Dan Bongino's Schtick Tragically Murdered By Actual Statistics

We almost feel badly for him.

Last night, on his Fox News show “Unfiltered,” Dan Bongino promised to show us all A Tale of Two Americas .

In one America, jobs are plentiful, health care is solid, education is A+, and in the other, the exact opposite. The latter, as per Bongino, are “Democrat-run cities." And boy was he ever excited about this theory! He even trotted out a really cool graphic (see above) showing that the most unhealthy cities in America were cities like San Francisco and Portland and Denver and Austin and the other Portland.

"You look at some of the health outcomes in these inner cities the Democrats have run monopolistically for decades, and you stand a pretty darn good chance of dying in one of these inner cities,” he exclaimed, full of pathos. "Far more likely, than if you lived in an areas where they gave a damn about people and their healthcare outcomes."

 youtu.be 

If this all sounds pretty suspicious to you, and like the exact opposite of what would be true, it is. As Twitter user Acyn pointed out, someone in Bongino's graphics department got it very, very wrong and accidentally made him a map of the healthiest cities in the US — according to the source he cited, Wallethub . Not only that, but they managed to confuse Irving, Texas, for Irvine, California.

I went to the source cited in this graphic and I’m not sure what happened herepic.twitter.com/3E1S3Dzvhg

— Acyn (@Acyn) 1644114985 

Whoops! The actual ten least healthy cities on that list make the exact opposite of the point Bongino was trying to make.

Toledo, OH
Lubbock, TCX
Huntington, WV
Jackson, MS
Fort Smith, AR
Montgomery, AL
Memphis, TN
Shreveport, LA
Gulfport, MS
Laredo, TX
Brownsville, TX

Apparently someone caught it because during the second airing, they replaced the map with stock footage of unhoused people. Because yes, there are more unhoused people in urban areas — and that is not because of governance, but because of the very obvious fact that it's slightly easier to survive there than it would be in an area where everything is spaced out and there is no public transportation. Duh.

I understand how thrilling it must have been for Dan Bongino to see that list of cities and get to go off about how they don't care about people's health in these cities — pointing to the fact that the people keep electing Democrats and never give Republicans a chance, probably just because the people who live there don't want them coming in and taking their reproductive rights away and letting the cops declare open season on Black people. He must have been thrilled.

I, however, am not thrilled by the fact that the other cities are not "healthy," just because they are in Republican states, because I'm not a sociopath.

The really unfortunate thing about this is that lack of jobs, lack of access to health care, and lack of educational opportunities are all actually pretty serious issues in rural America, that should not be ignored. There are not enough hospitals in those areas and when people have a serious emergency, they frequently end up having to use air ambulances, which are freakishly expensive and rarely covered by insurance. They start at $12,000. That alone could bankrupt most people.

It's also worth noting that many of these same areas have astoundingly high maternal and infant mortality rates. Mississippi, for instance. And they could bring those numbers down if they expanded Medicaid , but they won't do that. They will, however, expand the number of people who die in childbirth by outlawing abortion.

Republicans who, quite frankly, do not live in these areas either, like to pretend they're Mayberry or something, where everyone knows your name, comes to your aid when you need support, and there's a town doctor who makes house calls and has known you since you were born. That's not a thing anymore. These places are struggling, and pretending there are not problems there because one wants to "own" the libs is revolting and cruel.

Anyway! You may now chill in this thread while Stephen and I get ready to dazzle you in our live chat at 12pm Pacific/3pm EST. Come hang!

h/t Acyn 

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