On radio this morning, former Secret Service Agent and author Dan Bongino joined Glenn to talk about his new book, Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From it All, his Maryland congressional run, and why he decided to leave the Secret Service.
Glenn began the interview by telling the story of the first time he first met Dan a few years ago. He was still at Fox News at the time, and, as Glenn explains it, Dan seemed “too good to be true.”
“I want to introduce you to a guy who's been on the program before but, quite honestly, I don't know if he knows this…When I first met [Dan], I was so impressed by him and I met him on the set of my [Fox] show. And he said, ‘You've changed my life.’ And he was a Secret Service agent,” Glenn explained. “I walked out of the studio and I got about halfway back to my office, and I looked at my friend Joe and said, ‘What are the odds this guy is a setup because they would… know that I'm a sucker for a guy like [him].’ And we kept you at arm's-length… because I was afraid that there was a chance you were a setup because you were too good to be true. And you left the Service, and you are who you said you were.”
To start, Glenn asked Dan to explain why he chose to leave the Secret Service.
“Well, Glenn, you know, you get to that point in your life where as you well know, you hit that event horizon. The black hole is right ahead of you. You've got to put down the potato chips and do something,” Dan said. “You know, action changes the world and I felt like, although the Secret Service was great to me and was a noble job, I felt like part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
In leaving the Service, Dan left his pension and health insurance behind. Just moments before resigning, Dan’s wife shared the news that they were expecting a baby, and it was that news that gave him the confidence to go forward with his decision.
“This [was] a sign that just upped the ante,” Dan said of learning the news he had a baby on the way. “And I thought of a quote from one of my friends. He said, you know, the heavens have a way of putting the price on things. Well, they just upped the price. And I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ She said, ‘Let's do it.’ And I walked in and said, ‘I'm sorry, I've got to walk away.’ It was a tough decision, Glenn.”
Dan worked for both the Bush and Obama White House’s, and, in the book, he explains some of the security concerns facing the president at any given time.
“[The Secret Service is] autonomous in the respect that if they know something is seriously wrong and the likelihood of serious injury or death were to occur, they will stop it,” Dan said. “I even discuss it in the book a bit, that political pressures to put the president out there in situations that may not be to his benefit are there and very real. They've had to deal with it for a long time.”
When it comes to the Obama Administration, however, Dan fears the Secret Service has been used as a political tool.
“And [Obama’s] politicized the Secret Service like no other agency in the government. I mean people kind of glossed over the White House tours being cancelled and [him] blaming it on the Secret Service. That was a really big deal,” Dan explained. “The fact that he has a group of men around him with law enforcement authority that he could politicize in a heartbeat is a very dangerous trend. He blamed that on them and they had nothing to do with it. And he knows, you know, they are an agency that keeps their mouth shut and wouldn't say anything.”
Dan is currently running as a Republican in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, and Glenn offered a ringing endorsement of Dan and his character.
“You are a man that I believe is a decent man and a man that I sure would like to see in Washington because while we may disagree on things, I know you will do your damnedest to do the right thing. So anything that you can do to support him in his campaign… the GOP would not like Dan Bongino in office, and that should be all the endorsement that you need.”
You can learn more about Dan’s campaign HERE. And watch the entire interview below:
