Dan Bongino: What the politicians have forgotten about America and why lockdowns are ending
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Fox News contributor Dan Bongino said on Monday that state lockdowns across the country are ending because the American people say so, pushing back on governors' stay-at-home orders intended to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
“I don’t know where politicians forgot this country is run by consent of the governed. It’s a constitutional republic. It’s not a monarchy, it’s not an oligarchy, it is not the Soviet Union,” Bongino told “Fox & Friends.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“I remember my history teacher in high school, he was a good man and he said to me: the reason you don’t see more organized action in the country, civil disobedience type stuff all the time is because there is a middle class. Being that there is a middle class, people have things to lose. When you have to feed your kids, you have no paycheck for two months and everything is lost, you’re going to see a lot more civil disobedience …”
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Meanwhile, tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has emerged as a champion of defying stay-at-home orders intended to stop the coronavirus from spreading, stirred the pot with a cryptic tweet Sunday.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Some followers saw it as a sign that Musk was pushing for the conservative cause. Adviser to the president and first daughter Ivanka Trump later retweeted it, adding the word: “Taken!”
More recently, it's been slang for people abandoning the ways of liberalism for the values of conservatism. People of all ages and ethnicities posted online videos describing "red pill moments" — personal awakenings that have caused them to reject leftist narratives imbibed since childhood from friends, teachers and the news and entertainment media.
Musk has been vocally critical of government shutdown policies during the global pandemic recently, reopening Tesla's California plant in defiance of local restrictions there last week.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Tesla's factory reopened Monday with Musk practically daring local law enforcement to arrest him. The plant apparently continued operations on Tuesday. Officials backed off Wednesday and announced that the move would be OK, as long as the company followed previously agreed-upon worker safety precautions.
Tesla had a plan to maintain worker safety, including wearing gloves and masks, installing barriers between workers and maintaining social distancing, executives said. The company also reportedly agreed to check workers' temperatures before they entered the facility. Tesla's workers have not had a union.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Bongino said that there is nothing more American than “civil disobedience.”
“The lockdown is over because America says it’s over and, pretty soon, these politicians are going to figure this out.”
Fox News' Frank Miles contributed to this report.