The Young Turks - Abortion Executions?

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Congress and top Capitol Hill staff have violated the STOCK Act hundreds of times, but the consequences are minimal, inconsistent, and not recorded publicly. Sen. Joe Manchin vented his anger with the media in the wake of a report that he wanted to drop the child tax credit from President Biden’s expansive climate and social spending package. With the Supreme Court now considering Mississippi’s abortion after 15 weeks, and apparently open to rolling back half a century of reproductive rights, conservative Republicans in other states are pushing even more extreme bills -- and some big corporations are helping them. Nikki Fried, Florida's agriculture commissioner and a Democratic candidate for governor, has accused Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of trying to leverage campaign donations over members of the Florida public university system's boards of trustees. Hosts: Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now.

I get a free Tilly Dog. Chilly Dog, not included. The Naked God. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. We're going to be able to be. All right, well, the young Turks, Jank Ugar Anna Kasparan with you guys. As usual here today, we'll have the roller coaster ride. We'll, you know, do our festivist celebration, our list of grievances, mainly towards Democratic.

today, but a little bit of Republicans too for the little coup thing that that apparently they were organizing. But then we have super fun stories, including the one. Oh my God, I love that story so much. Look, we're gonna dunk on a real estate developer, and that's like my favorite pastime. Yeah, the most expensive house in America. What is it and what has happened to it? You'll enjoy that story. All right, forward. All right, while money in politics continues to be a massive corrupting force among our lawmakers, equally egregious behavior includes trading individual stocks even when these members of Congress have access to insider information.

Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about this behavior and she didn't like it, but before we get to her pretty embarrassing video on this, I do want to go to this investigation that was done by insider in regard to the so called stock act. This was legislation that was passed under the Obama administration that was meant to prevent members of Congress from engaging in insider trading, especially considering the fact that these are people who have insider information, information that we as ordinary citizens are not privy to, and if they're able to trade individual stocks, well, they could very easily engage in insider trading. So this stock act was incredibly weak. So let me just get that off the

bat. However, it did force members of Congress to report their stock trades. And it didn't just include members of Congress. It also included their spouses and their staffers. So if they were making $132,552 in 2021, and if they were doing stock trades of $1,000 or more, they're supposed to report it. Did they? Well, here's what we know from this insider investigation. Insiders investigation of financial disclosures found that 49 members of Congress and at least 182 of the highest paid Capitol Hill staffers were late in filing their stock trades during 2020 and 2021.

Now lawmakers and senior congressional staffers who blow past these deadlines, they're supposed to report it between 30 and 45 days, okay? basically disclose these stock trades. If they're late, if they blow past the deadlines established by this 2012 stop trading and Congressional Knowledge Act, on Congressional Knowledge Act, they're supposed to pay a late fee of $200 the first time. Increasingly higher fines follow if they continue to be late, potentially costing tens of thousands of dollars in extreme cases. Now, did they end up disclosing in time and if they didn't, were they fined? Well, based on this

investigation, it seems like it ain't happening and that the enforcement mechanisms here are weak to say the least. No public records exist, for instance, indicating whether these officials ever paid the fines. Congressional ethics staff wouldn't even confirm the existence of non-public ledgers tracking how many officials paid fines for violating the Stock Act. And also 19 lawmakers wouldn't even bother answering questions about whether they paid a penalty. Ten and other lawmakers said, yeah, yeah, we paid the fines, but they declined to provide proof, such as a receipt or canceled check. Now, Nancy Pelosi was asked about this investigation and whether members of Congress

should be able to trade individual stocks in the first place. And her answer, I think, is to be expected. Let's watch. You should members of Congress have there's thousands be banned from trading individual stocks while serving Congress? No, I don't know to the second one. Because this is a free market and people, we have a free market economy, they should be able to participate in that. Nancy Pelosi has done very well in the stock market.

And so is her husband. And it doesn't surprise me at all that she would use this pathetic excuse of free market to essentially provide cover for what these members of Congress are doing. But make no mistake about it. This is insider trading. They have insider information and their stock portfolios tend to outperform the overall stock market. Gee, I wonder why is it because they're these incredibly intelligent investors or could it be that they have information that others don't? Well, most mainstream media reporters would say it's an outrageous, outrageous, you know, implication you have there, Anna, obviously they're brilliant.

I mean, Pelosi's such a master legislator. She's probably also coincidentally a master stock picker, right? So I'm gonna tell you one particularly outrageous case of what her husband did in a minute. But there's two different issues here. One is the absurd system of reporting these stock trades. So in the Senate, it's actually a little halfway better, okay? When you're late to report, they send you an email and then you have to respond. Okay, now there the, it doesn't look like they follow up too aggressively.

either but at least they have a system in place in the house it's a joke they don't even track it they say oh you're supposed to track it on your own out of good faith wink and so they don't send you an email they don't follow up and if you don't pay there are no consequences no one's ever chased down in fact they won't even tell the members how to pay members have asked the ones that wanted to actually report themselves have asked several times hey what don't do I do? Who do I make it out to here? Insider did a very good job in this five month investigation and found the treasure can't find any of the checks. No, the House side is clearly

choosing to not abide by the law. And gee, who's their leader? Oh, there she is, Nancy Pelosi. And so, and by the way, when the Republicans were in charge, they didn't abide by the law either. Yeah, this isn't a Democrat or Republican thing. This is about corruption. This is about insider trading. This is about people who raised their hands decided to run to become public servants and then turn around and say, no, it's a free market. I mean, obviously I should be able to take advantage of this role that I have to choose stocks that are obviously going to outperform the market because I'm privy to the insider information. And obviously, they have control over what legislation gets introduced, what legislation gets voted on. and if they have any sense that they might regulate certain sectors of the economy that could hurt the stock value of certain companies, well, again, that is incredibly important

information that is going to have an impact on the markets, and they're going to be able to make these predictions based on that insider information. By the way, the other thing is, if they're heavily invested in a certain business, are they going to want to pass regulations that could hurt that business, hurt the profit motive for that business. Well, that's gonna bring us to Mr. Pelosi in a second. But before we go to the first dude of the house, I'm gonna go to our members, t.wit.com slash joining you become part of the show. You write in these great comments and we read them. So shipwrecked super yacht

wrote in, funny enough, how free is the market really if they use inside information to manipulate the price of stocks? And that's exactly it. That's the second gigantic issue here and the one that Pelosi is addressing. So she says, oh, well, basically, all of the members should be able to buy any stocks they like. Remember the stories about the reporting requirements. But a lot of people say, wait, you should all put it into a blind trust. Otherwise, you know exactly what to invest in. And just reporting it doesn't actually solve anything, right?

So when asked about that, that's when Pelosi said, oh, free market baby. First of all, that sounds like a Republican. It's absurd to just say free market on its own. free market how what do you mean in what context in this context part of the protection of the free market is to make sure that there are laws against insider trading otherwise you don't have a free market so a person you could ask about that is Martha Stewart she went to prison for violating these types of rules right but when it comes to the most powerful people in the country

all of a sudden prison I mean another member wrote in about prison ain't nobody No one's going to prison. No one's going to prison. By the way, you can make tens of millions of dollars. The fines $200 for just reporting late. If you're reported in on time, they're like, I am stuck at the chain anything you like. Who gives that damn? We're all getting rich, baby.

And there's nobody asleep at the wheel. That's why, again, whenever there's great journalism like this, I applaud her inside and did a great job. All right, so that brings us to Mr. Pelosi. So they're about to introduce an antitrust bill against Google and some of the other big tech firms. And guess who winds up cashing out on a call option, it appears. Mr. Pelosi, the speaker's husband, and but it's a tiny little amount. It appears, according to the reporting, that his profit was $5.3 million.

Okay. You have any idea what kind of bet you got to lay down to make a profit of $5.3 million? Okay. And he happened to, it appears cash out right before they, it's, introduce the antitrust bill against Google and hold hearings. But another amazing coincidence, and we call that free market, baby. Listen, Paul Pelosi's initials might be PP, but his investments are not small. Very big investments, huge.

Yeah. So look, in this case, look, the media is actually doing a halfway decent job. The story itself is good. She got asked the question, and now people are reporting about her absurd answer. So that's what we asked for. But in this case, not so bad from the media, it's really Pelosi and the corporate Democrats that revel and bask in this corruption. Well, let's move on to more corrupt politicians and corrupt media.

This time in the context of the build back better agenda, which as I shared with you recently is going nowhere and is shelved in the Senate. So Politico's latest piece on this whole build back better debacle provides cover for the failure of Democrats while also, you know, nagging at progressives for having the audacity to fight just a little bit in the beginning of these negotiations. So the title of the piece is know when to hold and no when to fold. Progressives accept limits of their power. And before you go on, can I just say one quick thing, they write pieces like this sometimes just to rub it in afterwards. When AOC let go over

top staffers, or they parted ways, who was including the co-founder of Justice Democrats, New York Times wrote a piece like this, rubbing it in like, oh, yeah, what happened now? Now you know you got to get rid of your progressive allies. And this is what Politico is doing. Oh, yeah, you thought you guys were relevant? No, you're not. Shut up and know your role. And so there's going to be a lot of that in this piece.

Yeah, all right. So a few excerpts that really caught my attention. First off, there is quite a bit devoted to Pramila Jayapal. She is the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and how she's handled these negotiations. Now, I don't know about you, Jank. I have been incredibly critical of Pramila Jayapal, especially lately after the Senate essentially announced that, you know, now that the corporate handout bill or otherwise known as the bipartisan infrastructure bill has passed, they're going to shelve the social spending bill, the build back better agenda. and move on to other things, you know, like maybe voting rights, maybe. I mean, they're not going to reform the filibuster, so they're not really going to reform

our elections or do anything about voting rights, but whatever, we got to give reporters something, right? Now, in it, Politico writes this, free community college, Medicare expansion, a wealth tax, Democrats tore a litany of progressive priorities out of their signature domestic policy bill, but the House left's leader, meaning Primalogne, is still. still declaring a win. Yeah, sure. And by the way, she is, she is declaring a win.

And it's honestly one of the most embarrassing things I've seen among members of Congress. No, this isn't a win, this is a massive, massive failure. In fact, we're not even going to get the slim down, paired back version of that bill. Because she was willing to give her leverage away. Now, let me give you more. She gave herself cover for her failures, Pramila Jayapal. She says, there are always people who are like, you need to do more. And it's true, we do, Jaya Paul said.

But we're not going to. But to those who ask why they can't get more done, given Democrats full control of Congress, she replied, of course the answer is, we don't have enough control. Get out of here, enough control. In other words, give me more power, give me more prestige, then maybe, maybe I'll do what you want. But you know what that is, that's a Republican move saying we're going to to hold your priorities and your bills hostage, and the only way that you could release

the hostages is if you elect more Democrats. No, we already elected enough Democrats for you to have complete control. If that's not enough control for you, that isn't the voter's fault, that's your fault. But this is an overall problem with the Democratic Party and their messaging. Well, first of all, the biggest problem is their failure in actually getting these policies passed. But in response to their failures, they think that it's a perfectly fine campaigning message to say, listen, here are all the great things we wanted to do. But even though we held the levers of power, we weren't able to accomplish those things because you need to give us more power, elect more of us, right? How are you going to persuade people that you let down

to show up and vote for more Democrats in Congress? It doesn't work that way. You have to provide actual wins. And what I'm noticing with Pramila Jayapal is despite the failure here, she's trying to kind of twist this and whitewash it, launder the failure as a big win. So let me give you more on that. After a season of intra-party flexes by her block, Jayapal also didn't rule out the possibility of running for leadership in a future Congress. I'm always going to be open to whatever is going to help us deliver on the boldest, most transformational agenda. And whatever role that is. And so we'll see, Jaya Paul said, adding she is focused on the progressive caucus's current work for now. Okay, I have a thousand things to say. First of all, is it because they're

actually moving on the voting rights? Absolutely not. In fact, I have breaking news on that that I'm going to share with you in a second. They're saying voting rights, because it's hard to say don't move on to voting rights. That it's a way to neutralize people on the left, because then they'll pretend that their outrage, what you don't want us to do voting rights, right? It's a total trick. Now, why do I know it's a trick? Other than the super obvious that it's always a trick, cinema came out today and said, again, no, I am not bending on the filibuster at all. So then you can't pass voting rights. You would need 60 senators to vote in favor of voting rights, meaning you would need 10 Republicans,

or at least nine Republicans to vote in favor of voting rights in order to get that There are, there are zero Republicans that would vote for the voting rights bill for the People Act or anything else. So it's a lie in the fact that they were going to come back to build back better and pass the House version was always a lie. It was a preposterous lie. We told you ahead of time. The rest of the media and politicians in Washington disingenuous, whatever they are, corrupt folks that they are, or all pretending to be super surprised. Well, if you're super surprised, then you really don't know anything about politics and you suck at your job. Durbin kept saying, he was stunned that Mansion is now saying that he wants to get her child tax credit as part of the bill back better. And so issues are slightly more complicated, but basically he's proposing it in a way that

would kill every other part of the bill. It would wipe out the bill completely, right? And Durbin says he's stunned by it. Well, look, he's the number two Democrat in the House. If he's actually stunned by it, he's a great a moron. So, and I actually think he is. I think he's both corrupt and stupid. I actually believe he's genuinely stunned and apparently has no idea the depth of

the corruption of Mansion and all of his colleagues, even though he himself is corrupt. Anyway, Jayapal is saying that, no, it's okay, we're gonna declare a win. That is the oldest trick in the Democratic playbook, it's easy. You don't actually do anything, you just call it a historic legislation, even if it doesn't pass in this case, it didn't even pass, it's okay, we're still calling it a win. Okay, and then you get the mainstream media to kiss your ass, and this is partly this, both rubbing it into progressives and saying, what's been done already is historic and amazing and shut up and don't ask for anything more. And political obliges, every mainstream media outlet ablages, but I got news for you, it ain't going to work. Okay, not passing the bill is not winning. It's losing.

You gave away all of your leverage. You were completely wrong. Please stop embarrassing yourself. So I do want to provide two other examples of the rubbing it in, because you're absolutely right about that. And I think there were two quotes in particular that stood out the most. So the first one came from Mary Small, from Indivisible. She is the national advocacy director for that organization. And she says, progressives can only control a slice of what happens in the entirety of the landscape of the federal government. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the defeatist attitude is not what voters showed up to vote for these progressives.

Like that is not what persuaded them to vote for these progressives. Like, oh, oh, they, you know, they had leverage, but in the final hour, they decided to give that leverage away, with the exception of, I believe, six Justice Democrats who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Yeah, and they should kick Jayapal out of just Democrats. She's not a just Democrat anymore. So yes, the six that voted in the correct way. We're the only ones who give them credit. The people who are pretending to be left wing, it doesn't matter how right they were.

They still criticize them. They give him no credit at all. The mainstream media blames them, even though they've been proven 100% right. Take Ro Khanna's picture out. He voted the wrong way on this. Ionna Presley, AOC, Rashida Taleb, Corey Bush, Jamal Bowman, and Ilhan Omar voted right.

Roel Agrahaelva that you're seeing there voted wrong. So none of the incumbents that I helped persuade, honestly, the just Democrats voted the right way. Turns out the incumbents were always useless. So can I give you one more quote? Because this is the inspiration for the whole headline. And it comes from Representative Jan Schakowsky, who says, you gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold.

Yeah, no, I agree with that quote. It's a cliche of a quote, but the time to fold is not every time. Exactly. And that's what progressives do. every time. And by the way, that may be more clear. The actual progressives were the only ones who got this right. Fake progressives whose job is to advance themselves in their own ego,

i.e. leadership, we'll come back to that in a second, are the ones who say, oh, that's nothing we can do. I mean, we said, can we please get it, pretty please? No, okay, okay, take it out, take it all out. Okay, show me the House version of Billed Back Better passing the Senate. I'll retract all of this and give you all the credit in the world. and give you all the credit in the world. But you're never gonna do that because it's not gonna happen.

We were right, you were wrong. So individual, by the way, you should ignore everything they say. And I told you this a while back, they're totally a fake group at this point. Their job is to come out and go, Nancy Pelosi's right, absolutely. Progressives say she's right, yes, sir, absolutely sir, yes, yes, yes, yes. They never oppose leadership, they're not actual progressives, they're a joke. So if you see them understand their job is to be fake progressives who say leadership is always right, okay? They have a lot of these fake organizations pretending to be progressive.

Okay, now the leadership question. So Jayapal is playing old politics. And I understand it, it's just totally outdated and they don't get that it's outdated. They think we're the bad guys for telling you guys the truth. What they don't know is that a lot of you already know it. They can't trick them. So in this particular case though, you might not know the machinations of what Jayapal is doing. She's saying, hey, I'm the head of the progressive caucus and look, I'm gonna hold

out and I'm going to get some provisions in these bills and I'm going to look like a strong leader of one of the biggest caucuses in the House. That makes a good claim for leadership when Nancy Pelosi steps down, okay? But at the same time, I'm going to be a team player. And at the end, I'm actually not going to ask for any of those things. I'm going to surrender to leadership and hand over almost my entire caucus to them. And that way, you'll know I'm a team player, okay? And then Main Street media could come in and give me credit for folding. And that's this piece, right? Bravo, Jayapal, so smart the way she came into us.

She agrees corporate rules should, it kicks ass, it should be in charge. Way to go, Jayapal, and they do the cheerleading. Not going to work. Okay, it's not gonna work on two levels. First of all, you think they're gonna give it to you? Man, they don't know anything about politics. Pelosi was never gonna give it to Jayapal. She did that trick that I've told you 100 times

that my sister did when we're kids. Well, I was gonna give you the chocolate bunny, but since you did something to upset me, I ate it. Sure, yeah, you were never gonna give the chocolate money. They were always gonna give it to Hakeem Jeffries. Why? Because Hakeem Jeffries is the most corporate, the most in favor of the donors.

He will do anything for the donors, just like Nancy Pelosi. That's why he's gonna get it. It was never gonna be you, Representative Jayapal and you think this was clever? No, you lost your progressive base and the establishment doesn't like you anymore. They think you're a sucker and unfortunately this kind of proves them right. So Manchin says the child tax credit should be accounting for not just one year but 10 years and I'm not moving off of 1.75 trillion.

Well the child tax credit if you did accounting over 10 years would be 1.5 trillion so that leaves only 250 $50 billion for every other priority, universal pre-K, the climate change, which is supposed to be $500 billion in there, they're still brag about it in this piece, bye, bye, that's already gone, there's nothing left. And is Jayapal or any of them ever gonna stand up and go, you know what, Manchin screwed us? Mansion is the bad guy, and Manchin did it because of his donors, and so did cinema, and so did Joe Biden, and so to Nancy Pelosi.

No, of course not, they're gonna kiss their ass all day long and try to fix it with marketing and then and this is not the only reason I've now read about half a dozen pieces that say the real problem is we're not we're not doing the proper marketing if we just had enough pom-poms right we can go yay Democrats yay Democrats and have the idiot corporate media repeated enough times yes you will convince some older Democratic voters because all they do is watch MSNBC and they get propaganda and it turns their brain into mush but for younger voters We are gone, gone, gone. Your tricks are not cute and they're not going to work anymore.

You can get mad at us all you want, but you screwed up. You didn't get any of our priorities, and that's a fact. When we come back from the break, Joe Manchin gets real salty with a reporter asking him a simple question about what he feels about the child tax credit. We'll be right back. All right back on TYT real quick member comment I am sucks as I think everyone watching Jenks interview of Rokana had a collective moment of recognition that build back better would not pass unfortunately that's true and that's very observant of you and now on a lighter note on super chat static rich said happy birthday to me take my money okay that's funny happy birthday happy birthday all right well let's get to some other news Senator Joe Manchin acts like a real tough guy when he's in the Senate and he stops and serves as an obstacle to any type of social spending. But when reporters ask him about it, putting soft, as Jenk would say.

In fact, he didn't like the fact that one reporter specifically wanted to ask about his take on the child tax credit. Now that would be part of the build back better agenda, which the Senate is essentially shelving, because they've given up on it. But nonetheless, Arthur Delaney asks this, I had asked if it was true, he wanted the child tax credit out of the build back better agenda. I've always been for child tax credits, he said. So I asked if he wants it to continue paying parents $300 a month.

And he said he was not going to negotiate with me and that I'm BS. You know, there was no censorship of the curse there when mentioned something. at it. It's funny that we have to censor it, but the senators don't. Anyway, he, it mentioned declared the situation BS and that reporter BS. Now, let me tell you, the reporter is not BS. That's of course true. It's a little bit more nuanced than that. One of the tricks that Mansion is doing apparently, according to a word from the negotiations, is that he's saying, look, I want the child tax credit, but I want to make it 10 years of accounting for it. And that would swallow up 1.5.

out of the $1.75 trillion bill, thereby pushing out almost every other priority. Universal pre-K is gone, climate change $500 billion is gone, almost all of it is gone. So does he actually care about child tax credit? No, he could just do the one year extension and still have those other priorities. He's trying to kill off the other priorities, partly because he owns a coal company, and almost all of his donors are against the bill. So he's using child tax credit as an excuse. Exactly. And you know, the fact that he owns a coal company is relevant here because there are other provisions in the build back better agenda that would threaten the profits that he personally makes from fossil fuels, namely coal. And so he's never liked the social spending plan and has been against it. He's served as an obstacle for it since day one. And, you know, President Joe Biden, I'm sure, is incredibly furious with this because this is Biden's agenda, which has been paired back by.

conservative democratic lawmakers in the Senate, like Manchin, like Kirsten Cinema. And so he is fighting Manchin aggressively right now by, you know, giving Manchin's wife a job that she really wants and you know other things like complimentary commentary during press interviews about Mansion. So that's great. Now in a subsequent tweet, Arthur Delaney also says, everyone around here is for the child tax credit. It's a question of whether this is what Manchin told him. It's a question of whether you want to keep paying parents as much as $300 per month. If the advance monthly payments and extra $1,600 expire at the end of the month, there

will still be a $2,000 partially refundable credit. And in response to that, David Dayen pointed out something important. That $2,000 partially refundable credit is not permanent, it actually expires in 2025. And after 2025, it goes down from $2,000 to $1,000 because we really love to support families in this country. That's really our priority here, you know? So there's a couple other motivations here that are really important. First of all, to give you a sense of devastation that is about to be headed in our direction.

Once they cut off the child tax credit, about one third of all American families say they are going to have trouble paying their bills. So now, why do they want that? It's not like, oh, oops, yeah, we well, you know, because I want to make my donors happy, you guys are going to have to suffer, but it's a collateral, your collateral damage. No, you're not just collateral damage. They want you to suffer, not gratuitously, they have a business purpose in mind. You need to suffer enough so that you'll go back to working for lower wages.

Because, oh, we got a labor shortage here, take away everything from them. funding you were giving to them, take it away from them and make them miserable and dependent on corporate America again. And so that is Joe Manchin's agenda. The reason why he's so mad in this case is, and it's telling, it's because for 40 years now, people in Washington have been treated as the elites by the mainstream media. They're never challenged. Never ever challenged. In fact, whatever they say is repeated a thousand times and mainstream media acts as their PR agents and amplifies their message as if it's true. So that is why senators like Mansion are genuinely shocked when a reporter asked them a real

question. Hey, it looks like you're going to tank the bill. And by the way, he did tank the bill. It's over. They said, oh, we're going to go move on to voting rights. And now build back better is not even on the agenda anymore. He killed it effectively. And so Durbin says, Oh, we'll come back to it. I've heard that a thousand times. They never come back to it. Have they come back to a $15 minimum wage? Oh, we're coming back to a wink. They aren't coming back to anything, okay? So when Mansion gets asked actually a relatively simple question because they're just asking, hey, this is what you did. Yeah. Can you just tell us why you did it? He's in a rage over because he's like, because he assumes

you're supposed to be working for me. Yes. Okay. Why aren't you doing my marketing? But there's something, there's something else that's really, really important here. That line of questioning proves, proves that Mansion is pushing for something that's unpopular, something that is not even going to sit well in the state of West Virginia, which he claims, you know, it's a red state, what can I do, you know, because people living in West Virginia love to be neglected and abandoned by their representatives and their senators, right? They love to be abandoned and neglected when it comes to their economic needs, right? No, he knows that it's unpopular.

He doesn't want to be held accountable for it. But if Biden and if congressional Democrats who claim they actually want these provisions included in the build back better agenda actually campaigned aggressively in his own state and applied the necessary pressure, I think he's bendable. I think that he would end up signing off on a more robust build back better agenda. they're unwilling to do it. That's the problem. This nonsense about decorum, this nonsense about like, oh, we need unity in our party, which means we can never speak out against one of our own, even when they're fighting against our agenda. Like, it is a problem in the Democratic Party, period.

Yeah, and Anna, I realized that the people who were pre-justice Democrats starting in 2018, the people who were in office at that point are pretty much hopeless. And Noam Chomsky and I talked, about this in an interview that we did, that older generation is so thoroughly corrupt and accepts corruption as the normal state of affairs. To them, the idea of challenging a democratic colleague for taking campaign contributions from oil companies and killing off climate change legislation, they find that so reprehensible, not the corruption, calling out the corruption. They think that's the most impolite thing that it is, and we would be all tart and feathered and removed from the party and it would be a violation of unity.

No, we all have to lie for one another and we all have to cover up the corruption. So they don't view that as an option. We keep asking them to do something they would never do in a million years, which is admit the corruption of one of their own. So you need the new generation, the six that voted no, and we're right all along, to come in and say, yeah, no, they're obviously corrupt and they should do a massive, When build back better appears to be dead. So you got nothing left to lose.

Voting rights appears to be dead now. Cinema says under no circumstances, is she gonna change the filibuster? Since everything is already dead, you have nothing left to lose. You should go obliterate one of them. They are very vulnerable in their home states. The polling indicates their positions are deeply unpopular. So somebody needs to go be an enforcer for progressives. Until that person steps up, we're never gonna win on any of these.

The corruption will go unabated, you'll have no bills, none of the progressive priorities. What Joe Manchin said earlier, I'm sorry, what Joe Biden said about all of his so-called agenda, you know, it's both. He's incredibly weak and he never meant it. It was always a lie that was bolstered by the marketing of mainstream media pretending it was real. When we come back from the break, we'll tell you about the extreme right wing lawmakers who literally have pushed legislation that would potentially execute women who get abortions. And we'll also call out the companies that continue to fund their campaigns.

Come right back. Back on the Young Turks, Jenk, Anna, and Kay with you. Luce K, K, hi, just joined. If you're a Young Turks member, you're one of us and you do this show with us and you produce it with us. She hit the join button below. you can do that as well on YouTube, okay, everyone else. Kay could be a guy named. Could be.

Yeah. TYT.com slash join, okay? Yeah. All right. Major companies are donating money to extreme right wing politicians who have floated policy proposals that include the possibility of executing women who have gotten an abortion. I'm not even kidding. So there's a specific example that was revealed by excellent reporting over at TYT

He investigates, Andy Hirschfield did this report, and I want to share the details with you. For instance, in Texas, Republicans have tried as recently as this year to pass bills that could mean the death penalty for women convicted of getting an abortion. So just hold on, before I give you more details of the story, just let that sink in. Just consider the irony of that. We're so pro-life that we will execute women who have abortions. So it just goes to prove the point that I've been making over and over again, that this isn't about being pro-life, this isn't about protecting the life of a zygote or an embryo,

this is just about punishing women. And that's it. Let me give you more details. The proposed bill, the abolition of abortion through equal protection for all unborn children act, would have made it so that women who get abortions and physicians who perform them could be charged with homicide, which is punishable by the death penalty in the Lone Star State. Now comparable bills, by the way, have been introduced in other states like Wisconsin, Alabama, and North Carolina. And who would, who would support something like this? Well, one of the biggest proponents of this type of legislation is Texas State Representative

Tony Tinderholt from Arlington. Tinderholt introduced similar bills in 2017 and in the 2019-2020 legislative. legislative session. In fact, he makes an argument for this type of legislation in the next video, which is from May of 2017. Are you aware that state law currently says, according to Texas Penal Code 1.07, that an individual means human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth. What you're talking about is a horrific crime that no woman should ever have to deal with. But I want to cover the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. No person shall be deprived

of life without due process of law. That's a pretty important amendment because the children that are being aborted are according to state law, they are life. I agree with you that every woman should have control of her body. But according to state law and then according to the Constitution

the United States of America, that life inside the woman is a life of its own. And so my question to you is, I know we disagree on this topic. My question to you is that child is not complicit with what that man did to that woman, which again, I want to reiterate

is absolutely horrific. I could never imagine it. Do you take issue with two wrongs making a right? In that video, he is arguing that a woman who got pregnant after being raped should not be allowed to get an abortion. That's specifically what he's referring to there. And there are major corporations, including AT&T, United Services Automotive Association, and others who have continued giving him money for his campaign despite this disgusting, egregious behavior. He's so pro-life that his biggest corporate bankers, Ultria, that's the tobacco company that kills people for a living.

Oh, I'm so pro-life. Get cancer, get cancer. I'm making money off of it. Get cancer. Oh, I'm so pro-life. Now they just look, you you want to protect the so called life that you're talking about. Well, if it's a life, it's okay. Actually, when it's a life, we agree, you can take it out and it'll be an independent life form. Yeah, let's see, let's see a zygote be a viable outside the womb and talk to me about how that is the same thing as a living, breathing human being. The same living, breathing human beings that members of his party, including himself, have no problem watching suffer on the streets, leaving them completely alone and helpless when they need government assistance. Like these people do not care about people's lives at all.

It's so clear. Yeah, so after viability, everyone agrees, don't let Republicans lie to you. Everybody agrees that at that point, it's an independent life form and has its own rights. But before viability, it is 100% dependent on the mother. And the mother gets to choose what she wants to do with her body. If you say no, you should not choose what you get to do with your body. your body, you have an obligation to that other life that is dependent on you. Well, okay, that's an interesting theory.

So a lot of people need kidney transplants. We're gonna, the government's gonna come and take your kidney. What, what, the other person is gonna die on pro life? Well, they're gonna die and they're an actual person. So we're just gonna take your kidney. Well, why not? I mean, you don't have any bodily autonomy. We're taking away bodily autonomy from women.

So why don't, and since we're taking it away from women in the case of abortion, Why don't we take it away from men in the case of kidneys? So from now on, if anytime anybody needs a kidney, the government can seize your body and take it. What? Are you against life? Oh, you don't like it when it's done to you. Jake, you can't even get these clouds to wear a mask during a global pandemic. You can't get them to wear a mask, you can't get them to agree to vaccinations.

Please don't come at me about how this is really about life and protecting life. This is not about life, this is about punishing women, period, end of story. And look, if you happen to be a religious person who based on your religion, you're completely convinced that it's life at the moment of conception, great, great, that is your opinion, don't have an abortion. But again, don't force that on everyone else. Don't force that on everyone else. And I do want to give some specifics in regard to these corporations that are funding the campaigns

of just absolutely deplorable lawmakers like the individual we're talking about here. So Tinder holds most notable donor, as Jenk had mentioned earlier, is Altria Group. And the giant tobacco company has given him a combined $3,000 since his first election, 2000 of which was given in July of 2020 after he first introduced his bill. But make no mistake about it. I mean, the video that we showed you was from 2017. He has a long history of this type of belief that women should be essentially punished, both after they get raped and they become pregnant from that rape, and if they happen to get

an abortion because they don't want to carry that pregnancy to term. The United Services Automobile Association also donated to him to the tune of $1,000. Charter Communications, that's a big corporation. The parent company of the cable internet service provider spectrum gave $1,000 to Tinder Holt through its Texas pack in the 2020 election cycle. And of course, there's also AT&T, which has given him a total of $1,500. AT&T reports that it gave Tinder Holt $500 between July and December of 2020. So I wanna be clear, the companies are not giving them money just so they can take away

women's rights. They're giving them money because of normal corruption. They're bribing them for legislative and regulatory actions in Texas. So AT&T is a very conservative company. They're the ones who funded OAN in the first place to do conservative propaganda on behalf of AT&T. And so they're saying, now remember, you're just an errand boy that works for us, okay? Oh, you hate women and wanna murder them in certain situations? No problem, I don't care.

As long as you give me my tax cuts and deregulate my industry, okay? And do as you're told. By the way, deregulation worked out real well for Texas's privatized power grid, right, Cenk? That didn't lead to any deaths during a winter storm. No, no, but that's, but corporations made money off that death, so that's totally okay. Those deaths are okay. Those are okay.

Literally hundreds of people in Texas died because of the fact that these, the privatized deregulated power grid meant that they didn't weatherize their equipment, which means that there was all this malfunction happening during a severe winter storm. So he said in that rant of it is that the United States Constitution says that it's a life form and must be protected. It doesn't say any such thing, he's just, he's absurd, he just made that up completely because Republicans lie all the time as a matter of course, because they're used to never being checked by the press.

And you want to talk about government tyranny. Government tyranny is not, hey, can you please put on a mask so you don't kill other people, and Republicans go, I don't care about killing people, I'll take my contagious diseases spread it all over you. I'm pro-life. Yeah, you're absurd. No, government tyranny is I now possess your body. You are not allowed to do anything with your body that I don't sanction.

And you are to be a vessel for the children that I want to bring into the world. But now are they actually children? He says at the moment of fertilization, a lot of contraceptives work after fertilization. Does anyone think that those contraceptions like IUDs actually committed mass murder? No, no one actually believes that. Even the right wingers don't believe that. On the other hand, they are proposing here to execute women who have been raped. Gee, I wonder what's worse?

Controception that ends a pregnancy after fertilization or murdering women after they've been raped. Government tyranny, what a bunch of liars the right wing are. They love government tyranny as long as it's on behalf of their view of fundamentalist religion. All right, well, let's go over to Florida where there's more corruption taking place because, of course. And this time it has to do with universities. So Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is being accused of something pretty devastating. And it's being, and it has to do with campaign corruption, campaign donations, which for the most part, we've legalized that kind of bribery and it's totally fine based on

our laws. But what he's being accused of doing here is essentially pressuring members of university boards of trustees to give him money or else he won't reappoint them. So this was an accusation that was lodged against him by the current state agriculture commissioner, Nikki Fried. She's planning on running against him when he runs for reelection. So full disclosure on that, but it seems like there's some truth to her allegations. She says this, our current boards, our current boards of trustees across the state were required to give a campaign contribution to Ron DeSantis in the amount of $100,000. And if they didn't give him the campaign contribution, they were not reappointed to the boards. That is what we are dealing with here

in the state of Florida with this governor. Now again, it is unfortunately perfectly legal to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to various politicians and then in return get all of these appointments, right? But in this case, threatening various people with their positions, unless they give you money, that is not legal, okay? So DeSantis's appointments are stacked with his biggest donors, and the board of trustees are no different. DeSantis' corruption, according to a campaign spokesperson for free.

is knows no limits, even when it means compromising on Floridians schools. And is there any truth to this? Well, when you look at some of these donations, it looks like there could be. For instance, at least nine current members on boards of trustees across Florida's university system have made donations to DeSantis 22 campaign or other state GOP, either in their own name, through their company or via spouse, according to state campaign finance records. So I think the best example is the University of South Florida's Leslie Mooma.

His wife actually gave $100,000 to DeSantis' campaign this year. Nicky Freed says he asked for $100,000 and then look at that. He got $100,000, probably a wild coincidence. So there's several layers of corruption here in the case of DeSantis. And he's done this many times. So when the vaccine first came out, you remember there were the stories where he got it to communities that had his largest donors first. He went out of his way to make sure they got the vaccine. After his rich donors were vaccinated, he then turned around and said, ah, come on, who needs the vaccine and the mass and stuff?

Let's not take any precautions, who cares, right? But after all of his donors were taking care of. And this whole system is corrupt. No, you shouldn't make the board of trustees of universities, weirdo corrupt people who gave bribes to politicians, whether they're Republicans or Democrats. And now, of course, leave it to DeSantis to take it to the next layer level and go, no, if you don't give it to me, I'm gonna kick you off the board, which by the way, you're such a knucklehead, that's illegal.

You don't need, there's so many ways to get legal bribes, but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Now, here are some other examples. Remember, there were professors who were supposed to testify in these lawsuits against the state's handling of coronavirus data. And before they were set to testify, all of a sudden, the universities prevented them from doing so. In late October, it became public that multiple professors from the University of Florida were restricted from participating in lawsuits against the state. University of Florida employees were told verbally not to criticize Governor Ron DeSantis or University of Florida policies related to COVID-19 in media interactions.

And now there's an investigation in regard to that censorship and we'll see where it ends up. But it is fascinating that these professors were essentially told, no, you're not allowed to testify in these lawsuits, you're not allowed to criticize Ron DeSantis. And honestly, it really doesn't surprise me. And to be sure, what we've seen with Governor Ron DeSantis in the state of Florida is just this firm grip on intellectual freedom, on the ability to get accurate and critical information out there to people so they can keep themselves safe during the coronavirus pandemic. And while people are literally dying in that state as a result of his corrupt leadership, he's deciding to focus all of his attention on anti-woke legislation, which we'll talk about in a bit. Yeah, he's done several things against freedom of speech.

They're Orwellian. They say our biggest issue is freedom of speech. We want to be able to say racist things. Then they turn around and go, COVID numbers, make sure the professors shut up. They're not allowed to talk about it at all. And now on race, no, we're going to send vigilantes after teachers if they ever teach about racism, which is the next part of the story. Now, Ron DeSantis has focused a lot of his energy on censoring any form of education that right wingers might not like. And his latest play is in regard to woke culture.

In fact, he is signing what's referred to as the anti-woke act. He talks about in more detail in this next clip. So we are going to be including in this legislation, giving parents a private right of action to be able to enforce the prohibition on CRT, and they get to recover attorney's fees when they prevail, which is very important. And here's the thing. A lot of times these people will fear lawsuits more than a fine from the State Department of Education. because when you do a lawsuit, you get discovery and you're subject to that. And when they say they're not doing CRT, and then you have all this information showing that they are doing it. So he explains what he would do, essentially empower lawsuits against educators who might have the audacity to teach students anything about American history that might hurt the feelings of incredibly delicate right wingers in the state of Florida.

And he goes further than that. DeSantis even name drops Martin Luther King while he's introducing his so-called anti-woke legislation. You think about what MLK stood for. He said he didn't want people judged on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. You listen to some of these people nowadays. They don't talk about that. Oh, okay. I mean, he's quoting MLK, so I'm sure there's no bad intention. here. I'm sure that this isn't about, you know, erasing our history or pursuing revisionist history to, again, save the delicate feelings of right wingers who don't want anyone to learn

the truth about this nation's history. So when they set the vigilantes on the teachers and say you'll be able to collect very large bounties if you turn in your teachers, they give vague instructions like if they're teaching critical race theory. Now, how does a sixth grader know if it's critical race theory or if they're just teaching about racism that happened in America like slavery or Jim Crow. So what they're going to do is they're going to turn the kids against their teachers trying to collect big sums of money. By the way, that's what the Nazi youth did.

They were instructed if the teachers are being disloyal to the furor to turn in your teachers. It's just the fact, you can look it up. So now in Florida, they say, turn in your teachers, good boys and girls. Now if you hear anything about race at all, maybe you can get paid. They don't, so now you think it's just going to be about critical race theory? No, about anything related to racism, they're going to get sued, sued, sued, and what's going to happen? The schools are going to say we're running out of money. So please stop talking about race at all.

Whitewash history and pretend there was no racism at all in America. By the way, this is the party of freedom of speech, hilarious, liars through and through every one of them, they hate freedom of speech. So now he mentioned Martin Luther King, as if Martin Luther King was a Republican who would have liked the laws that he's passing. Now, not only did Martin Luther King talk about the vicious, that's a quote, vicious racist racist racist in the South, he said it in his I have a dream speech, all that has been white watch you could actually read the speech and you'll see it in there but he

also had this to say and look at how telling this is he said whites it must frankly be said are not putting in a similar mass effort to re-educate themselves out of their racial ignorance it is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn Martin Luther King said that and that's the actual Martin Luther King you read the whole quote he goes on and on about how white people want to bask in their ignorance and never want to talk about racism that is real. Weird that he left that part out.

Huh, huh, it almost seems like when you're quoting Martin Luther King, you should know who he actually is. So they hate freedom of speech, they're authoritarian through and through, and now turning the students against their teachers is despicable. That does it for our first hour, but do not miss our second hour, where we will talk about probably the biggest loser in the world of real estate developers. And later in the show, we'll also talk about Jimbo, Jim Jones, getting real antsy about the fact that his text messages to Mark Meadows have now been revealed. What did he text him? It's Jim Jordan, but I like this, Freudian slip of Jim Jones.

Oh, damn, I didn't even realize I did that. I'm sorry, I totally misspoke. I didn't mean that, but that is funny. Yeah, Jim Jordan, not Jim Jones, who's also not a great guy. Anyway, we'll be back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.