The Young Turks - Beggars & Choosers

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has opposed vaccine mandates, is now asking for federal help with COVID-19 testing and treatment. A federal lawsuit filed by a prominent civil rights attorney alleges that police officers in Fairfax County protected a sex trafficking ring in northern Virginia in exchange for free sex from the trafficked women. The Pentagon is projected to give $407 Billion to private military contractors this year. Hillary Clinton has urged the Democratic Party to be “clear-eyed” about what wins elections, ahead of next year’s potentially defining midterms. The IRS has stood by its decision to let a church in Iowa use hallucinogenic drugs. Hosts: Cenk Uygur & Ana Kasparian 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. You know, I'm sorry. Welcome to the Young Turks in a whole new year. But same host, Jake Hugar, Anna Kusperian. How are you guys?

How are you doing, Casper? I'm doing well. How are you doing it? Good tidings to you, dear ma'am. He's in too much of a good mood, honestly. Like, he's too hyped up right now. You want to know why, Casper? Because you're drinking coffee again.

Well, look, I'm going to ban you from doing before the show. Okay, look, Too Strong Coffee.com slash T.YT. abandoned several studios across the country. Okay, but now, having said that, look, you're going to like my real answer worse. I now have a premonition, a feeling, a sense that 2022 is the rebirth of hope. Oh, I said it. Oh, my God. Oh, I said it.

It's out there now. It's out there in the world. What are you going to do? You're going to bring it back? Can't do it. It's been released. All right, I mean, look, I love making money, so do you want to take a bet? No, no, I do not.

Because here, here, this is important, and then we'll do the news, okay? If you know the story of Pandora's Box, all the ghouls, goblins, demons, and evil and horrible things fly out of Pandora's Box once you're opening. But at the very bottom is hope. Oh, oh, that's touching. That's touching. Okay, now my point is, we've released a lot of ghouls and goblins, and 2022 will continue to release them. Don't get me wrong. At the bottom, we're going to see the rebirth of hope, okay?

That's what I'm saying. I'm sticking with it. And by the end, you'll be like, I kind of, I kind of saw blue there for a second. Oh my God. I wore blue in honor of is that blue I see, okay, because it is. You know what? The world needs, the world needs Jank Uyghurs to balance out people like me. Otherwise, we would all be constantly devastated, no hope, no optimism.

So thank you, Jank, for annoying me. but also, more importantly, giving people what they need, which is hope. You know, look, it goes back and forth. I say good tidings. She says, thank you, Jank, for annoying me. You know, it's a good relationship. It works, is salt and pepper, et cetera. And what's hilarious is I had to put out a tweet over the weekend explaining to people that I'm actually a cheerful dude.

Because on Twitter, you're so angry. No, he really is an insanely optimistic and pleasant person. It's crazy. Okay, now let's yell at things. Yeah, all right. Well, let's start off with the state of Texas. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a governor who has refused to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously, who has been against mask mandates and vaccine mandates, is now pleading with the federal government for resources to deal with the spiking numbers of new COVID cases in his state.

In a press release put out by his office, Governor Greg Appet announced today that the state of Texas has requested resources for federally supported testing locations and medical personnel and additional federal allocations of monoclonal antibodies. Now, the monoclonal antibodies is really the heart of this story. And if you're paying any attention to the narrative coming from right wing governors, they would have you believe that the evil Biden administration. administration is withholding monoclonal antibodies from red states. The problem is there is a shortage of that treatment, and if you happen to be a governor that has spread disinformation about the pandemic and has discouraged constituents from getting vaccinated, well, you have now put them in a terrible position. So let me give you more information.

Things are not looking good in states like Texas, thanks to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant. Luckily, as it appears right now, it's a mild form of coronavirus, but if you're not vaccinated, you really are putting yourself at risk. So Texas on Thursday reported 10,892 new cases, a 26.5% test positivity rate and over 5,500 COVID-19 hospitalizations. Now, Abbott made sure to throw some heavy accusations against Biden in the same press release asking him for resources. He says detecting COVID-19 and preventing COVID-related hospitalizations are critical to our fight against the virus. Maybe he should have told people to get vaccinated, but he didn't.

While the Biden administration has cut supplies of monoclonal antibody treatments and testing kits when they are needed most, the state of Texas is urging the federal government to step up in this fight and provide the resources necessary to help protect Texans. And to be sure, there is also a shortage of tests available. In fact, if you go to most pharmacies looking to get a rapid test, you're going to be denied because we have run out. We live in a third world country. It's insane. But let's get back to what Abbott says. He says, testing sites, additional medical staff, and continued shipments of therapeutics from the federal government will help us continue to save lives and mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

Now, in reality, as I mentioned, there is a shortage of monoclonal antibody treatments for Americans. And unfortunately, what the Biden administration noticed was that there were just seven states that were hoarding the vast majority of the treatments available. As one doctor wrote in Forbes, unfortunately the country is facing a shortage of monoclonal antibodies MAB treatments. Just like every other tangible product, MABs have their own supply chain constraints and only increase resource allocation and investment in manufacturing infrastructure. can resolve this issue. The Biden administration took over distribution of the critical COVID-19 therapy back in September. At that time, seven states, just seven states were using 70% of the nation's supply. Biden vowed to ramp up production, but also to even out distribution to give all states equal access.

And gee, Jake, are you curious which seven states were hoarding 70% of the monoclonal antibody treatments? body treatments? Anna, there's one thing I know for sure. It's got to be the blue states, okay? Yeah. Because I'm positive of it, and I know that the red states care about all the rest of us, and they're overflowing with empathy, and so I know they wouldn't be hoarders. And besides which, it's just COVID real anyway, it's just like a common flu that affects fat people. So I know it wouldn't be red states. They wouldn't be concerned at all. Well, you might be right if a bunch of Democratic voters suddenly moved in masses to states like Alabama, Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, and Louisiana.

So who would have figured? They create, listen, obviously I want every state to get the help that they need, okay? Regardless of whether it's a blue state, red state, every, like, I want people to live. I want to save lives. That's the relevant takeaway, right? But at the end of the day, we're working against elected officials who are literally dole out all sorts of disinformation because they decided to turn a pandemic into a culture war issue at the expense of their own constituents.

Yeah. So look, if I was Biden, of course I would handle things differently. So would I deny Abbott? I think about it because this, they do it to us. So when Trump was in office, he constantly warned about denying things and sometimes did to New York, New Jersey, any blue state who dared to defy him, right? And did he care about their well-being and oh my God, they're also citizens? Of course not.

He didn't care at all. And there's a disproportionate reaction here in America because since the left is filled generally with decent people, our heart goes out to the red states and we always help. That's why the red states are the biggest takers from the federal government. We did a story about this at the end of last week and almost all of the big taker states. You know, you're not supposed to use welfare queen when talking about Republicans or anyone else apparently, but whatever is the equivalent of that for Republicans, give me government money. I love big government. Big government, like slobbering all over. That's red states.

That's all red states. They take from the rest while pretending that they don't want government help or handouts. Now, so, but I still wouldn't deny it because I'm a softhearted lip, right? But what I would say ahead of time is, now, don't worry the state of Texas. We will not be using the fact that you were run by a village idiot against you, your governor talked about in regards to COVID, quote, federal government overreach. Now he's begging me for help. That's weird because I thought we were overreaching, Governor Abbott. I thought we were overreaching. Now it looks like you're accusing us of underreaching. Oh, you haven't given me Give it up. Yeah, giving me it up. Well, look, you need more because you are one of the idiots who told all your voters and all your citizens to be hesitant about the vaccine. And you didn't push it. You didn't push it. And now they're filling up hospitals. Now you come crying to me. But don't worry, I would normally, in under different circumstances, demand an apology from Abbott before I gave whatever he was begging for. But I'm merciful and I care about each citizen. So I will actually give Texas.

what they need, despite the fact that Greg Abbott has not apologized for being an idiot. And earlier saying the government was too large and now saying the federal government is too little and is not helping enough. And look, believe me, there's plenty of criticism for Joe Biden in this story as well. Because if you go to, let's say, the UK and you need to obtain a test to see whether or not you have coronavirus, it is not a huge hassle. It is not an obstacle, and you get those tests for free, easily. Whereas in the United States right now, most people can't get access to a rapid test.

Let's say you suspect that you might have contracted coronavirus because of some holiday get together or something like that, but you need to get back to work, you need to take a test before you can get back. It's nearly impossible in most parts of the country right now. And by the way, in regard to Biden, Abbott, in this press release, both asks for federal resources and also simultaneously just lies about how Biden is allegedly withholding monoclonal antibody treatments, even though there's a shortage and he knows there's a shortage. And he's hoarded. And he's been hoarding it much like the other states

that I listed. And Biden, you think Biden is going to, you know, be upset about that or demand an apology for that? No, Abbott does it because he knows he can. Because he knows that Biden is not going to fight back in any way. Again, I want any resource that is available should be given to Texas because I don't want Texans to suffer as a result of the stupidity coming from someone like Greg Abbott. But at the end of the day, the reason why Republicans do what they do is because weak Democrats, like Biden, allow them to do what they do. 100%.

So last two fun things here. Look, Anna's 100% right about the Biden weakness. So that's an open-handed slap from Abbott. Exactly. He's like, he slaps Biden across the face. And then he says, now give me whatever the hell I want. And you know what Biden's your response is going to be. It's not going to be any of the tough talk.

It's not going to be 5% and 1% of the tough talk I said earlier. Instead, Biden's going to go, okay, okay, I'm sorry. Everybody watching this knows it. If you're a corporate Democrat and you're like, this is outrageous. They shouldn't be a lot to say that about Biden. Do you disagree? No, I mean, it's true, but they shouldn't be allowed to say it. Oh, that's what I thought.

Okay. And so now the last thing is. is, look, guys, there's a difference between the voters and the leaders in the right wing. And I did a video about this during the weekend, talked to my friend of mine from Tennessee, and I asked, what are they thinking, right? Because we keep saying they're crazy. They can't all be crazy, right? So, and the bottom line is they don't trust the big drug companies. It's not interesting. It's not that they don't believe in COVID. This is not, you can't speak for everybody, but this is generally speaking, right, from his experience, surrounded by an ocean of right-wingers.

He's the number one problem is they just don't believe the big drunk companies because they've been lied to a thousand times. And he said, this is Appalachia where he lives. And what did they tell us about Oxycontin? They told us it was fine. Big media did it? Government did it? And then did anybody go to jail? Nobody went to jail, et cetera, right?

So if you're a voter and you've got that skepticism towards big business, it has been enormously well merited by both the business community and the politicians of the media that served them. So I understand that. But if you're a leader like Greg Abbott and you full well. know what 99.9% of doctors say and what scientists say, and you know how serious it is, and you know the misinformation is killing your own voters and your own constituents. That's a totally different ballgame. Then I'm happy to call him an idiot, a terrible person. He's like, if you believe in evil, Greg Abbott is definitely evil. I mean, how many people has he killed in Texas through the privatization, the deregulation, and now COVID, all for his own

political gain? If that ain't evil, I don't know what is. So screw Greg Abbott and the horse he rode in on, yes, of course, Texas will get what they want because decent people are in charge. But it would be wonderful if the decent people were also strong. As Mr. Unknown, one of our viewers writes at the bottom of the screen, Biden should send Greg Abbott bootstraps. I mean, obviously we don't really want that to happen. But it's a funny retort because that's what conservatives spew over and over again as our fellow Americans are struggling. whether they're living on the streets, dying on the streets, it doesn't matter, right? And it sucks because it does feel like we're in this abusive relationship with some of our

fellow Americans who don't see us as people, who don't see us as humans, and love to take, take, and as soon as we need people to work together to save lives, they'll give you the middle finger and tell you to F off. It's incredibly frustrating. Anyway, all right, well, let's move on to some other news. Police in Fairfax County, Virginia are facing a serious lawsuit for allegedly protecting a sex trafficking ring in exchange for free sex from the victims, the trafficked women. The lawsuit names the former Fairfax County Police Chief Ed Rossler as a defendant in this lawsuit, alleging that he helped cover up for the officers when another detective's work threatened to expose their wrongdoing. The suit was filed on behalf of a Costa Rican woman identified in the lawsuit only as Jane Doe. It says that the officers would tip off the trafficking ring to suspend its advertisements on sites like Backpage.com in advance of sting operations run by the police.

And so the woman who came forward noted that she was basically contacted, told that she could come to the United States to work as an escort. And so she, you know, obviously is in a terrible economic situation, considered it, comes to the United States. Her passport was allegedly immediately taken away from her, and she was forced into the sex industry, sex trafficking. And now there's been enough of an investigation to find, prosecute, and convict the head of that sex trafficking ring. I have more details, but Chank, why don't you jump in? Yeah, so look, there's a criminal wrongdoing, I believe, on the part of the police here in this case. There was a civil suit against the person who ran this, and it's a porn. And the person that was involved that is bringing both matters to the forefront here, says,

they told me that I was going to go and be an escort. Now, she's honest about that, right? But for wealthy individuals, and it was to date them. Now, maybe she was naive, maybe she was not quite so naive, but thought it was high-end. And I don't judge anybody, right? But instead, they took the passport away, and then they threaten them instantly and force them into this trade. And where on average, they were forced to have sex with 17 different clients per day. Okay, now when the police see this, are we ready for police to protect and serve us?

and the community, et cetera, don't be ridiculous. They think, how could I be number 18? And that is part of what leads to this story. So let's talk a little bit about who these cops are. Luckily, they're no longer with the force. But what I found fascinating about this story was the lawyer representing the woman who came forward was trying to work with the police department, not just for some sort of financial settlement, but for accountability toward the two cops who are implicated in this.

And they basically told him to kick rocks. Now, when lawyer Victor Glassberg, that's the one representing Jane Doe in this story, when he first filed the lawsuit, he did not know the identities of the officers who were allegedly involved because his client was never able to learn their names. But then he later obtained a court order requiring the police department to identify the officers described in the complaint. Police responded with two names, Michael Barbazette and Jason Mardoco, neither of them, on the force. But that is one part of the problem. The bigger part of the problem is what we see in many police stories that we cover on this show, usually stories involving excessive force. The department seems to have covered up the wrongdoing. And when there was a detective who was working to uncover what was really going on, that detective's work was immediately put to a stop. So as detective William Woolham

Pressed his efforts to investigate, he said he was threatened by high-ranking officers. He said he even received a call from Rossler, that's the police chief who has since stepped down, by the way, whose voice he recognized, even though he did not identify himself saying, quote, I need to make sure you're willing to play ball, according to the lawsuit. Of course, thin blue line. It does, we're supposed to stop the criminals, unless we are the criminals, in which case We invented a thing called thin blue line. That means you never turn evidence on a fellow cop,

no matter how criminal their actions are, your bosses protect you, and you know, you do whatever you need you to do to rob and take advantage of the citizens. And then, and then by the way, declare thin blue line in the open and have half the country go, that makes sense. When cops are criminals, they should protect their criminal racket. How does that make sense? No, thin blue line should be a really offensive concept to everyone else because it's a clear reference to covering up criminality on the part of some police officers, including taking

advantage of women who are basically kidnapped into slavery here in America. Yeah, yeah, and it is fascinating that like we have a giant group of people in this country who, you know, base all of their politics on this conspiracy of a Democrat-run child, child sex trafficking ring. And then when you see stories like this, I know it's not involving children as far as we know, it's involving adult women. But when you see stories of human trafficking in the United States that are proven, there's no big deal about it. Like you don't hear about it. This was like a small story reported by the Associated Press, barely getting any attention. It's incredible stuff. Yeah, I mean, look, it goes on and on.

And he's, you know, last week, Galane Maxwell sentenced, Trump wished her well on several occasions. They were good friends. Obviously, Trump was huge friends with Jeffrey Epstein for 15 years and said he likes his girls young. He knew what he was doing, didn't mind any of that. Here, the cops are having sex with the women they're supposed to be protecting. Or raping them, basically. And the band marches on. And half the country goes, yeah, I can't. cannot stand the child sex trafficking or any of that kind of sex trafficking. Oh, my guys are doing it.

Rock and roll. Thin blue line, thin Trump line, baby, right? So which one is it? And they're never going to give you a straight answer any of this. Of course we need better accountability. And I'm glad that the people who are covering up criminality are now gone, not just two guys who are doing it, but by the way, can I take a funny side last asterisk to this story? the cops in the union pulled them in that area they thought the the leader that was covering up the

criminality was not covering it up enough it's insane they thought he was too soft he was too transparent right he's like they're like what you just covered up our crimes that's all they were outraged and and they turned on him too and that's why he lost his job because they thought Generally speaking, the union vote showed that the rest of the cops thought he should have done a better job of covering their tracks when they break the law. That's right. Amazing. We got to take a break, but when we come back, we'll get into just how much money private defense contractors made off the war in Afghanistan for things like goats for Kashmir production in Afghanistan. How did that project go?

Used our tax dollars. Did it help Afghanistan at all? I'm sure you guys kind of get the hint, but we've got that story and more when we come back. All right, back on T.O.R.I.N. Anna, with you guys. B.O. Rodin. Welcome back, Anna. We missed you. Thank you. It's good to be back. Isn't it? Good to have you. It's not just B.O, Anna, which I assume, of course, is Barack Obama. Oh, not that kind of B.O. Only old-school TYT viewers will know that reference.

Hi, I'm Debbie Shluchel for Debbie does politics. That was one of the best things we ever covered. She was so embarrassed, she quit politics. It was hilarious. Okay, but not that kind of B.O. All right, anyways, but also from us as well, Anna. Good to have you back. Thank you, thank you.

All right, well, let's talk about defense contractors and how much money they make off of us and war. So, the United States may have lost the war in Afghanistan, but private military contractors have won, and they won big. Now, since September 11th, the 2001 September 11th attacks, of course, military outsourcing has helped push up Pentagon spending to $14 trillion, creating opportunities for profit as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq stretched on. So this was actually a pretty fantastic piece written in the Wall Street Journal of all places.

And they talked about the United States and its over reliance on private contractors, you know, when it comes to invading countries, going to war. And this is really something that blew up during the Bush administration as a result of his so-called global war on terror. So one third to half of that sum went to contractors, okay, with five defense companies, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. taking the lion's share, $2.1 trillion for weapons, supplies, and other services, according to Brown University's costs of war project. But here's where things start to get really good. A lot of that money, as some of you might imagine, was misused and did not actually end up helping in any way in regard to this global war on terror or the war in Afghanistan. So as a result of this global war on terror and this explosion of, you know, dependence on private military contractors, the government has had a harder time tracking how that money is being spent by the private contractors.

But here's what we do know in regard to how they use those funds and how those funds were actually misused. Of the $7.8 billion in projects inspectors examined, only 1.2 billion, or 15%, was spent as expected on new roads, hospitals, bridges, and factories. At least $2.4 billion, the report found, was spent on military planes, police offices, farming programs, and other development projects that were abandoned, destroyed, or used for other purposes. And honestly, my favorite part of the story is the Kashmir angle. And I'm not talking about a certain city. I'm talking about literal like cashmere, cashmere sweaters. The Pentagon spent $6 million on a project that imported nine Italian goats to boost Afghanistan's cashmere market.

The project never even reached scale. I think that's around $700,000 per goat. That's some serious Italian goat. right there. Okay, so I imagine there were other costs involved. But to me, it's fun to find these small examples. But there's the two big, big numbers for me are not the $14 trillion that we've spent in about 20 years, which is enormous, enormous what we could have done at home with that money. By the way, if you're a right winger and you believe in America first, why did we he'll spend $14 trillion on not America.

Okay, and by the way, to be fair to the right wing, a lot of them are asking that question now. Yeah, yeah, let me jump in on that, just real quick. For the first time I've ever noticed in this country, and there's never any talk about this in the media, which actually frustrates me a lot. The left and the right are in agreement. Yes. That we spend too much on the military, that we're spending too much of our resources abroad in wars that we should not be fighting, that we should not be, you know, involved in at all.

And so that's, that's, I guess, a good update. But it doesn't matter if you're a right wing voter or left wing voter. We're living under corporate rule. And those private defense contractors that I just mentioned are the corporations who essentially get to decide whether or not we get involved in these wars abroad. Yeah. And so lately I've been giving more and more credit to right wing voters on very specific things. And this is definitely among them.

And so it's not an accident, and obviously Anna knows this, that the media is not talking about how, hey, look, we have bipartisan agreement. Normally the media loves bipartisan agreement, right? But what's super interesting about this is that according to every poll, and by the way, you can see it in the right-wing comments, left-wing comments, it doesn't matter all over social media, right, that we have bipartisan agreement in the country. We want to end the endless wars. We want to spend less on these offensive operations and starting wars and wasting all this money, right? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, in Washington, they have bipartisan agreement to do the exact opposite. They've given record funding to the Pentagon more than they even asked for, which we're going to get to in a second. But the media makes no note of it at all.

Wait, isn't that interesting, right? We're left from tearing each other to shreds. But there's one thing they definitely agree on, spend less on wars in the Pentagon. Yet the media does not report that at all. And in fact, when they pass the gigantic $780 billion defense spending bill, the media did never ask the legendary question they love to ask whenever it's going to help you. How are you going to pay for them? Never. They never asked that.

In fact, the one time that the media was really like, they were all in cahoots, very critical of Joe Biden and his administration was when he pulled troops out of Afghanistan. Yeah. Incense. They were incensed. Jake Topper was furious. No, of course, guys, so what you're seeing in mainstream media, and this is what the right wing voters are right about, is not the news. It is the marketing arm of corporate rule. So when you all say in a poll, we don't want to spend this much money, the media goes, okay, good, let's bury it. And it's not conscious. This is a long.

conversation about how it happens in the invisible hand of the market, but the bottom line is the same result. They bury that news and instead they tell you, oh, Americans love defense spending and they want to spend more. Why? Because it's the same operation. It's the same companies that give to politicians to buy their allegiance through bribes that advertise on these mainstream media outlets. Look, you will see advertise. So the two numbers I was going to get. One of them is the one, and I read you, about the 2.1 trillion, right? That just went to five companies, not 2.1 million, not 2.1 billion, 2.1 trillion.

So that's as, you know, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics for Atheon and North of Grumman, okay? So guys, that's the robbery. Those are the people that are taking our money, all of our money, right wing, left wing, they don't give a goddamn about where it comes from. And they're stuffing their pockets full of them. Redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top. That's what you need to think about whenever these stories come about.

When they talk about the class war, when they talk about, understand that there's been a class war. There has been a redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top in this country for decades. And here's a prime example of it. So one of the many reasons conservatives agree with us is because look at the other number, Ann, I read you. Only 15% went to things that actually came to fruition that actually worked. 85% was pork. You're just robbing us of trillions of dollars. But the robbers own the bank.

That's why they pay the bribes to the politicians. And then that's why they pay the bribes to the media. And the media tells you know the politicians are honest. And when they waste 85% of basically $14 trillion over 20 years, That's fantastic. And the American people love being robbed like that because they're not doing news. They're doing propaganda. And so right now, and did Biden stand up to them?

Biden is part and parcel of corporate rule. Biden has absolutely no power. He's just a servant of his donors. So he has served them in this context as well. I mean, look, if Biden actually wanted to flex the power that he does have, he could do that. But he's not doing that. Of course. He is very much going along with this system of corporate rule, even though, I mean, there's so much

that he could do by executive order. I mean, look, I gave him credit when he pulled troops out of Afghanistan, but in regard to all the things that, you know, he claims he can't do, but absolutely can do, can't do, things that he says he can't do, but can do. He could have, during a pandemic, expanded Medicare to cover every single American who's uninsured. He could have single-handedly canceled student loan debt. So many things he could do. But he goes along with what right-wingers and what corporations want in this country, and it blows my mind every time. Now, in regard to the defense budget, he just signed the National

Defense Authorization Act to the tune of $778 billion. And I want to go to this graph. This is Graphic 8, which shows you how much money the federal government has spent year after year on the defense budget. And it just keeps going up. In 2016, it was $612 billion. Biden just signed the new National Defense Authorization Act, also known as the defense budget, $778 billion. It just keeps going up. No questions asked, no debate. There's no nickel and diming the defense budget. But when it comes to ordinary Americans and their needs, during a global pandemic, oh, they'll nickel and dime you all day. We just saw it happen when it came to Biden's build back better agenda, which was supposed to be a social spending package that helps ordinary Americans.

In that regard, won't fight for it, nickel and diming us. We got to do means testing. In fact, I want to read you this short excerpt from a great Jacobin piece. Biden's military budget raises the Pentagon's base budget by about $40 billion. If the privatization of funds rate over the last, rate over the last 20 years holds, it means that the military industry will get about $407 billion from Biden's first military budget, $16 billion more than the $391 billion, those $1,400 stimulus checks cost the government earlier this year. Yeah, so I want to focus on those numbers. So if we give credit to Biden for getting out of Afghanistan, which I do, okay, and by the way,

if you're conservative, and by the way, a lot of you did give credit to Biden. The only people who didn't are the corporate media who are like, oh my God, well, Lockheed Martin do, by the way, check out mainstream publications, and you will now start to see if you read them at all. Oh my God, that's an ad for Lockheed Martin. I can't buy a missile from Lockheed Martin. I wonder why they're putting it in this giant newspaper or magazine or digital outlet, right? Oh, Raytheon, how that's weird. That's the bribe that they pay the media to buy them to do this insane propaganda that we'd like to have 85% of our money wasted and to the tune of trillions of dollars.

All right, so Biden, you get the credit for getting out of Afghanistan. So I guess we should spend less on defense. He says, no, I want to spend even more than Trump. I'm going to spend $40 billion more than Trump. And then he says, I want to spend $25 billion more than the Pentagon asked for. The Pentagon asked for everything they can get there. I was going to use more harsh words, but their mouth around, right? Pigs at the trough.

And they're like, give me, give me, give me. Because most of the major generals are going to retire and work for all the defense contractors. Some of that money is going to get funneled straight into their pockets. So they asked for as much as humanly possible. And Congress and Biden were like, nope, not enough. I want to just throw another $25 billion in. Did you know that we can get the vaccine to the whole world for $25 billion? I know, but that would save lives.

Why would we do that when we could use resources to make private defense? By the way, small group of people, at the end of the day, small group of people who have all this control over our limited resources. Okay, why would we save lives when we can make them richer, when we can redistribute our resources from the bottom to the top? This class war has been going on for decades, but it's not the poor fighting against the rich, it's the other way around. And again, this is a prime example of that. So not just Republicans, but by the way, every Republican, but also Manchester cinema. And in reality, Biden all just said we don't have enough money for child tax credit. We don't have enough money for universal pre-K.

We don't have any money for any of these things that would tremendously help you through these hard times. But they just gave $407 billion. So you remember how the package got whittled down to $1.5 or $1.75 trillion to help average Americans. And now Mention has even killed that. Just the $407 over 10 years is over $4 trillion. It's over $4 trillion. dollars that goes just to private contractors, just in defense, it's a robbery. Any reporter that doesn't tell you it's a robbery is not a reporter, they're a marketing

specialist, okay? And so finally, the last number is these private contractors, just in the defense industry, have over 700 lobbyists. Gee, I wonder why. And if somebody wrote jokingly in a reply in one of my tweets over the weekend, oh, it's probably because they want to, you know, help the American people understand what is in their general welfare. And that's why the defense contractors have hired, you know, as an example, 700 lobbyists to just inform us of how much it would help us if we gave them $4 trillion. Okay. And reporters report that as if that's true.

Like, oh, the lobbyists that spent all that money on politicians, those aren't bribes. No, no, they just, they're just doing it for charity. Nobody's that stupid. Nobody's that stupid. No, this is highway robbery and they do it every year at record amounts. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, Hillary Clinton, a notable presidential loser, wants to give us some advice on how to win elections. We'll be right back.

All right, back on TYT, Jay and Anna with you guys. News. Hillary Clinton lost not one, but two presidential elections, one of which she lost against Donald Trump, of all people. But nonetheless, she has thoughts on how to win elections, and she gives her advice in this next clip. Let's watch. I think that it is a time for some, you know, careful thinking about what wins elections and not just in deep blue districts where a Democrat and a liberal Democrat or so-called progressive Democrat is going to win. First of all, we don't know what the state of the map is going to be after all of the redistricting. It appears as though

the Republicans in a number of states are doing their best to eliminate as many seats that Democrats can be competitive in and so we've got to be very clear-eyed about what it's going to take to hold the House and the Senate in 2022 and to win the Electoral College because also Republicans are doing everything they can to create an environment in which winning the Electoral College even narrowly the way Joe Biden did will be out of reach for a Democrat. So I understand why people want to argue for their priorities. That's what they believe they were elected to do. But at the end of the day, nothing is going to get done if you don't have a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate.

And our majority comes from people who win in much more difficult districts. And our majority in the Senate comes from people who can win in not just blue states and hold those wins, as we saw, didn't happen in Virginia. but can win in more purplish states. There's a lot to unpack in that video. I'm just going to make one quick point about how she notes gerrymandering by Republicans as serving as a massive challenge for Democrats to win in these congressional races. And decides that the solution to that is to run as Republican light in purplish states. How about do something about the fact that our democratic process is just being dismantled by the right wing?

I mean, it's like, we're gonna go ahead and just accept the fact that they're doing this gerrymandering. And our response to it is to run Democrats as Republican light. Now, if you are the kind of voter who finds Republican candidates appealing, why wouldn't you just vote for the Republican candidate instead of Republican light Democrat running in that race. I just, they've done this for years, election cycle after election cycle. They fail every time, it's like they want to lose. They love losing. Hillary Clinton loves losing, that's why she's lost two presidential races, but still

feels the need to give us advice on how to win. Unbelievable. Yeah, so, you know, when you say two presidential races, obviously she lost the primary to Barack Obama back in 2008, and, um, and. And Obama at the time was pretending to be to the left of her. I say pretending because they're the same person. He was pretending. Yeah, they're both totally ruled by the corporate class.

And he did exactly what she would have done, which is give everything to the wealthiest and corporations, okay? But he was pretending to be to the left of her significantly. And the voters in Democratic primary made their decision. Now, the media knew something we didn't know, which is that Barack Obama didn't intend any of that. That's why they supported him. And with media help, he was in. able to defeat Hillary Clinton because progressives are way more popular.

Anyone to the left is more popular. And if the media doesn't ambush you and assassinate you, you're going to win, right? So that's why Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries. And then, well, the person on the left won the general election. And then he won re-election. But when she defeated the person on the left in 2016, she went on to lose the general election. Now, you could get an obvious lesson from that, but that's not what the media and politicians are paid to do, okay?

They're paid to lie to you. And so now that sounds like a heavy charge if you're new to the politics in America, but it's not at all heavy. Think about it, guys. And the only reason why anybody would even be surprised by that charging as a mainstream media is because they've been brainwashed into a cult. Because here is Willie Geist on NBCRMS, NBC, wherever they're doing this garbage, like treating it like super seriously and having an interview about how do you think we can beat Republicans like Trump. It's unbelievable.

But wait, she's the one person who lost to Trump. Why would you ask her how to beat Republicans? And guys, she didn't lose like, oh, it was an underdog campaign in golly cheap. She had every advantage. She had almost twice as much money as Donald Trump. She had almost the entire media, and everyone knows this whether you're a Democrat or Republican. Almost the entire media backing her and against Trump, okay, except right wing media. And everyone was fawning over her in the elites, every advantage.

And running against the guy who barely gets into the double digits and IQ, and she's still lost. Now, I don't want to rub it in. They get so mad at us, they get your feelings when we say one thing that's true, right? But she's the very last person we should take advice from on how to beat Republicans. That's anyone, anyone with one shred of logic would know that. But yet every reporter in Washington is like, hey, let's all go ask Hillary Clinton on how to win elections. As if that makes sense. And they genuinely believe it because they're brainwashed into their own cults.

But it's an alternate reality where Hillary Clinton was the way. She wasn't, she lost to a pathetically stupid, stupid man. You know, and it's not because Hillary Clinton is unintelligent. It's because the country hates the establishment. And she is the establishment. Every word coming out of our mind was corporate rule is awesome, status quo is the best, whatever you do, do not listen to progressives who are going to challenge corporate rule.

I can't recommend Jonathan Allen's book Shattered Enough, okay? It is a documented tale of how much of a loser Hillary Clinton was in the 2016 election. But putting that aside, I do want to get to the next video because she gets into details about policies that she thinks actually ended up hurting the Democratic Party. So let's watch. An unfortunate pattern, you know, when Bill became president and pushed through a lot, including the Brady Bill, the assault weapon, ban, deficit reduction, raised taxes on the wealthy. People forget that. He lost the Congress two years later.

When Barack Obama came in, after the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes, you know, not since the Great Depression, pushed through the Affordable Care Act, put through big stimulus programs, you can argue was it big enough or not big enough, but he pushed it through. And we began a slow, steady recovery, you know, the 2010 midterm. was not good. The shellacking, as he called it. Shalacking.

Let's talk a little bit about that shalacking and that economic recovery under Barack Obama. And I think that it's important to hear from Barack Obama himself, so you guys don't think that I'm, you know, just putting my bias into this or putting words at anyone's mouth. Here is Barack Obama in September of 2013 during an interview with George Stephanopoulos explaining what the economic recovery really look like. The gains that we've made in productivity and people working harder have all accrued to the people at the very top. 95% of the gains to the top 1%. That is so striking. It is. And the folks in the middle and at the bottom haven't seen wage or income growth, not just over the last three, four years, but over the last 15 years.

That is President Barack Obama, not in 2008, not in 2009, but in 20. 2013 explaining how 95% of the economic gains went to the top 1% during the economic recovery following the 2008 recession. And he says it as if he didn't have a role. Exactly, exactly. You did that, you built that in the words of your earlier campaign. You made the decision to give trillions of dollars to the largest banks in the world that caused the collapse in the first place. You did quantitative easing. You had the Fed print all that money.

You gave everything to the richest people in the world. And when it came to helping people with actual housing problems, so we covered the stories back then. You gave them almost nothing. They were foreclosed on. Yeah, so just all of this is corporate rule 101. And look at Hillary Clinton. She says, let's end the gerrymandering.

And the Republicans are doing unfair things. By the way, let's be more like Republicans. What? Okay. But all right, now the second part of that, though, is, wait, are progressives in favor of gerrymandering? No, we're the ones saying, for God's sake, do the Four of the People Act. You know, the HR1, your theoretical top priority.

And by the way, we have anti-corruption things in there, which we know you're never, never going to pass because you are corrupt Hillary Clinton. You are corrupt Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, et cetera. But okay, at this point, we're desperate for you not to burn democracy to the ground. I know they're never going to do the anti-corruption stuff. For God's sake, at least end up to chariomandering, at least give us. voting rights. Who's stopping that? The idiot moron, Joe Biden, who hasn't lifted a finger for it. Exactly. Civil rights leaders are getting arrested every week in front of the White

House. Because they're like, for God's sake, aren't you going to do the bare minimum, you goddamn liar, right? And he's like, oh, yeah, maybe I'll get to it. Oh, my agenda's built back better. Oh, I lit it on fire. Oops. And then Hillary Clinton blames progressives, we're pushing them to do the right thing. It's your clown corporate friends that have done all of this damage. And everyone in the media that takes Hillary Clinton seriously as a person you should go to for advice on how to beat Republicans is an obvious liar. So they go, we'll get the person who lost to a guy you couldn't lose to. The one we said had a 98% chance of winning. The one we said was definitely going to win. And then she clowned herself and she made

us all look like idiots. But it doesn't matter. All you have to do is lie. Now we'll all pretends she won. Whoa, what do you think we should do? How do you think we should win Hillary Clinton? They say with a straight face. And then they can't figure out how they lost all credibility and how their favorability ratings are around, what, 14%, 86% of the country hates you because you're obvious liars. And, Jank, just going back to what you mentioned, what you referenced with the buildback better agenda. No, understand what Hillary Clinton is saying here. She is saying, no, helping people too much ends up backfiring. Oh, does it?

That's essentially what she's saying. What progressives want to accomplish through economic policy is somehow unpopular in purple states. Because, you know, if you happen to be a right wing voter, you don't want help with child care. You don't want universal pre-K. You don't want to help with elder care. You don't want, you know, the child tax credits. You don't want help with housing. Apparently, these are policies that are so deeply unpopular with Republican voters, because

somehow Republican voters are so different from everyone else when it comes to bread and butter issues, except they're not. There's a reason why Donald Trump's lies about economic stability and how he was going to create economic stability in the country resonated with those voters. Yeah, and so let me give just last piece of details here, because the details are so important. She, if you notice, she said, you know, my husband did a bunch of things she listened, including deficit reduction, all these progressive things, wait a minute, deficit reduction is not at all progressive. That's a neoliberal austerity program. He ran that program, and that's why he lost the election.

Now she ironically blames it on the people who are screaming, don't do that, don't do that. She goes, you see that? We listen to them. Well, you're a goddamn liar. That's not what progressives asked for, and you know that with 100% certainty. Well, the guy's a moron. Who knows if he knows it or not? What's austerity?

I don't know, right? What am I? A reporter? What does the script say on the prompter? Okay, and then they did, the Clintons were famous for triangulation. What is that? That is, I'm going to be more like the Republicans. Ha, ha, ha, I'm going to triangulate between Republicans and Democrats.

Yet, you know what that led to? Not making your own case. Instead, telling everybody, going halfway towards the Republicans is a great idea because Republicans are right. Oh, goddamn, they voted for Republicans. No, blank Sherlock. Yeah, of course they voted for Republicans because you told them to. And then finally on Obama, he passed a health care bill written by the most right-wing think tank in America, Heritage Foundation.

That's a fact. That's what Obama care is. And earlier it was called Romney Care because Romney passed the same thing in Massachusetts. How many times have you heard that in mainstream media? Almost none. In fact, when I say it in front of other reporters, they're like, oh, that's, I mean, that's true, but it seems unfair. Why is it unfair? It's the same plan.

And you know what that plan was? We wanted, progressives wanted universal health care, like every other developed nation. And he said, no, you will not get universal health care. You will get the right-wing think tank version of health care. And that will include a mandate to buy from private insurance. You must, by law, buy from private insurance. You see how progressive I am? That's not remotely progressive.

And then they'll turn around and go, you see, we lost because of Obamacare, because we did progressives a favor. Nah, they're all liars, they're all liars, and they've created a cult. Don't let them brainwash you. In their Alice in Wonderland world, everything is the opposite. Hillary Clinton won. They're doing deeply right-wing policies is the progressive thing to do. The reason why progressives are the number one enemy of corporate media and corporate Democrats

is because we're the ones that actually defy corporate rule. You want freedom, you want to rebel, you don't. don't want to obey anymore, look at what the reaction of the establishment is to progressives. It is obvious from their reaction, they think we are the most dangerous thing in the world to corporate rule and dominance. They can tolerate Republicans until the cows come home. But progressives, send in Hillary, send in all the media, and attack, attack, attack. Because those guys mean it, they would end corporate rule and they would free America. All right, that does it for our first hour.

When we come back for the second hour, we'll talk about how Turning Point USA continues to target college professors. And in a recent leaked video, they're training them on how to get educators fired. We've got that story and more when we return. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to 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. Thank you.