The Young Turks - About Facepalm

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

Senator Joe Manchin had a very noticeable reaction to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Kyrsten Sinema TSchumer’s debt ceiling speech. The Senate Judiciary Committee released details of Trump's attempts to weaponize the DOJ to overturn the election. Gavin Newsom gets slammed for issuing 138 new oil drilling permits as the California cleanup continues. Fox's Mark Levin says Black Lives Matter protesters use “spears” as weapons. Hosts: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, and Ben Carrollo 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. All right, well, you know what I'm derks. Okay, John Iderola. How's it going? Host of the legendary damage report, which is not a big deal, but S&T will be on tomorrow. Senator Nina Turner.

Got a bit of a guest host slash co-hosts. Slash Phenom. Slash TNT. Destroyer of worlds. Breakers of chains. Creator of dreams. Ruler of the universe. This is all in a Wikipedia, by the way.

You can read it there. It's not a big deal, though. It's not a big deal. She's on tomorrow with John. All right, I'm on with John right now. So, Happy Newsday, of course, as always, we've got cinema, certainly not Paradisio, as we'll talk about in a second. So usual, TYT. Yeah, what's that?

Is that a sports thing? Is that some sort of sports? Cinema Paradisio? You uneducated buffoon. I'm just kidding. So it's not a sports thing. It's not a sports thing. No, it's a movie thing.

And you've forever shamed Bart Kyle. by not knowing that, and that he works with you. All right, anyways, seriously, guys, lots of this news for you guys. Of course, we'll talk about the Democrats. They appear to be in charge, but only mildly so. And then there's a lot of shenanes in today's show. Tons of digital media companies doing tons of questionable things. And look at that.

It's not us. Yay. All right. The bad ones. John, news. Okay. I apologize. You're okay?

I actually was feeling much better this morning, but I've been talking all day already. Yeah, all right. Okay, so we're gonna try to get through this. Not COVID, right? No, I got tested. Okay, thanks. Like a week and a half ago, so since then, who knows? I'm just kidding, just kidding.

I'm feeling better. Anyway. Okay, don't follow me to the bathroom. Okay. Senator Kirsten Cinema had fled D.C. a few days ago to go back to Arizona to get her foot looked at or something, and also to teach a classroom. to teach a class. At ASU, she serves as a lecturer in the School of Social Work, I believe, which I find to be ironic, but I digress. While there, she was approached by some protesters who wanted to have their voices be heard, but she was not hearing that, as you'll see in this

video. Hey, I'll be back. Sit in a minute we want to talk to you real quick. I'll talk to you over. Hi, actually, I am heading out. But right now is a real moment that our people need in order to for us to be able to talk about what's really happening. We need a build back better plan right now. We knocked on doors. We need solutions to build back better plan, need how to the solutions that we need. We knocked on doors for you to get you elected.

And just how we got you elected, we can get you out of office if you don't support what you promised us. Okay, so what you had there was a group of young protesters who came with a few things on their side. One, some of them had personally worked as volunteers for Kirsten Cinema, so they represent the growing number of people who feel betrayed by her seemingly abandoning her values, turning against things she had claimed to be insupportive. They pointed out how important some of the components of the bill are. So they had all that on their side. But unfortunately, they followed her into the bathroom, so none of that cancels anymore. You did it the wrong way, you made the rich person uncomfortable so your protest doesn't count. At least that's what the media has been mostly telling me so far today.

Yeah, well, so I'm gonna double down on that, but I'm also gonna double down on your point. I wasn't sure if you would, actually. That's interesting. Yeah, so I'm gonna go both ways here, and because it's logical. So first of all, guys, don't ever follow anyone into a bathroom and do not tape in a bathroom. It's crazy. Other people were coming in and out, and you're taping them, the toilets are flushing. So we do disagree.

Yeah, no, don't do that. do that. Don't go into people's, I hate going to people's houses. Another hand, I love going to their offices. Why? Because that's a very important form of political protest. What I mean my office is like that, I mean, if they're your representative or they're a representative in Congress, their job is to represent you. Okay, so going to their office is actually the most fundamental thing in a democracy. You have a right to redress of grievances, whether it's Festivus or the government. That one's actually in the Constitution, right? So you're supposed to go see your representative, but not in the bathroom and not in their house, okay?

That's my sense of it, because it's gonna get ugly, you start following people in the bathrooms, okay? Now, having said that, I will also double down on the point that John is at a minimum implying, and we'll talk about more in a second, which is, well, if you weren't so inaccessible, people wouldn't follow you into a bathroom, right? And so you're supposed to be the senator from Arizona, they haven't been able to meet with you in a long time. If somebody doesn't write you a check, the chances of Krista Cinema meeting with you is near zero. And so she, as we talked about it then in the last week, cinema didn't go back to Arizona for a mythical, non-existent foot problem. Okay, and besides which, even if she had a foot problem, I believe they had podiatrist in Washington, D.C. No, she had a fundraiser planned in Arizona with all the people she cherishes most in the world, and that is her donors. That's why she went back to Arizona, okay?

So let's keep it real. So while Joe Biden and everybody else, Bernie Sanders, everybody's trying to make a deal with her, she doesn't answer them, doesn't answer her own constituents, and goes to serve the only people she cares about her donors, and then makes up BS reasons about foot issues, right? So if you're more accessible, people don't have to follow you to these crazy places. Which is why, like, everybody wants to suddenly say, well, what if the shoe is on the other foot? And they all seem to have agreed that the comparison should be to right-wingers hounding AOC. As if that's a hypothetical, as if Marjorie Green hadn't acted like the clown from it or one of the bad guys in the warriors outside of her office before she got in office already, as if they're already not hounded. But you want to make that comparison? Well, then let's add a little bit of context. AOC not only does town halls for her constituents, appears in the media and answers the questions of journalists, does press conferences in public, gives speeches on the Senate floor, speaks at length in committee meetings, and has been incredibly vocal about what she supports, what she doesn't, what she wants to be in the legislation, and why that is the case. You cannot come up with a representative who is more vocal about what she supports, why, and is responsive to her constituents.

So it's a meaningless, it's a baby-brain thing to say. Well, what if somebody you liked was to do it? Well, we would have to actually look at the circumstance. They don't need to follow AOC into bathrooms, because AOC is a responsive politician who seems to care of. about her constituents and even response to the concerns of people that she doesn't agree with. Whereas Curson Cinema doesn't talk to literally anyone. Whether it's on camera, Lauren Windsor, who you know we have a lot of respect for. She spoke with Curson Cinema earlier today in an airport and got her to take a photo

with her, but Curson Cinema said she would answer no questions, not even on camera, because they're negotiating. Not with Lauren Windsor. Lauren Windsor can't ask any questions about her philosophy, her strategy, anything. because there's a negotiation going on. And so there is so much shallow, nonsensical talk about this designed, regardless of who it is. Right, Wingers are doing this.

I saw Glenn Greenwald tweeted about this. The end goal of this is stop putting so much pressure on people like Kirsten's cinema. Everyone back off. Be polite. I know that you're dying in the streets. You can't afford health care.

You can't afford your house and all that. But let's not go too far. Let's not cross the line of making someone uncomfortable. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, this is the bribery in American politics is so over the top that I'm tempted to bribe cinema into getting answers. Like, she'll do almost anything for $5,000. So, I mean, can I give her $5,000 to answer questions about what her actual policy positions are?

I bet we could put that together. Let's send the money to Lauren Windsor and she'll find her in an airport. Yeah. I mean, look, her fundamental dishonesty is really gross. So I think one of our members is asking here. Well, no, here, let me read you two things from you guys, because I think they're relevant here. First of all, Mickey See the Silver Dragon in our member section disagrees with me and says, good for those young people.

Since she refused to meet with her constituents at any time in any way, in any place, they're justified in and falling her into the bathroom, especially since she's flushing their futures down the doorland. Which, by the way, you heard on tape because she flushed the toilet and it was in the video. Or someone did. Someone did, but all of that is super uncomfortable to me, but Mickey disagrees. Dragging with a girl tattoo says Krista Cinema, basically saying, quote, stay out of my bubble. That's a really great way of putting it. It's true, but the bathroom really is a bubble.

It should be a bubble. That's my thing on it. Can I give their response to this, the actual organization? So Lucha, Arizona, who sent some of these protesters, said, we wouldn't have to resolve to confronting Senator Cinema around Phoenix if she took meetings with the communities that elected her. She's been completely inaccessible. We're sick of the political games, stop playing with our lives. And look, protesters talked to her on the plane. They were waiting for her after she got off the plane, I think back in DC, although that seems

unlikely considering her unwillingness to do any work. But they have been forced to follow her around. And look, I read a great op-ed, and I'll try to remember, I apologize, I don't remember who it's from, but what are they supposed to do? Should they send letters to her office? Phone call? Like help her get elected again next time and hope that she actually like feels some sense of loyalty to her volunteers this time? Like we have all of these traditional means to communicate with them. They don't care.

She is she is providing a unique test to American democracy, a different one than Trump. Trump had his own. It was horrifying. But she doesn't even feel like she needs to pretend to care about what anyone other than her donors actually think. And she has been more brazen and throwing in her face, spitting in our face than any other politician that I can think of. She clearly is not scared of being primary. Now whether that's because she has so much money and she knows the Democrats, the Democratic leadership will still support her, or because she's not going to run for reelection again.

She already knows she's going to get a big lobbying job. So this is just a cash generating opportunity for her. Like what do you do with a representative who doesn't feel like she has any obligation to represent? What are you supposed to do? Just wait? Just say, well, no legislation for two years. I guess we had a good run. It sure seemed like 2020 was going to be different. What are we supposed to do at this point? What do you do with a problem like cinema? Well, good news, I have all the answers. So look, there's a reason why she's blocking things. And if you haven't kept up so far, it's okay.

Right now, it looks like almost all the Democrats agree on not just the bipartisan corporate-backed infrastructure bill, but the bill back better. That's a tongue twister every time. It's the worst saying of all time. Anyway, billed back better bill, the $3.5 trillion one, they all agreed to the day. They're all agreed that they should do it. They're not all agreed that it should be three and a half trillion, but all agreed that it should be a big number.

They want to do it. The two holdouts are Mansion and cinema. Mansion looks like he's gonna do it too, but at a different price tag. And at least he's put out things. And the reason why, if you're wondering, why are we not talking about Mansion? Is because he said, look, there's the number I want. These are the things I want taken out. These are the things I want in.

So at least he's given his position, and then you negotiate, that's fair, right? We don't like that. We think it's the Republican position. He's incredibly corrupt. Yeah, and he's doing it for his owners or for his personal enrichment, but at least we get where he stands. Whereas cinema goes, oh, I'm at a no, and I'm not going to tell you anything about how to switch it from a no to yes, I'm not going to tell you what I want.

And so I think I have an answer as to why. On Super Chat, Ed wrote in, the new name for Krista Cinema is Senator, is Senator Baiton switch, since she seemed like a progressive running for the Senate, but talks like a Republican. Now that is absolutely true, and we have the smartest, most educated audience in the world, And we love doing the show with you guys. Okay, so now, why is that then? When she ran, she ran, I mean, when she first ran for national office, my gosh, she's the most progressive person you'll ever meet, okay?

She openly bisexual, like at a time when it was brave, right? And talking about how she's going to help with Medicare and lowering your health care and getting your higher paying jobs and just you name it. And she was super progressive. Why? Because she had to break out and win with the voters. That was job one. She's got to get into office. And she knows with the voters, they want things that are really progressive. It's not, that's not a theory. She ran that way. That's a fact. So when she desperately needed you guys, when she had no power at all and she was beseeching you, she was like, I swear to God, I'm so progressive. I'll do whatever it takes to make sure I deliver for the average voter in Arizona.

Now she's turned around, and hold on, kind of logically so in this really corrupt system and said, well, before the voters were very relevant, especially when I was an unknown and I had to win in a primary, et cetera. But now I win easily every time by just kissing donor ass. They tell me what to do. I do it. I went in, you know, in a so-called purple state. I win easily. Primaries, I have the Democrats crush all the progressives. I have the media yell at them and humiliate them and call them radicals and outsiders

and they're ruining unity. I have the entire, she used, until this moment, she had the entire press under her thumb. And by the way, in a lot of ways she still does. Still some. Yeah, Axio still doing articles about how she's the biggest accountant and she cares so much about spreadsheets, other people kissing her ass in a thousand different ways. She's like, I got all the media lying on my behalf, I'm collecting all the checks, what the hell do I need you schmucks for? So now when people say, hey, I think you kind of do need us because we're on to you, then she's super mad. And this is, John, that's why I agree with both don't follow her in the bathroom, but also what John

started with, which is that- Oh, no, I'm mostly fine with the bathroom. No, no, I know, no, I'm saying as a distinction. Oh, sure, sure. But the part that I agree with you on is she's also using it as an excuse, as if that's the only thing that's happened in this whole drama is that somebody went into a bathroom. Yeah, as if she didn't walk in there, she didn't talk to them outside of the bathroom before the bathroom. So let's be clear, she wasn't talking to them ever. She decided to make part of that the bathroom. Yeah, so we're telling the whole story, including the precipitating

events. So now that finally comes back around to, so why don't we know her position? Why doesn't she just say, even within the negotiations, a lot of the senators are like, we don't know where she's stands. We're, you know, negotiating with a ghost here, right? And it's because she doesn't have any positions. Part of the reason she's going to talk to her donors in Arizona is to collect checks. But the other reason is to collect orders. Yeah. So because it was easy to go, oh, I'm generally against it. My donors told me no. Now all of a sudden there's media attention and people are saying, but why no? Which no one ever asked before. Our media sucks, right? And so She's like, what? The plebeian, the masses are questioning me?

How did the reporters allow this to happen? Portorian Guard, where are you? Mainstream media, call me an accountant. Say I work with spreadsheets. Go, right? And then she did all that by doing leaks and stuff like that. By the way, Axios should be deeply embarrassing how they have handled this. Okay, I mean, it really exposes them in a very sad way. Anyways, so now cinema is thinking, oh, I can't just kill it. I have to give you a reason for killing it.

And then the first reason she gave comes straight from her donors, oh, this raises taxes on the wealthy. And this raises taxes on corporations. Yeah. Yeah, it does. You're a Democrat. Trump cut taxes to the bone for the rich and for corporations. And she's called that common sense before making the rich and corporations pay more.

Yeah. More than they were paying before Trump, by the way. That's when her tweets came out. Now she says, how dare you? Trump is right. We should keep the corporate taxes at 21%. My beloved Trump is absolutely right. And when she tried that and thought, oh, I'm done with it.

Oh, everybody's in favor of lower taxes. That's the trick us Republicans have been playing for decades. Wink. Oh, whoa, whoa, I vote no on higher taxes for the rich. And then where's the ring F off to her voters? You remember that? Right? Yeah.

And then that didn't work. So now she's flummoxed and she's on the run. And she had to go to her donors to get orders for what to say next to try to kill the bill or water it down so they pay less. So we do have more on this. I just want to read one more example. You mentioned

the Axios thing. So I want to read a little bit from an article titled Cinema Stars in our own film by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. Yeah, I read it. Do you think you're Oh, you did? Okay, well. No, no. Wait, they didn't. Go ahead. People who want to think they can understand her or get to her. Let me tell you,

you can't. Okay. That's what one Politico told her. It doesn't work that way with her. She doesn't think in a linear process like, okay, will this impact my reelection? She just beats her own drum. When she leaves in the middle of something and says, I got stuff to do, it's because she has plans. Sometimes she's just more interested in training for an Iron Man. More power to her, man. It's like watching a movie. So when she leaves in the middle of something, like negotiations over the most important bill of the Biden administration. The Arizona's senator's name is pronounced cinema and it is apt because she sweeps and sometimes when the triathlete has a sports

injury limps through the Senate like a silent film star the Greta Garbo of Congress as one top Democrat called her. Tell me who that Democrat is because I really want to know who actually told you that she's the Greta Garbo of Congress. Anyway, this is what she expects there to be a lot of. There's still too much. She expects it to be universal because after all she's a moderate. a centrist. They're a special breed and they deserve your respect. Regardless of whether the conservatives or Democrats, we'll call them by the same name. They're better than you and I. We're all biased. We're all slanted. She's an independent free thinker who's not going to be swayed by things like what are constituents want or what is reasonable or logical. Anyway,

there's a whole article. You can see more of that, but that's the highlights. Yeah. Below lights. So, look, whenever you see insiders from her circle, as Maureen Dowd explained there, quoting, giving you a quote, understand a couple of things. Number one, that quote is going to fluff her, okay, because it's from her circle, okay? Secondly, understand that Maureen Dowd, or whoever it was in that context, decided to run that article full well knowing it's fluffery. Yep.

Okay. And also understand that most people who read, including the New York Times, just read it quickly. And they don't see that. Oh, that's one of our own staffers. Let me mentally discount that. They read it like, oh, I read that in the New York Times. It turns out that she's enigmatic, but for a good reason, she always has plans. Yeah.

And if you don't know that, and you're a reporter, you don't know that people read quickly and they'll assume that that was real. Again, you're not really great at your job. Okay. So you choose to include that in your piece to make her look amazing. Now, I have other sources inside Washington who tell me she's not that bright. So you, this whole like, oh, she's so enigmatic. And she just randomly leave a meeting. But trust us. It's because she has really important plans like running and bicycling and swimming. Number one, hey, God bless. Make sure, you know, you won't keep in shape. Bless your heart, right? But that's not a great answer for why did you leave a Senate meeting in the middle without telling us your policy positions? Do it on your time. Yeah, can you please to do your iron manning at a time when you're not supposed to be doing policy and negotiations on the most important bill at the most important time? Hey, you know what? More power to her.

I decided to go for a bike ride. It's not a great answer to the whole country is waiting on you to tell us what the hell you want. Yeah. Actually, if you could cover for me for the C block, I want to play squash. I just feel like I got a squash, you know? Yeah, and besides which, guys, it's not true. From what I hear from insiders, the reality is she don't know what she's doing. And so she leaves when she gets uncomfortable and doesn't know, and then she calls her donors and asks, what am I supposed to do next?

Yeah. That's how sick, not just Chris and Cinema, but this entire system has become, because the great majority of politicians actually do that, but in a more organized way. Well, almost all the Republicans, and most of the Democrats already called their donors. They worked a little harder. They figured out what they wanted. They figured out what a compromise could be with their donors. Why are the Democrats even negotiating? Republicans, they don't need a single Republican vote.

They're negotiating with their own donors. That's what this cinema is all about. Yeah. Well, I think we should probably take a first break. All right, we're going to be taking our first break, everybody. Ladies and gentlemen. I might be back after the break. We'll see. It depends on how I feel.

Yeah, and squash dependent, okay? All right, when we come back more of this drama, we'll be right back. All right, back on the young Turks, Jank and John with you guys. I'm gonna read two more comments because I'm having fun. Courtney Nicholas writes in a YouTube super chat. T.R.T keeps me sane, especially living in Louisiana. Don't worry, we do sanity all across. the world. Okay, but yes, in the southern states, it does help a little bit more.

That's just the political reality of today. And Cofefefe 19 in our member section wrote in, Jake, didn't you just have a prediction about Christmas cinema that said she would react like this? Of course! What are you, is lobbying softballs to me today? I love it, I love it. Yes, I've had many predictions about cinema, and yes, they won't come true. All right, we go forward. Okay, let's do it. This is a mildly fun one. We've got some mildly fun for you. Everyone. Online misinformation, it's not just for vaccines anymore. In fact, it's come for the infrastructure bill.

You've got Megan McCain. She is fresh off of being pushed out of the views airlock, but still commenting on politics. She had something to say recently about how popular this bill is. You'll see it right here. The Build Back Better Agenda is the most progressive, modern agenda of all time up to $5 trillion. And it's not polling well. So I think I'm just confused as why they're doubling down on something that is cratering in the polls right now. Okay, she said one thing there that was accurate, she's confused.

So we're going to try to help her to relieve some of Megan McCain's confusion. Actually, we're just going to comment, but Bernie Sanders and his team put together a response, which you'll see now. Look, I'm not quite sure what planet Megan is living on, but right here on planet Earth, overwhelming majority of the American people, including independent centrists, support the $3.5 trillion American Families Plan. And here are the receipts. According to an August 2nd Quinnipiac poll, they ask the American people, do you support or oppose a $3.5 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education, family tax breaks, and expanding Medicare for seniors. And guess what, Megan? 62% of the American people said they support this bill,

while only 32% said that they opposed it. Opposing these policies doesn't make you a moderate, it doesn't make you a centrist. It makes you an extremist who is way, way out of touch with the American people. It was a great job there by Warren, that top line number. That 60, I think it was there, or what Megan described as cratering in the polls. But you can go deeper into this and find similar levels of support for specific things. Because she might say, well, sure, you say we're going to do this big bill. And then, yeah, people are going to say they like it. Well, no, you can get quite specific.

So when you ask them about expanding access to health care and child care, providing paid family and medical leave, and making community colleges tuition free, that has 63% support. Actually, one percentage point more. People really like that. Supporting and opposing legislation, you can see 66%, 93% of Democrats. Also helps to answer a question of why the Democrats would be pushing for it. Do you favor or oppose the additional infrastructure items being considered by the U.S. House is a Fox News poll.

You can see even 56% support there. 60% independence. So it is just Republicans at this point that are mostly against it. But even a significant chunk of Republicans are in support of that. are in support of that. So multiple different polls all saying the same thing. This is a broadly popular set of priorities that is consistent with how the Democrats in general campaigned in 2020 and how Joe Biden himself said he would govern as president. Yeah, so by the way, that was Warren Gunnels. He's longtime staff director and policy advisor to Bernie Sanders. This I did know,

apparently he has the nickname, The Keeper of Receipts. How cool is that? She's him, Lord mercy, I'm kind of jealous of that nickname. The best one I got, I think, was Erin Foster, legendary NFL running back, not a big deal. Once called me the sword of the left. Ooh. And I was like, yes, okay. But keeper of receipts is badass, especially when you work for Bernie Sanders and do his policy. So look, I love that they're fighting back here.

I thought it was really effective in a couple of different ways. One, you pick a target of Megan McCain, and like it or not, it makes people pay more attention, right? Right? Number two, she says something flamboyantly wrong, right? So it's easy to pick apart. Number three, she didn't get challenged by Chuck Dodd on Meet the Press. Of course! Of course, mainstream media's not going to do the job. So they're going straight to the people. That makes a ton of sense. Well, really fast. And they liked her comment, her false comment so much, they tweeted it out on the Meet the Press Twitter account. They quoted it in the text, her wrong, objectively wrong comment. With no context and no correction or anything. But that goes to the heart of why this video makes a ton of sense.

and is the effective way of doing it. And it's a message most importantly is correct. Which is that in mainstream media, you will hear this all time. We did a protest just around the fact that mainstream media lies about their own polls once. You remember when we went down to CNN in LA, the CNN headquarters, and that's where we got footage that we show all the time of people chanting TYT in front of CNN and stuff. And the reason for that protest, now all the way back in Obama years when they were considering Obamacare, Well, CNN had a poll showing that the public option had like a 70% approval

already. It was their own poll. And then they set it on air and then they dropped it immediately. And for the next week, they kept telling you how unpopular the public option was. So we went down there just to say like, can you just state your own poll? Your own poll, which here Warren quotes a Fox News poll, right? So if Fox News did the poll and it shows that this is immensely popular, why doesn't Fox News just quote their own poll and tell people, hey, by the way, you guys actually love this proposal.

Yep. Maybe as a Republican, only 30%, by the way, with 30% of Republicans love something, a Democratic proposal, that is worldly popular, right? Normally that number is at best in the teens, et cetera, especially on social issues, okay? So when the media sees numbers it doesn't like, it buries it, and it pretends it to be the, there Megan McCain is only the vessel. Really, her being on Meet the Press and amplifying that message and the Meet the Press hosts allowing it is media manipulation 101. Yeah. That's exactly what Dick Cheney did on Meet the Press when he went on and said, Iraq attacked

us from the general region of the 9-11 attackers. And the host was like, oh yeah, that's cool, yeah. Or way to be, Iraq sucks, I guess they're somehow connected to 9-11, right? by the way, that same number, 70% of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein had personally attacked us on 9-11 when he had not. So it's too many mistakes by the media to have you think that there are actually mistakes. So now finally to the substance of it, guys, what Bernie Sanders' office there is talking about is true on almost every issue. I theoretically wrote a book that's theoretically coming out at some point. You can go and pre-order it at Justice is coming

book.com. The title, Justice is Coming has now become a little ironic, but Justice is coming book.com. And the reason I tell you that in this context is the first chapter is all about polls. And every poll in the country shows that our policies, progressive policies, are the exact opposite of what the mainstream media gaslit people into believing for all this time. They took, I showed, the magic number guys is 66%, and you saw it in that video too. On this issue, And I wrote that stuff now almost two years ago, chapter one. Okay, so that's a little embarrassing. But seriously guys, every poll we're at around two thirds, two thirds, two thirds, right?

Now do you see that in the news? No, progressives, extremists, radicals, outsiders, no, not within the mainstream, not within the mainstream. What the hell kind of mainstream are you looking at? If two thirds of the country is not in the mainstream, I think you might misunderstand what that word means. They keep using it. Yeah, and Warren made the point there. When it's coming from Bernie's office, it has more impact. Stop calling them moderates and centrist.

I hate that. The center of the country agrees with us, and it is indisputable. Look at your own numbers, and stop lying for once, because it isn't about Megan McCain. It's about all the corporate media, and how they purposely tilt things in favor of corporations and against the American people. people. Yeah. And I love that Bernie's office fought back. I agree. I agree. Okay, why don't we mix things up? Yeah. Talk about some else. Okay. Facebook is currently down, but that doesn't mean that we should go easy on them because they are currently facing a whole bundle of different scandals. We've talked about a few in recent weeks, the internal studies showing that they understand the mental

health impact, the negative mental health impact that they have on especially young girls using their services. The ways that they've helped boost sources of misinformation provided some high profile right wingers with protection from their own terms of service being invoked against them. But there's a new big one too, and it's coming from a whistleblower. This is whistleblower Francis Howgan, who has revealed how they not only helped provide a platform on Facebook for the insurrectionist to plan January 6th, but also effectively disarmed after they felt they had done enough right before the insurrection. So in addition to some other things, we're going to go through that right now. Now, Francis Hogan had been a product manager

who'd worked at Facebook since 2019, recently provided leaked internal Facebook documents and reports to the Wall Street Journal in Congress in recent weeks after resigning back in April. Before departing the company in May, Haugan sifted through Facebook's internal systems, reviewing thousands of documents looking at how the company operated. That was back when they actually operated. But anyway, so here is what Francis found

and is describing in interviews this week. During the 2020 election, Facebook executives, believing they had done their duty, promptly disbanded their civic integrity team at the beginning of December as part of a broader reshuffle within the company. A month later, insurrectionist stormed the Capitol. they'd plan the incident at least in part on Facebook.

She says there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook over and over chose to optimize for its own interests like making more money. Bear in mind this is a company that brings in countless billions of dollars every single year. But they couldn't bear to have this civic integrity unit operating for a day longer than they felt necessary. And just in case you've forgotten, I want to remind you that December of last, last year was not like a really cool time from democracy's point of view. There were what dozens of simultaneous court cases challenging the legitimacy of the election. Lynn Wood was doing press conferences every day. Rudy Giuliani was farting on other people who worked for

Donald Trump. They were very much still in a full court press to stop the election from going forward. And that is the context under which Facebook decided that their civic integrity unit did not need to function. And that meant that this territory, which was already fertile for things like insurrectionist planning, would allow for a more free flow of misinformation and radicalization of people on it. I want to give you a brief description of how that actually works. And you need to understand going into this that Facebook has always said that if people get radicalized on its products, that is on them. They went looking for this material, and it's not on Facebook to stop them from finding things that are out there, but that is not actually

how it works. So Francis Hogan says, so they've taken brand new accounts, so no friends, and all they've done is they follow Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Fox News, and a local news source. And then all they did is click on the first 10 things that Facebook showed them, where Facebook suggested a group, they joined that group. So they're not doing any conscious action here, just one time go in, and within a week you see QAnon, within two weeks you see white genocide. And so this is not searching, there's no searching.

They only accept the things that Facebook presents to them, and it is clear that Facebook is presenting Q&N, conspiracy theories, white supremacy and white genocide. And why, it's fairly obvious, this is the stuff that people click on and comment on, and spend more time looking at Facebook for, which means they're exposed to more ads. They're doing it for the same reason that every two-bit grifter does. It's just to make more money, damn the costs. So there's more, but what do you think? Yeah, I've got a, again, a slightly different opinion.

And so there's tons of nuance in here. So first, though, let me be out front and do what no one else in the media does. I am biased here. And the reason I'm biased is because Facebook is one of our top partners. And by the way, to be fair to Facebook, and you'll see it, you'll see this video on Facebook. once they're back up, if they ever, right? But a lot of you will literally be viewing this video on Facebook. So here's a critique of Facebook that they are putting onto their own platform.

So credit where credit is due on that, okay? So now to the main arguments here, all they do want to do is make money. Welcome to America. So every, like this is the part that bothers me is, and now this is a very ironic defense, is when people are outraged. that corporations just want to make money. That's their nature, that's literally in their bylaws, that's their fiduciary responsibility, that's how we wrote the laws.

Now I say it's an ironic difference because I argued that we should change the loss. And so, you know, what are today B Corpse? Maybe that should be the way to go. We should be really careful about the stock market, because when you have a corporation that goes public, it basically institutionalizes greed and must return 15. percent at a minimum every single year. There are systemic fixes that we can do to that. But when we pick one company at a time and go, can you believe they're trying to make money

and that's all they care about? My answer is, yes, I can definitely believe it. That is what almost all of them do, okay? Some private companies, not necessarily, they have more leeway, okay? Public companies have almost no leeway. So number two, their defense is not completely wrong when they say, well, this is what you guys want, and it's true. So here, let's explain a couple of reasons as to why it's true.

So number one, have you ever been doing a spring break where two guys are agreeing and the whole crowd gathers goes, watch these guys agree, man? No, I haven't either, right? But have you ever been at a spring break when somebody says, watch these two guys fight? And the whole crowd turns and watches the fight. Yeah, but they all agree that he should fight, so. But you see the phenomenon I'm talking about.

But as soon as there's a fight, and I picked spring break, because we recently did a video about that in Miami. And so the minute there's even a slight fight, everybody looks, it's human nature, guys, it's human nature. So what these comments sections are doing are in sense starting fights, right? Since it's highly engaging material, one side goes, no, there is no racism, and the other side says, yes, there is, and all of a sudden we got a fight and everybody's looking, okay? And so they're trying to drive engagement so that you can stay on Facebook or

longer so they can make more money. None of that is false. That is correct, okay? Now, we say bad boy, don't do that. The question is, how? How do we stop them? I would say having one side who says there is racism and other side says there's none. Maybe this doesn't substantively change your point, but that is not the bounds of what we're talking about. We're talking about content designed to convince people that their government is instituting a genocide against them effectively. But now let's go to that. Conspiracy theorizing.

No, but. And allowing them to organize based on this, convincing them that vaccines don't work or the vaccines are actually killing them. No, but John, look, so there I, in a sense, I disagree even more. So why? Okay, you said, and I don't think you meant it this way, but I want to make sure that the audience understands, that Facebook presents that to them.

They don't. There is no person at Facebook that says, now serve them white genocide. No, no, I'm saying that they are explicitly. being served up, they are not searching out this material in the experiments that the whistleblower is describing. Yes, the algorithm. It is suggested to them. The algorithm is suggesting it to them. That's the presenting that I'm talking about. I got you. But why is the algorithm suggesting it to them? It's not because Facebook wants to push Q&N or white genocide. My guess is that they're against that, right? And so the reason it does is because it is highly engaging content. Because people when they hear about it go yes or no

And then they fight, okay? So by the way, again, another ironic defense, we're talking about white genocide. Fox News talks about it all the time on air. That used to be an insane conspiracy theory that the government was looking to do genocide on white people by replacing them. By the way, originally with Jews,

that was the German version of that. Now also in Charlottesville, right? But now more often with immigrants and dirty immigrants, But Tucker Carlson does that every night out Fox News. That's true, he's caught up to the message boards. So are we telling Facebook that they should ban Fox News material because it is avowedly racist?

I don't know, that's a good question whether they should do that or not. But it is definitely a so-called legitimate, so-called news operation that is pushing that racism. No question. So if you want Facebook to stop it, then you got to tell them, oh, they got to make the decision and be comfortable with it, which is a tough decision. decision on banning Fox News. Yeah, presumably legitimate in that they have more money than O-A-N. I'm not sure about much more than that.

And also, Francis, the whistle door, as far as I'm seeing, is not calling for it to be banned. They're saying, you need to understand that publicly, Facebook is saying, this is on you, it takes two to tango, you need to be more responsible when they are in fact proactively suggesting this material. And so none of that is prescriptive about what should actually be done or whether anything should be done to change it, but you need to understand whether a corporation is fundamentally lying to you. But again, when you say presenting they are, the only reason why the algorithm suggests

it is because of how popular it is and how engaging it is. So if white genocide had no comments, and it was like something terrible, like hey, you know, there's a new meme out that says quadruple homicide is, homicide is awesome. Well, that would not be quote unquote suggested by Facebook's algorithm, because no Nobody's in favor of that and nobody's engaging that. I know I'm worried now that it's become, right? Hold on, but I'm worried of putting anything into the world because then it starts a fight and next to you know it's super engaging and next thing you know it's promoted by everyone. So guys, they're looking to make money.

They're not going there and be like, oh, if we push the satanic cult, et cetera. Now at the same time is Zuckerberg super friendly with the right wing? Yes, he has Ben Shapiro and other right wingers over for dinner on a regular basis. So he, I don't know that he's had a single progressive over for dinner, a single one. So again, one lunch made him. Oh, you did? Okay, good for you. Breakfast britos. I just was feeling breakfast burgos at that point. So, but honestly, it's partly because Facebook leans Republican, they're almost their entire board is Republican.

Their fact checkers are Republican. I mean, almost everybody in the organization with the exception of Cheryl, Sandberg, as far as I can tell, is certainly on economic issues, are Republican to deeply Republican. So I'm not defending them on any of that. So I don't see a lot of parity in how they treat folks, right? And so if you want to press on that more, I think that makes sense. By the way, a lot of times when they go to fix these problems, what they'll do is, okay, we're now wiping out everything that touches the issue of race. So you can't be in favor of racism, but you also can't be opposed to racism. If you do videos saying, hey, cop,

shouldn't beat up on black people, we'll just delete the video. We won't allow you to put them on. Wait, that's not fair. Doesn't it make sense to put something good and positive in the world to try to create positive change? Yeah, I agree.

They're bad. Nope, nope, as long as you guys tell us to stay out of politics, we're going to punish the racist and the non-racist equally. That is far more likely to happen, especially given the Republican proclivities, right? So watch out what you wish for.

You just might get it. I'm not wishing for that. I don't like the status quo or their BS fixes in the past. But I do think people need to understand that we used to have a world where if the KKK or white supremacist wanted to radicalize you,

I don't know, I guess they left a flyer posted in a gun store and you had to go to a meeting in the woods or something. Now your grandma logs on to Facebook and right alongside the New York Times, she's getting stuff from, you know, white eagle.com. and she sees it as equally reputable.

And groups, insurrectionist groups, it used to be that terrorist groups and things like that, it was difficult to radicalize people. Now they're on the biggest platform in the world. And again, I'm not saying I know specifically what needs to be done, if anything, but that seems like a pretty bad status quo. So now let me talk about why this news story

and the revelations are good news, okay? Number one, anytime you find out the truth, it's good news. Okay, it's better to know than not know, okay? So then we can have an interesting dialogue as we're doing right here as to what to do about it, but at least you know what the problem is and the context of the problem. Okay, number two, all they've ever gotten at Facebook, and this might be a bigger reason why they almost always lean right wing,

is pressure from Republicans. Yep. Ted Cruz and all the others, Trump, yelling at him 24-7, and Democrats are usually, the politicians are generally speaking cowards. So they're like, oh, please give us a donation, but we're fine with you, we're fine, we're totally fine, right? That's generally how Democrats react. So they think, oh, we can push progressives around, we could push Democrats around, we can ignore the left wing, and it's going to have no consequences. So now this at least shines a spotlight onto how right wing, like the worst, most extreme part of the right wing has taken root at Facebook.

And it might create pressure on them to go, hey, maybe that's not a good thing. thing. Maybe we could work on fixing our algorithm so that it doesn't promote hatred in any direction, right? And be really, really thoughtful about it. Because until you create pressure to fix it, they won't. Because they're just going to continue to try to do the thing that makes them the most money. And the third thing that I think is positive about this is that it brings attention to the fact that things that you see on Facebook or anywhere online are not necessarily true. Okay? And this apparently is a really hard concept for people. And so we need to repeat that a thousand times. And it's again deeply ironic here because we're online and we're

telling you be careful about things you see online. For with us, you can always verify. You could Google it, you can search, do an independent search on your own. We often put the links in the description box so you can check and verify on your own and we encourage you to do that. Okay, and I wish other outlets would do that, but of course they don't, because if you checked what Breitbart wrote, you'd realize, oh my God, almost none of it is true, right? And you'd be like, well, that's weird. Why am I subscribed to a thing that lies to me 24-7? Oh, it's because they want the rich to get even more money. Well, I'm not in favor of that. Okay, so my point is, unfortunately, a gigantic percentage of people, if they see anything on Facebook or something like Facebook, They'll just automatically believe it. Yep.

Don't do that. They have no compunction about, I don't mean Facebook. I mean the individual sites on Facebook that are pushing that to you. There are no rules against them lying. There's no laws against it. They can put up almost anything they want. So for God's sake, think twice when you see something online. Agreed.

Second break. All right. We do know us on TYT. We'll be back. All right, back on TYT, Jenk and John with you guys, more news. Big news, massive news, massive dumps actually of financial data. Let's talk about it. We're going to discuss the results of the world's largest ever collaborative journalistic

enterprise involving more than 600 different journalists across 150 different media outlets in 117 countries. It is called the Pandora Papers. And like the Panama papers and other massive financial leak investigations before it, it reveals a lot more than we knew before about the behind the scenes shady financial activities of some of the most powerful and rich people in the world, including 35 world leaders. That includes current and former presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state, more than 100 billionaires. Celebrities, rock stars, business leaders, many of which have a shared interest, and that is using shell companies to hold luxury items like property and yachts, as well as incognito bank accounts, Picasso's and banksy's and all that stuff. And so what they found totaled $11.3 trillion in money being held in these offshore accounts.

This is, sorry, that's a result of a 2020 study. We're now seeing some of whom is putting that money into those accounts. And they're fairly big names you might actually recognize from the news, like King Abdullah II, who rules Jordan, spending more than $100 million on lavish properties in the U.S. and Europe, while his country fell deeper and deeper into political turmoil. That includes a mansion in Malibu, California, and three houses in Belgravia in central London.

all were concealed behind a dense web of shell corporation. So not just like a shell corporation, literal webs of them designed to make it as difficult as possible to understand that this guy was spending massive money to buy real estate around the world. We have other examples like a woman suspected of being involved for a few years in a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, became the owner of a pricey Monaco apartment days after reportedly giving birth to his child. They believe they've identified something like $100 million in assets being held by that woman now.

So big money being thrown around for the mistress. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who was elected in 2019 on a pledge to clean up his country's notoriously corrupt and oligarch-influenced economy, is also named in the leak. During the campaign, he transferred his 25% stake in an offshore company to a close friend who now works as the president's top advisor, as you do. So again, that one of my favorite running threads through all this is politicians who got in office specifically claiming they'd be warriors against corruption. And the second they got in, they began draining tens or hundreds of millions of dollars out and plopping them in offshore bank accounts. Yeah. So you got other examples too, but what do you think? Yeah. First of all, unfortunately, it's one of the most common things in the world.

So gee, I wonder if foreign oligarchs are taking their money out of the country. their money. No, they're of course. How do Putin get a hundred million dollars to give to just one of his mistress? Stoshcoin. Okay. My guess is that he didn't walk in office with that kind of money. He walked out of office with that kind of money or he's still in office and he's never going to walk out. So for all the people pretending to be on the left, go ahead and scream Russia gate now and defend your beloved Vladimir Putin. But it's not about Putin. It's about all of these guys doing it at the same time. Well, Jake, really fast.

Yes. How much money would you have to have to casually give $100 million to a mistress? There is no amount of money where I would do that. Trump gave $130,000 and he's a billionaire. Putin's giving $100 million. Yeah. No, no. Putin, look, there are credible reports that Putin is the richest man in the world,

even more so than Bezos. Why, if you have access to the treasury of one of the largest countries in the world and you have complete power in that country, knowing humanity, any person, let alone a guy like Putin, would rob the country blind. And it appears that's exactly what he's done. Again, it's not just about Putin. There's Turkish billionaires in there. They're, as usual, right? And there's kings and all these other folks, right? We're going to get to why America's not features so much in that document dump in a second.

More moral, more ethical. That is not the correct answer. In fact, it's the opposite. But I wanted to say one thing about King Abdullah before John gives you more info. So life is complicated. King Abdullah is one of the more secular and stable leaders in the Middle East. There's been less problems in Jordan than almost any other country in the Middle East. And so credit to him for managing that country in a way that has.

has been even-handed enough not to cause revolutions, et cetera. And he is more forward-thinking, and he has given more power, a little bit more power to his own people. But is he going to take some of the people's money and call it his own? Of course. King is in the title. King Abdullah. So like when we're all shocked and chagridden,

the king is taking the country's money? Yeah, yeah, of course he is. Is he going to hide that he's got a house in Malibu? Of course, of course he's going to hide that. Because back at home, he's going, al-a-a-a-a-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-a, right? And meanwhile, if they find out he's living high on the hog in Malibu, it might create some issues.

So that's why I use them as an example, because it isn't personal. We have to shut down these tax shelters through legal means. Otherwise, all these powerful people in all these different countries will, of course, rob us blind. And by us, I mean, mainly their own people. Yeah, yeah, we have to shut down the tax shelters. We also have to fight for democracy strong enough that people actually have the free press necessary to know that this is going on

and the democratic ability to have their will be heard when they turn against the leaders. Many of the countries in this are run by people that, like, it might be inconvenient for them that people know of their crimes. But there's no way they're ever going to lose office. In any event, let's turn to a couple more examples, including the president of Kenya, Ohuru Kenyatta, who has portrayed himself as an enemy of corruption, as so many of these has. According to the ICIJ report, Kenyatta's family has been accumulating a fortune offshore tax havens for literally decades. They own at least seven entities based in the British version islands and Panama, two well-known tax havens. The offshore businesses have assets

worth more than $30 million. Now, relative small change in this one example for former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Sherry Blair. They avoided paying over $400,000 in stamp duty, a tax on property purchases when they bought a townhouse in London. The building now houses Sherry Blair's law firm. So that corruption is kind of pathetic compared to many of these, but it's still a significant amount of money that they didn't have to pay that other people presumably would have. And look, the interesting thing is many of these, when you think of offshore tax havens, you probably think of things like perhaps Panama or the Virgin Islands, something like that. But this report makes clear that South Dakota and Nevada are actually among the two

U.S. states that right now are serving, especially South Dakota, as tax havens for international funds of the sort that you see in this report. And that is where, in theory, the U.S. could do something to fight against this. And I'm sure that Kirsten Cinema would be totally on board with making those changes to the law. Yeah, so this specific in the general here, the specifics about South Dakota. Why South Dakota? Well, it's one of the reddest and safest Republican states. And not a lot of eyes are on South Dakota. So that's a perfect place to put in a corrupt Republican governor like Christy Noem and say, all right, we'd like to use your entire state basically as a tax shelter for all the crooks and criminals in the world. And for

the Republican Party, they're like, yeah, yes is our answer. That's not a close one. Right? And so that, like, it's not like Christine Ome's unfamiliar with it. Oh, golly, gee. Are they hiding trillions in my state? Okay, that's almost the only thing in South Dakota. There's a lot of COVID, too, to be fair. Let's see. Yes. Credit and Sturgis and Mount Rushmore. Okay. So, so we're willing participants in this, which then gets the much bigger point about America. There's not a lot of Americans on the list. Is it because we're more moral? Don't be ridiculous. Okay. No. It's, it's not a lot of Americans on the list. Is it because we're more moral? Don't be ridiculous. Okay. No, it's that America is so corrupt and there's so many tax loopholes written into our laws that a lot of people don't need tax shelters. Yeah. So if you're in Europe, especially in Northern Europe, you really got to hide your money, okay, because those are good mixed economies, colloquially referred to as socialist, where they actually try to track you down and they serve the people, and they have, relatively speaking, especially compared to America, fair tax codes, right?

In America, we're like, the rich have to pay very little. And by the way, here's one enormous loophole, and another one, and another one. You choose whichever Mack truck you'd like to drive through any of them. Okay, so they don't have to bother going to illegal or sheltered, you know, hideaways. They just do it wide out in the open. And furthermore, we have, of course, this is why I talk often about how America is, unfortunately, the most corrupt country in the world. It's because we legalize bribery. So you can bribe politicians to write the tax code any way you like.

It's called a campaign contribution. And later it's called a salary for being a lobbyist or money for a speech you're giving at Goldman Sachs. Okay. And they shovel millions of dollars to the powerful here so that they shred our tax code. And they're not cheating anymore. They just changed the rules to favor the rich and only the rich in America. That's why you're not going to find a lot of Americans on the list. Get a load of the Europeans and the Africans and the Asians hiding their money.

Idiots, they didn't even write bribery into their laws. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, we're way over. I will say that the Biden administration has said that they're going to look into this. Yeah, no, they're not. They're going to get it around to it right after infrastructure and the voting bill, I'm sure. Other countries like, let's see, a representative for Putin say that it's all unsubstantiated. I don't think they're going to be looking into it there.

Oh, Putin's working 24-7. Around the clock. Leeds. He's working on leads. I mean, here. We're all looking for the guy that did this. Right. They haven't slept all night looking for leads in Putin's government or in the king's government or in anyone else's government. Blair is going to be shocked and chagrined. Yeah. And by the way, one of our members is 100% right. And I just wanted to say, Irene wrote in, these journalists are heroes, hashtag Pandora Papers. That's exactly right. This is what journalism looks like.

There's 600 journalists across 117 countries that expose deep corruption. American journalists, you could learn a thing or two from these real journalists being super brave across the world. Yeah. All right. So everybody's checking out damage report. Nina Turner's on there tomorrow. So that's a perfect opportunity to check it out. and when we come back

we have more shenanigans including from digital media companies and once again it's not TYT in the center of a controversy what is going on in this world all right 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 slash TYT I'm your host Jank Yugar I'll see you soon.