The Young Turks - Bernie's Wage War

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

As Republicans try to distance themselves from Trump, they fight to preserve his 2017 tax cuts and oppose action on COVID relief. Mitt Romney describes the Biden plan’s price tag as “pretty shocking” while Susan Collins says she has “a lot of unanswered questions” about how the administration came up with $1.9 trillion dollars. 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. Welcome, everyone. You're watching The Young Turks with Anna Kasparian and Ida Rodriguez. She joins us today. She's the host of the Truth Serum podcast. Make sure you subscribe. Ida, how you doing? Hey, I'm doing good. I'm back. I'm back after, you know, the mess that happened a few weeks ago. So I feel a lot better. I mean, I know we got a lot of work to do, but I do feel better. I would be lying if I didn't say that I did. Yeah, no, I definitely hear you. I mean, a few weeks ago, seeing what happened in the Capitol and not really knowing where we were headed after that was kind of terrifying. But things are starting to settle down a little bit. We're seeing some. Good executive orders coming from Joe Biden and some promising signs from Senator Bernie Sanders as he becomes the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. So we'll give you some updates on the possibility of a $15 minimum wage later in the show. But for now, we're going to discuss a little bit about the Trump tax cuts and whether Republicans are going to serve as a giant obstacle to repealing at least a portion of those tax cuts.

Later in the show, we're also going to discuss the impeachment and what we're hearing from some Senate Republicans who will definitely stand in the way of convicting Donald Trump. But anyway, we'll get to all of that. Why don't we start off with the tax cuts? And everyone, I'm a little under the weather today, and I have a headache on top of that. So please bear with me if I struggle to get through anything on the show today, I'm going to do my best. I feel a little like hazy and all that. But as Brett said, it's probably just a weather change slash as our elderly family members usually tell us. Oh, it's the weather, honey.

Don't worry. Anyway, all right. Well, now that I'm done with that, let's talk about tax cuts. Republicans are already gearing up for a battle with Joe Biden over his proposal to partly repeal Donald Trump's tax cuts for the rich. Now, I say partly repeal because it appears that Joe Biden is not targeting the 2017 tax law in its entirety, but he certainly does want to repeal certain tax cuts that benefit the highest earners. For instance, Biden has called for rolling back the Trump tax cuts on people making above $400,000 a year and to partially reverse the reduction in the corporate tax rate.

If you guys can recall, Trump had cut that from 35% to 21%. And then when you consider the effective tax rate with all the deductions, they pay far less than that. And even though Biden has indicated tax increases are not his most immediate priority, he has noted that they could be a way to finance his spending priorities down the line. Now, already you have Republican lawmakers raising their hands and saying that this is absolutely unacceptable, including Representative Kevin Brady, a Republican who says that's going to have a significant impact in a bad way on our economy. And he further elaborated on this point in the next video. Let's watch. I assume he's going to follow through on his pledge to repeal the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, raise those business taxes. And of course, obviously that's going to have a

significant impact in a bad way on our economy. There is some scuttle butt that that maybe it's only a partial rollback of some provisions of that 2017 law. Does that mean that there's room for a compromise with Republicans? What would Republicans want to agree to the rollback of some of the tax cuts? Well, I'll tell you, just making those tax cuts permanent for families, small businesses, and companies will create another one-and-half million jobs. 10 countries have already lowered their corporate tax rates since we did. So if the president thinks the rest of the world is sitting around while we tried to become competitive, they aren't. And I think it's a major mistake to raise those rates, either at the local level on small businesses, on corporations.

I think discouraging investment in technology and production through raising cap gains and others, I think again, economically, this would be controversial in good economic times. It makes no sense trying to recover from this pandemic. So I want to bring you in and get your thoughts on what Representative Brady has to say there. He's arguing that the pandemic has hurt these businesses. And so raising taxes on the wealthy is actually a terrible idea. So first of all, did he say scuttle butt? Did he say that?

I wanted to know. Yes. Right? Um, I got, you know what? I just, I'm so tired of people who make money off the people justifying, continuing making money off the people, right? That the people who are defending these corporations that talk about the rest of the world, the rest of the world doesn't look like us right now.

And I just think that, you know, we have to We have to take into consideration the specificity of what it is to be in America with a presidency and an administration that overlooked a pandemic that overwhelmed this country so much financially, the economics of this. while these corporations made so much money, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have been going back and forth, you know, competing for who the richest man in the world is. And they're American. And so when we talk about that, you know, these tone-deaf conversations from these people who are also getting paid by corporations to continuously lobby for them, this talk fake capitalism, patriotism, that Americans are always pushing out to the people, the aspirational stuff that you two can be about. billionaire when chances are that you probably won't, I'm tired of the rhetoric. It needs to just go away. All of it needs to go away because the people are suffering right now. And those that are making the most money and are thriving in this moment and have been thriving, should pay more in taxes. They should participate in helping the American people do better and recover from all of the stuff that's been happening forever in this country.

Yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree with you. And if you're worried about companies, you know, maybe relying more on foreign labor in order to cut costs, then if it's a U.S.-based company that's exploiting cheap labor abroad, then why don't you think about various tariffs or various taxes you can use to discourage them from using that kind of labor? But instead, What they want to do is, you know, put out these incredibly hollow arguments in favor of maintaining these tax cuts for the rich. Remember, when you really think about who was impacted negatively during this pandemic, and I'm talking about economically, it was not the wealthiest people in the country. It was not multinational corporations. They were already bailed out by either

the Federal Reserve or through the CARES Act and other stimulus that was passed following that. And so, again, when you look at it, there's been an asymmetric recovery, economic recovery that has largely benefited people who had already gotten these massive tax cuts by Trump. And when we want to focus on real recovery right now, we need to focus on ordinary workers, ordinary Americans, wage earners, people who have not gotten enough relief yet. So to make this argument that, hey, you know, these wealthy people, they've really been hurt by this pandemic. And so we don't want to raise their taxes now is an absolutely ridiculous argument to say the least. Most people in this, you know, in this income bracket are either able to continue working from home or make such a tremendous amount of money that this argument of going back to what taxes were before Trump, which by the way, we're already pretty low. It's just it's not going to negatively impact these companies. It's just, again, a hollow argument.

Before we go to the next video though, Ida, did you want to jump in? Yeah, no, I just wanted to say that I'm tired of these talking points about these multi-million billion dollar corporations having to make these concessions so that they can survive by making, you know, they are who they are because they've exploited people, because they get the cheapest labor, because they exploit the people, that is how they have been able to reach the heights that they've reached. So this whole thing is like, oh, we're going to have to resort to going out of the country to get our labor. They have money. They have a lot of money. And Americans are always deluded into believing that, oh, the poor companies are struggling and they have to outsource the labor. They are, the reason they do that is because that's how they get super rich. They get the most that they can get the less amount of money that they have to pay.

And it is always at the expense of the people. Stop feeling sorry for them. So Kevin Brady spoke a little more about why it's such a bad idea to raise both the corporate tax rate and the tax rate for the highest earners. Let me just note though, it's important to know the numbers regarding the corporate tax rate. As I mentioned earlier, prior to the Trump tax cuts for corporations, the percentage was 35%. He lowered it to 21%.

Biden isn't even calling for the corporate tax rate to go back up to 35%. He's calling for it to go to 28%. So it's this middle ground between what the corporate taxes were before and what Trump turned them into, which is incredibly low when you consider the effective corporate tax rate with all the deductions included. Now with that clarification, let's go to Representative Kevin Brady again. What do we got? Well, it's not over in Georgia, Senate races went to a runoff.

What are we up against? You'll never believe this. Far-left activists are attempting to gain full and total control of the U.S. government, Senator Perdue and Senator Leffler. They must win. What's our situation on the ground? We have two patriots down there, Senator Lovler, and Senator Purdue. Great fighters with a great message.

They just need a little backup. Last question. How do you want to bring? Bring everyone. We can't take someone. seriously if they've been in that commercial. Like, that's just, who are you gonna trust? That's a scuttle butt right there.

What kind of scuttle butt is? Sorry. Oh my God, who says scuttlebutt? And also, who agrees in being in that incredibly cheesy advertisement? But anyway, just a few more points because we've been picking on Representative Brady for good reason. But there are other lawmakers that are worth mentioning Senator Mike Crapo, who, of course, I'm always tempted to mispronounce, argued that Biden's proposal to raise the corporate rate would hit already vulnerable

businesses and put the United States companies once again at a strong competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world. So again, it's more and more of the same arguments. Chuck Grassley had a similar argument. I think it would be a big mistake to raise taxes on individuals and businesses as they struggle through an economic recovery and a pandemic. Again, we're talking about earners who bring in more than $400,000 a year. Those are the individuals we're talking about. And when it comes to the corporate tax rate, again, Biden wouldn't even increase the corporate tax rate to what it was before the Trump administration passed their tax cuts. He would just increase it from 21% to 28%.

that again, when you look at how major corporations have performed in this pandemic, they're doing fine, guys, they're doing fine, they've gotten all sorts of stimulus, they've gotten all sorts of help, they've gotten bailouts from the Federal Reserve, it's about time that they pay their fair share in taxes. And they've become who they are because of the people who go work for them and don't make a living wage. They are the ones who've been abusing people during this pandemic, some of the, that's where people can't even go to the bathroom and take a bathroom break.

These are the people that are making a lot of money, and we need to stop with these talking points and keep pushing this narrative that these are the American people. These are the corporations that are making laws that are affecting us every day. They are affecting our government, which is why it's so corrupt to the core at this moment. And we do not need to be defending these corporations or people that make for $400,000 and I hope to make $400,000 a year so that I can pay my fair share of taxes. If that's going to make somebody's life better, especially somebody who comes from where I come from. I mean, you're making $400,000.

Let's say your effective tax rate is 50% with state taxes included. Like you're bringing in $200,000 clean every year. Like, why are people complaining? Just pay your tax. And then by the way, they're not even going to pay that much. Like all the deductions are still there. No one pays 50% effective tax rate. It just doesn't work out that way.

There's all sorts of loopholes and things that people take advantage of. But what I'm saying is even if 50% of that goes toward taxes, you're still bringing in a good amount of money. And they're acting as if like, how are people going to survive? How? How are they going to survive with the tax rate that they were paying prior to Trump? And it infuriates me, especially when you hear statements about how they can't pass economic relief bills because they're so costly.

But they don't consider the tax cuts for the rich costly. They cost this country $2 trillion over the next decade. All right, well, I wanted to also give you guys an update on the legislative filibuster in the Senate because there might be some headlines that give you a little bit of hope, but I'm here to crush those hopes and tell you the truth about why Mitch McConnell has seemed to change gears here. In reality, we have two Democrats that we need. to hold accountable because they have cited with Mitch McConnell. So let me give you the details.

Progressives are urging Senate Democrats to do away with the legislative filibuster, which of course indicates that the Senate would need 60 votes in order to pass most legislation, especially sweeping legislation that Biden wants to pass as part of his presidential agenda. Now, we got word that Senate Majority Leader, a former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, had held up negotiations regarding the rules in the Senate, which he has to negotiate with the incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, because he wanted a promise on paper, a written commitment that the Senate Democrats would not do away with the filibuster. Senator Schumer said, no, I am not committing to that.

we want to be able to have that option on the table. Well, we just found out that Mitch McConnell has decided to agree. Okay, that's fine. We have the power sharing rules in place. Let's sign off on this. Let's get the process going. And people were wondering why, why the change of heart? Well, it turns out that there are two democratic lawmakers, conservative Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema, who have committed to voting no on doing away with the filibuster. And so I'm going to go to their quotes right now, including one spokesperson for Senator Cinema who says that the senator is not open to changing her mind about eliminating the filibuster. So she's not even open to that discussion.

She wants to maintain the filibuster, which by the way makes it abundantly clear that the policies that the Democratic Party want to pass will be impossible to pass because they are not going to get enough Republican senators to sign on with them. They will serve as obstructionists. And Kirsten Cinema, a right-wing Democrat, has decided to side with them. Fantastic. Same with Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin says, if I hadn't said it very plain, maybe Senator McCormack.

McConnell hasn't understood. I want to basically say it for you that I will not vote in this Congress, meaning not vote to get rid of the filibuster. That's two years, right? So by the way, unfortunately, he's not seeking re-election until 2024. I looked because I would love to get Mansion out of the Senate. Kirsten Cinema still has a pretty lengthy term left as well, which is why they probably feel emboldened and empowered enough to stand in the way of passing legislation that's desperately needed right now. Now, Senator Bernie Sanders, of course, is going to pursue reconciliation, which only requires a slim majority, 51 votes, in order to pass coronavirus relief. So luckily we have that option. But this is incredibly disgusting

behavior by these democratic lawmakers. When they know that we're facing this moment of crisis, when Americans need help, where we need bold solutions in response to this economic crisis and this public health crisis. And instead they decided to stand with Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate to aid and abet their obstruction in Congress. And it's so infuriating. So Ida, I'd love to get your thoughts. Well, you know, we talk about a lot about the Republicans and we talk about what a problem they have been for the American people. But we also talk about the Democrats and with, you know, these politicians who are negotiable, they will fight to the last drop to make sure that they keep in good standing with the corporations

and the people who are behind them in order to not make some things happen. And anybody who says that they are in favor of the American people and are not standing fairly to support legislation that is going to provide the American people with relief should be scrutinized and highlighted so that you can get them out of office. And I'm with you because a lot of these people have been in office for a long time. And the conditions of the people that live in their districts have not changed. And that is what we need to be looking at. Like, why are we, why are these people still in office? You know why? Because the people who benefit the privilege, the people who are fighting against these taxes that we talked about

early, they show up and vote and they keep these people in office. And the people who are suffering are not showing up. And that's why we need to show up in local elections. And we need to make sure that we get rid of these people who absolutely do not care about the well-being of the people in their communities. Yeah, I mean, I would get super aggressive about, you know, the DNC, for instance, should get super aggressive about maybe using some of that money that that they accumulated during the elections to do targeted ads against these Democrats who are standing in the way of passing these policies. I mean, would the DNC do that? Of course they wouldn't. The DNC is gonna carry water for conservative Democrats as much as humanly possible.

And it's infuriating. But when you have members of your own party that are literally raising their hands and saying we're gonna stand in the way and make it impossible to pass policies that we need. that we supposedly champion and believe in, then what's the point in having them in our party? They need to be held accountable. Follow the money. I'm gonna always say follow the money. When you see people standing up like this, follow the trail of money and see where it leads. And then you'll know where their real interests lie. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's always the case. OpenSecrets.org. It's a great resource to know how these politicians are funded. But I do want to also give you Senator Mitch McConnell's statement on this.

He says today, two Democratic senators publicly confirmed that they will not vote to end the legislative filibuster. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients, designed to fine-tune your hormones by

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So, I mean, look, it's one thing to say something out loud and commit to something out loud, especially when you're a politician and you get away with lying all the time. But it's something completely different to have to follow through on it. I would love to see them avoid following through on this verbal commitment to maintaining the filibuster. Unfortunately, based on Senator's cinema and Senator Manchin's track record, I think that they're being honest and they're going to go along with what Republicans want in the Senate by maintaining this filibuster.

It just sucks that we have to rely on Bernie Sanders using reconciliation in order. order to pass coronavirus relief. Again, it shouldn't be that complicated. It shouldn't be difficult to pass policies right now when we have majorities in both the House and the Senate. If the case were flipped and you have Republicans in control, they're going to get what they want done. They're not having a discussion. They're not going to be bullied around. They vote together as one coalition regardless of what happens. I mean, even with the president, you know, provoking an insurrection, you might, you'll get some Democrats, I mean, I'm sorry, some senators and some, what am I saying, some members of the House, Republican members of the House that will vote along with Democrats to impeach Trump. But by and large, the majority of lawmakers on the right still go along with Trump because it's really hard for them to ever turn their backs on their party. They put party before everything, everyone else. And I'm not saying that Democrats need to do that. But when it comes to sense policies like raising the minimum wage right now, like providing real coronavirus relief

that benefits ordinary workers as opposed to major multinational corporations. Why is it so hard for these conservative Democrats to be on board with their party? It's just, it's incredibly infuriating. So. And it is what we've been talking about. It didn't change on January 20th. It didn't change on November 3rd and it's not going to change until the people show up and start voting these people out of there because the truth is that they show their true colors and we have to we have to know we have to believe people when they show us who they are and you know at this point that's what we're what we're doing ignoring the signs that we see when people show us who they are and we have a petition on this so share your thoughts weigh in by going to TY dot com slash petitions slash filibuster. That's t yt.com slash petitions slash filibuster. And it calls for an end to the legislative filibuster in the Senate. All right, we're going to take a quick break.

And when we come back, we'll discuss where Congress currently stands on the topic of minimum wage, something that Senator Sanders is fighting for pretty aggressively. And there might be some promising signs. So stick around. I'll give you those details. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fibuster. The Republic, or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations

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So we are going to give a lifelong membership to TYT membership for whoever wins, you know, what is this called? Like, it's like a raffle kind of. It's like a raffle situation. We got a big raffle machine. It's like someone's going to be spinning it. We're going to put your names in it. So if you're one like the new aspiration people, you just signed up for an aspiration account, you will be entered to win. And if you're the winner, you get a long, lifelong membership as a TYT member. You get access to all of our archives, our post game, and all the perks that come along with being a member. So you can learn more about this by going to aspiration.com slash t-y-t.

Do people do raffles anymore? A raffles a thing? Yeah, they're a thing. All right. Brett showed me his raffle ticket. Okay, let's go to some member comments. Perpendicular time says there's almost certainly more than just cinema and mansion that are happily not in the limelight.

Oh, for sure, regarding like conservative Democrats. I just, I want to get a little better at framing who these people are because while on paper they might claim, no, I'm not conservative. What are you talking about? What they do in aiding and abetting the right wing leads to a conservative outcome? So make a decision. If you're a Democrat and you believe in what Democrats typically want to pursue policy-wise, then be a Democrat. But if you're not a Democrat and you're just planning on running as one and then you plan to just serve as some sort of obstructionist later down the line, then get, we don't need you. We don't need you.

Like, what's the point of having these people in the party? I'm just fed up with, God, the Democratic Party's, you can't say the worst because Republicans are the worst. Republicans will cover up for insurrectionists and they'll, they'll cower at pathetic ghouls like Donald Trump. But Democrats are just continuously disappointing. Opinated, writes in and says, Senator Leahy has been, oh my gosh. Senator Lay has been transported to hospital after being examined by the chief attending physician.

Out of an abundance of caution, Leahy wasn't feeling well in his office prior. So we'll check in on that. There's a link to a CNBC article, so it looks like it's real. But we'll look into it even further and give you guys more details as we learn them. Just writes in and says, every time Republicans lose power, Democrats inherit a disastrous economy and a furtherance in income inequality amongst those that impact the economy the most, it's all a sick cycle. Absolutely. Gabby Marita says, sailors say scuttlebutt. I don't know what scuttlebutt is or what it means. I just know that people should probably stop saying it. It's over for scuttlebutt.

Mr. Limburg writes in and says, what a disappointment cinema is. She was rather liberal until she got to the Senate and started getting that sweet, sweet donor money. That'll do it. Anyway, we got to get back to the show, guys. I'll see you there. Hey, everyone back to TYT, Anna and Ida with you. Let's talk a little bit about minimum wage where there appears to be a little bit of good news, but let's not get too optimistic yet. I'll give you the fight to raise the minimum wage. The fight to raise the minimum wage continues with Senator Bernie Sanders as the new budget chair in the Senate threatening to use reconciliation to make it happen. Now, let me be clear

in stating that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is incredibly popular. Polling after polling indicates that it's incredibly popular. Even red states have passed hikes to minimum wage through ballot initiatives, which shows that it doesn't matter where you stand in the political spectrum, if you're a worker, chances are you want an increase in your wages. And as Senator Bernie Sanders said in a recent interview, that with Republicans trying to stand in the way, it clearly has to be done by reconciliation. That's something I'm working very hard on. Now again, he is the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, an incredibly important position, and he can get that process started. We have a little bit of good news as well coming from both,

the House and the Senate because Democrats have introduced legislation to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour. And here's the caveat by 2025. So we'll, well, I'm going to hold fire on that for a minute and just give you more. Hopefully Senator Sanders pushes back against that date because it's ridiculous. Because honestly, in some States right now a living wage is around $20. Again, it depends on where you live in the country. But if you're living in California, $15 an hour, you're going to be struggling. So Durbin says that Senate Democrats are exploring whether $15 for minimum wage can be done with reconciliation. And he seems optimistic that it could. That comes from a Politico reporter who got a little

inside scoop on that. Also, as you guys know, reconciliation means that. in the Senate, the Democrats would be able to pass a minimum wage hike by a simple majority, 51 senators. Unfortunately, Senator Manchin, who's a conservative Democrat, has already indicated that he might vote against a minimum wage hike. We'll see where he stands on that, because he has backed off of, you know, serving as an opponent to direct checks, $2,000 direct checks to Americans. And that was because he got a lot of backlash. So who knows, maybe he'll cave to a little bit of pressure. But there are some other naysayers, Ida. And before we get to them, I do want to get your thoughts on what you think about what's currently happening with congressional Democrats proposing a hike and minimum wage. You know, it's interesting that people who continue to get paid through the year through the pandemic to deliberate whether other people should get relief who were elected by those people can sit on moral ground and oppose. relief because actually this is what it is. It is relief to the people who are struggling,

the people who don't have privilege, the people who don't have power, who still had to show up to work for us because our essential workers showed up throughout this entire pandemic and to make the minimum amount of money that they could make and not be able to have the support that they need and the relief that they need. Because at this point, this is not even a wage, It's just relief. It is infuriating to me because people call a smug, right? They get on Twitter, they call us smug, they call us, pumpus, they call us, whatever it is that they call us. And yet and still, we're the people who are sitting here screaming for people to see everyone and not just the rich. Actually, the smug people who don't even acknowledge those who are beneath them in this food chain, on this food chain or whatever.

But I just, I really think that it's ridiculous that we continue to have this conversation about whether people should be able to make a living wage and continue to use small businesses as the excuse as to why we don't support this when we know good and well that this government doesn't care about small businesses as we watch so many of them shut down during the pandemic because they were handing out checks to their buddies at the big corporations. Yeah, I mean, look, there's a way to write minimum wage legislation that doesn't harm small businesses and ensures that massive profitable corporations that can afford it actually pay their workers a living wage. The federal government should help subsidize small businesses so they're able to pay $15 an hour minimum to their employees. But these massive corporations can easily afford it. You think Amazon can't afford to pay minimum wage? And to be clear, they do pay $15 an hour, but only after Senator Sanders shamed and bullied them into doing it. But it shouldn't have to be that way. I mean, Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world and has done very well for himself during this pandemic.

So the argument that increasing the federal minimum wage is going to hurt these companies is absolutely ridiculous. These lawmakers, Republican lawmakers, know that there's a way to write the bill, to write this. legislation so it doesn't actually harm small businesses and ensures that we help to financially uplift this country, especially at a moment of crisis when they desperately need it. The last time the federal government increased the minimum wage was 2009. 2009, that was the last time it happened. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25. It's just beyond shameful and disgusting. And so again, I mean, when you look at the makeup of the Senate and how Democrats, you know, it's a 50-50 Senate with Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote. And so the only way we can get this passed in the Senate is if Senate Democrats succeed in ending the legislative filibuster or if they don't do it, Senator Bernie Sanders can pass a minimum wage hike through reconciliation.

So we'll see how Manchin responds to these efforts. He could serve as an obstacle, so could Kirsten Cinema as she has when it comes to doing away with the legislative filibuster in the Senate. But there is overwhelming support to increase the minimum wage. Again, I mentioned that red states, like Florida, for instance, just recently passed a minimum wage hike through a ballot initiative. Why are you guys afraid to be popular? Why are you so afraid to finally represent your constituents? Oh, that's right. Donors are involved, right?

So the donors have an outsized influence on our lawmakers. And I think it's abundantly clear when you look at this kind of legislation that's incredibly popular with the people, but not so popular with corporations. All right. So let's, man, we are flying. through these stories, I feel like today. That's good, I like it. So the next story has to do with Deborah Birx. And since we have so much video for it, I think I would like to take a break right now, so we're not rushing through it. So when we come back, we'll talk a little bit

about her rehabilitation tour, whether we're buying it or not. And then later in the show, we'll also discuss what's currently going down with the efforts to convict Donald Trump on the article of impeachment that the House voted on earlier, that and more when we return. I see you guys over there signing that petition that petition. So you want to get rid of the filibuster. I'm not saying that filibuster. I'm not saying that it's 100% that we'll get rid of the filibuster. I'm not saying that it's 100% that we'll get rid of the filibuster. by you signing that petition, but it couldn't hurt. So go to t-y-t.com slash petitions slash filibuster and let's show Congress just how much we want to get rid of that legislative filibuster in the Senate. Now let's read a few super chats, starting with Ray Turner, who told me that to be well.

Thank you so much. Good for you for making the show. Thanks. I mean, I didn't really have much of an option. Can you imagine, Brett, if I just hit you up like an hour or two before. the show. I'm not feeling well. It would be a disaster. But anyway, thank you for the well wishes. Angelus, Dreamer Dragon Knight writes in and says, no billionaire made their wealth on anything, but the back of the workers, ain't that the truth. Except there's a coconut milk company

that just got dropped by Costco because they were using monkey labor. And I'm not joking, that's a real story. Previously there was another company that dropped them, I think, Target, but just, I mean, these companies will, Costco and Target, right, Brett? Yeah, Costco and Target, they'll exploit anything. Like, let's keep it real, even those cute little monkeys. B.C. Trumpet, the produce dragon writes in, the rate doesn't matter. They will still pay nothing. We need a new taft to bust these trusts. I want to get rid of some of the deductions they're able to get. And by the way, Richard Wolf had an interesting point about property tax and how he wants to apply that to stocks. Anyway, it's fascinating. I got to read more about it,

but check out our interview with Richard Wolf on weekends for the Jacobin Show. That's at YouTube.com slash Jacobin Mac. British writes in and says, hi, Anna and Ida, enjoy TYT as normal. The Republican version of the United States is equal to zeros in your bank balance and how corrupt you are nowadays. Long live TYT and TDR. Thank you. Andrew Gru writes in and says, why not change the rules on the filibuster to require continuous debate without adjournment? The old bugs won't do it often if they have to be there. That's not a bad point, actually. But unfortunately, like to, you know what? Cinema and Mansion might be in favor of it. that, right? Like, you think they'd vote for that? They might. I like that idea. You guys are smart. I like smart people. Let me read more. TYT, Wolfman, I feel so out of it. I feel like I'm drunk right now. So I apologize if I sound out of it. TYT. Wolfpack Justice Dem writes in, our economy has bombed every time. I'm sorry, our economy has boomed every time we've raised taxes on corporations and the rich. It's true. Look at what happened under Bill Clinton. He increased

the corporate tax rate considerably, and we had a surplus. Business was booming. Top marginal tax rates of 90% during the 1950s, plus corporations do stock buybacks instead of hiring people with lower tax. All great points. We got to get back to the show, though. I'll see you guys there. At all the wayt at all the wayt. big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay

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

available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EXP-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Welcome back to the show, everyone, Anna Casperian and Ida Rodriguez. And in case you're tuning into the show now, I'm going to plug Ida's podcast again, The Truth Serum, make sure you guys check it out.

And Ida, you always have these incredible specials and gigs that blow my mind. So if there's anything else that you'd like to plug, please do so. I'm on serious this morning, I mean, tomorrow morning. Thursday and Friday, I'm finishing up two weeks on Sirius XM, Channel 12, 26 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern time. And yeah, truth serum is on Fridays at 12 p.m. You can catch it on YouTube, Twitter, to which, and Facebook. Love it. All right. Well, let's talk about coronavirus and what we're seeing now with some of the former members of Trump's coronavirus task force. Well, everyone's hating on Debbie Birx, everyone. And it might be because of the fact that she refused to hold Donald Trump accountable

as he lied to the American people over and over and over again while he was president during this pandemic. And so why is Deborah Berks coming up now? Well, it's because she recently had an interview that appeared to try to kind of rehabilitate her image. this is what she said on the recent interview with CBS's Face the Nation. Do you think President Trump appreciated the gravity of the health crisis you were describing?

I think the president appreciated the gravity in March. It took a while after I arrived in the White House to remove all of the answerary data that was coming in. I mean, there was parallel data stream coming into the White House.

that were not transparently utilized. And I needed to stop that. You mean outside advisors? Outside advisors, coming to inside advisors. And to this day, I mean, until the day I left, I am convinced there were parallel data streams because I... Disinformation. I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made.

So I know that someone or someone out there or someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president. I don't know to this day who, but I know what I sent up, and I know that what was in his hands was different from that. So it might have been great for the American people to know about that in real time, but I guess it's great to find out about it now. remember, Dr. Berks was asked repeatedly whether Donald Trump was being honest with the American people, whether there was misinformation being spread through those disastrous press conferences

that he would hold in the first few months of the pandemic. And time and time again, we saw Dr. Birx carry water for Trump and alleged that he took the scientific data very seriously. And, you know, CNN's Breonna Keeler seemed pretty livid about that. And we'll go to her video in just a minute. But Ida, I want to hear from you first. You know what? I've been trying to contain my rage and my anger because I'm working on some new stuff in terms of dealing with my frustration.

I am so tired of the people that enabled Trump, stood around him and watched him, recklessly, you know, give out information that was inaccurate. 400,000 plus people are gone. And you don't get to just say, my bad. Like, that's just not okay. You enabled him, you sat around. Now you want to distance yourself because you saw what foolishness came about on the six. And now nobody wants to be a part of, well, not nobody.

Some people are still sticking with the program. But just to try to alienate yourself from it now, when we watched you, we watched you publicly live out these lies. And I just think it's disrespectful. And you know what it is, is this privilege is these people are in this bracket, this financial bracket, where they are exempt from the realities that coronavirus has rained down on people who don't have the privileges that they do. They stand in line first for the vaccine. They have access to the information. They got the treatments because they were around Donald Trump when Donald Trump was infected with the coronavirus. So now you get to just say, I didn't know that there were most.

You knew exactly what was going on. You enabled it, you participated in it, you faced the American people, and you told them lies. And now you want to back away with it from it. And mind you, with a horrible scarf on while you do it, I can't stand this. She loves the scarves. They're big, beautiful scarves. No, I mean, you're absolutely right, but this is not to excuse Dr. Berks in any way, but it is to, to really highlight something that I personally was very naive about. People are unwilling to stand up to power, especially when their livelihood is on the line,

when their career is on the line. Now, Dr. Berks is retired now. So she was at the home stretch. And to be quite honest with you, if she had retired months earlier, I'm sure her life would be just as lovely. But she chose to stand by Donald Trump and even lie to the American people about how he takes the scientific data seriously when she knew that wasn't the case. And she's not the only one, guys. That's the thing. Now, I think Fauci did a decent job in, I mean, he definitely had a combative relationship with Trump. There's no question. He and his family have dealt with the death threats and all sorts of awful things that come along with ever speaking against Trump or sharing a conflicting message to his lies, right? But he found a way through the various

television interviews he did and also through the coronavirus briefings to get relevant, important information to the American people. I didn't see the same effort from Berks, which was frustrating. And then when you kind of open. this conversation up to the government in general. I mean, you have one fake strong man Republican after the next, cowering, cowering in Trump's presence. They're all so afraid of him. I mean, Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Lindsey Graham is like running around trying to find lawyers who will represent Trump in the impeachment trial. Pathetic. These are pathetic people. It's really hard to find individuals who are strong enough to speak truth to power. Unfortunately, we don't

have many of them in Congress, especially in the Republican Party. Anyway, I do want to go to Brianna Keeler really quick because she had a lengthy segment on this on her show, and she raises some concerns of her own. Reputation, rejuvenation are quite in vogue right now in the wake of President Trump's exit from the White House. And that includes the curious case of Dr. Deborah Burks. Burks began the pandemic buttering up President Trump, even as he denied science. So while Berks actually had a very large platform, she said early on that Trump was, quote, attentive to the literature and the data. But now, she says, I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made.

Whatever reason Dr. Berks had for going along with misinformation, failing to forcefully discredit medical advice that could kill people, only she really knows. Her explanations are weak. They are woefully insufficient. They are an insult after more than 400,000 Americans have died. And to scientists, Burks is a cautionary tale about letting politics and power warp science until it is no longer science. That a doctor can spend 40 years building a reputation that garners respect, being a champion of science, and serving others.

But if they don't stand up for science when it counts, when lives are on the line, their reputation can be wiped away. All it takes is a little bleach and in her case, a small ray of sunlight. I'm going to say something that might be controversial to some. I don't care. I like Breonna Keeler. I like her. I like her a lot. I think that maybe she has political views that I disagree with. I don't know. But in terms of her style on CNN, she's one of my favorites. She has great follow-up questions for politics. She's super salty when it's appropriate. She's got a good heart. I don't know. I just, I really like Brianna Keeler. That's just, that's just me.

So I give her credit for that segment. And also she's done really great reporting on coronavirus and has, you know, gone to pretty extreme lengths to share people's personal stories. I'm not talking about people who have celebrity or, you know, some, you know, public figure position. just ordinary people who have really dealt with the significant, devastating impact of this pandemic. And I think those are the stories that should be uplifted and shared with the public. Anyway, Ida. I like her too. So I appreciate you saying that. And I think that it's

important for us to be able to say this without feeling like we're going to be condemned for it because there are, you know what I mean? There are people across the place who actually have good intentions and all of us can be misguided at some point and have conflicting views. But you know who the good eggs are. And I think it's important to call them out when you see it. What I was going to say is, you know, there are people who are going to say that Dr. Burke is a woman and probably was intimidated by Donald Trump. We know Donald Trump is a sexist. He had very abusive language when it comes to talking about women, and I understand that. But I do agree when you have an opportunity to walk away from a situation when you're not being held captive, what a beautiful thing to teeter between

privilege and victimhood, which is something that a lot of people are not afforded. And I just think that in this moment, if you really are concerned about the American people, we lost a lot of lives. And people like to minimize that by saying, well, people are dying of all other diseases. And we, these people had the information to really empower people to react to this virus in a way that would keep us safe and keep it from spreading to the degree that it has spread. And they chose not to because they chose dollars over human beings. And anybody who is complicit in that is guilty. And they need to be held accountable for that, whether they are man or woman, because there are a lot of

women who died in that 400,000 number and nobody is speaking their names. Yeah, and you know, when you look at the demographics that are harmed the most by this pandemic, the most number of deaths, I mean, it's it's black and Latino communities. In California, Southern California specifically, the dominant demographic in terms of contracting the virus and dying from the virus is the Latino community. And, you know, socioeconomic status, of course, has a lot to do with it. And access to the hospitals. I mean, that has a lot to do with it, whether there are underfunded public hospitals in the area. That has a lot to do with it. Right now, by the way, there's a discussion about sending kids back to school, which I think is

incredibly important. And the data indicates that community spread within schools is incredibly low. However, however, we can't treat each public school as if they're all on equal footing. We know that's not the case. And so are some of these schools performing better than others because they have the appropriate resources to buy the PPE and the, you know, the products necessary, hand sanitizer, masks, whatever it is to keep the kids safe. And if that's the case in some schools, we got to ensure that those same resources are available to other schools that have been underfunded compared to some of these public schools in wealthier communities. So I bring that up as an example of how there's really been this blanketed approach in some

ways in regard to opening businesses up, sending kids back to school, doing certain things. as if everyone in this country is on an equal footing and we're living in similar circumstances. We're not. And so the approach does need to cater to certain communities. We're seeing a little bit of that with Joe Biden and his efforts to send mobile units to, you know, rural areas and elderly homes in order to ensure that people who aren't mobile get access to the vaccine and the treatment that they're going to need. But overall, I mean, especially during the Trump administration, there was a decentralized approach, every state for themselves. And then when you look at how states have handled things, in a lot of cases, there's just a generalized approach that completely glosses over the inequalities that we have built into this system. You know, so that's a long way of saying, I agree with you, Ida. No, but it was a lot of people who were negligent when it came to the people because they were in, Trump's good graces. And then the governors that he had a problem with, they were punished.

And then we saw this hunger games play out with the people. And of course, the people at the bottom pay the highest price. And, you know, I just, I feel like we have to be real about that. And we have to be honest about the people who are suffering and are still suffering right now because of this pandemic. It is not gone because Donald Trump is gone. We, it is not gone because they opened back restaurants in California or in other states. We are still dealing with a pandemic that is, it is running amok on the people and people are dying to this day. Our medical people are struggling and we just got to, just because it's not in the news cycle and we're not trending, we're not talking about the stories, we got to keep,

we have to keep talking about this because it is still a very big problem. them in this country. Absolutely. I also wanted to issue a quick correction on a coronavirus story we did yesterday. I still stand by my analysis and commentary on it. Gavin Newsome, the governor of California, has decided to partially lift some of the shutdown order he implemented over a month ago. And I felt that it was a curious decision to make because hospitals are currently at capacity,

meaning that any new coronavirus patients that need to be hospitalized are going to have a difficult time finding a hospital that can accept them. However, the number of new coronavirus contractions in the state of California has already begun to dip. I was under the impression that the number was still rising, but new contractions are going down and I wanted to give that quick clarification and correction because I want to make sure you guys get the facts on this show. So with that said, we got to take a quick break. But when we come back for the second hour of the show,

we're going to start off with some good news regarding private prisons and how Biden is planning on partially doing away with them on a federal level. Come right back. 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.