When Dan Bongino was named the FBI’s second-in-command last year, the right-wing podcaster’s fan base hailed it as a monumental victory. Bongino, it seemed, would finally be empowered to confront the “deep state” cabal he had long blamed for some of Washington’s darkest mysteries, including sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s death.
Now, having stepped down as deputy director after less than a year in the job, Bongino is returning to an audience in rebellion. Many online have pilloried him for not exposing the conspiracies or jailing the villains he had once decried in hundreds of tweets and Rumble streams.
“People feel conned here,” conservative commentator Evan Kilgore said on X. “Literally NOTHING has changed.”
Bongino has struck a defiant tone as he prepares to relaunch his podcast and radio show, dismissing his critics as having taken a “black pill” of cynicism and defeatism toward President Donald Trump’s administration. “Complaining and whining all the time. … It’s just like: Man, what team are you on?” he said in an interview this month with Hayley Caronia, a conservative podcaster, on his online media network Silverloch.
Bongino’s return to online content from the halls of real-world power will test conservative audiences’ appetite for a onetime renegade who has become a staunch defender of the administration. Some former allies believe that the commentator, whose Facebook page once eclipsed the popularity of major media outlets, will struggle to overcome the antiestablishment fury he once profited from stirring up.
“He’s in a really tough spot,” said Kyle Seraphin, a fellow conservative podcaster and an ex-FBI agent who was once friendly with Bongino but now derides him as a hypocrite. After a decade of insisting that the federal intelligence apparatus was rotten to the core, Seraphin said of Bongino, “his reputation is now inextricably tied to the FBI’s reputation under his administration, so he can’t meaningfully criticize it. He’s cornered by his own words and actions.”
Bongino’s predicament reflects the broader challenge for MAGA movement leaders who gained power by harnessing online provocations, conspiracy theories and skepticism toward government, only to face similar attacks.
Bongino said this week that he would return to his podcast, “The Dan Bongino Show,” on Feb. 2 as part of an exclusive live-streaming deal with Rumble, a right-leaning video platform. A statement on the relaunch promised “a renewed focus on Washington insights, behind-the-scenes details from his time in government, and a message of hope and resilience in the conservative movement.”
“Bongino’s return is great for public discourse and great for Rumble,” the company’s CEO, Chris Pavlovski, told The Washington Post in a statement, noting that Bongino’s show was the platform’s top live stream before he entered the FBI.
Bongino shifted his focus to Rumble after he was suspended from some larger online platforms for posts related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the covid-19 pandemic.
Bongino didn’t respond to requests for comment on his plans for the show. But his posts on X and guest appearance on Caronia’s podcast offer a preview of which topics he plans to address — and which ones he is steering clear of.
In an X post Monday, Bongino shared a collage of headlines about the FBI from the past year with a caption that read, in part: “It’s been a busy year. So much to talk about when I return to podcasting.” The headlines mentioned the indictment of a Black Lives Matter activist, a drug bust in Philadelphia and the ouster of some top FBI officials — but nothing about Epstein, the well-connected financier who died in his jail cell in 2019 before he could face trial on charges of sexually abusing and trafficking dozens of underage girls.
Before being named to the No. 2 spot in the FBI, Bongino had gained online traction by touting his background as a Secret Service agent and delving into some of the online right’s most popular storylines — none more so than the Epstein case, which he said in 2023 was like a “tick burrowing under my skin.”
He dismissed the official finding that the disgraced financier had killed himself, portraying that as a cover-up to protect political elites whom he saw as complicit in Epstein’s crimes. On his podcast in 2023, Bongino urged his followers to “keep the heat” up on the case because so many “in the Washington swamp” were lying and wanted “this thing to go away.”
“How is it that all these people … intersected paths with Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein isn’t with us anymore, and nobody seems to want to talk about it?” he said.
Once in the FBI, however, Bongino declared the Epstein case effectively closed.
“He killed himself,” Bongino told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo last year. “I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”
The about-face outraged some of Bongino’s longtime fans.
“None of #BonginoArmy peeps believe this,” one user said on X. “None of us believe [Bongino] even believes what he is saying.”
In December, after the FBI arrested a suspect in a January 2021 D.C. pipe-bomb planting who had no evident connection to government circles, Fox News host Sean Hannity asked Bongino about his past claim that it had been an “inside job.” The suspect later said he had placed the bombs because he was frustrated with the U.S. political system.
“I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions, that’s clear, and one day I’ll be back in that space — but that’s not what I’m paid for now,” Bongino said. “I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”
Bongino is reentering a conservative media sphere that has been jostled in his absence by the September killing of activist Charlie Kirk, said A.J. Bauer, a journalism professor at the University of Alabama who researches right-wing political movements.
“There’s a repositioning within the sector to see if anybody can capitalize on that audience,” Bauer said.
Among the figures whose profiles have risen, especially among the young and very online, are conspiracy theorists such as Candace Owens and hard-line White nationalists such as Nick Fuentes. Bongino’s recent X posts suggest that he will align instead with an older guard — including talk radio host Mark Levin, Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — that has been pushing back on what it sees as a destructive antisemitic insurgency within the party.
Bongino has also come out swinging at his critics, labeling those who have questioned his ties to a pro-Israel advocacy group as “demon savages.”
In an X post last week, Bongino said he intended to serve as a gatekeeper for the conservative mainstream and compared himself to a sports team leader, saying, “You don’t allow cancers into your clubhouse and then plan to win baseball games.”
Bauer said Bongino faces a challenge in maintaining his appeal to the right wing’s “deep antiestablishment streak” while fending off criticism of his own role in the administration. “Part of what Bongino is navigating is how to convey an aesthetic of insurgent outsiderness while also using the associations he has with the state to leverage and build credibility,” Bauer said.
In his Jan. 8 interview with Caronia, Bongino discussed the threats of Chinese surveillance and online radicalization but dedicated none of the 38-minute interview to the Epstein case.
Seraphin said he doesn’t envy Bongino’s position.
“He has appointed himself essentially the MAGA policeman,” going after anyone on the right who breaks with the Trump administration, Seraphin said. “The backlash from social media, if that’s any indication of where the audience sits — and I don’t think it’s all of his audience, but it’s some — I think it’s really bad for him.”
Bongino’s loudest post-FBI squabbles have been with the comedian and political commentator Dave Smith, who has said Bongino “disgusted” his base by being “the anti-deep-state guy” who “exposed himself as the deep state.”
“Dan Bongino’s got a real problem: You’re either lying then or you’re lying now,” Smith told TV host Piers Morgan this week. “If you’re going to come back to this world of doing these shows on the internet, you’re going to have to explain that to people at some point.”
Bongino shot back that Smith is among the “digital astroturfing chumps” and other antagonists who have sought to undermine him and the president, including “anti-Trump doomers trying to destroy his administration.” On Monday, Bongino put a positive spin on the controversy his return to podcasting has been generating.
“The engagement is absolute
,” he said on X.
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