No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - MAGA civil war explodes between Elon & Trump faithful

Episode Date: December 29, 2024

A MAGA civil war explodes between Trump’s most vocal supporters and Elon Musk. Brian interviews Congressman Jamie Raskin about Elon Musk's takeover of the GOP, his ascent to ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and whether failing to elevate AOC to the top of the Oversight Committee was a mistake. And TYT’s Cenk Uygur joins to discuss his appearance at far-right AmFest, and whether reaching out to the MAGA-sphere is smart or naïve.Shop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the MAGA Civil War exploding between Trump's most vocal supporters and Elon Musk. And I interviewed Congressman Jamie Raskin about Elon Musk's takeover for the GOP, his assent to ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and whether failing to elevate AOC to the top oversight position was a mistake. And I'm joined by TYT's Jank Yugar to discuss his appearance at far-right Amfest and whether reaching out to the Magosphere is smart or naive. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So Elon Musk's honeymoon in the Trump administration seems to have ended before the administration has officially begun. While most of us were celebrating the holidays, Elon's been waging a fight with the very people whose voices he spent months elevating. So he's been publicly advocating for offering more visas to highly skilled foreign workers via the H-1B program. And he tweeted, I'm referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top 0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning.

the number of people who are super talented engineers and super motivated in the USA is far too low. Think of this like a pro sports team. If you want your team to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole team to win. And he was backed up by his Department of Government Efficiency co-chair Vivek Ramoswamy, who tweeted, A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the Math Olympiad champ or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers.

Well, I'm sure you can imagine how that went over. with Trump's America-first base. Matt Gates, for example, tweeted, we welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the third-grade teacher picking their kids' gender and the obvious Biden-Harris economic decline. We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy. He was joined by Anne Coulter, who tweeted,

American workers can leave a company, imported H-1B workers can't. Tech wants indentured servants, not high-skilled workers. Laura Lumer, who would ultimately have her Twitter verification stripped away by Elon over this very argument, wrote, Vivek Ramoswamy knows that the great replacement is real, so does J.D. Vance. It's not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H-1B visas, not an extension. And I would happily say it to their faces because there's nothing inflammatory about what I said.

Everything I said is true. If India was so high-skilled, people would stay there instead of flocking to the U.S., you're not going to shame me into tempering my thoughts. I really am past the point of giving a fuck. The tech billionaires don't get to just walk inside Mar-a-Lago and stroke their massive checkbooks and rewrite our immigration policy so they can have unlimited slave laborers from India and China who never assimilate. And so then Elon started clapping back, tweeting stuff like this. Quote, the reason I'm in America along with so many critical people who built

SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H-1B. Take a step back and fuck yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. To which Steve Bannon replied, someone please notify child protective services need to do a wellness check on this toddler. And this was all just a tiny sampling of the hundreds of tweets that consume Twitter over the holiday on this very topic. Now, first of all, just as a quick aside, imagine being the richest person on the planet. You can quite literally do anything on Earth, and you spend the holidays fighting with random racists on Twitter whose voices you elevated, by the way? Like, if you ever

needed to disabuse yourself of this notion that money buys happiness, all you got to do is look at Elon Musk because, my God, this dude really does have a pathetic existence. Also, this is what you spend Christmas doing? Aren't you part of the administration whose entire MO is that Trump is bringing Christmas back? Those evil communist Marxist Democrats stole Christmas from the department stores, and yet now Trump is entering office and you spend that sacred holiday fighting with strangers on the internet? This is what we brought Christmas back for? Okay, but Elon's sad little holiday aside, the broader irony here is that Elon paid hundreds of millions of dollars to help Trump, who ran on a xenophobic platform of deporting immigrants win the presidency. And yet now he can't understand why

the rabid base of unrepentant racist that he emboldened continues to be racist, man votes for leopards eating faces party, did not think leopards would eat his face too. And look, of course, all of this is a hill that Elon will die on. He's a former H1B visa immigrant who owns businesses that I'm sure largely rely on H1B visa recipients to function. It's also a hill that the MAGA faithful will die on, though. Trump's agenda is America First and his campaign handed out deport them all signs at his rallies. And so look, my take on this is that they both got fooled. The MAGA loyalists probably took it worse, recognizing now that they just installed into power an unelected oligarch who's going to use Donald Trump to expand immigration programs that they

hate, and there's probably nothing they can do about it because Elon is the de facto president. But Elon is also a sad little man who desperately craves the approval of the Maga Base that he has spent the better part of a year nurturing. He needs them to keep petting him and massaging his ego, and now he's recognizing that his little foot soldiers are just racist assholes who are happy to accept the financial help, but don't actually agree with his worldview and instead want to elevate white Americans and no one else. So not great for either side. Now, it goes without saying, but the H-1B program is good. We should absolutely bring the best and the brightest talent to the United States. And if they don't come here, the talent goes to other

countries. There is actually a 100% quote-unquote America-first incentive to do that. Now, of course, MAGA doesn't care because for them, it's more about promoting white Americans than actually helping America as a whole. The irony of all of this, though, is that Democrats understand this. But Elon decided to throw his lot in with the deport them all guys. and just hope that everything would work out from there. If Elon is looking for the party that would actually embrace and welcome high-skilled labor from other countries, that would be the party that he himself helped and sure it would be shut out of power.

But hey, I'm sure it's going to be plenty easy convincing Steve Bannon and Matt Gates that suddenly immigration is good. One quick note, I'll be doing my annual year-in-review and predictions episode on January 1st with my buddy Alex Michelson, so that'll be a midweek episode to keep an eye out for but until then, I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas and is having a happy Hanukkah and that you all have a safe and healthy New Year. Try not fighting with strangers on the internet for the next few days.

And finally, thank you for taking a little bit of time out each week to listen to this podcast and to hear my take on things. Okay, next up are my interviews with Jamie Raskin and Jank Yugar. No Lie is brought to you by Lumen. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailor guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and even stress management.

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So if you want to stay on track with your health this holiday season, go to Lumen.me. me slash BTC to get 15% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N-D-C for 15% off your purchase. Lumen makes a great gift, too. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode. I'm joined now by someone who needs no introduction. Congressman Jamie Raskin, thanks so much for joining me again. Well, I certainly need no introduction for your audience because you have me on all the time, Brian.

It's always my pleasure. It's always a delight to be with you. So happy holidays. You too. You too. Congressman. So from your vantage, how do you think Republicans feel about President Musk being given full control now over their party? Well, some of them love it. I think the most mega-inflicted of them love it. The others just kind of are born along. by whatever happens. They've made their peace long ago with Trump being the dictator-ruler of the GOP. And there might be a handful of them who are alarmed by the further degradation of politics on their side. Is there any sense of regret, at least from your Republican colleagues, maybe folks who you've spoken to, that they did usher in a billionaire who is now

immediately threatening to fund primary opponents if they don't fully bend the knee? Or Or to your earlier point, are they just that content to fall in line and kiss the ring? I mean, I think they're coming to the conclusion that they have created a monster in Donald Trump, who's just uncontrollable and incorrigible and ungovernable, and he just does whatever he wants. And that includes bringing in people just like him. I mean, it's going to be a cabinet of billionaire oligarchs. It will look a lot like Putin and his oligarchs. So we're talking about people who own significant segments of the American economy.

And then because of that are granted a place at the table to govern that there's a name for that, which is oligarchy or plutocracy, rule of the wealthy, although that makes it sound too diffuse and widespread. It's really oligarchy. It's the rule of the wealthiest people, a handful of them, over everybody else. So we're talking about a country of hundreds of millions of people, which is built on the struggle for and the principle of one person, one vote. Well, Elon's first big move was to demand that the CR, the continuing resolution, be slimmed down. Republicans did that by stripping out certain provisions like a bunch of health care provisions, including childhood cancer research funding.

Elon then supported that new bill. So is this what we can expect from the new head of the Republican Party? Is this the populism that was promised and that voters voted for? for? Well, I don't think, certainly that was not put on the table specifically as subject matter. Like, let's remove research for pediatric cancer. Let's attack VA benefits. No, that wasn't. And I think the optics of it were striking to people that, you know, you had the wealthiest person in the world demanding the deletion of these programs to benefit. poor people and kids and working people. So we'll see how long that lasts and, you know, how long the pseudo-populist pose will be convincing to people. So in the aftermath of these

programs being deleted from the initial CR, there was a lot of talk on the right about, okay, well, this, you know, the, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Act 2.0 was already, had already passed the House back in March, and it was sitting languishing in the Senate. So can you explain why the Senate couldn't simply pass the bill to fund pediatric cancer research since it did pass out of the House previously? Well, for the same reason, it's difficult to pass almost anything out of the Senate, which is the filibuster. And the filibuster means that you need not 51 votes to get something through, but 60 votes. And the way that's operationalized is that each member can place the so-called hold on a bill or on any legislation going through through their hotline process.

And if one senator says no, they can stop it. So the way that you get legislation through is as part of a package and a compromise where lots of different things are put together. And you don't love X and I don't love Y and Z people are okay with and you put it all together and then it goes through. And that's the kind of negotiation that works over there. But it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to say, well, let's just take it out and have the Senate pass it because anybody, you know, Rand Paul or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz could have just blocked it. And by the way, we did see Rand Paul block this bill. And it wasn't until Tim Cain got him to finally release his hold that this was able to pass with unanimous support. But that doesn't mean that it would have passed prior to that. And it also doesn't mean that a bunch of the other health care provisions that we had intended to pass,

including provisions that would impose penalties on drug companies for not doing the less lucrative work of pediatric cancer research funding. That none of that got attention either. And a lot of these failed to pass as the result of this. It was like thankfully the Gabriela Miller Kids First Act 2.0 was able to pass. But that's owed in large part to the fact that there was so much pressure on it. there isn't that much pressure on the lesser-known provisions that failed to pass as the result of Elon's meddling in this broader CR. You know, Trump had said that anybody who voted for a clean CR would be primaried. Cut to, 170 Republicans did vote for a clean CR at the end of the day.

Does that suggest that perhaps Trump has less political capital than he might think? Well, I think those threats just get diluted over time in terms of their effectiveness. I mean, they threaten them every day. If you don't do exactly what we want to do, we're going to put up candidates against you. Elon's going to spend millions to stop you. Trump is going to endorse your opponent. And it's kind of humiliating that you get elected to the United States Congress and, you know, you constantly have, you know, this system of legislative extortion mobilized against you. And, you know, why even do it at that point? I do think that their hold is weakening, especially since they're constantly careening from one side

of the road to the other. You know, the continuing resolution that they blew up was the product of many, many weeks of intensive bipartisan negotiation. And then Elon sent out his tweet, and then the politicians started getting scared, and, you know, the support was eroding over the course of the day. Then they asked Trump about it, and then Trump had to scramble. to catch up with Elon, and it was just chaos. So then they scrambled to put together this hodgepodge bill the next day,

which was utterly indigestible to us. And I think all the Democrats voted against it, or maybe one person voted for it. But then a bunch of Republicans voted against it, too. I think 37 Republicans opposed it on that day. And, I mean, this very quickly triggered memories of the terrible, election of Mike Johnson, which went on for more than a week with all of these different ballots, you'll remember 2 o'clock in the morning. And we realized we're being plunged back into the exact

same kind of chaos that they started the 118th Congress with. Can you speak on the diffusion of responsibility that Republicans are trying to engage in right now? Right after that second CR failed, where, as you mentioned, 38 Republicans voted against it, Elon took to Twitter and blamed it on Speaker Jeffries because only a few Democrats had given support. But Democrats aren't in the majority. The Republicans are the ones that are in the majority, and it's not necessarily the Democrats' responsibility to bail out the Republicans or to teach them how to govern when, again, they control the House. So can you speak on this attempted diffusion of responsibility by the Republicans right now on the Democrats who are in the

minority in the House? Well, this is a lesson that they just can't seem to learn, where they just have to learn it over and over again. Look, they've got a very slender, tiny majority. in the House. They have no majority in the Senate, which means you've got to negotiate. It's got to be bipartisan. And even in the next Congress where they've got this slenderest of majorities in the House and a slender majority in the Senate and the White House, theoretically, they could just go ahead and say, we're just going to ram everything through. But if they can't come together in their own conference, then they're going to have to turn a Democrats, which is how we've kept the government open. It's how we've passed a budget repeatedly with the continuing

resolutions, but they get dozens of defections from the most megified Freedom Caucus people, although now there seems to be a split even there. I'm not sure I can understand all the convoluted politics of it. I know that Trump has been trashing Chip Roy and some of the other Freedom Caucus people, but in any event, they can't get together. So then they come to us. So then we negotiated a continuing resolution bipartisan compromise. We were all set, and it got blown up. So then they came back and they said they didn't talk to us. So there was no negotiation. They just said, we're just going to put this on the floor. So of course we're not going to vote for it after that's a job they did on the original bill. It was terrible.

And then, you know, and then Elon who really doesn't understand the process in fairness to him said, well, the Democrats didn't support it. Well, of course we wouldn't support it. We weren't part of the dialogue that led to it. So then there was legislation that was not what we'd originally agreed to, but we understand the situation they'd been put into and that they have a very difficult time governing. And so we just went with it because we were not prepared to shut down the government. But Mike Johnson has lost all credibility as a negotiating partner. People kept saying, well, wait, who are we negotiating with? Is it Mike Johnson? Is it the Freedom Caucus? Is it Donald Trump? Is it Elon Musk, who's never been elected to anything? Like, who do we negotiate

with? And it's just a very crazy way to try to run a railroad. Well, Congressman, isn't that the exact issue that led to Kevin McCarthy's ouster because he had lost the, he had lost the ability of the Democrats to actually trust who they were negotiating with. And he lost the trust of his own conference. That sounds an awful lot like what's happening with Mike Johnson right now. Right. And we're heading right back into January 3rd, where we're all going to be sworn in and a speaker's got to be elected. But on January 6th, this time we also have to meet in joint session under the 12th Amendment to receive the electoral college votes. And either there will be a speaker or there won't be a speaker, but it's never happened before in American history that we

have this kind of flux and uncertainty heading into the January 6th receipt of the electoral college votes. So I want to switch gears to some good news here, and that is that you were elevated to the ranking spot on judiciary, the House Judiciary Committee. committee, why was it important to upend normal procedure and make a run at sitting at top that committee? Well, actually, it is the normal procedure that we elect people every two years. I mean, what was unusual about it was just that there's a presumption that you go with the most senior person, and I'm not the most senior person.

I'm just still in my fourth term in office, so I've been in the house for eight years, which is not a long time for, you know, some people will be in the house for 30, 40 years, something like that. But look, I just felt that we're in the fight of our lives. And I have devoted my career so far centrally to the defense of democratic political institutions against all of the fraud and the cheating and the violence and so on. And the Judiciary Committee is going to be the front lines of the assault on the Department of Justice, the continuing erosion of ethics in the judiciary, the attack on immigrants, the attack on reproductive rights, and the oversight committee, of course, is essential too. But I felt after I was prevailed upon by lots of colleagues

on the Judiciary Committee and in other parts of the House to run for it. And it worked out well. And so I will be working hard on the Judiciary Committee as the ranking member, along with the new ranking member on oversight, who's Jerry Conley from Virginia. And I want to talk about that. While again, your ascension to the top of the judiciary was beyond welcome news, AOC lost her run to lead oversight, which would have given one of the most effective communicators in the Democratic Party the ability to have a bigger megaphone. And look, I think that we should be under no delusions about how difficult it is to garner attention in the attention economy. AOC has a singular ability to be able to do that. So can you speak on that decision by the party more broadly?

So this is where the power of seniority really did kick in. AOC is even more junior than me. She came in the term after me. So she's only been in for three terms. She's only been in Congress for six years. And Jerry Connolly's been in Congress for more than 20 years. Alex has been my vice ranking member on oversight. So she has had a very intensive two-year tutorial in the management and running of a committee

and has worked very closely with a lot of our members and has done a fantastic job at it. But Jerry Conley, you know, exceeds her in terms of his experience with dealing with the manifold issues of the oversight committee, including the management of all these different government departments. And so I think it was amazing that she came as close as she did, really, because a lot of people were saying, you know, Jerry Connolly is perfectly able to do the job and he's, you know, he's smart on his feet and he knows the issues really well. But there's a lot of love for AOC. And as you're saying, she speaks to the outside world and to the country in a way that none of us do. I mean, she's got millions and millions of followers in the social media. And, you know, I have colleagues, more senior colleagues,

who really don't even understand the social media channels that she's an absolute master of. So that's something that I think the Democrats in the House and in the Senate, the Congress generally, are going to have to deal with. But AOC is not going anywhere but up. I mean, I think I've encouraged her to stay on the oversight committee because I think her future is very bright there. And we work together on a whole bunch of different projects in the House and in the country to communicate a very strong true blue progressive democracy message in the country, including, you know, our democracy summer project that we do in the summer.

And I work with her and Maxwell Frost and a bunch of the other junior members. on. So there is, you know, an important generational dimension to American politics, like all politics, and this is a generation that is really coming of age, and we need them badly right now. Is there some, I guess, to assuage some concerns, because it does feel like when you have somebody who is a unique talent within the Democratic Party who fails to assent up to the ranking member role, which would, again, give her a bigger megaphone, is there an understanding or an acknowledgement within the Democratic Party that there does need to be changes in terms of how the Democrats reach out to people

in the broader media ecosystem, the evolving media ecosystem right now, given what happened in November? It's something that's very much on my mind. I certainly believe it. And I've been making an effort despite the fact that, you know, I'm, you know, I was like the big rebel of the season before Alex has run. And I'm, you know, I was a 61-year-old grandfather when I, you know, captured that position, but that was seen as scandalous enough. So I think it was just a bridge too far to go with, you know, go with AOC as a ranking member at this point.

But look, you know, her legislative skills are fantastic. And as you're seeing, her communication skills are really surpassing. And I think people know that, and there will be lots of different ways for that to be expressed and represented. I mean, for example, one of the things I've thought about is they're creating this new Doge Committee, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, although it's not a department in the House, in the Oversight Committee. it's just a legislative subcommittee even in the administration it's not a department i think they wanted to call it that just so it mirrored the the bitcoin that uh the elons got but in any event um they're appointing um marjor taylor green to be the head of that subcommittee she's going to be the head of it well i mean one way to put that whole thing away very quickly is to make aOC the ranking

member on that and put AOC up against MTG. That will be a top-ranked show, but I think that the intellectual substance and the insight that Alex brings to it will shine through, you know. And I think that will be a meaningful, that would be one meaningful demonstration of what we're talking about. But there's lots of opportunities, and we will see that there will be a proliferation of opportunities for Alex. And not just Alex, by the way. I mean, you know, Melanie Stansbury from New Mexico and Greg Casar from Texas, Maxwell Frost from Florida, Jared Moskowitz from Florida,

Dan Goldman from New York. I mean, we've got an extraordinary junior team. And that's not even talking about the freshmen who are coming in right now, like Maggie Goodlander from New Hampshire. Julie Johnson from Texas, I mean, extraordinary people are getting elected because they understand the stakes of the times and they're running and we've got to figure out a way to use them in the House, in the Congress and out in the country in the Democratic Party. And, you know, the one thing I've noticed, Ryan, is that, you know, when things are going all right, when we're winning elections or we do things well, and people talk about, yeah, we're doing well. And then when something happens that disappoints us, then we say, well, you Democrats better do this. And you Democrats better do that. And I wish that people would use the third person singular. Is it that we use the we form to describe it?

Because we can make these things happen. And despite the fact that Jerry Connolly won, that's not a disaster or anything. I mean, Jerry Connolly is himself a great, an effective legislative leader. He just comes from a different generation. So he doesn't have all of the amazing skills that Alex. has in terms of communication through all of the channels that other members are just getting acquainted with now. Well, you had mentioned, you know, the importance of the times. I'm to quote somebody who you like quoting quite often, Thomas Payne said the Times have found us. And so I'm glad

that in this time right now, we do have you atop judiciary to do the work that you do so well and like nobody else can do. So, Congressman, thanks for taking the time today. Happy holidays and looking forward to seeing what you do in the new year. It's always a pleasure. I'm going to be fighting hard for strong democracy and freedom and the rule of law in the new year and we need you. Thank you for everything you do, Brian, and send happy holidays to your family and to all

of your great listeners out there. I knew you guys were for real in fighting against the establishment when I started going on right-wing shows and I would say something negative about Mitch

McConnell. And when I did that in the past, what I would get back is, oh, no, no, no, no, Mitch McConnell's great. Pelosi's terrible, but Mitch McConnell's great. Let's do that here. What do you guys think of Mitch McConnell? All right. Yes, I love that. So, look, for my left-wing friends that are watching out there,

they just booed Mitch McConnell. That's a great thing, okay? And let's do one more. What do you guys think about Dick Cheney? My left-wing friends out there, we have been waiting for the right-wing populace to boom Mitch McConnell and Dick Cheney our whole lives. Take the win. Take the win. I'm joined now by founder of TYT and host of the Young Turks.

Chank Yulgar, Jank, thank you so much for joining. That was a clip of you at an unlikely event this past weekend, Amfest, sponsored by Turning Point USA. So not exactly a liberal bastion there. I wanted to talk about this event in particular because you have, you've taken a lot of heat for going in the first place. And I want to push back against that right off the bat because I do think if this election has shown us anything is that Democrats do have to be willing to go into spaces that are more hostile to Democrats. Inherently, if we're going to look at expanding our coalition, expanding our tent, we have to go outside of that tent to be able to do that. So I disagree with people who think that you shouldn't be going there. I think we should be going into the most dangerous territory that we could.

That's the only way that we're going to be able to really, really send our message the farthest. But I do take issue with one thing there. You said in that clip, I knew you guys were for real about fighting the establishment. And you give a bunch of a list of reasons. But, you know, you set it to a room full of people who voted for a billionaire in Donald Trump and who was funded by the little richest guy in the world in Elon Musk. So I understand and appreciate your argument that Kamala Harris and the Democrats are to establishment. That's a drum that you've beaten for years now.

But isn't it insane to think that this Republican Party, this MAGA Republican Party is the answer? Like, there are more billionaires in Trump's cabinet than the buffet line at Davos. Yeah. So let's think both of those real quick. So number one, I'm going to talk to folks. There's a talking point that we have on the left that we don't really. is absurd, but it is totally absurd. They say, well, if you go talk to them, it legitimized them.

You know what legitimizes them, winning the election? Right. That chip is sailed, right? Like when people say, don't go on Fox, as if millions of, as if we're the reason that Fox is suddenly going to be legitimized because on a network that millions of people watch on a daily basis. Of course. And so, and they even won the popular vote.

But the fact that they won the popular vote is very relevant because we have to win those voters back. and you can't win those voters back if you're not talking to them. So that's point one. Now, in terms of the establishment, this one is complicated and really interesting topics. So both sides claim that the other side is bad and their donors suck, but our donors are great. And I always find that conversation intensely absurd, right? So if you say to me the donors on both sides are bad, meaning like, not that they're bad people,

but that it's bad that this system allows for those kind of donations, which they're, and obviously influence both sides. I say absolutely 100%. But that means you've got to be honest about your own side. So as you pointed out, I've been saying this for about 20 years now. And so that's why I'm in the Bernie Sanders wing. And I think when Colin Harris was bragging

about how she had 90 corporate CEOs on her side, that was a terrible strategy. And when she raised over a billion dollars for herself, let alone the billions in the packs, largely a huge portion of that. was corporate donors if you think that they don't have to pay them back with favors you're just not paying attention I love your brothers and sisters but this is the same exact thing I say to the right wing so when I go there and I say one thing they did that we didn't do yet is they did a revolt against their establishment wing within the party so they you know basically kicked out Mitch McConnell from power etc we have not done likewise we have not kicked out the Nancy Pelosi's and the Joe Biden's and so when you go to do that there's massive pushback okay no way those are our leaders and we do we the other side is so evil we have to take the money we have to bow our heads to these leaders and we have to let them do serve the donors no i don't agree right but now when you turn to the right wing it i said later in that speech i said guys don't uh you know lower your guard because you have donors too and then there was a little bit of a hush over the crowd right because when you start talking about republican donors who pops the mind first Elon Musk And so I'm honest about it in both directions, and I say it to their face.

And so I've got on other right-wing shows and said, who's Elon, you know, what's Elon Musk? He's a donor. He's the largest donor over a quarter of a billion dollars that he gave to Donald Trump. And now all of a sudden, he wants regulatory agencies that regulate his companies to be wiped away from existence. Right. That's awfully convenient, right? And then who's his donor, his third largest donor? Miriam Aedelson, $137 million.

If you take the Aedelson family, Sheldon and Miriam, Sheldon has passed away, but before he did, they've given over $330 million to Donald Trump even larger than Elon Musk, and in my opinion, he's handed them foreign policy. So these are the points I make to right-winger's, and who else is even getting in the room to make those points to tell they're not their leaders,

but they're voters. Guys, remember, you're supposed to hate corruption. That's what you say 24-7. If you do, be careful about Elon Musk, Muriam Edelson and every other donor that Trump has. Well, I think, I think that's where the point of contention is because, because you saying this stuff is you operating in good faith. These people don't care.

Like, there are no longstanding principles that they abide by. This is the purported party of family values, the purported party of the constitution, of law and order, of states rights, of fiscal responsibility. They will throw that shit out the window the moment. The, the milliseconds, it becomes inconvenient for them. And that's what they did. But you're saying these things to people as if they're operating under some principle that they should be against the establishment, that they should be against these donors when they're not. The only longstanding principle is their allegiance to Trump.

And so my worry is that like you trying to get through to them on these issues of principle is falling flat because it's not principle that got them there in the first place. There is no longstanding principle when you are a Trump supporter. Yeah. So, Brian, this is an interesting, I think this is probably the most interesting point of the conversation, because I think you're right and you're wrong. So the right part is what you're laying out the history of, and that is correct. That's what I've said, that's what you've said, and we've been accurate about that, right? So did Donald Trump do anything actually popular was in his first term? No.

He even forgot about the wall until six months were left, and he, oh, right, I've got to run on the wall. So I'll pretend to build like three feet of it, right? And all he did was giant corporate tax cuts, which is literally the least populous thing you could do. And I say that all the time, again, on right wing shows, I talk to them about Jaffe Yes, how Trump wanted to ban TikTok. Yes, gives him a couple million dollars. All of a sudden, he likes TikTok. Same thing on electric vehicles on Elon. And again, whenever I make those points, even the host, like, not along, like, it's uncomfortably true, right? Yeah. So now, so, and so on family values, another point where you're absolutely right, enormous.

hypocrisy like record-breaking hypocrisy for my entire life family values for you but not for me but I'll vote for the guy with the porn star mistress etc etc right so we're all clear on that and there's nothing wrong with anything we've ever said on that we've been 100% right okay now where's the part where I think you're wrong and this is the part where people I think I'm a little ahead of people and people think I'm being naive so what I'm sensing Brian is from their audiences and I'm not just sensing it like like through intuition they're literally doing polls while I'm on their shows they were doing interactions calls when I went to Amfest talked to

literally hundreds of guys who are Maga as you know they came up to talk to me etc and this is not the same base as Trump 2016 so that doesn't mean that they're angels it doesn't mean that everyone on that side all of a sudden changed their mind. Will you find the immovable part of the Trump base as we had before? Absolutely, right? Will you still find some evangelical Christians? Yes, but they have greatly dwindled, both in size and power. So that family value stuff went out the door, partly because they were hypocrites, but partly because the evangelical Christians aren't in charge anymore of MAGA. So the rest of MAGA are kind of bros and stuff, and they don't really care about family

values at all. In fact, a lot of the bros are pro-choice. So, like, when, When you say that some people on the right or agree with us on things like pro-choice or anti-corruption, the pushback I get from the left is no way they're all evil, they're all a monolith, they're all this, they're all that. No, guys, that's unsophisticated. 77 million people are not all the same thing. And remember, we don't have to win or care that much about the outer edge of MAGA on the right. You're never going to win those guys over, and that's not the issue. you've got to win over people on the inner edge that voted for Obama, that voted for Biden

and now have voted for Trump. And those folks are not radicals. Those folks need to be one over and they are different than what the base was before. And so what I'm sensing is on anti-war and anti-corruption, they really do mean it. Now if you say yes, but there's backing Trump who's doing this obvious brazen corruption we just talked about, I know, I know. So what I'm doing is giving them an opportunity to remember that they're supposed to be anti-corruption and that, hey, when Trump does favors for the donors, I'm the only one pointing out to them that that's hypocritical, right?

Because remember, they're not watching mainstream media, they're not watching our shows, right? So, and their right-wing media hosts are not overly incentivized to point out Trump's hypocrisy. Totally. Yeah. like for example on anti-war they're definitely anti-war definitely they're not even hypocritical about it and so if you don't believe me i love you it's okay i get it we've all been burned

hundreds of times right but but if it turns out i'm right what i'm hoping people go oh yeah jake told us this i remember yelling at him about it but it turns out holy cow they are anti-war right on anti-corruption i think that the instincts of some portion of their base are correct but we've got to show them without, like, ripping their face off, that maybe Trump is also corrupt.

I think the part that, and you touched on this, is the cognitive dissonance between these people purporting to say that they are for one thing and yet constantly reaffirming their support for Donald Trump, who stands in stark opposition to the very thing that they purport to be against. And so I guess my question for you is, what's your red line to the point where you finally recognize whether or not the people who you were talking to at Turning Point USA's Amfest, for example, are not actually operating in good faith. And whether there is, against my earlier question, no actual longstanding principle, it's other than fealty to the God King, right? Like, I guess

that's what I'm trying to figure out here, because thus far, there has been no indication that even though they say they're for anti-corruption, Donald Trump's the most corrupt guy to ever sit in the Oval Office, even though they say that they're, you know, for, the The list goes on and on, right? It's the list that we, that we has spoken about earlier, but, but when does, when, when, when will you stop giving certain people at this event, for example, the benefit of the doubt in terms of their actions not matching up to their rhetoric? Yeah.

So, um, I think some things are clear, right? So for example, we're not going to win on a whole heap of issues, right? So like if I try to convince them that the crypto bros are going on the wrong direction, I'm going to get massive blowback. and I'm never going to win on that. Correct. So that's going to take four years and probably us getting robbed

to the tune of a couple trillion dollars before they realize that mistake. Okay? So I'm super realistic about all of these different things. I think that on corruption, they're never going to want to admit in the beginning that Trump is doing favors for their donors.

Although, again, I see right-wing hosts and people in their audience going, I understand what you're saying about Jeff Yaz and TikTok. I understand what you're saying, you're saying about electric vehicles and Elon so that's the beginning right it's not the end so so then my best guess is the anti-war stuff is where the rubber hits the road so he put in and Brian you know parts of your audience parts of the left wing host etc might not might not love this but but my sense is that the rubber's probably going to

hit the road on Israel and so here's why because Trump put in Marco Rubio at least the Mike Huckabee and Mike Wals as Team Miriam. That's his, you know, the four people that he's handing foreign policy to Amiriam Madelson is a supporter of the hard right wing in Israel. And so they're going to push towards outrageous positions like annexing the West Bank, annexing north in Gaza. Israeli press has already written about this Israeli cabinet ministers, already excited about this. If they try to annex, for example, the West Bank, it's going to, it probably will lead to a vicious, bloody war. And then, but I don't know the Congress of it, but they might just slaughter the Palestinians again. And I'm not naive enough to think that Maga is going to be like, oh, my God, we're losing precious Palestinian and Muslim lives, right?

No, but I think at some point they're going to say, look, guys, this is an America first. Why are we paying for another war of Israel? Why are we paying for another war of Israel, right? Yeah. And if they don't, though, and then they go, hey, you know what? I mean, now let's do an extreme example. If Trump helps Israel start a war with Iran and says, we have to finance it, and they don't rebel, then I was totally wrong. And I think, and I understand completely, and that's, and these are good examples.

And it's good to have this, this sense of, like, where it could go in the future. And I think that's a realistic example as well. But I think what you are probably giving more credit than I will is this sense that any of this stuff matters because, again, there has been, they haven't shown any discernment thus far on any of the things that they claimed were their principles before. And so I'm, I'm skeptical at best of this notion that they're going to move away from Donald Trump as soon as he enacts any policy that goes against the grain in terms of what these people claim that they wanted. But, but again, remains to be seen. I hope you're right. I hope that they do show some discerning behavior toward Donald Trump. I'm skeptical that they will. But I guess we're going to see in the coming months and years here. I want to pivot over to the state of the media right now. Now, you have been, you know, you and the team over at TYT have been critical of the left, certainly more critical of the left than the right is of the Republican Party, which, you know, that's your You're certainly more critical of the Democratic Party than I am. I think that I can learn more from you in terms of bolstering independent media bona fides by virtue of doing that more.

And I also think that there is a time and a place to do it. But, you know, we are in a media environment right now where it's, we often see that left-wing media kind of bolsters its progressive bona fides by criticizing the left. right-wing media bolsters its conservative bona fides also by criticizing the left and so given given that massive disparity especially in light of how it presented itself ahead of this election where you know so many people are consuming independent media right now and that informs so much of their political affiliation and if and if it feels like like the left is getting hit or the democrats are getting hit from both sides it really isn't that surprising then that that's the Democrats would turn in such a poor performance in this election, again, if people are really

gaining their knowledge from what they see on indie media, does that inform a little bit of how you're going to operate moving forward in this kind of new media environment with so many people, kind of sprinting away from legacy media and coming toward independent media and seeing how the asymmetry in that media ecosystem manifested itself in this election to the benefit of Republicans? Yeah, so I disagree with one of the assumptions that you layered in there that's so important. I'll get to that in a second. So there's two parts of this conversation. Number one, we do a news show. So we're just going to be honest, period. So if the Democrats are doing something wrong, we're going to say we don't care when, we don't care where. We don't care

people go, no, no, no, no, no, that's not good marketing for the Democratic Party. That's not my business. That's not my job. My job is to be honest. So same with the Republicans. Oh, no, no, no, don't hurt Donald Trump's feelings. No, I'm going to hurt his feelings. I don't care. That's not my job is to protect Kamala Harris or Donald Trump's feelings or their political career or either party. We're just going to do an honest news show. Young Turks live, 6 o'clock Eastern, check it out every day, and you'll be amazed.

Okay, so, and it's funny that that's like a unique thing in American media. Okay, now, let's go to the core of what you're asking, though, in terms of strategy on the left and on the Democratic side. And I ask this. I ask this question that you're going to get into because, you know, obviously you're progressive and you want to see progressivism win out in the United States, as do I. And so, and so it's not, this isn't, you're not Reuters, right? So that's why I ask, there is a sense of like, there is activism that you want to see happening. And so, and so I just wanted to, like, lay that out.

But go on. Yeah, I totally get it. And so to your point, Brian, so what we do on The Young Turks is we give you the facts first, and those are non-negotiable. Then we do prospective journalism. especially me right and so that's where i get into strategy and what's the best way for progressives and populace to win et cetera et cetera so that let's address that part of it now so in my opinion there's three wings of the democratic party there's the establishment wing there's the populace

wing and then there is what i call the far left wing right and you can call that anything you like and i'm not trying to be offensive about it in fact in that umphous uh discussion i said for example i'm extreme left on gun control i know that my positions would not win in america uh they would be very normal in europe but but in america we have no chance of passing my gun control policies okay so so now between these three wings the establishment wing uh is you know common harris joe biden uh Pelosi clinton etc that has led to electoral disaster uh and it has done it so with incredible haughtiness. They told us, no, Hillary Clinton is definitely going to win. And this riffraff Bernie Sanders, nobody wants populism. Well, they were 100% wrong. 100% wrong. So,

by the way, Bernie Sanders had a 12-point lead on Election Day in 2016. Obviously, the campaign would have a change that, but I'd much rather start with a 12-point lead than lose, as Hillary Clinton did. But Joe Biden barely won with 43,000 votes in three swing states in 2020. 2020, even though Trump was awful and that he could be barely meet him and then obviously Kamalares, not only lost every swing state, but the popular vote. So guys, you've got to face reality. Like there's what the world you want and the world does it actually exists. And the world as it actually exists despises this establishment. The right wing does, the left wing does, the middle does, the independents do. So if you keep going, well look, look, look, we've got

a new and improved corporate robot, Pete Buttigieg, he's going to go out there and he's going to be in a flannel jacket. He's gonna have a populist script. It's never gonna work. It's never gonna work. America does not want someone who takes donor money, has pretty little talking points, and then does what the donors want, okay?

So please, please stop losing. Please, I'm begging you. If you don't want Trump, you don't want Maga in charge, stop going with the wrong strategy. So then you've got the four left, and they say, no, we should have maximalist positions. So on trans issues, I don't want a moderate position, You know, just give me everything.

Give me everything. Everybody has to be called a birthing person. Everybody, you know, change sex operations for people under 18s, fine. No, are you, okay. They have to be forced, the professional sports leagues have to be forced to allow trans women, et cetera. Look, even if you think those maximalist positions are wonderful and exactly right and the most moral thing to do, America is not there. You have to win over America so that you can.

can win elections with that strategy right now if you go with my gun control policy or maximal's positions on crime trans issues etc you're going to lose so please if like why are you handing elections to the right wing i mean people are yelling at me for talking to the right wing i mean the democratic party gave these elections you should be furious at democratic leadership for handing these elections to the right way so what's the the part of the democratic party that I think is the most popular and the one that is actually the biggest component of the Democratic Party in the left wing is the populist wing so that's a higher minimum wage paid family leave Medicare for all which is just

universal health care that the entire world has free college at the state level at the at the for government state-run colleges like University of Texas University of North Carolina I can go on and on but the economically populous positions we have that are enormously popular you have to run on them and then when you get into office for god's sake you have to do them if you don't do them you seed ground to the right and you seem hypocritical and you lose elections so in my ideal world we all coalesce around obviously burney's too old so someone along those lines and and that person was the primary and i promised to you that if that person was the primary we're going to just absolutely clean the Republicans' clock in the 2028 general election. I'm going to play devil's advocate here and push back on something and say that Biden in the first two years of his term when he had full control of government was able to enact a lot of the populist agenda that you and I both wanted to see enacted.

I mean, we're talking about, you know, the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act capping medical, out-of-pocket medical costs of $2,000, insulin and inhalers at $35, dollars, getting the rich to pay higher taxes, infrastructure, the infrastructure bill, the gun safety bill, although, of course, it didn't go far enough for what you wanted, but the list goes on and on, right? And so eliminating junk fees at banks, getting automatic refunds for airline cancellations, a lot of what Lena Kahn did at the FTC, blocking the Kroger Albertson's merger, clicked to cancel, again, elimination of junk fees. So there were a lot, there was a lot that happened. And so I guess my question is,

if there is only contempt for someone like Joe Biden who was able to enact a lot of the populist agenda, then what incentive is there for somebody who comes along next to enact a populist agenda if there is so little applauding and so much criticism for what hadn't yet been done? Yeah, I just fundamentally disagree on your view of what got done. Well, no, to be clear, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I mean, that's like- No, I get it. Yeah.

So let me address it. So look, if you say Biden got more done than Obama did, for example, and Clinton, Clinton's very conservative Democrat these days, meaning like when we look back at his policies from back then, they seem very conservative. Yeah, I mean, but that's damning with faint praise. So I said Obama got about 5% of his agenda done, and I think Biden got 15% of his agenda done. And for a Democrat, that's amazing. uh and for and if you're in the top 10 percent or you're relatively comfortable in this country

you look at and you go this guy got us 15 percent change what else you unreasonable people want right but if you're in the overwhelming majority of americans that are struggling half the country can't survive a 500 dollar financial hit then 15 percent isn't close to good enough so for example on negotiating drug prices did he negotiate them yeah on insulin one one one literally one drug and then by 2016 we can get all the way up to 10 drugs right which what that does guys i i hate to break your heart but that's a trick that protects tens of thousands of drugs that we cannot negotiate drug prices on yeah i agree with that yeah it cements the drug company's power while pretending to fight back against them but on the other hand there's good

things that Biden did that are real like so whenever somebody uh sends in a comment was we're doing the show live about oh my god i got student debt relief i go look guys he did about 10% of the student debt relief so i want the whole thing and so i'm going to push for that but if you're in the 10% i got student debt relief you got to vote for joe bide i've said that dozens of times on my show because if he if a politician delivers for you you owe him the vote right he did he delivered for you so the proof is always in the pudding and so we ask way too little of our politicians especially on the Democratic side. He didn't even introduce the public option. He didn't fight for paid family leave 1%. If polls at 84%, what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? You know what's

going to happen? If Trump is smart at all, he'll pass paid family leave because it's so popular both the right and the left wing. And then people go, well, why didn't Biden pass it? Because Biden didn't want to pass it. That's the part where I break the hearts of some Democratic voters who believe that our politicians are saints and good people. They're not. His donors don't want him to pass paid family leave. It would have been so, so easy to pass it. And he just absolutely refused to do it.

And the parliamentarian and the filibuster are nothing but excuses. And you'll never hear about the parliamentarian when Trump's in charge. When he was president for four years, I never heard the word parliamentarian. Never. And you won't hear it again. It's just an excuse. We don't have a parliamentary system. It's such a ridiculous excuse.

So we've got to do more. And then lastly, Ryan, I'm the thing, good things that he did, that 15% that I always give him credit for. Like here, here's another example. He put a minimum tax of 15% on the wealth, on corporations, not corporations, on the wealthy, okay? And so that's really good. But now it turns out it's because the OECD forced America to do it, right? So we didn't really have too much of a choice. But hey, I'll take it.

I'll take it, right? And so that's way better than the Republican. and I gave Biden a lot of credit for that. But even on that stuff, their messaging is so awful. And again, why have such terrible message? Like, if I did 15% minimum tax on the rich, I'd go do 12 press conferences on it, right? And if I did student debt relief,

if I did the things that he did, and I did an infrastructure bill, if I had the record low unemployment he had, I would go out there and be like, all right, guys, we broke it up. record today. We broke another record today where our unemployment is better than France, better than Holland, better than... Totally. And that's something, that's something, by the way,

that Democrats should have learned from Donald Trump the first time. I mean, we should have learned it about with the failures of Obamacare. You have something like Obamacare, which has now afforded 50 million Americans the ability to have coverage. And that was killed by Republicans in messaging. I mean, that was where they came forward and said that death panels were going to decide whether you lived or died. So that should have been the first. indication as to what happens when you create a vacuum in this media environment. But then watching Donald Trump, the guy couldn't take a shit without trying to throw a parade on Pennsylvania Avenue for himself and, you know, signed his name on the stimulus.

I sent a letter along with those stimulus checks that everybody knew that it was his. Democrats didn't do that immediately following Trump having done that with, I believe Trump used the CARES Act and then Democrats used the American Rescue Plan. And so often Democrats don't learn their lesson with regard to taking credit for what wins they are able to pass. And I think that there's no excuse for that in a media environment where you need to make sure that you get credit for every possible win that you can, especially in light of the fact that the Republican Party is led by somebody like Donald Trump who's still out there beating his chest because he quote unquote built the wall along the southern border that amounts to like 50 miles of wall. And that's it. But you ask 99 out of 100 Republicans, and they will tell you that Donald Trump completely secured the southern border because they know how to beat their chess and take credit for wins

even when they are non-existent. Yeah, Brian, I couldn't agree more. And so what Trump does is good politics. You might hate it, but he constantly draws attention to things that he did right. He often will draw attention to things that he didn't do right. And he'll just lie and say he did them right. Or blame him on the Democrats that aren't in control. Right.

But when he says, even if it's a lie, which is very, very often, right, if he says that 10 times or 100 times, people think it's true. Especially when the Democrats don't push back. Correct. And don't say it 10 times or 100 times. And there's something, look, I'm going to now again, I'm going to push your guys limits here for those of you're watching for what you're willing to tolerate from the left. from your own, which is culturally, we have a problem. We have an NPR problem. We think we should always whisper, and we should be civil, and we should be polite.

And so when I raise my voice, even in defense of the left, I almost always get pushback from Democrats who go, you're doing it on civilly. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't, don't, don't, oh, what a braggard, how arrogant, how this, how that. No, guys, we're in the WWE era. We're not in the NPR era. Yeah. I don't think you're going to get any push back from my audience on that. In fact, I think the recurring theme that I've seen from my audience is that there is a desperation for the Democrats to actually learn how to fight back in this era where Republicans are showing that they are willing to do it. And then when Democrats defer to norms, when they defer to the institutions, when they defer to the fucking parliamentarian, I mean, people are tired of that shit. And we are not there to uphold the norms of the Senate, some unwritten rules of the Senate. We are there. to ostensibly protect people in this country, enact our agenda, and actually get shit done, not just preserve the norms of the Senate that, by the way, are going to be upended the second

that they become politically inconvenient for Republicans. Jank, I wanted to finish off with this. You had alluded to this before, and there are a lot of these edge case examples of what Democrats should be doing. And I think the ACLU questionnaire, I mean, we obviously, you know, there has been so much ink spilled about this idea of. Gender reassignment surgeries in prison. This was part of an, I believe, an ACLU questionnaire, some edge case example.

But Democrats often feel, I believe, like they have to go on record defending even the most obscure examples. Otherwise, they're going to be viewed as not sufficiently progressive. And so they do take these maximalist positions. And so moving forward, and by the way, that will serve the purpose, as we've seen now, of, okay, so you're on record taking this. position and ostensibly to support a very marginalized subset of the population, but now it's become such a liability that you can't actually get in power to be able to help the people that you purport to want to help because you've come out and taken this position. And I think that, well, this is my question for you, do you think that there has to be some

acknowledgement by either the Democrats who would be the ones that have to answer these questions or the interest groups, the special interest groups, who pose these questions? about how, in fact, while you think you're trying to help, you're just giving ammo and fodder to the right to be able to attack you with, thereby ensuring that you're not actually in power to support those very people and those very special interest groups. So I read really thoughtful pieces about how those interest groups are driving the party to extremes, and I get it, and I understand that phenomenon, I think it's right.

But I don't think that's the heart of the problem, because an interest group can, and I've run for office, So they have asked me these questions. I answer them the way that I think is right, period, right? So, oh, well, then we won't support you. Okay, then God bless your heart, brother. Don't support me, okay? You've got to be able to at least have the courage to do that.

So the politicians are the ultimate arbiters of whether you're going to sign on or not sign on to that. But I think really the heart of the matter is not the politicians or the interest groups. It's the media. So now you see me pushing back against the maximalist positions on the left. And some people are under the misimpression that started. after black should know i've been doing it for two years i've been doing that battle for a long long time right and you go ask the far left and they'll tell you yeah no we've been battling jank and anna on this for years now and so why but and when we do brian you see what happens with your own eyes

like the far left then swarms how dare you you're right winger you're nazi fascist racist you're hurting trans people, you're leading to their suicide, you're hurting black bodies, so extremes. I mean, look, a borderline lunatic talk. And if you're in the far left, you're like, how dare you? That's not lunatic. Guys, go ask a normal person that's not in politics, okay? Go to a barbecue, go to wherever you go. Okay, go to dim sum, whatever you do, right? And ask a normal person, do you think calling a woman, a woman, will, lead to trans people dying and they'll say what what our God's green earth are you talking about like they won't even understand the language you're using it's so

extreme right so it's incumbent upon us to fight back and go I love you guys it's not that you don't exist and it's not that I hate your positions you're still within the tent and I got young Turks host TYT hosts who are in that camp and I'm not pushing them out I'm not banning them I'm not censoring them I'm having conversations with them. You have to have the courage to draw the line against your own extremes. And if we don't do that, then everyone in America is going to think that we're all in agreement on the most extreme positions. I mean, I question deep on the police from day one. I said, that is the worst slogan I've ever heard. And like, you guys are not explaining that you want

to move some of the money to mental health. Besides which, when you went to go implemented in these liberal cities, you didn't move it into mental health. All you did was cut funding. And then where did this insane idea of turning felonies into misdemeanors come from? I don't know, a single progressive host that fought for that. I didn't hear any interest groups. And then all of a sudden, it's foisted on us. And then we have to defend this extreme position that the voters in California and New York hate.

And so, no, I don't defend that position. I never voted for it. Or actually, I did get tricked into voting for Prop 47 because they literally didn't write it in the proposition in California. But we never had a discussion about it. We never came to a conclusion on it. So I know it's hard, especially as you see me and Anna get attacked so extreme, extremely from that wing of the party, it feels like, I don't want to deal with that, right? But if more people don't have the courage to say, I'm sorry, brothers and sisters, you're on our side, no disrespect, but I don't agree, then we're never going to get to be clear with the American voters that we don't all want to abolish prisons. I mean, that's just crazy.

That's not where the Democratic voters are at all. And they proved it overwhelmingly in California. I mean, they recalled the progressive mayor 65 to 35 in Oakland. If Oakland isn't progressive enough for you, then you've lost a thread. Yeah. Well, look, I think one thing is clear. I do absolutely agree with your philosophy of making sure that we have these conversations. And by the way, I understand that there might be.

some virtue in not having them in the months before the election and giving fodder to the right to be able to weaponize some of the stuff that said against the Democrats. But it's, it's December of 2024. You know, if we use this moment for anything, if this, if this whole loss is going to be worth anything, it's having some introspection in the aftermath and figuring out what we can do to get better. Anybody who thinks that the Democrats or the left is perfect is not paying attention to this election cycle, not paying attention to this to this media environment. So I do think that there is a lot of virtue in having difficult conversations,

having, speaking to everybody throughout the entire left of center space and spectrum and figuring out what we can take. Some things people are going to want to adopt and some things are not. But it's okay to have these conversations. We lose nothing by virtue of having them right now. So I do appreciate you taking the time. And one last thing, how can my viewers see more from you? uh thank you so you t yt dot com you can see our whole 24 hour uh network there you could also

check out the populace plank sign on so that has uh you know extra weight and that we could use as leverage for with the politicians on both sides but mainly guys i know we're on all the platforms and you can watch us on roku samsung it's any almost any platform but young turks on youtube six to eight p m eastern every day come watch the show live and see if you're for yourself. Hey, do they make sense? Do they not make sense? And we're bringing in right wingers, left wingers, and every part of the political spectrum to have these important conversations we need to have. So Young Turks on YouTube, 6 p.m. Eastern every day. Jank, I appreciate you taking the time and happy holidays.

Thank you so much, Brian. And I really appreciated this good, honest, thoughtful conversation. Thanks again to Congressman Raskin and Jank. That's it for this episode. Talk to you on January 1st. to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to Briantellercoen.com to learn more.