The Young Turks - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Shames Government Corruption And Trump Is Making The Deficit Worse

Episode Date: December 7, 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to get CEOs out of Washington. Trump is incredibly incompetent. Get exclusive access to our best content. http://tyt.com/GETACCESS 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. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too.

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I love it. Okay, so we're going to get to that story real soon. You know, John's show is now available for members, right? Everybody check out Damage Report. You can watch it live at 10 a.m. Pacific 1 p.m. Eastern, okay? And Anna is going to be back. She's actually going to be on Fox's L.A. Fox L.A.'s, the issue is with Alex Michelson at 10.30 p.m. Pacific tomorrow.

Okay? And then she'll be back on the Young Turks on Monday. So apparently she's coming in tomorrow and going on that show. So check that out. If you had a chance, yes. Can I plug today's episode? Yeah. So today we had two guests on the show, actually, two great guests.

So one, Dave Lindorf, he recently wrote up that big article in the nation about the Pentagon's $21 trillion worth of both ways accounting, either issues or purposeful deception. So I interviewed him this morning. And Kate Aronoff of The Intercept, she sort of sketched out, what could the world look like if we passed a Green New Deal now in 30 years? In a bunch of different areas of society, what would it look like? So we had to talk about that in the politics of the Green New Deal. Yeah, so speaking of John's guests, I have one of them on rebel headquarters tonight, right after this show at t.t.com. That's the founder of the Sunrise Movement. So that's super cool.

They've done an amazing job. Please check that out. I think you guys love that interview following the young Turks immediately on our website. Okay. Time to thank some folks who contributed to the Amplify program and then give you a fun announcement about it. Anonymous, thank you. But you'll also get a T-shirt. We know what your name is.

The Hacker Collective? Yeah, that's right. Okay. So if you don't put your last name, we don't read your name online or put it up anywhere publicly, but we do know, of course, who you are and we'll send you a T-shirt. I think we know who you are, but we at least have your email. Okay. Anyway, William Sir Ladis from Houston, you get a T-shirt.

These are all $150, all going to journalism students to spread the progressive message and a message about journalism, which we're going to touch on a little bit later in this program. New York has a terrible, terrible headline that we're going to point out. Rick Kangalosi from Spokane, Washington, you get a T-shirt. Brad Weiner from Fort Lee, New Jersey, you get a T-shirt. Sean Charette from Fontana, you get a T-shirt. Parker Chahawk from Montclair, New Jersey. I love all these Jersey folks.

You get a T-shirt. And now, can we see the T-shirt? I love this. I've got to start wearing this on Old School now. Nice, I can get one of those. And I had a great old school last night. Guys, man, we got a lot of wonderful program for you guys. If you're progressive, old school, you don't even have to be progressive to love that show.

TYT.com slash join to become a member. Okay, actually, it's a perfect time to become a member. Free trial right now, t.wit.com slash holiday. I should have one more from Amplify. I was actually reached out to that we had not read one name. But Greg Lowry also gave $150 to the Amplify program. So thank you very much. Thanks, Craig.

And now, quick fun fact, then we'll go on the news. Chris Cuomo today has redeemed his TYT membership and so has a producer of his, meaning that they now are young Turks members. So the funny thing about that is, so you guys provide them, we try to get it to them. That's a challenge honestly, and some folks have already redeemed and Chris is one of them. And, you know, Ida Rodriguez and I talked about how we kind of like Chris Gromo, right? Well, now he might be watching this, so there you go, Chris. Yes.

Be careful. No, but I'll tell you, it did give me a little pause like, now folks of CNN are listening to the post game. Yeah. Well, it reminds me, do you remember when you told me that you heard there was a reference that Bashar Assad made to TYT? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, ugh.

Now, Bashar Assad apparently does watch, that's the dictator in Syria, it does watch. The Young Turks, he told reporter Michael Isakov that. He said, I like that what the flick. No, he did not say that. But I don't know that he's a member. We should check it out. Could you imagine? He's an activist level member.

He's one of those live chats that we do with the webcans. Yeah. He's like, I could do more than $4.99, $10,000, $25, too much, come on now, all right, okay. Cannot go to live events, why do you get first tickets? I cannot go, I can stick with activist member. Okay. Jesus. I don't even know what accent we're doing.

That was vaguely middle Eastern. All right, let's do the news, John. Okay, let's talk about that. I got a million stories here. Let's see if we can get them all. Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is attending the bipartisan freshman orientation sessions that have been going on for the new incoming class, basically. She's been doing that all week, and she's been providing us some behind-the-scenes coverage

of what's going on. She's been posting on Twitter and Instagram and things like that. And that she noticed something interesting about the trend in the speakers that were being brought out to speak to all of these, remember, Republican and Democratic, freshman, congressmen, and women about legislation, you know, what you should vote for, what you can pass, what you can write, and things like that. And she tweeted this right now, she's at that bipartisan orientation. Invited panelists offer insights to inform new Congress members' views as they prepare to legislate.

of corporate CEOs we've listened to here, four. Number of labor leaders, zero. I like, I love it, I love it, I love it. That's great. Okay, no, look, guys, they're in the house, they're in the house. So right now, both Republican and Democratic leaders are like, who's leaking this information? Oh my God, the phone call, it's coming from inside the house. So we elected real people into the House of Representatives to represent you guys.

So all of these years, you know, I remember this young woman walked up to me at an airport said hi, I watched the show, et cetera. This is a bunch of years ago and I asked her if she was going to vote in the next elections. Now it's been so long I forget which ones it was 2014 or 2016. It's the HW election. No, it wasn't that long ago, as you'll see. And I said, are you going to vote? And she said, no.

And I was like, why? She said, after Obama, what's there left to hope for? I was like, wow, that's powerful, okay? And so for so long, Democrats promised things and then didn't deliver. And they would go to these seminars, they'd be like, well, of course corporate leaders, but we bow down to you corporate leaders, yes, corporate leaders. They didn't even notice that there were no labor leaders. They just take it as a given and assumption, like, well, of course, we have to listen

to the grand poobahs of industry. And now these four just Democrats, there's seven of them overall, the four ones that were newly elected, they are fighters. So it's not just Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she keeps calling them out. She's driving them crazy. But listen, there are representatives. We should know how they are giving orientation to them, indoctrinating them. And so there was a great news article a couple years back of a orientation that was leaked. It's actually a document.

And in this case, in this case, it was the Democratic side, okay? And it told the incoming members what they're supposed to do, what their job is. And their number one job was, now this is not me saying it, it's the memo written by Democratic leadership, raise money. You are to spend four to six hours a day calling donors to beg for money. How pathetic. I mean, look, there's two parts of it. One is pathetic.

I mean, that's your job as a, to represent us, you just call rich people all day long begging for money. Four to six hours a day. That's unbelievable. I wouldn't show up for the second day. Yeah, right? And then like, an afterthought was legislation, but I. There was also an hour of recharge time.

Yeah. Honestly, I don't even remember if they gave him any instructions on what to do about legislation. They told them like, okay, but here's where you go, the committees, et cetera. And there was a section on, like, it was like strategy and steering meetings. There was, I think there was actually one that said, like, work for your district. It was like an hour, I think. I was like, that seems like a bit ironic. You're supposed to do that the whole time.

But they did break down a few other categories. By the way, do you know who wrote that? No, I don't remember. I'm fairly certain because I looked at it early tonight, Ryan Grimm. It was two people, Ryan Grimm was one of them. Can I just think real quick. I mean, look, guys, if you're Young Turks viewers, I don't know if you're a young Turkish viewers, I don't know if you know how much you've affected the world.

So Ryan Grimm is a TYT contributor, and he's the one that broke the story about Kavanaugh. Now he broke it for the intercept, but he mentioned in a young Turk stream right as he was putting it up on the intercept. And that could have changed the world, and that was partly you guys that built our reporting team, right? And you guys helped to elect these Justice Democrats, and look at the difference that they're making. In previous regimes, if you will, they say, you work for your district for one hour.

a day. The rest of the time, you beg donors, right? And these folks are not having it. They're like, no, not interested. Here's what I'm gonna do all day long, represent my district. So you love Acacio-Cortez in what she did here and all the other times. Wait till you get a load of Rashida Talib. Yeah, so we don't have like a full rundown of all of the speakers.

I'm sure there's more than the four. That was when she tweeted that. So I don't know who most of those are, but we do know one of the corporate leaders that was in Rashida Talib tweeted out, Gary Cohen, former CEO Goldman Sachs, addressing new members of Congress today. Quote, you guys are way over your head, you don't know how the game has played. And then Rashida says, no, Gary, you don't know what's coming, a revolutionary Congress that puts people over profits.

Damn. Yes. Damn. So Gary Cohn was inside the Trump administration, and he's there to lecture them, let alone the fact that he ran Goldman Sachs, I think he was C.O. And so he comes and goes, you people don't know what you're doing. We in the Trump administration, he's now left, but we in the Trump administration knew what we were doing. Are you kidding me?

What a joke you are, Gary Cohn? What the hell did you do in the Trump administration other than give yourself a giant tax cut? That's their only so-called accomplishment, which is giving a giant $1.9 trillion tax cut for the rich and for Goldman Sachs. Then he lectures down to them. And Rashida Taleb says, I don't think you understand. I'm a representative. You're nothing. Here's who Gary Cohen is.

Nothing. You might be rich Gary and you worked at Goldman Sachs and for Trump so you find yourself in this presumptuous situation where, and to be fair to Gary Cohn, the Republicans and Democrats, because it's a bipartisan orientation, agreed to bring Gary Cohn in to talk down to these representatives, to lecture these representatives, not interested, not remotely interested. And what's so amazing is that Gary Cohen walks in there with, I don't use the cloakwell term, he's got a lot of energy, I'll say, like, I'm this rich guy, represent all these other rich folk, I can come in here, I can throw my weight around, tell you to do whatever

I want. And for the most part, he always could. And even now, he still can with a lot of them. But if you're rejecting all of that money, it means nothing to you. He is a worm. He is one vote, effectively, and not even in their districts. They don't accept his money. They don't accept the corporate money, so they're not going to be corrupted by it. And they see that, literally he walks in and they are able to look at him with unclouded eyes, seeing him for what he really represents. Guys, I'm telling you, man, you partly did this, so would Rashida Talib have gotten elected anyway?

Probably, but did you help? Yes, not every one of you, certainly not the trolls. You did nothing. Right, no, well, they actually accidentally give us money, so bless their hearts. Keep watching. But for you guys who built this home of progressives, you got, you know, a lot of you contributed to Rashida Thalib, you volunteered for her, Ilhan Omar, these are all just Democrats, Ianna Presley and obviously Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, we did dozens of videos about them and interviews

with them before their elections, we had their back, and for once politicians in America delivering, now they've got our back and they're doing their job, which is representing us. democracy feels awesome now that we've finally gotten a taste of it. Yeah, yeah. Why don't we take our first break? We actually have two international stories, Donald Trump, one of his big priorities in office not working out the way that he'd hoped. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love this story.

He got, how little he knows about economics is amazing and stunning. We'll talk about it when we come back. All right, back in the Young Turks. I'm going to do some tweets here, actually. Blue Cobco writes in, Congress seems to be the best paid call center in the world. That's funny. The nerdy Negro, that's his handle on Twitter, says if you spend four to six hours calling donors, that means you are bought and paid for, and you don't need our vote.

By the way, that's the Yuga Rule, just so you know, okay? If you are wondering if you should support corporate Democrats, establishment, Democrats that do take corporate PAC money, well, it's really easy. If they don't take corporate pack money and they're uncorrupted, whether they're just Democrats or otherwise, you should volunteer for them. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-Inging the Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode,

episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting

and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today. and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time. Should donate to them, et cetera, because they're clean, they're uncorrupted, okay? But if take corporate pack money, it doesn't mean you don't vote for them. I'm sure that they're better on social issues than the Republicans are. So, you know, sight unseen these days in America, I'd vote for a Democrat over a Republican every time. But should you volunteer or donate to someone who takes corporate PAC money?

I would say, no, you shouldn't. They've already decided who their friends are. Their friends are corporations. And so they could be socially liberal, but they're obviously economically conservative. Honestly, they can't be trusted because they're taking legalized bribes from corporations. So why would you give your money to a guy who apparently has plenty of money from the corporate world? So that's the Yuga rule.

You can vote for them, but you shouldn't volunteer. here or donate to them. Okay? Seems fair to me. But thank you for making that point. Okay, so I want to tell you guys just a couple quick things here before we move on to Donald Trump's ignorance. Okay.

So, wouldn't it be great if there was a progressive Netflix? That's pretty neat, right? Well, I got great news for you. There already is. It's the Young Turks. Okay, you kind of saw that one coming. Okay, but I want to let you guys know about a couple things we're doing for you that is part of our subscription package.

We're gonna do basically kind of a newlywood game. It's called hostmates, we made that up, where there's different couples that are playing against each other. So it's me and Anna versus Ben and Michael, John and Brooke, Ricky and JR, et cetera, and it was hilarious. So members, you're gonna love that. T.y.t.com slash join actually this perfect time. You could actually get a free trial right now at TYT.com slash holiday. Okay, that's likely for only a limited time, so take advantage of that.

But now here's another fun part, okay? So next week on Thursday, we are going to do what is next for the progressive movement. What should we fight for? Now, you know some of the policies, but we're gonna prioritize. What should come first? What should we do strategically? How much should we fight for? How much should we try to push Democrats?

It's easy to push Republicans, although not for apparently for the rest of the Democrats. They never pushed Republicans. But for progressives, that's easy. But how much should we push other Democrats, right? And we're going to have a whole range of progressives from very socialist, okay, some of them seem to make arguments that are borderline communist. Anyway, I'm not in that camp, but bless their hearts, okay? Curious who now?

To establish a little bit more establishment-de, but really, you know, we're, so we got the whole spectrum of progresses. But obviously, you know, having support of Wolfpack, just Democrats, and you know, you know what Young Turks stands for. I think we're also arguably the mainstream of progressives these days. Progressives as in Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, people who actually represent us, obviously Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, et cetera. So that's gonna be a big night.

Rokana's gonna be here and many other guests and they're gonna tell us, and he's inside the house, he's one of the leaders of the progressives, and he's gonna tell us what priorities they have and what order they're gonna go in and how much they're gonna push democratic leadership. So that is really interesting. Make sure you check that on on Thursday night. And then like I mentioned earlier in the live show, John has his show Damage Report. That's our morning show. And now that is available to live, to all the members. And also, as with all of our program, if you're a member, you can get it live. And you could also get it anytime you want. You can download it or stream it. So t.com slash join to participate in that. I just want to

make sure you guys get a chance to check out all of our shows. Anna's coming back next week. Her show is no filter. We've got dozens of progressive shows for you guys, so good time to check it out now. Oh, by the way, speaking of which, Anna has been on vacation. And so we're doing this competition among the hosts to see who can sign up more people. Now, I've been here the longest, to be fair, so obviously I'm going to be winning, right? and Anna has been on vacation, so it's going to be easy, right?

So I've got new numbers in, okay? And apparently we were doing it a little bit wrong, and these are the up-to-date corrected numbers. And John, congrats, you're in third place, okay? All right. The legendary Jim Adore is in fourth place, okay? And so bless Jimmy's heart. Then we've got a lot of folks, Haas, Francis, Ben, Emma, J.R.

Brooke, Brad, sign up with any of their. names, t.y.d.com slash John, for example. And they don't get anything. It's just a fun competition. Don't look, don't cheat. I already saw all I needed to see. And I am incensed internet, incensed. Okay, so John is in third place. He's got 204 folks that he signed up. Hey, thank you everybody. Thanks a lot. So is it enough to, is he close to me? Is he almost going to overtake me? No. So for a while he was ahead of me. Not anymore. I was satisfied with that. I'm good.

Okay, so tyt.com slash jank is at 287. Ugh. Some quick math on that ahead of them by 83. I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying. Okay. So have I caught Anna while she was taking it easy down in South Beach where she took her talents to? Okay.

No, she's pulling away while on vacation. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. I read the number wrong. Okay. I read it, I thought you were up. That's why I was incensed. I don't get it.

All right. There's justice in the world. TYT.com slash Anna is at 355 sign up. She's almost doubled me. I had closed it within about 40, and now she's pulling away again. I don't know how to catch her. Okay. DYT.com slash jenk!

What is wrong with you? No, I'm kidding. Here's what we've discovered today. These people are a bunch of bandwagoners. It's like, oh, she's going to win. I just want to sign up with her. Make it competitive, people. You know what?

I think what'll really work is if we continue to insult the audience, you and I? What's wrong with you people? Why do you like Anna so much? I'm willing to try anything. Okay, all right, bless your hearts. All right, come join the home of progressives. TYT.com slash join. And like I said, this is a wonderful time because we have a free trial for you guys at

at TYT.com slash holiday. I have a couple of ideas for how I could possibly get more followers. It's desperate times, perhaps calling for desperate measures. I'm not ready to announce them yet, but if necessary, I'm willing to pull out the big guns. Okay, so let's jump back into the news. Bad news for Donald Trump, in one of his big passions, that's reducing the U.S. trade deficit, one of the sexiest of all political topics, but he talks about it a lot. And supposedly, he thinks it's a terrible thing that we have this big trade deficit between

the U.S. and other countries. Unfortunately, the foreign trade gap in goods and services rose one point. 7% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted $55.5 billion in October, which is obviously that's news for October, but it's also sort of historic news. If you bring up this chart, you're gonna see that trade gap over time. Yeah, widest point in a decade actually, the largest deficit since October 2008. Can we go back in the chart for a second, John? Because I wanna draw attention to a couple of things in that chart, okay?

So it looks like, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, that was there a Democrat or a Republican between 2003 and 2008 in charge? I don't remember. No, I didn't, yes, obviously it's a problem. Oh, right, that was George W. Bush, right. And then when it was really low in the chart, you know, let's keep the chart up, between 2008 and 2016, when it's much lower, oh, that's right, that's Obama, a Democrat, that's interesting. And now it is spiking again for the guy who claimed that he really cared about trade differences

and he was going to bring them down. And lo and behold, here we are at the highest point since the last Republican was in charge. So Donald Trump, as usual, total loser. And to put in perspective, it has gone up 11.4% in October would compare with the same period in 2017. So a lot of progress in one year. So look, here's the thing. He talks about it a lot.

I personally think that it's complex, and the trade deficit isn't as uniformly bad as he describes it. It's a complex combination of a number of different things. If American income goes up, then hypothetically that can lead to a greater trade deficit because we spend money. If we're not producing the goods here, that means we're going to spend more money, which goes outside of the country. Actually, wages going down could lead to a smaller trade deficit.

So you have to look into the specifics. The problem for him, though, is that while the trade deficit sort of goes to, you know, up and down dependent on a lot of different factors, when it comes to him, there's actually good reason to believe that he has been having an influence on it, just not in the direction that he says. And it has to do with his alter ego. Tariff man. So he is tariff man. He declared that. He sort of ripped the mask off on Twitter and says that he's going to use these tariffs to make money. The issue is that he doesn't actually seem to understand how tariffs work at all. He seems to think that the other countries pay them.

which is not actually how it works, I pay them and you pay them, it's a tax on consumption for the country that the goods are coming into. Now, hypothetically, you could want that, and you could say that long term fine, we're gonna pay a little bit more in the short term, but it'll change consumer habits, and so in the long term it'll benefit our country, okay, that's fine, but right now the money that he is like congratulating himself for raising is not Chinese money, that's our money, that's That's money that we spent. And I'm not sure that he actually gets that.

No, he, I am sure, he definitely does not get it. He has been saying since the campaign, the Chinese are taking this money from us. It's just not how it works. Not remotely how it works. And so it is a tariff that we Americans pay. So how would the Chinese be taking it from us? So, and but like his argument though was, well, okay, we're gonna get a back from the Chinese, which is not factual, doesn't make any sense at all, right?

But at least the trade deficit is going to go down. But now the trade deficit has gone up. So in Trump's logic, well then China's taking more from us. Yeah. Right? What would it even mean if he says, I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna make them make the trade deficit smaller? What does that mean?

The trade deficit is just a combination of a couple of numbers. The amount we buy from overseas that comes into our country and the amount that other countries buy of our products that then go overseas. What does the Chinese government gonna do? They're gonna go banging on all the doors around China saying, hey, you better shop on Amazon more. What would that be in practice? Okay, look, they could change tariff policy.

That might change things either of second and tertiary effects, but they can't directly change. It's not the Chinese government that's buying all these products, it's random people. If we wanna make a smaller trade deficit with China or with any set of countries, we need to produce more things that they wanna buy. That is the only answer, that is the only answer that there has ever been. Okay, and finally, I am actually going to be super duper fair to Donald Trump, because I'm merciful. And the reality is, there's a little bit of a twist here that if the economy is doing well, people will buy more things in America, because they'll have slightly more disposable income.

But when they buy things, they are buying a lot of imports, because a lot of our economy is driven by imports. So that's why this is a complicated issue. And so if you were an intelligent president and understood those economic principles, you would be thinking to yourself, hmm, this is a tricky calculus. I probably shouldn't promise a lower trade deficit and a better economy at the same time. Because if I have a better economy, I'll probably have a higher trade deficit, right? Now, the idea that Trump would even understand that concept is obviously laughable.

Okay, so he's like, no, me have good economy and low trade deficit at the same time. No, you don't, that's not how it works. So I'm being fair to him in that saying that, yeah, the economy up until now, now it's crashing, but at least the stock market is, had been on the ups, continuing the upswing of Obama, but he hadn't killed it yet. And so people were buying more, that led to the higher trade deficit. It's just too thick to understand that concept. If he did, he could actually take credit for some of it, just not the parts he's talking

about. Yeah. So you were fair, I want to take away a little bit of that credit now, because as I said, there are sometimes when you can point to a particular act that the president does have control over that can lead to this sort of thing, and we do have that act. And it does have to do with his alter ego as tariff man. So October's exports drop, partly reflects the continued drop back in soybean shipments to China following the imposition of tariffs.

But there's also been a more general collapse in overall goods exports to China, which have now fallen by 30% over the past 12 years, which for one country, a fairly large trading partner of ours, to happen in one year is certainly significant. And to give an idea the amount of money that we're talking about, soybean exports decreased by $800 million in October and are down more than 40% from last year as China countered Trump's tariffs with hefty taxes on U.S. agricultural products. So to the extent that he can directly influence this, he has. set up tariffs, they in turn did exactly what we said they were going to do.

They set up their own tariffs against soybeans. They're buying less soybeans, taking close to a billion dollars. Now, our overall trade deficit is like $55 billion, so that's not a gigantic percentage of it, but he could have taken away the 1.7% that it went up in October. That's pretty close to the soybean effect, actually. And that is directly attributable to Donald Trump's action. So last thing on this is that, look, presidents take too much credit when things are going well.

They take too much blame when the economy's not doing well. It's more complicated than that, and you have to have a bigger picture look. So if you look at the eight years under Obama or Bush, well, that actually is a fair assessment, as we were doing a little bit earlier, right? But if you're looking at any one time, they're not directly responsible for all the economy or all the trade deficit. But John makes a great point here, to the degree that Donald Trump has a fact, you know, affected it, you could say, hey, you know what, he's got a good economy, that Obama had a good

economy. That's why the trade deficit, well, that's why a lot of things, including the stock market, were doing well. And unemployment was low. And Trump continued that and hence the trade deficit under Trump, not hence, but partly why the trade deficit went up. But he exports clearly went down because of a direct action that Donald Trump took. So, and that was the tariff man, right? And so tariff man clearly made the trade deficit in that instance, worse, not better. It is as directly attributable to the president as any action can be. Yeah, exactly. Okay, let's turn to related topic, actually. The upcoming trade talks between the United States and China, which are supposed to happen soon. Donald Trump came back from the G20 summit saying that these are going

to happen and hopefully will help smooth over some of the drama that he has created with his tariff man actions, they might actually be a little bit more tense than we thought they were going to be, based on news from today. So let's bring up this picture. You're going to see Meng Wang Zhu. She's under arrest, actually. Chief of financial officer of Huawei, who goes by Sabrina Meng, detained in Vancouver, Canada on Saturday, sought for extradition by the United States.

The arrest appears to be related to alleged violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran. So this is a high-placed officer inside of this gigantic Chinese corporation, the daughter of the head of that corporation, being detained in Canada because of a U.S. request. That is huge international news. Let's get a little bit more information about Meng. As I said, daughter of Huawei's founder, she was detained when she was changing flights in Canada on what Huawei said in a statement were unspecified charges from the Eastern District of New York. The company said it has been provided very little information regarding the charges and is not aware of any wrongdoing by Meng. So to some extent, until we learn more, we have to take a look at what has been going on between our countries and what the priorities of the countries are. So the Wall Street Journal reported in April, the Justice Department had launched a criminal probe into Huawei's dealings with Iran,

and both the Commerce and Treasury departments had issued administrative subpoenas to the company on Iran-related issues. And understand that as this is going on, the Trump administration is looking to tighten sanctions on Iran after Trump decided to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran deal in May. So this is, I guess, some sort of power play, either they're going to make the case that she's involved in some sort of wrongdoing, the details of which have not been released right now, or it's some sort of negotiating tactic. Seems like a dangerous one to me. Yeah.

What's your take, Jank? So this was a little bit complicated. It's got upsides and downsides. but at the end of the day, as usual with Trump actions, potentially disastrous. So let me explain. First, look, I'm concerned about Huawei, and I think that some action is justified. So they're, as usual with the giant Chinese companies that are connected to the Chinese military and government, there are accusations of spying using their smartphones to spy in

on people. It's gigantic their smartphones in Europe. They're trying to break into the U.S. market. our intelligence officials are worried about that as they are with a number of large Chinese companies. And then they're also trying to acquire U.S. companies to get better technology. And the Chinese government does use practices that are not exactly free market to say the least. And so it is not really a fair playing field.

So those are real legitimate issues. And I think some action could have been taken against Huawei. Now, arresting one of their executives, first of all, we don't arrest their own executives. I mean, we had, the bankers committed fraud on a, like, global scale in 2008 crashed the economy. We didn't arrest almost anyone, right? So now we're arresting Chinese executives. Hold on if you want, don't celebrate that because there's a couple of things that come from it. Number one, one of our pretenses is that they are violated our sanctions of Iran.

But we're the only ones who have sanctions on Iran. We're the only ones who backed out of the deal. Russia, China, the rest of Europe still have that deal with Iran. But we say, no, we don't care. We're gonna enforce our point of view on all of the rest of you. And if you don't follow what we say, we're gonna start arresting your business people, okay? I think that's crazy talk. And then now, if all you care about is America and America first, and you're that kind

of guy, okay, you're a knucklehead. But even for you, think about it, they, we arrest their business leaders. What do you think is going to happen next? They're going to arrest our business leaders, okay? You think China can't find a pretense? So we arrest one more person, and she's not only one of the top business leaders that, she's also the family member of one of the most connected and powerful people in China. So then they start arresting the family members of our leaders.

And this gets to be insane really, really quickly. So yet another terribly dangerous precedent set by Donald Trump, because my guess is as usual, he didn't think it through. You know who else is a business leader in America who's connected to the family of leaders in America? Ivanka Trump. She goes to China all the time, she has all those permits and business in China. What if they're like, oh yeah, you violated our sanctions, Ivanka Trump, you're under arrest.

Oops, didn't think about that. What if it was Don Jr.? What if it was Eric? Well, maybe in that case, I wouldn't care. Yeah, but it could be serious. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe it's already been Tiffany and we don't know.

Okay, so, but you're implying it's going to get crazy. It's starting to get crazy if we could skip ahead. A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry told reporters that Meng's detention without any given reason violates a person's human rights. And if there's one thing that the Chinese government is concerned with, it's human rights. The spokesperson said that China had demanded both the US and Canada immediately clarify the reasons for the detention and immediately release the detainee to protect the person's legal rights. I mean, at some point, they are going to have to say what it was.

Senate Intel Vice Chair Mark Warner released a statement that sort of implies that they're very focused on the connection between the company and the government, and they are talking about the possibility that some sorts of laws, sanctions laws have been broken, but there's no specific claims about what was actually done. So at this point, we are still waiting to find out. Two more points here. One is this is a bit of a Muhammad bin Salman move. It's a Saudi move. So what do I mean by that?

So before he got famous all over the world for dismembering journalists, Muhammad bin Salman had done something arguably almost as crazy. He had kidnapped a foreign leader. The leader of Lebanon had gone to Saudi Arabia on a diplomatic mission, and they arrested him and made him do basically a hostage video where he gave up power in Lebanon. What the hell's going on? And finally they released him and he went back to Lebanon. He's like, yeah, no, I take that back.

Yeah, I'm the leader of Lebanon. What the hell was that, right? I mean, that's crazy. And now here we are following up with, okay, we'll start randomly arresting business leaders of other countries. That's a super dangerous precedent. And then, you know, who didn't like that was the markets. They're like, ah, disaster, okay, and they're not worried about the

The rest is much, I mean, I can't read their minds, but I can't read business articles. And what they say is, well, then this is potentially going to get much uglier between U.S. and China, which is going to hurt trade, which is going to hurt the global economy. So the markets crashed initially again for the second day in a row today. They recovered a little bit when Trump keeps bullying the head of the Federal Reserve. And he keeps coming out and go, okay, okay, how do I artificially inflate the stock market? He's like, okay, we were, you know, increasing rates, maybe we'll lower. Maybe we'll lower.

And so the market's like, okay, fine, we'll go up a little bit. But overall, still the market's significantly down the last two days because of madness like this. Yeah, yeah. We should probably take our next break, huh? Yeah, okay, fine, you win, we will. I should probably do. Yeah, okay. Now, you guys know I'm up in arms over the cheating that has been going on by Republicans in Wisconsin,

and Michigan we'll be talking about the last couple of days. Now here they go again, now they're doing it in North Carolina, and the way that they're cheating here is both ingenious and laughable. I mean, this is arguably worse than any of the rest, and more brazen and more preposterous. So we'll explain it to you, and we'll fight back when we come back. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, Become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today.

In the meantime, enjoy this free second. All right, back on a young turks, lots of fun comments here. Wait till you get a little the last one. Madness makes a fair point in the member section. Thank you for coming closer to me, John. That was weird. Okay. In my defense, I did it in the creepiest way possible.

Good defense. Madness writes, and the last thing the U.S. permanent state wants to give up is their monopoly on spying on everyone in the world. So fair point, we also do the spying. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech.

And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN.

And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash T-Y-T, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Shy Coltrane 42 points out. Professor Richard Wolfe was on Tom Hartman today, and he's predicting a really bad recession. Worse than the crash of 08. Brace for Impact, folks.

First of all, I like to shout out to Tom Hartman. Yeah. And by the way, a lot of folks are. I've been going on CNBC too much lately. And even they're like, watch out, a lot of bad signs, lots and lots of bad signs. So it's a strange agreement between CNBC and Dr. Richard Wolf. So if they agree, oh boy. My crazy theory, I'm not an economist, to be fair, my crazy theory is that it's connected

to us doing nothing to fundamentally change the causes of the last recession. Wow, yeah, naïve. Anyway, Suborto writes in, just a fun comment here, no country for tariff men. That's a T-shirt waiting to happen. Very good, very good. Mark Kister on YouTube, Super Chat says, actually, we would have a better economy of the trade deficit decreases. By increasing exports, we would have employed more people who would spur the U.S. economy. I wasn't, that's not what I was saying at all.

I'm saying that it doesn't necessarily mean what he's describing it in terms of the ability to just like, it's not like a country can just say, we're gonna shift it up, we're gonna shift it down or anything like that. Yeah, no, unless these were state-run economies. No, I think he's mainly referring to what I was saying. And so, look, I hear you brother, and that's what we said over and over again. It's a complicated matrix. There are things that bring exports and imports down and up, and so it's not easy to just say, hey, good economy means bad trade, right? Lower deficit. low deficit.

Okay, all right, but here's my favorite comment. On Twitter, who, how do I pronounce this, Anna, Anna Kusp, Anna Kusperian. What? What? Anna Kasparian writes, and I'm watching the Young Turks in bed while recovering from the flu. Oh, no. I was barely able to move until I heard on TYT live that I'm still beating jank at the member

sign of competition. I stood up and danced like a crazy person, I love you guys. And by that, hey, but she doesn't need that. Okay, and by that, I assume she means you guys and not us guys. Okay. All right, what's next, John? Okay. By the way, hi, Anna, if you're still watching.

You know what? By the way, one more thing. So damage report and no filter in our podcast network as well, so is Teret. And Teret had a great interview with Mark Lamont Hill about his firing and what he's going to do next. So, t-y-t.com slash app or just go to wherever you normally do podcast, get the TYT network, and check out Trey's last episode because it's a really interesting one. All right, what's next, John? Okay, corruption's up. Fascinating a case of potential corruption in D.C., lobbyists funded by the Saudi government spent more than a quarter million dollars renting hotel rooms in Trump's Washington hotel soon after the 2016 election.

The lobbyist paid to send U.S. military veterans to Capitol Hill to push back on a law the Saudis opposed. While the vets were originally sent to hotels in northern Virginia, the lobbyists switched to the Trump International Hotel less than a month after Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Some of the vets interviewed, said they were not told that Saudi Arabia was involved in organizing and funding the trips. Oh, what do you know?

It was deceptive. operative who helped coordinate the trips told the post that the hotel located just minutes from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue was chosen because it offered a discount on its nightly rate at that time of $768 and had nothing to do with influencing Trump. No, of course not. Nothing to do, but they did rent 500 rooms in a three month period. Again, more than a quarter million dollars, money that's funneled from a foreign power to lobbyists, to the president, while he is in charge of that policy.

Like he's shaping the course of a relationship with that country, and he's making more than a quarter million dollars. So, to be fair to them though, I mean, how could they turn down that low, low rate of $768 per night? I mean, they're practically giving it away. Jesus Christ, man, that's like, I don't know, a month's worth of hotels for us. I had one of my first apartments in Connecticut when I was going to college was $375 a month. Jesus Christ.

So, now, the Saudis did have one more thing to say in their defense. They said, look, at least we didn't dismember anyone. Oh, okay, well, I didn't know you were that merciful in this particular case. And if you're thinking, guys, come on, if you're one of those magna knuckleheads, the Trump's A billionaire, he doesn't need that. He's got like 10 or 12 or 3 billion or whatever he's got, right? What does he need $270,000 for it? Are you kidding me?

This is the two-bit scam artist who's charging people $5,000, $30,000 at Trump University and giving them nothing. He's running like two-bit operation over there trying to rip people off $10,000 at a time. For him like $270,000, he's like, oh my God, I'm rich, right? And so, and yes, that's a big deal to transfer all those rooms. You think, come on, even if you're a Maga guy, you think the Saudis did that by coincidence or because they were, because in northern Virginia, I know I lived in Washington. The hotels are a lot cheaper than they are at the Trump hotel and right in the middle

of Washington, D.C. They're nowhere near 700 some odd dollars in Arlington and in other areas in Virginia. It's a preposterous statement, and you don't believe that either. You know they were trying to influence Trump. And in this case, it's not like Trump is like, you know, he used the excuse of like, hey, it goes to the defense industry. The defense contractors are getting rich, so it's all right. If you like that excuse, okay, fine, right?

I think it's terrible. Yeah, but in this case, no, it's going straight into Trump's pocket. We used to have a word for that, I think it was called a bribe, right? And there is a provision in the Constitution that doesn't allow you to do that. It's called the emoluments clause, I wish they had a different name for it, that's awkward. It's right there, but we've gotten so used to Donald Trump taking illegal and unconstitutional actions that we're like, we're overwhelmed. We're like, okay, chalk another one up and let's move on.

Exactly. Thankfully, some people are challenging it, so back in June 2017, a complaint was filed in D.C. federal court, more than two dozen senators and more than 160 House members argued that Trump, quote, has chosen to accept numerous benefits from foreign states without first seeking or obtaining congressional approval in violation of the Constitution's so-called Mollumance clause, what I call the Emo Clause. It's not catching on, it turns out. But yeah, this was just one of the cases.

I mean, they had already filed that complaint. Now we're finding out more and more ways that money is being directly funneled to Donald Trump, to his family, and to the organization. Yeah, and so in case you're again wondering if this is normal or not, if you haven't been following politics all along, no, it's not remotely normal. What presidents normally do is they sell their assets and they put them in a blind trust. And so they don't know where the trust is a lot of politicians do that some of the politicians are cheesy is you're not going to be surprised by that no matter where you are in the political

spectrum and they'll have trust that aren't so blind they largely know where the money is but no one has been as brazen as Donald Trump where he's like it's not a blind trust he knows exactly where his hotels are or where all of his properties are he says no it's okay you're supposed to have someone not attached to you running it right he's like no it's okay my sons are running it. So you know how you're getting paid and your family's running it, that's not within miles of a blind trust. Exactly.

Yeah, it's not enough that you feel no emotional attachment to them. I don't want you communicating with them either. So money directly into his pocket. The Saudis know it. But it's, John, last thing, let's be fair. It's not like he did the Saudis any favors, did he? How much would someone have to pay you to cover up a brutal torture and murder? Apparently, about $270,000, let alone all the other business he was trying to do

with Saudi Arabia during the campaign. So there was a big news story that Russia, he was trying to do the Trump Tower in Moscow with Russia, and that is, that's gigantic and that might have been part of the collusion, etc. But it's also collusion with Saudi Arabia because he was also trying to do business while campaigning with Saudi Arabia, and hey, wink, wink, if I win, we make this thing happen. And then right after he wins, the Saudis, so like, oh, here's all this money. That's not a coincidence. It is clearly meant to influence the president of the United States so that he doesn't

work for us. He works for the Saudis. Exactly. Let's move on. Possibly the biggest story that should be talked about nonstop in this country. We've been talking about throughout the week. As the evidence for electoral fraud starts to pile up in North Carolina's ninth congressional district, the Republicans there in that state are trying to pass an electoral reform law

that includes a component that I think is the most cynical, most partisan law, and most comical law that I've seen in literally years. So they're in the North Carolina's General Assembly. They have House Bill 1117. This proposed law self-professedly aims to restructure election administration. So look, their elections seem pretty messed up. So maybe that's a good thing. So look at one part of it.

It says this, in choosing electal county board chairs. In the even numbered year, the chair shall be a member of the political party with the second highest number of registered affiliates as reflected by the latest registration statistics published by the state board. So you might think, well, that's odd. Why would it be the second? Hey, wait a second, who has the second highest party registration? Well, damn, if it isn't the Republican Party.

No, but here's the best part. It's amazing. Okay, so first of all, they're saying, well, we get to run the elections in even years, but it's okay, we're being fair, the Democrats get to run it in odd years. That's fair, that's fair. Okay, now you want to guess we're in all the major elections, including federal elections happen? In even years.

Well, what a coincidence that turns out to be. I mean, it's literally laughable. So, I mean, who tries to pass that law? Like as if, like, no, no, no, we're being fair. We let them run elections when there are no elections. To be fair, there's like really small municipal elections in North Carolina in the odd years, but almost all the relevant elections are in even years. Like, did you think we wouldn't notice?

No, but the thing is, it doesn't matter if we notice, right? They're like, yeah, it's a brazen power grab, who cares? So the media will, you know, point it out, but then they're not gonna, you know, can't, crusade on it, that they're not Fox News, they're just going to report it one day and drop it. And the Democrats are pushovers, so we're just going to steal election after election. I mean, they're stealing the 9th District election in North Carolina right now. We're going to talk about that next, but this is in essence saying we get to rig elections for as long as the eye can see.

Even though, I mean, what a hilarious thing, the party that has less people affiliated with with it in North Carolina. You might be surprised by that because North Carolina historically has been a red state, not really that much anymore. They're-jerrymandered. They are holding on to power in the legislature because of gerrymandering, et cetera. But it's becoming more and more blue every day. So they're desperately holding on.

Their registration advantage is obviously obliterated. And they have no chance of ever being the most affiliate registrations in the state again. So it's just a brazen power grab. and they think the Democrats are pushovers, which is going to get away with it. Yeah, it says so much about their philosophy going forward and how they're going to govern, how they're going to run, that you might think, okay, well, it says second most. So, wait, so that seems self-defeating. What happens when you become popular again?

They don't have any plan ever of having the registration advantage. They're not trying to get people to support their party. They already have the seats. They're trying to make it impossible for them to lose them. Not to get more in the future. They already have the advantage. Why would the second most popular party get to pick who's in charge during the more relevant elections?

Like what's the, if they bothered to have logic, what would be the logic behind that? There's no logic. So what could possibly happen? Well, look, there is that race going on right now, Dan McCready versus Mark Harris, and every day more evidence comes out of how shady that entire thing is. I mean, they sent people around who were doing ballot harvesting, taking these absentee ballots from people that they were not legally allowed to do. The law was being broken there.

At least one of the people who did that says that they were paid to do that and that they did not hand those ballots they harvested into the state. They handed it to someone else. And once said it happened, we don't know what happened with those votes. Incredibly suspicious, the person who might have been running that effort, one of the contractors for Mark Harris that he paid a lot of money for, has previously gone to jail for fraud, been involved with other extremely shady elections in exactly the same way, absentee ballots. In two elections that he's been involved in, in primaries, his candidate in 2016 got 98% of

the absentee ballots, and in this election got 96% of the absentee ballots in that primary. So incredibly suspicious, and now there are some people fighting back. There's a couple different ways this could go. So Nancy Pelosi says, the House still retains the right to decide who is seated. That is one of the powers of the House of Representatives. Any member elect can object to the seating and swearing in of another member elect. We'll see how that goes. So hypothetically could not seat him.

No, no, no, no, no. That would actually happen. No, I mean, look, we got just Democrats in the House now. On a north circumstance should they seat this guy? I want to give you one fact that I think might actually convince you even if you're a conservative. There's a board of elections in North Carolina that's split up between Republicans and Democrats and one independent. So there's nine overall, four Republicans, four Democrats.

And you know what the vote was on this, on whether to seat him or not? Nine to nothing, do not seat him. Yeah. They're significantly concerned about electoral fraud, including the four Republicans. They're like, we can't certify. No way, right? So there are reports that they took the ballots that they sometimes just threw them in the garbage if they voted for the Democrat.

Sometimes if they left it blank, they're like, oh, no, you don't have to fill it out. They would fill it out and voted for the Republican and then hand it in. And they would report so it would literally cross out McCrady's name and write in Mark Harris's name. I mean, that's electoral fraud 101. It doesn't get him. And this guy has a history of doing it. So finally, McCrady today unconceited. Yeah.

Jesus Christ, what took you so long? I mean, even the Republicans in the States are like, that's really bad. Like, really bad, right? And McCrady finally, because he said, at least he said one thing that was strong, he said that Harris bankrolled, quote, criminal activity. I'm like, okay, finally. That is good. Yes, and to the point that John brought up, if this electoral fraud is allowed to stand,

that means you give carte blanche, it's a precedent for Republicans. Oh, hire any criminals you like and steal any elections you like. Of course it can't stand. under no circumstances should they seat Mark Harris. Now, unless they find evidence that they didn't do it, and the Democrats agree, they go, oh, no, it turns out they didn't do it. There was a mistake or something. Then, of course, you'd seat them, right?

But otherwise, of course, you're not going to seat a guy who clearly cheated in the election. That's ridiculous. Yeah, won by 904 votes out of, I think, 220,000. Yes. So, yeah, suspicious. Let's do a couple of brief updates on related issues that we've been talking about a lot. We've been incredibly frustrated with the situation in Wisconsin where the Republicans have decided that they're done with democracy, they're not going to have it anymore.

The voters chose a Democratic governor, Democratic attorney general, but because of widespread gerrymandering, the Republicans maintain their hold in the state legislature. And so they've decided that in this lame duck session, there's going to take away all the power of those new bodies. And we've been reporting very honestly on that. We've been criticizing a lot of the media that has refused to actually identify what is going on. And I think here we have one of the best examples of that.

So let's bring up an article for you. From the New York Times, Wisconsin Republicans defiantly move to limit the power of incoming Democrats. That's not bad. I mean, that's got a bit of spin on it, but it does identify what is actually going on. But then you find out that's actually not what the headline originally was. That's the second draft. If we go to this next graphic, you're gonna see, it was originally Wisconsin Republicans defiantly

quote, stand like bedrock in face of democratic winds. That makes it sound like they are the moral ones, they're the ones in the right. No, they lost, and now they're trying to effectively end democracy in Wisconsin, and the New York Times is effectively doing public relations for them in that. So I've told you a lot of times that mainstream media, including the New York Times, AIDS and abets, Republican lies. And so is it because the people who work in the New York Times are bad people? No, they don't care about drone.

No, they genuinely care. But unfortunately, they're in a group think where they think, well, the Republicans say we're all liberals, so we have to make sure that, A, we call everything even at least. It doesn't matter what the facts are, that would be journalism. No, I'm gonna just say, well, Republicans say this and Democrats say that. New York Times, who cares what the party say, I don't care what the Democratic Party says either. What is the truth? What is the reality?

And the reality is that they, in this case, the Democrats won the election, and the Republicans didn't like it, and they're doing a power grab against the will of the people. See, that's not arguable, it's not my opinion. The people just voted, like, it was a couple of days ago, right? So you can't say, wow, I mean, Cenk, hey, listen, that was a year and a half ago, so maybe the will of the people shifted or something. No, it is clear as day. So your headline should say, Republicans defy the will of the people.

And now everybody who's a mainstream journalist goes, oh, I can't, I can't say that. I can't, I can't say that. Why? Why can't you say that? Well, they'll yell at me, they'll say it's biased, but it's true. They did defy the will of the people, it is a power grab, but it'll seem like the Democrats are right. You know why?

Because the Democrats are right, okay? They're not always right. For example, I gave Ted Cruz, who I can't stand credit on the Export-Import Bank. Nancy Pelosi was wrong, and Ted Cruz was right. And you could say, hey, Jake, that's your opinion. No, they actually had a set of facts about whether it led to crony capitalism. The underlying facts, shockingly enough, in that case, Ted Cruz was right, right? So you've got to have the courage to actually say the truth, and not only do they equate

the lies in truth, but oftentimes they go even further like they did in this case and make it seem like the Republicans are heroes. Because part of the reason is they never get pushed back from the left. The Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer never yell at the New York Times and go, how dare you be biased against progressives? But the New York Times is biased against progressives, not on social issues and it drives your conservatives crazy, why don't you hate Latinos and Muslims like we do? To be further, New York Times, I don't get that sense at all.

I think that they are socially humane. If you wanna call it liberal to say that everybody, all human beings are equal, then I guess they're liberal. And I guess you're a terrible person if you don't think they are, but that's up to you, okay? But on economic issues and on political issues, they have total disdain for progressives. They either never cover them or they cover them with sarcasm and belittlement, et cetera. And with the Republicans, they revere them. They stand like bedrock in Wisconsin, right?

And they're scared to death of them. And honestly, I think they revere them. And so, yeah, New York Times, you are biased in favor of the right wing. You really are. Maybe they were trying to imply that they were like the Flintstones out of touch in the past. Yeah, probably not. I have one other little surprise.

Do you want to do it now or do you want to take a break? No, let's do it now. Let's keep- Okay, so it's a very related issue. In Michigan, in Michigan, the Republicans also not a fan of the fact that in these midterm elections, they lost, the Democrats won, the Democrats have an incoming governor. Also, by the way, in addition to what we've been talking about this week, where they're gutting these bills that would have raised minimum wage and would have provided sick leave to more workers in the state, they have another way that in this lame duck session, they're

attempting to completely subvert the will of the people. I saw this right before we went live on the show, it is absolutely absurd what they're doing. So, not only did the Democrats win some of these high profile races, but they also have a new majority on the state board of education, which means that in Michigan, the Democrats will be able to help sort of craft their education policy. So you wanna know what the Republicans are doing in this lame duck session. They're scrambling to put together a bill that would set up a new education commission that would not be accountable to either the State Board of Education, the State Department

of Education, or to the governor. It would have broad authority to set education policy in Michigan and would not be accountable to any of these now or about to be democratic systems of authority. So who would they be accountable to the king? I believe the legislature. But oh, and by the way, the governor gets to appoint people to that board. The governor now, who is because we haven't sworn in the new Democrat one, it is a Republican. So they would stack it with their own people and then screw the people.

maintain control of the education system, even though they just lost. It's amazing. I am looking forward to the New York Times declaring Republicans in Michigan defiantly stand like bedrock. And they rightfully stripped the pathetic Democrats of their undeserved power. Okay, mainstream media generally will applaud. No, it's, again, a robbery. And it's a crime against democracy, which is what Republicans do all the time.

And there are no equivalent cases of Democrats stripping powers away from governors, from the Board of Education, trying to control every election ever like North Carolina is doing. There's no reports of electoral fraud like they did in North Carolina's ninth district that the Republicans did, et cetera. It's not remotely even Republicans cheat. They don't believe in democracy. And we have facts that back it up, and we've been proving it all week for you guys. Check out all those videos.

But the mainstream media will be like, I can't tell who's doing it. Can anybody tell it? Can anybody tell? Who's manipulating the elections? I can't quite tell. Well, then you're not a very good journalist. And in this case, I want to give credit to Rashida Taleb, who we were talking about earlier. She was talking about this on Twitter.

That's actually how I saw it. Not getting much national media attention yet until she brought it up. And now hopefully people will. Rishita Talib, just Democrat, newly elected, and by the way, who cares a lot about education in the state of Michigan and has spent her entire career trying to privatize it? Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education. You know, but you know what I think, I'm not like the other progressives, or liberals, well, we should be offended and really complain, but loudly, although oftentimes not loudly.

I think, okay, well, oh, you want to take away the rights of the governor and the newly elected people in the state of Michigan, take away the will of the people? Sorry, Democrats just won the House. We are now taking away all powers from the Secretary of Education. It's not going to have any powers. The House of Representatives will make all the decisions going forward. Why not? They just did it in Michigan, okay, why don't we do it at the National Law?

Well, we have the House of Representatives and let them cry, cry and cry and then go, oh, Did you not want to do the thing in Michigan? Because then we could reconsider. But Democrats never exercise power. So just get up and fight. But luckily like Rashida Talib is in there or Kasia Cortez, et cetera. And they should propose it. They should propose stripping Betsy DeVos of all of her powers until the Republicans in Michigan

can see that what they are doing is against democracy and withdraw those bills. Right between the hours? All right, fine. We'll take a commercial break. When we come back, this is not even a tease, right? Like, you're going to be shocked to find out that Donald Trump also lied about drug prices. Of course. I didn't see that one coming.

Of course. Anyway, we'll just give you the details when we come 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 t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.