‘The only thing that matters is power’: New FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino says the quiet part out loud

Dan Bongino, the law enforcement officer who became a secret agent, then turned to far-right conservative podcasting, tried three times and failed to get into Congress, and who, like Pete Hegseth, also got media projection on Fox News, is now the appointed FBI Deputy Director.

Who appointed him? Bongino’s appointment to a position for which he has no experience whatsoever – something unprecedented in FBI history – bears less of a shocking effect. Judging by how both these men are nose-deep in the MAGA alternate reality and its associated conspiracy theories, expecting Patel not to appoint someone like Bongino would be comparable to expecting the Mad Hatter not to choose the March Hare as his right hand.

🇺🇸❤️ pic.twitter.com/8cLhZ3b5JH

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) February 25, 2025

Here we are: Welcome to Donald Trump‘s catchphrase is “you’re fired!” rather than “off with your head!”

Checks? Balances? Who? Never met them.

If you were to ask the most prolific left-wing podcasters, what would they say “is the only thing that matters?” First off, narrowing “what matters” to only one thing is fallacious reasoning; it’s stretching a false dichotomy to prioritize one thing to the exclusion of everything else. But, fine, let’s for a brief moment – unless we want to fry what may remain of our neurons – indulge Dan Bongino and the question he poses in the clip above.

Off the top of one’s head, if left-leaning political commentators were forced to select “one thing” that matters, they would respond something along the lines of: universal healthcare, a livable minimum wage, affordable housing, eradicating homelessness, solving climate change, curbing gun violence, minimizing wealth inequality, preventing children from going hungry at school, preserving the actual democratic values embedded into the Constitution… In short, all that nonsensical claptrap leftists keep rambling about.

If you answered any of the items listed above, Bongino would likely cackle in your face, before glaring at you with those menacingly soulless eyes – which still have nothing on Patel’s death stare – and yell “That’s a good one!” with all the charm of a cyclops who’s just slaughtered a village. Because, how could one be so shortsighted as to forget the most important thing, the very same thing that generations upon generations of TV and movie – even Shakespearean – villains have been reminding us all our lives? Power is, of course, the single most important thing. Silly us for thinking that guaranteeing every citizen reaches the bare minimum threshold of rights and necessities essential to living a dignified existence was remotely relevant.

The Don Bongino Show clip above is dated from May 2024. One can reasonably assume that this stance which presupposes power is always bad in the hands of anyone who isn’t Trump or loyal to him (but never vice versa), is what has earned Bongino his position, and not with the merit of decades of experience of his predecessors. He fits the quintessential stereotype of the far-right MAGA pundit who repeats the 2020 election was “rigged” like a mantra and blindly advocates for a billionaire felon to “clean the house” – one can speculate how his and others’ constant spiel may have helped add fuel to the fire that ultimately led to Jan. 6. Perhaps hundreds of federal employees have something to say about Trump’s (and Elon Musk’s) recent house-cleaning duties?

In a 2021 New Yorker profile, the author writes: “No one in American media has profited more from the Trump era and its aftermath than Bongino.” Trump could pull a toddler move and smear feces on the wall and Bongino would aggressively yell at you that the surface was immaculately clean until you nodded along. And he’s told you why: Power matters the most to him. And now, he certainly cannot complain that neither he nor Trump suffers from a lack of it.