Politics

‘The podfather is back’: Podcaster-turned-FBI deputy director Dan Bongino makes his return to the MAGA masses

Published

5 months ago

February 2, 2026

After a nine-month stint helping run the FBI, former deputy director Dan Bongino is a podcaster once again.

On Bongino’s first show back on Monday, President Donald Trump briefly dialed in, offering Bongino — who resigned from the agency in December — well wishes.

But otherwise, the episode was more of a two-hour monologue that saw Bongino attempting to skewer old enemies — namely the mainstream media — and reconnect with the masses that launched his name, years ago, into the MAGA stratosphere.

“The podfather is back,” he declared, “and I’m here to take back this movement.”

Before joining the FBI last year, Bongino was a prolific right-wing podcaster who peddled in deep-state conspiracy theories. As the agency’s No. 2, working alongside the real-world powers he used to rail against, Bongino was often caught between his past digital footprint and his new job helping lead one of the nation’s premier law enforcement agencies. 

For years, he entertained conspiracies about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s death, dismissing the authorities’ claims that the late financier killed himself. Bongino built a fanbase by stoking these very fires — and angered many when, after joining the FBI, he swiftly backtracked his rhetoric. Online, some of Bongino’s former supporters have slammed him as a sellout.

The show was a big moment for Bongino, whose tenure at the FBI was at times chaotic. The show’s launch included a Times Square billboard, and opened with around 140,000 viewers — according to conservative video platform Rumble’s view count — and peaked at around 220,000.

After a victory lap around the nation’s top law enforcement agency, Bongino is not returning to the friendliest audience. And he had some choice words for any critics.

“I want to address the grifters out there who mistakenly thought I wasn’t coming back,” he said during the livestream. “This movement’s been hijacked by a small group of dipshits and bums and losers, who are nothing but doomers under the frame of accountability.”

This was the throughline for much of the two-hour segment, which saw Bongino ripping into a number of his critics. “Get your lips and just pucker them up and plant a big wet one on my ass,” he told “the libs and their media pals.”

The “dipshits” in media, he said, remain “totally divorced from reality.”

And to alleged leakers at the FBI: “You guys destroyed the place, and you tried to destroy us too,” he said. “But I’m back now, and you can go fuck yourself.”

Bongino, exhaling at the end of his minutes-long diatribe, smiles into the camera: “We’re so back. Aren’t we?”

But unlike the first version of his podcast, Bongino largely shied away from conspiracy theories — except for when, 15 minutes into the show, his livestream abruptly cut off thanks to a technical glitch. 

“Rumble is under attack, this show is under attack, this is what these scumbags do,” he said. “Can’t have a voice like me speaking out.”

“They just don’t want me to talk,” he repeated for the rest of the show.

He also offered “behind the scenes” insights into his time at the FBI, defending himself against critics who misunderstood, he said, the decisions they made — including the agency’s handling of the Epstein files. 

“When you get selected for one of these principal or deputy positions, everything you do is a level 10 decision,” Bongino said. “Find out which one is the shittier decision and avoid it. That’s the best you can do.

“Here’s the problem with the Epstein mess,” he continued. “The FBI doesn’t have the evidence many thought it did. … There were not tapes with powerful men raping kids. There was not a list. Epstein’s rolodex was already public. The files are largely unreleasable for many reasons.”

The files didn’t contain the smoking gun people were expecting, Bongino said, but “this administration got you the information.”

Near the end of the show, Trump — who hand-picked Bongino for his post last year — dialed in for a brief interview, where the two discussed the administration’s crime crackdown, Minnesota’s welfare fraud scandal and National Guard deployments.

“I’ll tell you what, if I were a Democratic governor and I were in charge of Chicago, as an example, I would be begging Donald Trump to come,” Trump told Bongino.

Trump took another chance to rail at the results of the 2020 election (“I won in a landslide,” he said), urging Republicans to “nationalize the voting” and suggesting taking over voting “in at least 15 places,” which he didn’t name. And he patted himself on the back for his military actions in Iran and Venezuela, saying the U.S. is “respected again like never before.”

“Listen, you did great in the FBI,” Trump told Bongino. “I’m very torn. I think, maybe, I’d rather have you where you are. “Very few people can do what you do, and your voice is a very important one.”

Bongino, who has generally been a reliable supporter of Trump, intends to host his show every weekday. And for those expecting a Bongino chastened by his time in government — or those looking to take his space in the MAGA media sphere — he had a direct closing message.

“All my bullshit detractors or whatever,” Bongino said at the end of the episode, “don’t know shit about anything. Throwing popcorn from the front row. We’re the number one livestream in the world. … I’m such a target that they came after the whole damn website. That’s how bad they want to keep me off the air.”

“But I have my first — guys, you ready for this screenshot? — double barrel to those who tried to stop us,” he continued, silently flipping two middle fingers to the camera.

Politics

World Cup match collides with Florida GOP bash

Published

1 hour ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

HOLLYWOOD, Florida — Colombia and Portugal’s World Cup match in Miami Gardens won’t be the only major draw pulling crowds to South Florida this weekend: Florida’s Republican grassroots are heading to Hollywood for their “Sunshine State Showdown.”

The GOP’s event at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino is one of the state party’s biggest of the year. The GOP sold more than 800 tickets, with the party’s most devoted volunteers and many donors coming in from all over the state to get revved up for the midterms, gameplan their messaging and hear directly from top candidates.

The shindig will feature speeches from Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, as well as gubernatorial candidates Rep. Byron Donalds, former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner and Lt. Gov. Jay Collins. It will also include two congressional debates.

Several “Showdown” attendees said they were thrilled about the convergence of their party’s bash with a World Cup match. South Florida has already seen a huge economic boom in recent years, and the Magic City is poised to become even more prominent given Miami is set to be home to Donald Trump’s future presidential library and will host the G20 in December. “Miami is again at the center of the universe,” observed Miami-Dade County GOP Chair Kevin Cooper.

Several prominent Republicans said they see the international event as an opportunity to showcase the state. State Rep. Dean Black of Jacksonville, who also chairs the Republican Party of Florida’s fundraising committee, said he’d enjoyed seeing fans from abroad show appreciation over social media for American culture. “They have fallen in love with the greatness of America,” Black said. “By being exposed to the Republican Party event, they will learn just how that greatness came to be.”

Collins’ team said that while the lieutenant governor wasn’t attending the game, he was “happy the state of Florida is hosting so many fans from across the world experiencing the beauty of our state.”

Former Fox 35 Orlando anchor Ryan Elijah, a GOP candidate for Congress who’s attending the showdown, said he would be checking his phone regularly for World Cup updates.

“What a night for Florida to see the biggest names in Florida politics and World Cup soccer be just miles apart!” he said in a text. “It’s a dream night for tourism numbers and local businesses!”

But the packed weekend also risks turning into a logistical headache. The Hard Rock Hotel is one of the pickup points offering shuttle services to Miami Stadium. It’s less than 9 miles away from the big game.

Angie Wong, Republican executive committeewoman in Miami-Dade, attended Wednesday’s match between Scotland and Brazil. She said her family paid $200 for parking near the stadium and that it took more than an hour just to get out of the parking lot.

“We were lucky — we actually left before the game ended,” she said.

Yet this year’s “Showdown” is a more scaled-back affair than in the recent past. It won’t, for example, feature a dinner like in previous years. But that’s probably good news for any attendees who don’t want to miss the soccer match — or who are just trying to get back home without getting stuck in traffic. And it doesn’t have any major Trump administration officials attending, in comparison to last year, when the event prominently featured White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and now-former deputy chief of staff James Blair, who is currently running Trump’s political operation for the midterms.

Florida’s GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis — who remains highly popular with the state’s grassroots — won’t be speaking at the “Showdown” this weekend and his office didn’t reply to an inquiry about whether he’d attend Saturday night’s game. The governor was in the Miami area during the last couple of days, including hitting the Brazil-Scotland game on Wednesday night and holding a press conference at the former Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention center on Thursday.

Evan Power, chair of the state party, had already arrived at the Hard Rock Hotel on Wednesday night and said he got to watch a Brazilian victory parade happening right outside the restaurant where he was having dinner. He added he hadn’t had any issues getting in and out of the events center and that Republicans sold out their room block, “so I think we were able to get in before the craziness.”

“In our room block, people are happy because they’re not paying the market rate that is out there,” Power said. “Seeing some of the prices — they’re crazy now.”

Politics

A drag queen, a rainbow festival and a game FIFA can’t control

Published

2 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

SEATTLE — FIFA has not endorsed the Seattle host-city committee’s “Pride Match” designation, which will not be part of the official branding when Iran and Egypt meet tonight at Lumen Field.

“I think they’ve always been aware of what we’re doing,” said Louise Chernin, who as chair of the organizing committee’s Pride Match Impact Council began planning for the day nearly a year and a half ago.

Chernin began her match day at Rough & Tumble, a women’s sports bar in Ballard, a historically Scandinavian neighborhood where a crowd had gathered to cheer on Norway against France. The bar was notably free of FIFA’s commercial imprint: The World Cup posters on the walls and the merchandise for sale were all drawn by local artists without any official logos.

It all reflected the extent to which the “Pride Match” has become a gentle challenge not only to FIFA’s record of clamping down on some expressions of LGBTQ+ rights but also the corporate monoculture it creates in host cities through its restrictive sponsorship rules.

“If there’s going to be revenue spent, let us bring it to LGBTQ-owned businesses,” said Chernin, a longtime head of the Greater Seattle Business Association, an LGBTQ+ chamber of commerce.

Just down the street, fans had gathered at a “regnbue” street festival — the word is Danish and Norwegian for “rainbow” — organized by a local Ballard business association. The Norway-France match was being shown on an oversized screen, but when halftime hit attendees did not listen to any of the ads on the Fox broadcast.

Instead DJ SummerSoft took the stage as Sativa the Queen, a local drag performer, vamped through the break.

Politics

The world’s not big on the US. The World Cup might help.

Published

3 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

America’s stint hosting the World Cup is drawing mostly positive reviews to date — and it couldn’t come at a better time.

According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, views of America across the world are worsening and confidence in President Donald Trump’s leadership is dropping.

Pew surveyed 42,000 people across 36 countries between February and May, and found that America has a largely negative impression on the global theater. Only 23 percent of surveyed adults expressed confidence in Trump’s leadership — eliciting less confidence than Chinese leader Xi Jinping (34 percent) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (31 percent).

Foreign policy is the biggest pain point for Trump’s international critics, who take issue with his handling of tariffs, Gaza, Iran, Greenland and the Russia-Ukraine war, according to Pew’s findings.

Meanwhile, fewer countries — and longtime allies — believe the U.S. is a reliable partner. In Canada, where 83 percent of respondents described the U.S. as reliable in 2022, that number is now down to 35 percent.

In 2023, 60 percent of Germans said the U.S. considers international interests in its foreign policy decisions. That share has now dwindled to 23 percent — Germany’s public opinion of the U.S. is “now similar to or more negative than what was measured during George W. Bush’s presidency, when many people in Europe and elsewhere strongly opposed the war in Iraq and other major elements of U.S. foreign policy,” writes Pew.

There are only seven nations where a majority rate the U.S. well — Israel leads the pack, with 81 percent of respondents viewing America favorably. Some of the country’s lowest ratings come from predominantly Muslim publics, “such as Malaysians, Pakistanis, Turks, and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

Over the past decade, Pew’s polling has found growing concerns about the health of American democracy. A 2013 Pew survey, just as Barack Obama entered his second term, an all-time high of 75 percent of respondents in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, the Philippines, South Korea and the U.K. said the U.S. respects its citizens’ personal freedoms.

Since then, declining shares of world respondents believe the U.S. respects its citizens’ personal liberties — and this year, 56 percent of respondents said the U.S. does not.