI, and we're going to help. form a reasonable opinion or output without doing Reverend Kane or without doing the other thing either. Like, Hey, this is all great. We should just ignore guardrails and damn the torpedoes full steam ahead. Speaker 1 (1:38) But I come back, you know, I like to chat with producer Jim before the show. He's my friend and all. I noticed on his X count this weekend, an X account, he was doing what he always does, putting up photos of smoked meats, which he thinks is an art form. I am not a smoker of fine meats. So I don't know if you'd like to see what meat Jim was smoking, then you can check him out on X at JJ Verde. But I come back today and I'm like. Dude, you know what this reminds me of? The hell breaking loose this weekend. I'm a young buck, Secret Service. That was Buck with a B, so don't worry about FCC rules. I'm a young buck. Although I could, you know, that'd be interesting. Yeah, I don't think we're allowed to say that on a podcast. Yeah, but radio. So I go down to St. Simon's Island. I had some experience in doing Secret Service motorcades, you know, vehicles and cars and stuff. So I don't know what's happening like that. Was it the G8 in St. Simon's Island? I don't really remember. But they said, Dan, can you go train or help train the locals in motorcade security? uh, you know, we're going to need some help. I said, yeah, sure. Whatever, man. So I go down there and it's like a three, four day exercise. And there was this one, a local, uh, police officer who was a wonderful guy. There's not a knock. He was actually hilarious. And every time we did an AOP and assault on principle exercise where we, you know, you fake an attack and they respond, you get the point, you know, practice, right? We would debrief afterwards. And we would ask this guy like, well, what do you think happened? He'd be like, we were driving down the road and we turned the corner and then all hell broke loose. And he would say it about every scenario. And this is what happened this weekend. I come back and I'm like, I can't believe I was off the air. I should have done a Saturday, Sunday show. Everyone's freaking out about AI. They're now camp set up. I mean, opposing forces. Speaker 1 (3:40) I'm just going to tell you this part up front. And I think we can all agree on this, especially in this audience. Thank the Lord. And I am not using my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ's name in vain at all. I'm not kidding. Thank the Lord and the voters that President Trump is in the White House and not Kamala Harris. While this debate about AI, one camp of doomers, it's going to kill us all. The other camp like, oh, we don't need any guardrails. There's a, I promise there's a middle ground. Thank the Lord Kamala Harris is not in charge right now. I was talking to Teresa texted me, Jim, before the show. Teresa from Westwood. You know, we make everybody part of the show. That's just what I do. Teresa works at Westwood One. She texts me before the show. She's like, you know what this reminds me of? Jim, this will kick you in the gonads. This reminds me of Y2K. Remember Y2K? When the year 2000 came up and they were like, the clocks can't handle it. And everybody was going to die. Again, Reverend Kane. Speaker 1 (4:38) And none of that happened. We put up some guardrails. We fixed the two to the four instead of, oh, oh, it became 2000. And almost nothing happened at all because we're humans and we fix stuff. And we've got a guy in the White House right now, and I'll play some cuts of President Trump later on this, who's a reasonable business guy who's like, are we all going to die? Well, if we don't do anything, we could all die, but we are doing stuff. On the other side, is AI great? AI is absolutely fantastic. Potential to cure cancer, to cure HIV, to cure, to get toe fungus. That stupid Digger commercial on TV. I get on Digger and every time I see it, I'm going to throw up. This is all like on the horizon, man. The Digger guy, there'll be no need for Digger anymore. But there's a middle ground. Think about this. Think about this. This person could be in charge right now. Kamala Harris. Jim was kind enough to pull some absolute bangers. And believe me, this is dripping sarcasm, like blood from vampires teeth. That sarcasm is thick with this one. Speaker 1 (6:00) Here is what would have been President Kamala Harris. Thank the Lord Almighty, that's not the case. Remember, they Speaker 3 (6:09) made her the AI czar. Speaker 1 (6:11) The AI czar. Here she is commenting on AI. And you want to talk about an absolutely brilliant, tactical, political mind. Here's the great Kamala Harris, dripping sarcasm. explaining what AI is. You know, it's two letters. Artificial intelligence. Wow. Thank you for that axiomatic, tautological, deep insight. And it stands for artificial. So it's intelligence that's artificial. This reminds me of like Ibram Kendi. Racist is a racist, the racist thing. Here's Kamala Harris on AI. Imagine if she was in charge. Check this out. Speaker 7 (6:47) And I think the first. part of this issue that should be articulated is AI is kind of a fancy thing. First of all, it's two letters. It means artificial intelligence. But ultimately what it is is it's about machine learning. And so the machine is taught. And part of the issue here is what information is going into the machine that will then determine, and we can predict then if we think about what information is going in, what then will be produced in terms of decisions and opinions that may be made through that process. Speaker 1 (7:30) What just happened? What just happened? You ever see a lot of these giffies on X? Like, what just, what is going on here? Speaker 1 (7:45) Artificial intelligence is intelligence. It's artificial. You know, like the machines, like the bus goes wheels and around and around and the machines learn stuff. Whoa. Thank you so much for those deep insights that this to me is up there with the great, this is up there with, you know, I was hanging out. I didn't do a weekend update, but maybe we'll get to it later. I got to hang out with family this weekend and my nephew I haven't seen in a long time. Nephew by marriage, but I love the kid. I've known him since he's like two years old. You know, and it was my niece. And we're watching football, gym, you know, Texas, big game, whatever. And my niece is there. And my niece brings up Descartes. And she's like, I think therefore I am. How it came up, I don't even know. Like this is up there with Descartes and the great works of philosophy. I think therefore I am. The machines, they learn stuff. And the intelligence, it's artificial. You realize this lunatic could have been the president right now? While we've got people out there doing the Reverend Kane. We're all going to die. and you got the lady that's called Buzz. Look at that. The clouds in the sky. What is going? Sorry, the mucus in the nose. Some would call it nuts. This is like, I can't with this lady. I can't. This is an open for a Monday for all time. You want this lady in charge, Democrats, instead of President Trump? Wait till I play the clips of President Trump later, who you all lefty lunatics think is crazy. He seems to be the only rational actor out there. Watch what he says later when I play his cuts compared to Kamala Harris. That's cool, boss. He's like, yeah, I mean, you know, this is a great technology. We need some safety guardrails. We don't want China to beat us. You're like, wow, sounds pretty rational to me. Jim pulled this other gem. President Kamala Harris, God forbid. Can you imagine? Here she is after she told you that D-R-A-I is, it's two letters, folks, in case you didn't know that. It's not a comedy show, brother. I'm not trying to be funny. I'm not Eddie Murphy, raw, funniest thing I've ever seen. I'm not. I just can't get over this. Can you imagine the country we live in? So first she explained to you that AI is intelligence, it's artificial, and it's two letters. Now Jim pulled this one. This is Kamala Harris explaining to you how cloud computing, you know, it's in like the cloud, like what, in the cumulonimbus cloud? Like, are we seeding the clouds? Like, you mean like physical clouds? Here's genius Kamala Harris. Imagine she's in charge with all this going on right now. Check this out. Speaker 7 (10:37) So you're now no longer, are you necessarily keeping, those private files in some file cabinet that's locked in the basement of the house. It's on your laptop and it's then therefore up here in this cloud that exists above us, right? It's no longer in a physical place. Speaker 1 (11:06) No, President Harris, God forbid. It actually is in a physical place. It's not in the ether. Even the Phantom Zone in Superman 1 and 2 was in the physical piece of glass they sent out into the universe from, who was it? Like Jor-El or Kal-El? Who's Kal-El's Superman? That was actually a physical, but on a piece of movie strip at the time. It is a physical place, like a data center. This lady doesn't know anything. This is why. Why am I bringing up President Kamala Harris, God forbid? Because there's an election coming up and I'm going to tie this into the end of the show. Ladies and gentlemen, I've never said to you Republicans are going to solve all your problems ever, ever, ever. I have said to you over and over, however, that Republicans may not be the solution to all of your problems, but the cause of all your problems are definitely Democrats. You have a choice coming up. You have a choice, which I will harp on today throughout the show, and there is a cost to apathy to not showing up in these midterms. You're going to have people like these people, Kamala Harris in charge, Lindsay Clancy supporters. I'll play that at the end. Crazy videos coming up with Lindsey Clancy supporters. I am white, but I don't participate in white. What do we do? What does that even mean? Aren't you obligated to provide a definition of what non-participating whiteness means? Why do you keep inventing stuff? We have an election coming up. You've got choices to make. Speaker 1 (12:46) All right, back to serious time. This show is always an emotional roller coaster. Believe me, for me too. I've had physical jobs, grave digger, painter, all this. I'm sitting there on a ladder painting this lady's clothesline like, you know, 30 feet tall one day on this little like mini ladder, painting and the hots almost fell and died. Whatever, man. I'm just telling you, like, I've been there, out there, but this job is mentally exhausting, dealing with a lot of the stupidity on the left because serious time now, this is... As I titled my podcast today, you can always check it out on Rumble, at rumble.com slash Bongino if you're interested. This is the most important show we've done in a long time. And I will harp on that throughout the radio show today. Folks, we have developed advanced technologies before. We have. Speaker 1 (13:40) Nuclear fission. We're working on nuclear fusion now. There are different processes. One involves fusing an atom. One involves splitting an atom. Fission versus fusion. Nuclear fission bombs. You may say, well, we invented nuclear and look, they use them to build bombs. Yeah, they also use it for nuclear medicine. They also use it to power our society with nuclear power plants. With any advanced technology, there's always going to be a potential benefit and a potential downside. Some of those downsides are very serious. And this requires very serious people, unlike Kamala Harris and others, and thankfully President Trump, to evaluate ups and downs and come to a conclusion that benefits us all without wiping out humanity. Electricity. Speaker 1 (14:28) Almost magic at the time. No, when you've lived with electricity so long, you take it for granted. Most of human history, there was no such thing as electricity as we know it now. Flight. There were physicists early on, human beings will never fly. The physics don't work. It looks to me like they pretty much worked. But