The Young Turks - Bad Faith Bozos

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

NYT’s heartbreaking investigation into the widespread phenomenon of migrant child labor across the country. The GOP pushes bill targeting food aid for the poor. Biden expected to sign new executive order on gun control. Trump trashes DeSantis in Iowa Speech: ‘Ron reminds me a lot of Mitt Romney’. Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. On July 18th, get excited. This is big. For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited.

Sorry. Smurfs. Only theaters July 18th. Woo! Get some. Thank you. Welcome to the N-Turks, Gene Cougar, Anna Kusparin with you guys on a fascinating day, on a day where I found out accidentally that I'm number one on the Amazon Democracy book release list.

I'm not saying anything except for the words that have come out of my mouth. Not a big deal. Jank is beating Ted Cruz. Okay, now get a load of this. Ted Cruz is number two. But guess who's number three? Me. Is Jake Eugre the new Ben Shapiro? Well, look, right?

Showing up twice on the same list. Okay, fascinating. Anyway, I'm not sure I like that analogy. The audiobook is the number three. Okay. But like, okay, let's bring that graphic back up. Just real quick, okay? You have an advantage over Ted Cruz.

You want to know what that advantage is? He decided to put his face on his book. That's a very big mistake. Yeah. Anyway, he's pushing that book super hard. That's the one he pushes CPAC. It's his new book. My book doesn't come out for six months. I haven't said a word except t.Y.T.com slash justice. Apparently you guys have heard that word. By the way, no, but Bernie's number 19. He was in L.A. If he'd come here and maybe promoted it on the same. Well, interesting. Maybe. Maybe. Okay. Is what I have to say to that. So ridiculous. Okay. All right. Casper. All right. Well, why don't we get started with a cheery topic about child exploitation in the United States? When I started this reporting, I thought that we might find that some kids were working agricultural jobs, maybe dishwasher jobs. I never anticipated that we would find this scope of children working, these really industrial, adult, dangerous jobs in all 50 states. So really what I discovered is, I think, a child labor scandal in this country.

Child labor scandal, indeed. You just heard from a New York Times reporter Hannah Dreyer, who penned an explosive New York Times expose on child migrants and how they are exploited by companies, making the brands that you're very familiar of, things like Cheetos, Ford, Ben and Jerry's, and more. Now, Dreyer spoke with more than 100 migrant child workers in 20 states for this investigation. The investigation also drew on legal records and interviews with teachers, social workers, and law enforcement officials. And here's what her reporting revealed. I talked to kids outside of slaughterhouses when they were getting off their shifts at seven in the morning. I talked to kids who are working as roofers at the top of buildings,

kids who had gotten seriously injured. Like you say, we found many examples of kids who had died on these jobs. And it's in the supply chain of, you know, so many corporations. At the end of this reporting, I just felt like it was inescapable. I went to different cities and towns, and usually the next day, I already was speaking to children who were working these illegal exploitative jobs. I talked to Christian in Southern Florida. He was living in a house full of other unaccompanied minors, other kids who'd come across

the border without their parents. All of them were working full time. None of them had gone to school. Christian had come when he was 12, two years ago. And immediately the next day started working full time in construction. He told me that he doesn't know how to read. And he would like to learn English, he would like to learn how to read. But he can't go to school because he has a debt to pay off.

He has to pay rent. And I went to a construction site and talked to him as he was putting the roof on a building. And he told me he had already fallen twice that year. In fact, I want to talk a little bit about what the Labor Department has done to essentially hide the number of child deaths as a result of this underground, you know, exploitation of children. Let's go to graphic three here. So the Labor Department tracks the deaths of foreign born child workers, but no longer makes that data public, which is fascinating.

Now, reviewing state and federal safety records and public reports, the Times found a dozen cases of young migrant workers killed since 2017, the last year the Labor Department reported any. Now, you might argue that the decision to stop reporting these numbers or making these numbers public happened under the Trump administration. But if I remember correctly, the Biden administration has been in place for a few years now and could have, you know, done away with that opaque system of reporting. But let me give you some more information about these child deaths. The deaths include a 14-year-old food delivery worker who was hit by a car while on his bike at a Brooklyn intersection, a 16-year-old who was crushed under a 35-ton

tractor scraper outside Atlanta, and a 15-year-old who fell 50 feet from a roof in Alabama where he was laying down shingles. And to make matters worse, these aren't unaccompanied minors who the Biden administration is unaware of. The Biden administration knows about them. They're not undocumented. The government knows about them. They claimed asylum and are away their hearings, the Department of Health and Human Services has essentially released these minors to so-called sponsors without doing proper vetting. And I'll give you more detail into that in just a moment. Before I do though, Cenk, you know, if this was going on under the Trump administration,

I mean, you would hear from Democratic voters wanting heads to roll. Yeah, so I'm gonna get to the Democrats, Republicans, and everybody, and what they're all doing wrong, okay? they're doing different things wrong. But first, I just want to say a couple of things. Families think that they're sending their kids for hope and opportunity here in America. And there's good reason for that because of immigrants like me and Anna. And our parents came a while back. They worked super hard.

My dad sold pots and pans. Her dad was a handyman. And they kind of lived their American dream. But the problem is they don't realize that was in yesteryear. Now when you send your kids, they just become a cog under capital rule. right and so what that means is corporate rule I'm sorry and what that means is oh you got 15 year olds for the new machine okay plug them in plug them in if they get bulldozed by a tractor trailer they fall off a roof they're just a cog they're just a

cog in the machine no one has any real power anymore corporations rule us all so they just get plugged in right away so don't be naive about that that it gets my first myth and then I get to the Democrats later but the Republicans mythology of like oh children working, it's kids at a dairy queen, you know, on their summer job, and it's so innocent. No, meat packing plants can't, and construction sites don't are not have enough people because unemployment is so low. And so they're like, this is super cheap labor. Yep. And we don't give a damn that they're 13 or 15. You see that picture in front of the bus? That was heartbreaking. That looks like a school bus for junior high. They're all going to work. This story is just filled.

with awful adults from beginning to end. Awful adults when it comes to the management of these companies that are exploiting the migrant workers, the child workers here, the federal government that seems to do very little vetting, very little oversight of this process and essentially releases these migrant children over to so-called sponsors who actually are working with human traffickers in order to make money off of this. Okay, there was one particular instance highlighted in this New York Times piece that stayed with me because the sponsor was mistreating the child and essentially told the child, I don't care about you. You mean nothing to me, right? These kids are being exploited for money.

They're being exploited for cheap labor. And it's not like this is all happening underground. Again, the Biden administration is aware about the children being in the United States, but they're not doing a good job in vetting and ensuring that these kids are safe. Now, with that said, Dreyer also described the reporter here, the conditions that have led to this crisis. So let's watch. This is something that I think has been building for maybe the past 10 years, and part of it has to do with the changing nature of the children who are crossing the border.

10 years ago, there were far fewer children, maybe 6,000 children a year. Now we're seeing 150,000 a year. And those children were often coming to reunite with their parents. So they would cross the border and be released to a parent who often would take care of them. Often that parent would have paid to have them brought up. And now what we're seeing is it's much more common for parents to be sending these children. And the children are under pressure to send back remittances. So the dynamic of who's coming has changed.

And we've also seen a labor shortage. I've seen a couple dynamics that have sort of created a perfect storm for this phenomenon to really explode since 2021. And what the people who work with these kids out in the field are telling us is that they've seen this huge shift in the last three years. Middle schools where every eighth grader in the last three years has started working, federal investigators who used to focus on sex crime, times and are now instead focusing on pulling 12 and 13 year olds out of factory jobs.

these unaccompanied minors locked up in cages as they await their asylum hearings. Now, I understand that and I don't think the children should be in cages either, but just willy-nilly releasing them to individuals who claim to be their sponsors without ensuring the proper vetting is done beforehand is a problem. And what makes the matter worse, what compounds this problem is that the kids sometimes try to get help from the authorities because they know they're being abused. And so they'll reach out to HHS, HHS will direct them to local police, local police will take a report and we all know what happens after the police take the report.

Nothing, nothing happens, okay? So children are being abused, and if you think, oh, they're just unaccompanied minors, who cares? I only pretend to care about children when it comes to drag queens or when it comes to transgender bathrooms or whatever. Yeah, I mean, you're full of it, right? Republicans who claim they care so much about the safety of children, full of it. And if you think this stops with migrant children, you'd be mistaken, because as we know,

in Arkansas, in Ohio, all these states are now pushing to loosen child labor laws for American children, because cheap labor is how this country runs. Cheap labor and exploiting the most vulnerable people, including kids, is how this country runs, right? It's America's bread and butter. So in the beginning, we had just been working and then corporations decided, you know what, we're gonna, they were partly responsible. It's obviously suffragette movement, et cetera, but they decided we need more American workers,

so then women started working. And it's not that women couldn't or didn't want to before, but all of a sudden when corporations needed more workers, women were allowed, right? And now they're moving on to our children. So now the children need to be working. And look, there's this absurd mythology from corporate media that corporations are humans and have emotions and feelings. No, they're going to take the kids.

They're going to stick him in a, you know, meatpacking plan, assembly line, coal mine, wherever it is. And they're going to make money. They don't care. Please, Jesus Christ, this whole talk of like corporations caring is nonsense, total nonsense. So now, what are the Democrats doing wrong? Guys, law of unintended consequences is real and you have to think these things through. So when we say, hey, the parents that come, you will not be allowed it. But the kids that come unaccompanied you will be allowed in and you'll get to go not in a holding area but go right into the country with a sponsor, what do you think is going to happen?

The most obvious thing. Look, human incentives and disincentives are immutable. So if you're on the left and you go, oh, no, that's ridiculous. The parents won't send their kids by themselves. Well, you're empirically wrong. Of course. One, logically, of course they will. Some number of, you know, desperate parents. Number two, the proof is already in the numbers.

It's already over. 150,000 unaccompanied minors last year alone. Yeah, unaccompanied minors. Why? Because they got the memo. They're desperate. They're desperate. And the thing that makes me so sick is they're leaving their awful situation in

Guatemala or whatever country they're coming from. And then they come here to be exploited by people in this country. Listen, I don't want to say Americans, but human beings can be vicious little animals, especially when money is involved. And they don't care if it requires the exploits. of literal children in order to make a buck. If they see the opportunity, they're going to do it. Yeah, and along those lines, I want you to understand how the system actually works.

And before they get to the corporations, there are two other evil forces at work. One is the coyotes that bring them. Yes. And they charge them a ton of money, and let alone the fact that they, it's a super uncomfortable fact, but you have to say it, they rape a giant percentage of the women that they bring. And girls. So it is just absolutely heartbreaking. And so those guys are some of the most awful people in the world.

The guys who run the coyotes are the worst of the worst. Okay, so they bring them in. And in the past, what was happening in the beginning was, oh, they have a distant relative in Michigan, right? And they get sent to Michigan. Okay, they never met that relative, but at least it's a relative, right? Now a cottage industry of fake sponsors have arisen. And they're making money off the kids.

They don't know the kids, they don't care about the kids. The coyotes hook them up to the fake sponsors. The sponsors get them. Sometimes they get many of them, and they're making cash off of it. So now why are the kids going to work instead of school or doing both? Because they got to pay off to coyotes. Sometimes they have to pay off to sponsors. And the whole point was to send a little bit of money back home, right?

And so now we've turned those little kids into these like money factories, where everybody's, they're working super hard. starting at like the age of 12, okay, and a lot of them are leaving school and have no opportunity because they left school, all to make money for adults and grown-ups in this 6-6 system. Now the department, HHS, claims that they're aware of this, they're going to take some decisive action. So what does that decisive action include? Well, they want to focus on corporations that exploit the kids and stop taking their argument that it's really just third party contractors that are doing this at face value, right? That's the common corporate lie and cover story that

we hear whenever there's exploitation of workers, whether it be in other countries or here in the United States. And the Biden administration is claiming, no, we're not going to take that argument at face value anymore. But what does that mean? What are you actually going to do? They're going to explore using a hot goods legal provision that allows it to stop the interstate transport of goods when child labor has been found in the supply chain. But clearly, child labor is all over the supply chain. So like, listen, what I'm just kind of sick of at this point is hearing a bunch of vague promises from politicians, including the Biden administration. A story that we're going to cover later today has to do with Biden's executive order on gun

control, which honestly is incredibly vague, lack specificity, and is a bunch of BS, BS if you ask me. Now with that said, the other thing that they claim they're gonna do is create a joint task force with the HHS to better share information between the two agencies. So I guess enhanced communication at this late juncture. I'm glad that they're considering that. Begin an investigation into Hertzside food solutions, which is one of the major food producers that has been guilty of exploiting children like this. And so, all right, let's see, let's see what happens with that investigation. If there's any real consequences. And when I say real consequences, I'm not just talking about like, let's give them a slap on the wrist with a little fine that they can easily pay and then forget about as they exploit more children because it's going to help them at the end. And if you're wondering why it is that politicians have failed to pass any comprehensive immigration reform, this is part of the reason why.

Corporations love being able to exploit migrants, whether it be child migrants in this case or undocumented immigrants who have no legal recourse if they're being abused at work. love it. Comprehensive immigration reform might offer a little, a little bit of protection for these migrant workers, right? Yep. So last two things for me. One, you know, we often criticize mainstream media, but New York Times, if you, there's stories like this all the time, we'd give you nothing but credit. Wonderful story from the New York Times and a great interview from democracy now that we were showing you in the videos. And last thing is, we talked about Arkansas last week. Now we got Ohio. Now Ohio is saying this is not for migrant kids.

It's for American kids. Extend the number of hours that they can work. And then they, you know what their excuse was? Because we want to get them off of social media and TikTok. We're worried about their mental health. Right. No, you're not, you liars. I can't believe any article would print that as if it was at 1% true.

No, your corporate donors told you we need more kids for machines, right? As cogs in the machine and these Republicans in Ohio, we just criticize Democrats and Republicans. You know we're honest, and they both have massive problems. But the Republicans in Arkansas and Ohio are like, get us some kids, get into kids, put them into the goddamn mines and factories. We need more workers, and we need them to be real cheap. So let's use the 15-year-olds. Yeah, and please spare me your arguments about how concerned you are about the poor, poor

children because of drag queens performing in front of them. So that's such a great point. I mean, come on. So look, they're putting kids in meatpacking plants where they could suffer from serious injuries, but then at the same time, they're pretending to be concerned about children as a result of drag queens performing. So in one of the kids working at a factory that makes like lucky charms and Cheetos and stuff, they explain that the accidents that happen in that factory are like getting your fingers

cut off. This one woman got her scalp removed by a machine. This is where the kids are and they're pretending, oh, they just got a sober job, Dairy Queen. No, Anna's absolutely right. They're pretending to protect your kids and things like drag shows as if that's like an epidemic for kids. Meanwhile, they're taking the kids and stuffing them into dangerous factories. And by the way, also mass shootings all over the schools. So you're not worried about the kids getting their heads blown off, but you're worried about a drag queen that a kid

might accidentally see seven of them in the country? Come on. You guys, they'll put the right wing on this. Obvious liars. You guys don't care about the kids at all. All you care about is distraction so your beloved corporations can make more money. Exactly. We got to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about how the House Republicans have decided to let everyone know what their top priority is, taking benefits away from people who are struggling to put food on the table. We have that story and more coming right up. All right, back on T.I.T. Jank and Anna with you guys. And Chris Birch, again, gifted five Young Turks memberships on YouTube. Amazing.

Thank you, brother. And everybody can join on YouTube by hitting the join button below the video. Casper. House Republicans have decided to promote a symbolic bill to intentionally brand themselves as enemies of Americans who are so poor that they rely on snap benefits. in order to put food on the table. Now, the reason why I say it's a symbolic bill is because it's being promoted by House Republicans who control the House, but it's unlikely to pass the Senate.

And more importantly, if it somehow does pass the Senate, Biden would veto it. But nonetheless, this is a way of communicating to the American people what the priorities of House Republicans happen to be. And this is it. It is not economic populism, it's doing away with a little bit of help that some Americans rely on for sustenance. Now, more than a dozen House GOP lawmakers are proposing legislation that would impose harsh work requirements to obtain federal food aid. Now, let me be clear. Right now, there are already work requirements. But what House Republicans want to do is expand

the work requirement standards to a larger group of people. They're expanding the age group. Okay, so Representative Dusty Johnson's legislation, which currently has 14 Republican co-sponsors, would broaden the SNAP work requirement age bracket for able-bodied adults without dependents to 18 to 65, adding 16 years to the current age ceiling of 49. Yeah, so. That's what they want to do. By the way, sorry, Jake, sorry to interrupt you, but let's just keep it real. What do you think it's like to be an unemployed 55 year old looking for a job?

Just think about that, because that never gets talked about whether we're discussing the social security issue, right, where they keep wanting to increase the social security age to 65, 67. In some cases, as Ron DeSantis proposed when he was a member of the House of Representatives, he wanted to increase it to age 70. All right, you're 60 years old. Who's going to hire you at 60? Are we going to pretend like the ageism and the job market doesn't exist? Yep.

So guys, the ostensible reason for this is, oh, we've got to cut the deficit. It turns out deficit gigantic. Now first, let's just acknowledge why is the deficit gigantic? Donald Trump put a $2 trillion hole in it. But by the way, George W. Bush put a $6 trillion hole in it. These are all tax cuts for the rich. And Obama and Biden made both of those, made the Bush hole way larger by making those tax cuts for the rich permanent. So don't forget what Obama and Biden did because mainstream media will never tell you.

It'll be buried in a tiny little paragraph if you could ever find it again. So now, so if you cared about the deficit though and the Republicans weren't lying, there's tons of stuff to cut in the budget. We just told you, congressional budget office, nonpartisan, they said the Pentagon has $100 billion in total waste. I mean, they just, they already know what the waste is. They're like, there's that $100 billion that we're throwing in the garbage, right? You're like, yeah, go ahead, throw in the garbage. Oh, that guy, get back to work. You're 59, you'll get back to work, okay?

Otherwise, you're going to starve in the streets and not get any food. Go back to work for the $125 a month that you might receive from SNAP benefits. I'm not even exaggerating. Let's actually go to that graphic, because if you're wondering what the priority is, Like what Republicans have decided to target in order to cut spending. Let's go to the last graphic here. This is what SNAP benefits look like today, today. So if you are one person, you're not making enough money in order to provide food for yourself.

If you do get qualified for SNAP benefits, you'll get, if you're lucky, $195 a month, a month, a month, a month. Okay. Just let that sink in, guys. Okay, so let's say you're on the right, you're conservative. You're traditional conservative, not like something outrageous or anything like that, but traditional conservatives have said, look, I think it's important for that guy to go back to work and have a work ethic, et cetera, right? We can debate that, we can debate that.

But if you really care about the deficit, this is going to bring down the deficit by about two nickels, right? Here, I'll give you another example. There's $16 billion in just oil and gas, not all energy, and not all fossil fuels, just oil and gas. $16 billion in subsidies. Wait, those are the most profitable companies in the history of the world. Why do they need $16 billion from us? Nope, they won't cut it. Yeah, because poor people don't have a lobby for representing them.

Exactly, guys. So look, now let me give you something more depressing. I read the article. They're going to get their way. Because this is how Democrats signal that they're in on it. They will say like, oh, we have yet to come up with a plan for how to fight back on this. This is going to be very difficult to fight back on. Why is it difficult?

They're saying, oh, let's negotiate over raising the debt limit. That's a bluff. And you all know it's a bluff. There's no way you're going to destroy the stock market and have all the Republican donors angry. So the Republicans do a fake bluff. The Democrats know for absolute certain that it's a fake bluff and would destroy the Republican Party if they actually delivered on that bluff. But the Democrats play along. And they're like, oh, we are so worried that you are going to do that.

So, oh, I guess there's nothing we could do. We're going to have to cut this program and leave all the subsidies for our beloved corporations alone. Here's what's going to happen. This is my, because I was curious, I'm like, with Republicans wanting to brand themselves as economic populace, considering the fact that they know this bill is not going to pass and that it's a symbolic bill. Like, what's the real agenda here? And it hit me. So as I shared with you, they want to expand the work requirement to individuals up to the age of 65.

I don't think they're going to get that particular ask. But I think they're doing this to essentially desensitize voters and Democratic lawmakers. What do I mean by that? Well, let's go to Graphic 3 here because there was an earlier suggestion, earlier proposal by Rick Scott. So Senator Rick Scott reintroduced a bill in January that would raise the age for food assistant work requirements by a decade to 59, okay? So that's, I guess, a little, a little less extreme. And I guess that's what the compromise is going to be.

I think they're going to go with what Rick Scott is proposing in the Senate. And the argument, the cover story will be, well, at least we didn't expand the age to 65. A hundred percent. So, guys, I'm going to show you two lines here from the political. piece on this that show you the Democrats have already surrendered and this is all theater, right? And because it's not a surrender. They both want to do the same thing. They don't want to take the money from corporations or the rich. Hey, populist Republicans. Oh, Donald Trump and Republicans are so populist. Has they proposed one cent from the rich or from corporations?

Not one cent. Not one cent. Have the Democrats said, well, all right, then I'm not going to raise the debt ceiling until you raise taxes on corporations? Of course not. Of course. course not, this is all a joke. So here's the two, there's many of these quotes, but I'll just give you two. House Democrats have yet to mount a coordinated response, raising concerns in the caucus about whether they can fend off likely GOP attacks on the program during the negotiations over the debt limit. When they leak things like that to political, that means, oh, we will not be able to fend it off. Golly, gee, how would we fight back? Would we say there's $16 billion in oil subsidies? We would never want to say that. I don't know how we

would fend it off. If you can't fend this off, you guys are losers. But again, mainstream media on the last one. Another flank of the party, they say the fight over the federal anti-hunger programs could end up squeezing vulnerable members who represent districts Biden won in 2022. Okay. Hey, remember, if you do anything that isn't pro-corporate, that's going to hurt your vulnerable members, Democrats. And they never explain why. Because then you won't be able to raise enough bribes to win in that district. So guys, corporate media, corporate Democrats, corporate Republicans, they're all part of the same team.

And we live under corporate rules. So they're very likely going to cut this aid. Final thing is from the ironic populace of the Republican Party, what do they want to do? They're taking everything from the middle class. Everything is from the middle class. So what do they want the middle class to get angry at? The people that are taking the great amount of the money, which is up top. No, up top is the guys that fund their campaigns, the guys they take bribes from.

So they want the middle class to get angry at the people down below. So they're like, don't look at the oil companies. Oh, that guy in Florida, Arkansas, he didn't work enough. He's a bum. Get mad at him. Get mad at him. And take away his food. Literally take away his food.

Are we taking away food from oil executives? Come on, system is a joke. All right, this next story is going to be real quick. his executive order on gun control, which will accomplish nothing, pretty much nothing. It's just a bunch of vague promises with no real actionable items. He's going to call for some more studies on gun violence, as if we don't know what the reality is when it comes to gun violence, and that's it. It was a big photo op.

It happened in Monterey Park, California, which is located in Los Angeles County, which, by the way, has a district attorney who refuses to charge gun enhancements on criminals who are found to be in possession of illegal guns. So that is the entirety of the story. Okay, I can get into more minute details here that literally mean nothing. But, Jake, what do you think? Yeah, so look, I'll give you one example to that summarizes every single proposal in here. The executive order also instructs the Pentagon to, quote, develop and implement principles

to further firearm and public safety practices. Wait, what does that mean? Is the Pentagon going to pass a law? Are they going to do something? No, they're developing and implementing policies. Which policies? What are we gonna do? No, it's all studies and reports.

It's just a giant marketing effort. If you see any media taking this joke of a proposal seriously, know that they're frauds. They should all tell you this is garbage, it does nothing for gun violence. And you know what really pissed me off about the coverage of this story? Then they say, well, you know, they had a, you know, big gun reform bill that Biden passed. We told you that was also a total joke, had nothing in it. And then the article will say, yet there's been 11 mass shootings since then. It looks like gun reform didn't work.

Oh, Jesus Christ, you didn't do any gun reform. And now it's painted as, you see it doesn't work. We commissioned a study on it, and yet there's still mass shootings. I just, listen, this is a trick that I see happen with politicians all the time. It doesn't matter what their political ideology is. They do it every time. They'll tell you what the problem is, but they don't give you concrete, actionable. Like, they won't tell you exactly what they're going to do.

So I'll give you some specific examples pertaining to this story, right? So one of the things that Biden wants to address is the theft of firearms during the shipping process, right? someone orders guns, they're being shipped to their home, and in the process of being shipped to their home, someone steals it. Well, ATF data indicates that over 250%, there's been a 250% increase in the number of firearms reported as lost or stolen during shipment between federally licensed firearm dealers from roughly 1,700 in 2018 to more than 6,100 in 2022. So that's a big deal. Okay, great. So what is Biden going to do about that? He has acknowledged that this is a problem that exists. So President Biden is directing Secretary of Transportation. Oh, oh, the Secretary

of Transportation. So Pete Buttigieg, who has failed on the airlines, who has failed when it comes to the rail companies. Okay, he's going to tap. But he's directing them. Right, exactly, directing the Secretary of Transportation in consultation with the Department of Justice. Oh, in consultation. To work to reduce the loss or theft of firearms during shipment and to improve reporting of such losses or thefts, including by engaging with carriers and shippers. What are you going to do? Reporting. What is that? That's not a solution to the problem. That's not a solution at all. That's just acknowledging the problem exists and then saying, we're going to have some chats. We're

going to have some chats. Okay, great. More. Promote more secure firearm storage. This genuinely fascinated me because I think this is an incredibly important part of gun control. I think law-biting citizen should be able to purchase guns after undergoing a background check, but it's also important that they keep those guns safe. So their children or some other individual doesn't have access to it. And then they can go carry out a mass shooting. That's happened before, right? Well, here's what the Biden administration wants to do. I didn't read any specific policy proposals. I didn't read any specific actions that the Biden administration isn't. Is there going to be consequences for people who are not storing their guns safely. What will the consequences be?

How will we enforce that policy? No details whatsoever. This was nothing more than a PR stunt. It was a photo op. Yep. So, and how did the press respond to this super obvious PR stunt? I'll read you the CBS headline on this. Biden speaks after issuing new executive order aimed at reducing gun violence. It makes it sound like he's going to reduce gun violence when he's going to do no such thing. So on federal background checks, that's really important. And it is wildly popular. About 90% of Americans want universal background checks. You know what Biden's proposal is?

And this is top proposal. It's to clarify background checks that already exist. Why didn't know we were doing clarifications? Wow, that does seem really important. What else have you clarified, Mr. President? But nonetheless, CBS says in the middle of the article, Mr. Biden's rhetoric has only grown stronger around guns. Boy, his rhetoric is so strong. Last one.

All right, well, how about ballistics data? Well, Mr. Biden is also mandating better reporting of ballistics data from federal law enforcement. By the way, they were already supposed to do that. He's like, just make it better. So he's doing reducing gun violence by saying the things we're already doing, we're going to do them a little bit better and a little bit of clearer. Okay. Get out of here. That's none zero, zero, zero. And his words have no meaning at all. None. The one thing I will say to be fair to Biden is he's trying to do gun control through executive orders. And we all know that's not going to work. Okay, you need Congress

to pass legislation and Congress is broken because the system is corrupt. You have to root out the corruption in order to have a government that actually represents the best interests of the American people. Executive orders are flimsy as hell because it could be reversed instantly as soon as a new administration comes into power. With the Biden administration having to deal with a right wing Supreme Court, his executive orders could be overturned while he's still in the White House by this right wing Supreme Court. So relying heavily on executive orders to deal with a massive problem in the United States is just not a smart strategy. It's not going to work. But at the same time, can reporters just be honest about the reality here? Because

Biden really hasn't done anything because he's limited number one. And he wants to take credit for something that is honestly incredibly vague and lacks the specificity necessary to get that credit. And as with all issues, including mainly economic issues, Biden wants the credit without actually doing anything. And the media gives it to him by saying he proposed it. So last thing, guys, look, I hope always in favor of being constructive. So constructive critique. So is there anything Biden could do? Of course there is. You know that right now, according to Gallup polling, Americans by 63 to 34 say that they are dissatisfied with the gun laws in this country. But the gun laws are, in general, two lax. That's a 30 point advantage. It's the largest

in American history on polling on this issue. So that's when Democrats can jump in and go, hey, we got about two thirds of the country on our side, go to Congress and start putting up pictures of dead kids and saying, this is what happened because of the AR-15. This is what happened because of assault weapons. Dead kid after dead kid and say, hey, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, look at that picture, then tell me you don't want regulations on assault weapons. Say it, say it next to the picture. You know what would happen?

The entire country would be talking about dead kids, and they would be talking about weapons and they'd be talking about, hey, do we want the dead kids or don't we want the dead kids? But instead, Democrats do nothing. No fight back in a strong redick, my ass. He's a total weakling. I would crush the Republicans on this. Every time they said, oh, drag show, I'm so worried about the kids. I show dead picture and say, these are the kids that were murdered, murdered, and you didn't

give a damn about them. You see any Democrat with 1% of that passion, they don't care. There's slimy, greasy politicians, both sides. One side's supposed to overpower the other side, and in this theater, the other side's supposed to go, oh, there's nothing we could do. We just clarified our positions. And corporate media is supposed to go, oh, the Democrats, they fought so hard. Oh, they were so they were on your side.

But it turns out there was nothing they could do. They're all liars. There's a thousand things they could do. They just choose not to do it. Donald Trump uses economic populist rhetoric to attack Ron DeSantis, and he was right. We've got that story and more coming right up. Don't miss it. Back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys, but also Adam.

Adam, Adam just became a member. Hey, Adam. And Athlites LLC, gifted 20 young Turks memberships. Hell yeah, I mean, it's an LLC, you better. I'm just kidding. I don't know about that, but hey, listen, great credit to them. That's looking out for the community. We appreciate it.

Make sure you don't have more than $250,000 in a regional bank, okay? Okay, I hear you. But athletes, I hope I'm pronouncing that correct. Anyways, we appreciate it, guys. Everybody, you can join at t-y-t.com slash join. And when you join like Adam did, you're part of us. And so if you see us fighting for you, you made that happen. We're your voice.

And every time you guys join up, we get bigger and stronger. We appreciate it. Casper. This might be my favorite story of the day. Let's do it. But you have to remember, Ron was a disciple of Paul Ryan, who is a rhino loser. who currently is destroying Fox and would constantly vote against entitlements.

You would just vote against. Remember that the wheelchair over the cliffs? The Democrats used it. The wheelchair over the cliff commercial, very effective. That was about him. And to be honest with you, Ron, reminds me a lot of Mitt Romney. So I don't think you're going to be doing so well here. That was Donald Trump during his recent rally in Davenport, Iowa.

and he, of course, attacked Ron DeSantis, but he did so by going back to his favorite hits, the economic populist messaging that helped Trump win in 2016. What am I referring to? Well, he went into Ron DeSantis's congressional record when he was a member of the House of Representatives, and he noticed Ron DeSantis had some pretty extreme positions in regard to wildly popular social spending programs. Let's watch. He also fought against Social Security. He wanted to decimate it and voted against it three times.

Voted against Social Security. That's a bad one. A lot of people don't know that. But I think they've been finding out over the last four weeks. One of the reasons that were zooming in the polls, perhaps. Maybe that's one. Maybe it's other things too. It's really based on what we've done, I think.

And on Social Security, well, we're at it. He wanted the minimum retirement age to be lifted to people that are 70 years old, a substantial increase over what it is right now. That's a big increase. And he also voted to severely cut Medicare. I will not be cutting Medicare and I will not be cutting Social Security. We're leaving the age rolling. So everything that Trump said there, I can't believe I'm saying this.

It was correct. So I went into Ron DeSantis's record to see if he really wanted to raise the retirement age to 70, and it was true, just a few graphics. As a congressional candidate, DeSantis repeatedly expressed support for Representative Paul Ryan, he's a rhino loser, proposed overhaul to entitlement programs by privatizing aspects of Medicare and Social Security. DeSantis supported the even more drastic Republican Study Committee's budget proposal that aimed to balance the federal budget in four years instead of Ryan's decade to achieve such cuts as the committee for the responsible budget detailed back then, require changing Medicare

to a partially private system by 2019 and raising the retirement age to 70. It would have also increased the full retirement age for Social Security to 70 as well. Okay, so let me give Trump three different pieces of credit there, okay? So Ferris show in America, can't stand Donald Trump, but he's right about a number of things here. Number one, did DeSantis actually offer to cut Social Security and Medicare in the way that he's describing? Yes, absolutely. No question about it.

Let me pause here to say, where the hell are the Democrats? They're getting their ass handed to him by Ron DeSantis. Why don't they just say the things that Trump just said? What's wrong with you? Why do you need Donald Trump to make the most obvious case in the world against Ron DeSantis? Florida is filled with retirees. They have enormous percentage of their citizens are senior citizens. And cutting Social Security and Medicare poll at about 3%.

But the Democrats lost their own to say this is by 20 points. And ever once brought this up. The biggest losers in the world. So Trump, you know, I culminate it all the time. But he does have some good political instincts, okay? So it's the instinct to get marketing and constantly talk and the instinct on these populist things, whether he means it or not. So absolutely right on Social Security Medicare.

Number two, he brought up later that DeSantis wants to cut Medicaid too. And so Medicaid is a much more popular to cut among Republicans, right? And Trump's like, no, not cutting it. You know why? Because real people use Medicaid. Exactly. No, it is fascinating to see Donald Trump. I mean, of course, you saw this in 2016 as well.

But it's becoming clearer and clearer to me that the arbitrary rule, based on which party you're in are just BS because people are people and people want their government to work for them. And so yeah, some people will find themselves in a tough spot and they might need to lean on certain social spending programs, including Medicaid, which by the way, I should also note that Florida happens to be one of the, what is it, 12 states, yes, Florida is just one of 12 states that has refused to expand Medicaid through federal money that was offered through the Affordable Care Act. Remember, that was one of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act to provide federal funds to states to expand Medicaid in order

to ensure that more people are covered with state insurance. And Trump said in the speech, why doesn't DeSantis extend it to Florida? Why is he turning down the federal money? Dude. He's so much, Democrats are the worst. These are the simplest attacks in the world. They're like, What? Oh, our proposals are popular? What? Because they're paid to lose. All right. Now, the other thing that Trump does right, guys, he talks like a regular human being. And Democrats hate that. You idiots, that's how humans talk. You've got a bunch of robots like Adam Schiff. Mammar, me, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, right? Trump comes out and goes, Paul Ryan, rhino loser, who's destroying Fox.

And people go, oh, yeah, yeah, oh, is Paul Ryan's loser? Ah, he's a loser. People like that. Yep. No, but I don't know the Democrats in Washington have ever met a human being, right? Do you guys have any idea how real people talk? Jesus Christ. And that ad that he's referring to was it one of the, there's only like two political ads in my lifetime that the Democrats ran that I liked.

And that was one of them where they had a little old lady being pushed. in her wheelchair being pushed off a cliff by someone, basically that was Paul Ryan in the ad because of these proposals. And as soon as I saw that, I covered it here on 2.8 was like, that's an ad. Finally, you know why? Because Obama wanted to win. When Obama wants to win, he's a killer. The minute he wins, all of a sudden changing hope. Ah, man, it's misplaced in my closet. I couldn't find it. I don't want to be naive. And I'm not naive. But I do want to raise a question. So as we had covered, I think last month at this point, the billionaire donors who had previously supported and funded Donald Trump's campaign have pulled out. They want to

support Ron DeSantis instead. With that money now flowing to Ron DeSantis and with Trump now being abandoned by that billionaire donor base, is it possible that he'll be further untethered to some of the demands of the richest people in the country? And so don't get lulled into Trump. So obviously. To be fair to him though, he didn't touch Medicare or Social Security during his four years. I mean, he did all sorts of favors for corporations. He gutted the government through his $2 trillion tax cuts for the rich.

So I'm not trying to whitewash how awful he was. But we do know that money talks and that legalized bribery is the number one priority for politicians. So I'll tell you why you should never trust Trump. There's two main reasons. First of all, does he get bribed to? Of course he does. So I have that in the book as well, t.yt.com slash justice. You can get justices coming.

We'll put the link down below in the description box. But the point is, Sheldon Adelson, twice in both elections, gave Donald Trump over $100 million through different packs, okay? And Trump gave him everything he wanted, everything. I mean, when you read the details, it is shocking how, How corrupt, I mean, maybe it's not shocking how corrupt Donald Trump is, but how corrupt the system is, right? So Anna, if he starts winning, every Republican donor will come right back into the fold.

And when Donald Trump gets money from someone, he does exactly what they want, right away, right away. Basically, Trump goes, what am I dummy? No, you give me money, I give you what you want, and then you give me more money, right? And so they're gonna come right back into the fold and he's gonna do exactly what they want. he's going to put personal corruption layered on top of it. So this is not about, oh, wow, Donald Trump is good. No, I can't stand the guy. But DeSantis on those economic issues is definitely worse. And the Democrats couldn't fight back if their life depended on it because they

don't want to fight back. Let me give you another example of what DeSantis supported. He supported a nationwide sales tax system known as the fair tax, one of the most regressive proposals imaginable. This is graphic three. less than a month after joining Congress, he co-sponsored a bill that would have abolished the IRS and empowered states to collect what would start out as a 23% national sales tax. Different calculations, by the way, could mean that the tax would have been as much as 30%. Yeah, so guys, what that does is for the poor and especially the middle class, you're going to pay a giant amount of taxes. But for the rich, what they, the bubble gum they buy in the,

The coup d'et that they get at their local grocery store is a tiny, tiny fraction of their income. So as a flat sales tax is murder for the middle class and the greatest gift that rich could possibly get, DeSantis only serves the rich, 100%. Why don't Democrats fight back in the most obvious ways? Because they also serve the rich. Last thing to buttress what Anna was saying earlier, this is also a justice is coming. 2016, we found out that the party positions are totally made up by corporate media.

For my entire life, ABC News, CBS, CNN, all told you, Republican voters are for free trade, okay, and they want good free trade deals and corporations went on. Nonsense. It turns out they hate free trade. The minute Trump started talking against free trade, they're like, we hate free trade, right? The media has made up all of these pro-corporporate positions and said, Republican voters believe this, Democratic voters believe this. The polling shows that's not remotely true. All of it is a lie. The voters do not believe any of that stuff, but you're never going to see it in mainstream media.

They have all these fantasies about what the Republican principles are and their philosophy. It's horse crap. You want to know what's popular with Republicans? Listen to Donald Trump. He'll tell you. That's why they love him. All right, that is it for the first hour. We'll be back with the second hour where we'll give you some more snippets from Trump's rally speech in Davenport

because he decides to touch on the estate tax as well, and he is not right on that. So that and more coming up. 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 dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon