Dan Bongino, Master of the Streisand Effect

The second-in-command at the FBI keeps pointing us to the bad press he’s getting.

(Composite / Photos: GettyImages)

Bongino ramps up swatting PR response

FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR DAN BONGINO continues to take heat from MAGA personalities who don’t think the agency is responding quickly or effectively to a spate of swattings aimed at InfoWars staffers and other right-wing internet figures.

While no one has been hurt so far, the idea that a mysterious figure is faking police calls that result in heavily armed SWAT raids on homes has understandably put prominent Trump supporters on edge. And they don’t think the FBI is doing enough about it. Victims of the swattings have complained that the agency hadn’t contacted them about the cases, leaving them wondering if any progress is being made.

Earlier this month, I wrote about Bongino’s solution, which included tweeting a lot about how hard he was working while urging folks to trust him that progress was being made. He’s definitely continued the tweets, posting on April 15 that he told FBI investigators to “double efforts” and then on April 18 to relay that he had asked for a briefing about the case.

There’s some evidence that Bongino is winning over his critics. Right-wing journalist Breanna Morello had frequently slammed Bongino’s handling of the case, including during a livestream she hosted earlier this month with swatting victims who claimed the FBI had blown them off.

“I had my criticisms of him,” Morello told me.

But last week, Morello said, she met with FBI investigators and gave them a 140-page file with her own ideas about who’s behind the swatting incidents. She says she left convinced the FBI is working hard to “make sure no one gets killed.” In a boost for Bongino’s image, she told her more than 300,000 followers on X that Bongino was “prioritizing” the case.

While Bongino was putting out one fire, another was heating up. Over the weekend, the unusually public deputy director tried to pre-empt a forthcoming New York Times story by downplaying its significance and encouraging his followers to discount it. The paper, Bongino wrote, was trying to make a big deal out of how he had hurt himself sparring with an FBI trainer.

“It was my [sic] not an ‘injury’ but a bit of swelling in my right elbow, not shoulder, because I’m 50 years old and I can’t recover like I used to,” Bongino wrote. “But I felt it was important to get on the mats any way, because that’s what men do.”

Bongino added that the Times reporter, Adam Goldman, would never personally understand the need to “get on the mats” and spar.

As far as crisis PR goes, going full Streisand seemed like an odd move on Bongino’s part, made even odder by the end result. The Times story turned out to be much more about FBI Director Kash Patel’s flashy lifestyle of private jets and UFC fights, with Bongino’s alleged sparring mishap earning only a brief mention at the bottom:

During a recent visit to Quantico, Mr. Bongino got a taste of F.B.I. toughness when he hit the mats with an instructor skilled in jujitsu. Mr. Bongino did not fare well, several former agents said.

Gutfeld gone woke?

GREG GUTFELD, THE WANNABE bad boy of Fox News, has a problem. He turned his show Gutfeld! into the top-rated late-night “comedy” show by skewering wokeness. But now, impressionist and frequent Gutfeld! guest Tyler Fischer claims he’s been blacklisted from the show and the rest of Fox because of the network’s own woke tendencies.

Fischer, who had been a regular guest on Gutfeld! panels alongside the likes of rapper-turned-Fox host Titus and “Mr. Wonderful” from Shark Tank, has not been on the network since late January. Last week, he explained his side of the story, saying he’d been banned after asking a Fox employee on a coffee date while visiting Fox’s offices for a taping.

“What was my woke crime?” Fischer wrote. “I asked an employee out for coffee.”

Fischer’s punishment was swift, according to an interview he gave to the Daily Mail. The woman quickly complained about her interaction with him, and he was escorted out of the building by security.

Fischer claimed that after the incident, Fox dropped his regular appearances on Gutfeld! and employees at the show refused to talk to him about what happened. And after he explained his supposed ban from the network on social media, he said his shadow ban expanded. Gutfeld’s manager, Fischer said, canceled Fischer’s appearances on Gutfeld’s live tour.

A person with knowledge of the situation tells me there’s a bit more to the story. In their telling, Fischer grabbed the woman’s phone in an unfriendly manner, put his number in it, then “demanded to know if she got it.”

“It wasn’t a friendly thing,” the source said.

Fischer and Fox didn’t respond to requests for comment.

It’s a precipitous fall for Fischer either way. At the start of the year, all seemed to be going well for him. He did Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump impressions for Gutfeld!, and in return, he got a chance to sell his MAGA-style “Make Comedy Funny Again” trucker hats. In January, the network’s streaming service released Fischer’s standup special, No Pardon Needed—filmed, naturally, at Joe Rogan’s Austin comedy club. In a press release announcing the special, Fox called Fischer a “rising star.”

The episode does suggest that even in the current, Trumpian swing away from political correctness, there are boundaries that conservative networks themselves won’t cross. Famously, you used to be able to do much worse at Fox before getting in trouble. But those days are over, and Fischer, who wasn’t a Fox employee, isn’t taking that lightly.

In the same post in which Fischer announced his firing, he imagined how Trump would respond to Fox’s treatment of him, saying the president would predict that Gutfeld! will fail.

“Everything woke goes to shit,” he wrote in an attempt at channeling a Trumpian voice. “That show had a lot of potential, but with no spine or balls to back up the things they make fun of, it will likely wither away over time.”

This could turn awkward for Gutfeld, the former editor of Maxim magazine’s British edition. He’s supposed to be hosting a sort of louche late-night salon on Fox, not the kind of place where being uncomfortably pushy with a female colleague gets you blacklisted.¹

1. In college, I was so addicted to Gutfeld’s earlier Fox late-night show, Red Eye, that my roommate broke into the utility room to get us free cable so we could watch even more Red Eye.