The Young Turks - Beto Calls It Quits

Episode Date: November 2, 2019

Beto O’Rourke has ended his 2020 campaign. Cenk Uygur, Maytha Alhassen, and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Drop it. All right, Jank Uger, John Ida-Role, Matha Al-Hassen, power, power, power panel, obviously. All right, we've got massive news for you guys. Elizabeth Warren is out with our Medicare for All plan, and then people are reacting to it. already. Joe Biden reaction, Nancy Pelosi reaction. Most importantly, what's our reaction? Is it really Medicare? Most importantly. Is it really Medicare for all? No, but that is the most important part. And so that has been the big, big mystery. For the mainstream media, it was, how did you go pay for it? We have that too. But for progressives, the most important

question is if it's actually Medicare for all. And then we have, you know, the bumbling, fumbling shenanigans of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Fun for everybody. Okay, so lots of Last and lots a show for you guys, but first, fascinating. I was gonna say massive, is it massive? It's close to, it's borderline. Breaking news, John, go. Okay. Beto O'Rourke is out.

It's done, he's dropping out as of today. This happened just like 10 or 15 minutes ago, he put out a statement saying, our campaign has always been about speaking clearly, speaking honestly, jumping on top of things, and acting decisively. In that spirit, I am announcing that my service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee. For those of you listening to the show rather than watching, he didn't actually say that. He didn't actually say jumping on top of things. But when he means, act decisively, he means, I see something high, I get onto something

high. That's what he means. But anyway, he's been in this for a long time. And initially he entered the race with a certain amount of viral interest from people coming from his Senate race. He raised like $6 million in the first 48 hours. And then I read a stat was that that $6 million in the first 48 hours was more than he would go on to raise in the next 1,000 days.

Wow. Which I don't understand how that's possible numbers wise, but that's what was in like the Washington Post. Maybe they mean hours, I don't know. No, it's definitely possible. Yeah. Yeah. So here's my take on Beto and it's a really complicated one.

And you really? Yeah, yeah. So let me explain why. Because a lot of other candidates are in clearly defined buckets, right? Biden, Klobuchar are more conservative Democrats. They say you don't really need any change, we're just gonna fiddle around the edges, and we are not Donald Trump, da, da, da, da. Okay, and then there are the progressive candidates, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren.

Those are very clear ends of the spectrum, right? And now this end of the spectrum is weighted down with almost all the other candidates, John Delaney, some of the former candidates like John Hickenlooper, etc. And then there was a small sliver in the middle that could have gone either way in the beginning of the campaign, right? They could have gone in the more conservative round. And so that was Beto, Buttigieg, and I would argue Kamala Harris, Jilla Branden Booker, okay? So now that's small when you compare the 27 people that were in this race at different times,

but it's an important five, they're their establishment figures that were leaning progressive, doing things like rejecting corporate PAC money, et cetera. So Beto, I have in the camp of well-intentioned within that bucket, okay? I also have a booker in that well-intentioned bucket. But ultimately I made a terrible decision that probably none of the rest of the media will talk about now, that was absolutely decisive. So at the beginning of his campaign, he had his team that had done spectacularly well in the Texas Senate race, but particularly his field team, the people who organized the

volunteers and the staffers to go out on knock on doors, make the phone calls. They broke every record there was in reaching out through grassroots in Texas. That's why he almost beat Ted Cruz in a spectacularly run race. So he had it, and that's why he raised the six million, right? In the beginning, people are like, oh my God, and in the beginning he started running as a real firebrand progressive, no corporate pack money, and I'm gonna come back to that because he should get a lot of credit for that, Medicare for all, et cetera. Then near the end of the race, he was like, eh, not really Medicare for all.

And I was like, oh, no. I feel like we had those concerns much earlier though, even back during the Senate race. I'm saying in the Senate race, I'm sorry, thank you for clarifying, yes. So I was just about to say John watched the first debate that he had with Ted Cruz, came back and was like, I don't think he's for Medicare for all, right? Then Anna and I covered the second debate, and we did this all on t.t.com. We might have done it for the members, t-y-t.com slash join so you don't miss any of our content. So we came back scratching our heads, like he seems like he's leaning away from progressives

now. And I think that that was a critical mistake. I think he'd be having done that, he might have actually won in Texas, but most importantly, he runs that amazing race, he turns around and he's gonna run for president. And everybody says, Pedro, you got this, you're the next Bobby Kennedy, you're gonna win. This is so exciting. So we brought in the Obama people. Now, I would have said, and why would I want them?

I have the most amazing team that's ever been assembled. So, and he's like, oh, Obama staffers. So he hired them and decided that they were not going to do the grassroots campaign that he had done in Texas. Disaster. So the grassroots team that was legendary, left Zach Mallet, Becky Bond, and all the people that worked with them. These are diehard progressives and the best in the business in organizing, okay? So they immediately left because Beto decided to go in the opposite direction. Let me ask those people who believe in those Obama staffers now, how'd that work out for

you? Yeah, I think it was a completely different environment for Obama, one, the candidate was a different charismatic type of figure that Beto worked for all his impassioned rhetoric was not in Obama. The staffers were young and they very much utilized a digital space that hadn't previously before been leveraged for a campaign. So there were unique crevices that this Obama world had explored. And again, we've seen like the connection with people who worked on the team that went to Cambridge Analytica and then just really shifted their whole setup.

But that formula doesn't necessarily work now in this moment, that's one thing. And two, it's interesting to me when candidates can't win smaller races. Of course, Texas is a notoriously difficult race to win as a Democrat, to become a senator. But the fact that he got really close, I didn't understand why people saw him as a front-line candidate for the Democratic ticket when you did have some of these other folks that were energizing a population around more of a unique message and solutions, right? He didn't really have any solutions for us besides the fact that he doubled down on a gun buyback program and beside the fact that he had an El Paso moment, which was beautiful to see

the ways that he finally fought back to Trump in ways other Democrats would not. But there wasn't something spectacularly special about Beto that distinguished him from the rest of, as you said, that sort of middle pack of folks that didn't really know where they stood, depending on what their strategist told them for the day. Yeah, and so there was a lane that he could have used to win. If he came out and said, I'm the young progressive, I love what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are doing. I'm going to improve upon those plans and we're going to get them passed, et cetera.

People could have been excited by that. Both those candidates are in their 70s, and he could have, then he sticks with his organizing team, and then he would have the best organizing team, maybe even better than Bernie Sanders team. And he would have raised a lot more money because people would have continued to be excited. Instead, he listened to the idiots in the mainstream media. And so those Obama staffers, yeah, you know, the idea of that Obama's more charismatic, I always think charisma is overrated in politics, and you think like, what, what do you mean?

That's what everybody talks about. But Mitch McConnell has no charisma whatsoever. Chuck Schumer is in the negatives on charisma, and those are the two leaders in the Senate. They can never run for president. Yeah, that's true. Well, I know, but how do you win in Kentucky? How do you win in New York? I mean, so, like, most of the politicians are the driest people you'll ever, you'll

ever mean and have no charisma at all. So anyway, look, I don't want to get like- I'm more on Matha's side on this. Okay, no problem. I don't think you have to have it, but I think it's definitely a nice plus if you do. It's a key ingredient, yeah. I mean, I still remember the first speech I ever saw Obama gave. It was in 2004, the DNC speech and I thought, oh my god, this guy is something.

That counts for something. I'm not saying that that necessarily gets you all the way, but it certainly counts for something. And the concession speech that Beto gave was what put him on the map. Really. I mean, people were watching that race, but for a national audience, that was his moment to elevate was folks saying, oh, this guy didn't win in the Senate, but I want him somewhere on my team.

So look, I don't wanna get stuck on that because that's a tiny part of this story, okay? But the bottom line is he made the wrong choices. He decided to go more conservative. He decided to not do grassroots. And so all the people that are focusing on all the wrong reasons, if they keep missing the critical element, in this primary, unlike, let me put it this way. It's the race that I have seen it most clear in my lifetime. The voters care about policy.

They deeply, deeply care about it. Every time Warren proposes new policies, she rises. Bernie proposes new policies on the left, he rises. Beto decided like a lot of the other candidates, no, I'm gonna propose standard milk toast, moderate to conservative policies. And people are like, oh, no, no, no, no, you misunderstood us. We're not at all interested in that. We're gonna stop giving you money, we're not gonna volunteer for you.

And you're done. And that's what happened here. Yeah. And I would, especially early on, as you pointed out, he didn't have like a really strong identity. He was sort of known more than you might expect a random Senate candidate who didn't win to be known. But he entered seemingly just because he had this kind of viral thing and he was nationally

known because of his Senate race and so he decided to come in and like the first national introduction that a lot of people had was this Vanity Fair cover about how I was born for this. And it's like if you, if we're struggling to understand why. Why you think at this point, you don't have a lifetime of accomplishments and everything, why you should be president and you seem so sure of yourself. That's a weird combination. He didn't have like a core issue.

I can name a few things that he spoke with passion about. But like so for instance, recently he's been talking a lot about guns, but I don't remember six months ago I'm talking about guns a ton. It seems like he talked about it and it did well and so he doubled down on it. Occasionally that would be immigration. At one point, it was Colin Kaepernick, but it wasn't like I'm seeing the truth. you come through. It's like, you're sort of a little, I'm not saying he's like Trump, but Trump does this.

Trump talks about everything, he sees what gets applause, and then he talks about it more. Yeah, so then you might be wondering, why do I have him in the good intent bucket, right? So look, there's, John's right, there's a number of things he did, right? He was pretty good on the environment. He was very good in challenging Donald Trump's bigotry. You say everybody is, but he actually particularly was adamant and did one of the better jobs of doing that, but that's not why. The main reasons why were him doubling down on guns.

Yes, John could be right that he saw a moment there, especially with what happened in El Paso. But he was at least had the courage to do what every Democrat told him not to do, right? They're like, no, you're going to cost us elections and how dare you? And he's like, that's like your opinion, man. But this stuff's getting people killed. It's getting my constituents killed. It's getting all these. So I'm going to do it.

Yes, we're to do the buyback program. That was one of the best moments for any candidate in this entire campaign. Okay, so you have to give him credit for that. But even more important than that, he took no corporate pack money well before anyone else did, even before the Justice Democrats. Now I know that there was issues. He took some fossil fuel executive money during the Senate race. And so there was some loophole issues, et cetera there.

But guys, he led on that when no one else was. So that is both huge substantively and shows you he has promise. He can actually, he's a young guy, he can be brought back to the light side, right, the force of good. We'll have to see what he does now. Yeah, absolutely. He's not running for Senate, he says at least, he's also not endorsing anyone right now, so we'll have to see it.

Yeah, he has some good instincts. He appears to be a good guy, and he's had some really good policies. But he got wooed and, you know, seduced by like, oh my God, I think I'm gonna win. Oh, Bob was dappers. Oh, yeah, who cares about grassroots? So I hope that he has learned from that terrible, in this political case, fatal mistake, and that he could go back to being a progressive. And so in a sense, maybe I'm wrong, but I actually kind of believe in him.

And so I think he could make for an interesting person in an administration that's actually progressive. And if given the right leadership and guidance, I think he comes back and plays a really important role. Unlike others, here I'll say it like Buttigieg, who seems to be clearly scheming. Like I've never gotten a sense from Buttigieg of like I am authentic and I've got some good instincts and some bad instincts and I struggle with that. It's no like, calculating, calculating, calculating, how do I play the politics of this to get ahead? I've got to get ahead, got to get ahead, oh yeah, oh, the Warren took the progressive thing that I was planning to do, but oh well, I guess that's too late, so I'll now do the conservative

thing and calculate, calculate, calculate. So maybe I'm wrong, maybe you see it differently, but to me there's a world of difference between Beto and Buttigieg. And so anyway, of course he wasn't going to win, this is the right decision at this point in time. But in a sense, I was glad that he was in the race. Yeah, and I respect that he can look and see that he's definitely not going to become president and drop out.

Because there's a lot of people right now that are running, even though they know they're not going to be president. Yeah. Okay, why don't we move on to another related issue? So, Elizabeth Warren has been facing a lot of questions over the past few weeks since the Democratic debate at the very least about how she plans to pay for her Medicare for all plan and what exactly it will look like. And that is because Medicare for all is a benefit that you would get.

And so you need to explain how it's paid for. If it's bombs, it's free, you don't have to talk about it, but if it's Medicare, we really need to know. And so now her plan is available or at least a proposal about her plan. It's not the actual legislation, but she does have a post that's like 20 pages long about A lot of the details in terms of the financing and everything. So there's a good amount of good here, there's also some bad, we're gonna cover both. First of all, in terms of substantively, how much Medicare for all is it?

Well, she says under my plan, Medicare for All will cover the full list of benefits outlined in the Medicare for All Act, including long-term care, audio, vision, and dental benefits. And so that obviously is intended to match the version that Bernie has put out that is substantive Medicare for all that actually not only gives you everything that Medicare currently provides, but actually would expand the coverage to things like vision dental, those sorts of things. So overall, it is, before we get into the financing and everything, it is substantive health care. Yes.

All right, first thoughts on it. And the most important, it's real Medicare for all. Like, super worried that she was going to listen to advisors going, oh, we got to get closer to the Democratic Party and everything's just unrealistic. And let's do like Medicare for all, but for some and for others not so much. And let's find some compromise on top of compromising. I'm positive that she had at least some voices counseling her in that direction. She didn't do that.

This is actually Medicare for all. It ends private insurance, period. And it brings us to a system where we would all get guaranteed healthcare. We would get all the benefits that John talked about, and we would save money. Now, when it comes to how she's financing it. I'm gonna have all the details on that. No, I know. My overall analysis is, I think it's borderline, brilliant.

And so, you know, John mentioned some downsides. I'm not even sure I see the downsides. And so we'll talk her through, we'll have a conversation about it, but she did it. She it's a real Medicare for all and she clearly pays for it. Yeah, yeah, this was so smart because now in the debates what she can do and I agree This is Medicare for all, but she can say when she's being pressed on where are we gonna get the money from and I know we're gonna talk about that in a second And what does it mean? What are the parameters of this Medicare for all that you're proposing? She can say read the plan I put it out there and if you didn't do your job journalists to read the plan Then I'm not the one who should be responsible for the fact that you're not doing your work and

And it's out here for everybody in the public to see and to comb through it, which she starts with is such a great story about her father and his heart attack and how that led them not only to go to the brink emotionally, but also financially, and how this is such a common story for Americans, but that set the stage for her to really be committed to interrogate what is happening in this industry and how can we radically change it. And the reason why I'm not necessarily surprised of how this turned out is that Elizabeth Warren, And I've known some of the work that she's done, especially in her interest around economic policy for middle class folks.

She's worked closely with the Roosevelt Institute, which is a think tank that writes about the rules of the economy and wants to shift them dramatically in the favor of average Americans. And so I expected something like this to emerge, but I didn't expect how detailed and how she was going to answer her critics in a powerful, succinct way. Yeah, and I will say on top of that, the political framing throughout is very much. Excellent. It makes it nearly impossible to argue with from a conservative perspective. Okay, John.

Yeah, and so I'm gonna jump into how she's gonna pay for it. I will say, because many people are gonna be, you know, still suspicious, and I get that. No matter who becomes president, even if it's Bernie Sanders, passing Medicare for all is gonna be a monumental struggle. And so who it is that is pushing for is gonna be really important, perhaps most important to some people. And if you were predisposed to believe that she just can't be trusted on it, then there's nothing that could be written in the this document that's going to change your mind at that point. And I understand, if it comes down to it, I have much more faith in Bernie Sanders to have the organizing ability and the sticotiveness to push difficult legislation through. But we're analyzing this on the substance of what's

included there. And if your knee-jerk reaction is to say, well, it's really easy to write anything in a proposal, I would counter by saying, I've looked at a lot of the people in the Ever Hebratic Primary. It apparently isn't that easy because they can't put together proposals like this. So now let's get into the actual financing. So she talks about different ways that healthcare can be paid for. The first option is the current system, which costs like $50 trillion over this certain amount of time and leaves tens of millions of people without health insurance.

Option two is switching to Medicare for all, which will cost just about the same money, a little bit less perhaps, for a number of reasons we'll get into. She goes on to say the $11 trillion in household insurance and out of pocket expenses projected under our current system goes right back into the pockets of America's working people under this system. And we make up the differences with targeted spending cuts and new taxes on giant corporations and the richest 1% of Americans, and by cracking down on tax evasion and fraud, not one penny and middle class tax increases.

Now if you think that that is going to stop the questions and the debates in terms of you're going to raise taxes on middle class people, it of course is not. Jake Tapper, get ready to ask that question a million times. But anyway, so what does that actually mean? She made references to tax increases on some people. Well, she proposes a financial transactions tax of 0.1% of the value of every stock bond or derivatives transaction to raise $800 billion. Then she adds a systemic risk fee on financial institutions with more than $50 billion in assets

that will raise $100 billion more. She adds another $2.9 trillion in corporate taxes by ending accelerated cost recovery and imposing a 35% minimum tax on foreign earnings. Her wealth tax now changes as a part of this plan. It now goes up to 6%, which will raise another $1 trillion. Warren also proposes taxing capital gains for the top 1% at the same rate as normal income. And doing so on an annual basis rather than just when a sale is made to raise $2 trillion. Warren proposes a massive increase in IRS enforcement aimed at reducing the tax avoidance rate

from 15% down to 10%, which would raise $2.3 trillion. On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs, only dinners July 18th.

A little bit more, which we'll get into. But what I like about the financing is it shows that you can pay for this, which we shouldn't need to be shown because we know that many countries around the world already do. But also accomplishes a number of different important goals, finance it, like lowering tax avoidance by incredibly wealthy people is an objective good by itself. Not to mention, you know, the change to foreign earnings, the systemic risk fee, the wealth tax. I mean, these are good things in terms of income inequality and other things, even absent their ability to pay for something like Medicare for all.

Okay, so let me break down a bunch of things that I was looking for and what did I find. So first of all, in terms of how to pay for it, she was super realistic. And so, for example, the tax avoidance that people are doing and increasing IRS enforcement to raise more money, what I was looking for is, is she going to say that we can make up all the money that people normally cheat on their taxes on? Because if she said that, I would have thought that's unrealistic. So she's stretching things to try to get it done. She didn't.

She was very conservative on that. She just said we can raise enough money from that to make up a third of the money that people are cheating on by not paying their taxes, only a third. And we would have only gotten to a point where we would be half as good as the United Kingdom in catching tax cheats. And she put down specific numbers, which are absolutely true, that for every dollar that you put into the IRS, the government spends on the IRS, we get back $6. Now, the reason we don't do that is because Republicans and corporate Democrats don't want

to catch tax cheats because those are their donors. And themselves. And in some cases, that as well. So through every step of this, it was not only very realistic, showed you the exact numbers on how you pay for it. And then also she framed it well in terms of how about you guys, what do you get out of it? So she points out that the average American family of four pays 12. $12,378 every year in healthcare costs.

That's co-pays premiums, deductibles, and what you pay into your own insurance through an employer, right? So everybody that works at a company, your employer pays part of the cost, you pay part of their costs. When you put all that in, it's over $12,000, that's gone. That's gone under this plan, okay? So everybody just saved $12,000. Now the second part of it is that employer part that you're paying, the

insurance part that you're chipping in through your employer, that then becomes a raise that you get from your employer. That's a double raise. And then so you say, well, okay, how do you pay for it? And then she explains exactly how you do it. So one of the things that she talks about is the bureaucracy court's cost in private insurance is about 12% of the cost of the system. And Medicare that already exists, it's 2.3%.

So the difference is trillions of dollars. So when you go to Medicare for all and you lower those, well, you just save trillions of dollars. And she goes through trillions by trillions by trillions, showing you exactly how she's paying for it. The only part of the paying for it that I balked out a little bit, and now I'm more conservative than Warren is in this regard, is paying for capital gains yearly as opposed to when you sell something. You know, I know that there's a good progressive argument for that.

I think that enforcement is a little hard to do. I'm not sure, I'm not perfectly sold on that, but my God, we're talking about around the edges here, right? So she nailed most of it. And when they go, I kept thinking as I'm reading this whole thing, when Buttigieg or Biden or Trump goes to argue against this, they're going to get slaughtered. Because she's going to say, oh, so you want the average American to pay that $12,000? Because that's the current system. Just say it, it's okay, no problem. That's your choice. You're saying that average Americans should pay the $12,000. So why is it really Medicare for all? So Buttigieg says, I'm doing Medicare for blah, blah, blah, right?

And what does that mean? He says, no, no, I still want you to pay the co-pays and deductibles to premiums, but I'm gonna have you pay the government and have that be a public option, or you could pay all that stuff to private insurance. And it keeps the private insurance system intact, that's useless, okay? In this case, she says, no, you don't have to pay for any of that, right? We're gonna raise the money through other means, and she explains meticulously how. So it's real Medicare for all, and when Buttigieg says, no, I wanna defend the current system

where 87 million people are either uninsured or underinsured, 37 million people don't buy prescription drugs that they need because they can't afford it. 36 million people don't get treatment that they know they need, the doctors told them they need because they can't afford it, let alone all the bankruptcies. When the Buttigiegs and the Bidens of the world try to defend that, they're going to get politically hammered. And so I think that with this proposal, I know there's a bold thing to say, but you She's cut off the conservative flank of the Democratic Party.

They're done for. So I think it's Warren versus Bernie going forward, because they both believe in Medicare for all. Fighting against this from a conservative perspective is going to be a fool's errand. Right, right. And I just want to bring up a stat and then give another sort of framing on the finances. So the other part of the numbers that you mentioned, it's there on her fact sheet. Forty million people don't go see the doctor because they can't afford to per year when they need

to get the tests that they need. So also imagine the amount of health cost savings that we have when we have a healthy public. And that's the other thing that the expenses are going towards is emergency procedures, ER, overcrowded ERs, and these are the things that this could solve for. The other thing that I love that she does, you know, we always talk about how people don't ask where the money's going to come from for corporate welfare, nobody really cared or asked about Obama and Bush bailing out the banks and where that came from our tax dollars. But she also held the military industrial complex accountable in this.

So part of what she is going to rein spending on is the defense industry. And so she said since the 9-11 attacks, the United States has appropriated two trillion dollars to fund combat and counterterrorism operations around the world via the overseas contingency operations fund. And so that amount is $116 billion per year. She's proposing to cut that. how much we would save when we also pull from these industries that aren't doing anything for us. And they are taking our tax dollars. We don't ask how we are funding the military

or how we're funding corporate greed. We just always ask about the thing that actually is the most imperative in our lives. And it's funny that you bring a Buttigieg because I don't know folks know, but Buttigieg's father is a preeminent scholar on Gramsci. He translates Gramsci and Gramsci is like the godfather in communist socialist thoughts. So he clearly made calculations because he was exposed to Gramsci's thinking via his father. And I hope that that does wash away that tide of the Democratic Party and especially young folks who think that they could masquerade as Democrat while espousing conservative values. Yeah.

All right, last thing guys, one other part of the proposal that I love, it shows that she's a true progressive. Now you could, by the way, if you say no, I think Bernie can get it done better. He has a higher likelihood of passing it with putting grassroots pressure, et cetera. That is a perfectly fair thing to think. So, and Bernie is the one who wrote the damn bill in the first place. He's the one that- He's the reason we're talking about it. Exactly, he's been pushing it forward for 40 years and you want to vote for Bernie based

on that? That makes perfect sense, okay? But you cannot, but the thing you cannot say is that Warren's not a real progressive. This is massively progressive, and on top of the cutting the defense spending and charging more for the banks and et cetera, is she brings corporate tax. streets back up. Now, when you'll know a fake progressive, when they say, oh, yes, these corporate tax goes were terrible, we need to bring them back up to 25%.

You're like, wait a minute, they weren't 25%. They were 35%. And Warren says, oh yeah, we're gonna bring him back up to 35%. Not only that, we're gonna go all across the world and say, hey, you wanna hide your money in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, Netherlands, wherever you wanna hide it? No, you're gonna pay 35%, no ans ifs or butts. So a lot, that's, Wall Street would read this and they would be furious because it has a financial transaction tax, it holds corporations accountable, and wipes out the healthcare

industry that's been bilking us for trillions of dollars, sucking off the American people for trillions upon trillions of dollars and putting it into their pockets. She talks about how the top 62 CEOs got $1.1 billion in pay last year, okay, that's all coming out of our pocket for no damn reason. Wall Street will hate this. The American people will love it. And it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that shoes a true progressive. There was more that I wish we could have gotten to, but we're unfortunately way over. So I think it's time for the first break. All right. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing the Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government,

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about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Amira, Amira writes in, I love Jenks, clown music for Biden and Klobuchar, too-shay. Okay, fun.

DIRP state Donald says, I hope more Dems learn from Beto's mistakes, unlikely. Eventually, eventually, but it'll take him a long time. A guy says, loving that Malcolm X t-shirt, that's Mather's T-shirt, that is not shoppedy-D.com, to be fair. But John and I, as usual, why not wearing the same shirt on the same day on air? Oh, I didn't even notice that, actually. I don't, it's unbelievable, unbelievable, we do it every time. And you have like an off color version of the same shoot, I know, we have, I wasn't even gonna wear this.

Anyway, this. I was gonna wear a blaser too, actually. Mine's a little bit more blue. But so anyway, shoptyt.com for these shirts. This is my, the Revolution Rally shirt. It has all the places that the rally happened, at least for a while speaking, which I wanna see you guys in Atlanta. T.y.com slash rally to make that happen. I wanna go to Atlanta.

Okay, my gay marriage says, doubt it. No, I'm kidding. Are you doing women in Puerto Rico? I wanna go to that one. My brother lives there, I can see my brother for once. My gay marriage, right, says she brought receipts me likey about Warren's plan. And then I wanna say this, there's so much to go through, but I gotta say these last two. Lefty saw boss says, the 10 year implementation plan for Warren's Medicare for All is really impressive.

My father who has non-alcoholic syriasis of the liver due to lithium-based pharmaceuticals Might live long enough to see year two, only eight more to go, 10 years is too damn long. People's lives are on the line. So obviously being sarcastic in the beginning. But hold on, hold on. That part is actually unclear. I agree with you that if it was a 10-year implementation plan, that would be deeply problematic. That's the same one of the problems Kamala Harris had in our plan.

But Pramila Jayapal, who is the top expert on Medicare for All in Congress, says no, Warren's plan is actually four-year implementation. So that has to get sorted out. I'm not clear on it yet. And so I read the actual thing, and I actually came away from reading it, thinking that it was a 10-year implementation. But grammatically, it appears that what she is saying is the cost analysis is done over a period of 10 years.

Not, we will not have it until 10 years have passed. But I have no doubt that many people came away with the same misconception that I had. And so she just needs to come out with a very clear statement. Yeah, and given how clear this is, my guess is she will, and fairly quickly. This thing is just because it's fun on Twitter. I bathe in Tommy Laren's tears, says, Matha, I love Matha. When she's on the show, my day seems brighter. So that's very nice.

And I love your handles so much. Thank you. All right, okay, let's do this. Elizabeth Warren has come out with her Medicare for All plan and now the reactions are pouring in from people like self-described progressive Nancy Pelosi who said, I'm not a big fan of Medicare for All. I welcome the debate. I think that we should have healthcare for all.

I think the affordable care benefit is better than the Medicare benefit. I don't know what standard is being used to generate that sentence. It's words in order, but they don't make sense to me. And I know the language. And then talking about Medicare for all and the debate around it in the Democratic primary, one of the biggest policy-based debates currently going on, she says, remember November. Okay. I think you're supposed to have two remembers there, but I get what you're saying.

All right, so I want to go back to Pelosi in a second because by Remember November, she goes on to explain that she thinks that if you're on Medicare for all, you're more likely to lose. It's just not remotely true, that's why she's not remotely a progressive, and she hurts our cause every single day. She hurts the Democratic Party every single day. Anyway, but I want to go to Biden and then come back to Pelosi because she's more important. Biden, when questioned about Warren's new plan, responded, quote, she's making it up.

What? What do you, what? It's a 20 page plan with incredible specificity. What do you mean she's making it up? And then he says this. Okay, does he counter with incredibly specific numbers? He goes, no. Look, nobody thinks it's $20 trillion.

It's between $30 and $40 trillion. Every major independent study that's gone out there that's taking a look at this, there's no way. What does that mean? He didn't read it. No, what does that? What do you mean it's $30 or $40 trillion? She explains that the cost of healthcare in this country right now is $52 trillion.

And that the plan she comes up with is a little less than $52 trillion. But then you have to get into the specifics. So $11 trillion of the $52 is paid by the average consumer of healthcare. And then others are paid for through state governments, federal governments, and some version of taxes. And she breaks all that down. For Joe Biden to say, I don't believe it, $20 trillion, which is the portion of the federal government pays, I think it's $30 or $40 trillion.

on what? And do you mean the portion of the federal government pays, or do you mean the whole system? He doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. No idea at all, I think she's making it up. I mean, of all people, if you read that plan, or if anyone, someone bothered to explain to you what's in that plan, you could say you can disagree with certain parts. Hey, you know what? I don't want to have a financial transaction tax on Wall Street, they fund my campaign.

That would be an honest assessment from Joe Biden, right? Or have a real substantive disagreement, I don't think we should cut the defense. Defense Department that much, right? But saying she's making it up is the worst possible answer because her proposals are so specific and backed up by minutiae of details and economic experts that you can't possibly claim she's making it up. So Biden, as usual, totally fumbling, terrible answer. This is why they're going to get killed when we actually start voting.

for him saying, blah, I don't like it. And her saying, here's how you pay for it, here's what you get out of it, here's returning $12,000 to the average American, you want $12,000 or don't you want $12,000? He's got a losing strategy and he doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. Okay, now I want to go back to Pelosi. Guys, the thing you have to decide, what's left now, now especially that Bernie and Warren both put out campaign finance reform proposals, I actually wish they were more specific than they were, but they were pretty good.

Then Warren comes out and answers the last remaining question. Medicare for all, it's real, it's progressive. Bernie then goes back and says, oh yeah, I'm gonna talk about corruption within the Democratic Party more. That's awesome. So you've got two mega progressives in the race. I think that those issues are settled, they're both plenty progressive. The question that remains is who's going to be good enough to get the bills passed.

And in order to get the bills passed, you have to get past Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. So they are opposed to Medicare for all. And now the media oftentimes obscures things on their behalf. Well, it's unclear, blah, blah, blah, well, thank you. Nancy Pelosi just clarified it. She said, I'm not for it. It was super obvious before she said she was not for it before. She sent her top staffer to tell the healthcare industry, don't worry.

We're on your side. You keep giving us money and we're not gonna do Medicare for all. But now she said it publicly, super clear. So the question is, who can get past Nancy Pelosi and defeat her better? Shahi Boutar. Yeah. Yeah. Shihid Bhuttar is running against her in San Francisco.

You should definitely check out his campaign. Because these corporate Democrats are in a lot of ways, an even bigger threat than the Republicans. We can outvote the Republicans. The Republicans are irredeemable. The question is, can you get the corporate Democrats to actually be progressive? And the reality is, right now, as things stand, no. And my thesis on that is you must break them. And people go, oh, they're so uncomfortable, oh, no, no, what do you mean?

I don't agree, I don't agree, she just said to us, she doesn't agree with us. So if you're standing in my way politically, you either have to change your mind, or we need to break you politically so that we can remove your political carcass and move forward and passed the goddamn bill. So who's gonna do that? Warner Sanders, I don't know, that's a great question. Think about how ridiculous this is that you're having the top leadership of the Democratic Party try to stop a frontrunner.

How ludicrous is that? Think about the fact that I don't want to give GOP any sort of credit, but the credit that they do deserve was that they noticed that Trump was winning the caucuses. And so they got out of the way for his crazy platform. and they let it happen and they fell into line. How does it make sense that Pelosi and Schumer are going to stop a running train? And the way that she's explaining, remember November, is that, okay, this is cool, but we're not going to win the electoral college.

How out of touch are you? Because this is what Americans are concerned about. These are the folks who in the middle America, the numbers that we depend on with the electoral college, health care is a huge issue for them. So the fact that all you have to do is let her speak and break down how it's getting paid for and how Americans are going to be finally able to have Medicare for all, why would you sabotage your own victory? And I would finally say, if you are going to look to Nancy Pelosi's predictions about

what will save or doom the Democratic Party in the 2020 election, look, she stalled on impeachment month after month after month because she just thought, oh God, what happens if we go for it? We'll get killed. And then finally, she gets pushed into doing it, begrudgingly, and the polls immediately start to swing in the favor of the Democrats, especially in battleground states. And so her instincts were horrible on that, a huge issue. And it definitely cost the Democrats to stall because of her lack of leadership.

I would say she's equally wrong on this issue. You are not going to persuade her. She is part of the systemic corruption. She has raised incredible amounts of money from those healthcare industries. So you must defeat her politically. She is not your colleague, she's not your ally. And most importantly, what Matha said, they don't believe in unity. It was a lie from day one.

When their establishment Democrats were winning, they're like, unity, everybody bowed their heads, bow their heads. Now Warren and Sanders are surging and not Warren is leaving. leading, or is arguably tied with Biden in the national polls, Bernie is now taking the lead in New Hampshire and Nevada. All of a sudden, Nancy Pelosi hates unity. She's like, no, the plans of the leading candidates are terrible and I won't do them. I knew it.

I told you guys from day one, they don't believe in unity, they believe in corruption. Have there been any consequences for Joe Manchin saying that he might vote for Trump over one of the frontrunners? Of course not. Schumer hasn't said a word about it because the reality is it's not Democrats versus Republicans. It's corporate Democrats and Republicans versus the rest of us, young Turks. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data.

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All right, back on the Young Turks. So, by the way, we were talking about our shirts, ShopT, Y, TYT is still having that Halloween sale. So go to ShopTYT.com, put in Spooky 15, and you'll get 15% off of hoodies and long-the-sleeve T-shirts. So check that out. And I want to tell you, look, John, of course, hosts a damage report for us, you can catch out on all of our platforms, Zorro, Pluto, Zumo, YouTube TV, and obviously if you're a member

at t.com slash join, you could watch it live. But also check out the YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash the damage report. It's killing it. It's doing great. It's got wonderful stories there. Okay, Jody R writes, isn't Pelosi's big achievement the ACA? She doesn't want to see that go away because she'll have nothing left to doubt. Oh, that's devastating. And so that's undoubtedly a part of her calculation. And so that puts her ego above what is best for the American people. So great point, Jody. Shrink the right wing amygdala writes.

And Joe Biden is essentially calling Warren's Medicare for All planned fake news. And neglecting was chelaneous. And so Biden's reaction is basically to stick his fingers in his ears and say, nah, no, no, no, I can't hear you. I think that's pretty accurate. So nice job. Those are all our members. Okay, let's move on with something a little fun, although scary because of its implications.

Rudy Giuliani is an absolute joke, but it's a joke I'm going to tell right now. So just 26 days after he was tapped to advise Donald Trump as the White House cybersecurity czar, the former mayor went to a San Francisco Apple store and asked an employee to help him unlock his phone. The reason he did that is because he'd reportedly locked himself out because he entered his passcode wrong 10 times in a row, disabling the device. Okay, first of all, he's the expert. Okay, look, you mess up your iPhone and not a big deal, okay, and no one on planet Earth is surprised that Rudy screwed up his iPhone, right?

Here's the guy who butt dialed the reporter the other day and accidentally left a message going, oh man, we need money really badly, I'm sending somebody to Turkey, I'm sending someone to Bahrain. They're like, oh, Jesus Christ, what are you doing, right? But Trump thought he would be the best at cyber security. Come on, man, it doesn't get any better than this. They give you 10 try. I just imagine him.

Like he's done the ninth and then he's sitting there like, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, what have you gotten yourself into? He's like, you know what? I'm a roll these dice. No. I mean, I get afraid after the fifth time, then I back off because I know what will happen. Then I just sit for a second. But if you're thinking, no, it's just I'm gonna keep going and you don't even know about

the disable feature, then I'm scared a little bit. And I don't even understand it because like I get if it's some website you go to once a year you forget your password, it's his phone, he's on it all day long. He's literally on it, on Laura Ingraham, he's using his phone as a prop. How do you have any time to forget your password? And to be so, he's not even the ballpark, he got 10 tries and he messed it up every time. Yeah, and so I think that it might actually show you that they're breaking down mentally. So we see Rudy on air and he looks like he's got some mental health issues, right?

I don't know if it's his advancing age or what the situation is or I don't know if he was always had mental health issues, right? But it turns out our eyes aren't lying to us, because look, I'm a tech spas. I'd be the first guy to somehow misplace my password, I'd be the first guy to try it four times and get it wrong. But like Nathan, I'd be like, I know my limits, right? I'm not messing around because I don't want this thing disabled, at least I know that. And I'm not up for the top cybersecurity job on the planet.

So, and that goes to a second substantive point about this, which one is the first one, the first One was Donald Trump's personal lawyer has clearly deteriorating mental health, right? And Donald Trump still thought that's the best guy for the job. And then secondly, Donald Trump thought he was the best guy for this job, which means he doesn't care about qualifications at all, at all. He just thinks, cybersecurity, I don't know it, I don't care. All I know is Rudy's a good guy. Rudy says I'm innocent on everything.

So I want Rudy, which job do you want him for? It doesn't matter. Yeah, no, he's just staffing with loyalists. I think the thing that this does to get more substantive, as you were saying, is that this is a metaphor for a type of behavior that is always excused. So he can go and do something wrong 10 times in any other place, and he's allowed to lie 10 times in a row and flip-flop between how he talks about the Ukraine call, and then he's allowed to in plain sight hide the fact that he is trying to make money.

from the Bahraini's or pull out money and this is part of their strategy was to get golf money. That's, you know, to bail Trump out in so many different ways, either through his business, or through this campaign, this upcoming 2020 campaign. So I think that this is just emblematic of the way that these folks live their lives. And they just think there are no consequences. And so thankfully there are people at an Apple store that will relay this story to Gizmodo and here we go.

And this is not the only time that something like this has happened to Rudy Giuliani, obviously there were the butt dials, which is still a thing. I thought it was from the 90s. And yes, he does talk about incredibly serious things, potentially with criminal implications on these butt dials. But also, in November, this is last year, Giuliani accidentally created a hyperlink in one of his tweets ranting about the Mueller probe. A social media user was quick to purchase the G-20.in domain name that he accidentally created and trolled Giuliani by making the link lead to a web page reading Donald J. Trump. as a traitor to our country. Now, that by itself doesn't necessarily make Rudy look bad. Everybody can accidentally make a typo.

It's how he responded to it, tweeting Twitter allowed someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-president message. The same thing, period, no space occurred later and it didn't happen. Don't tell me they're not committed card carrying anti-Trumpers. Time magazine also may fit that description. Fairness, please. What? Inveid my text is something that was...

By the way, and when Apple had to recreate his phone because it was disabled, they put all of his information in the cloud, which then actually endangers his information and maybe Trump's information. So that is the worst possible thing you can do for cybersecurity. I was slightly amend that. It was already in the cloud, that's how they were able to back it up. Giuliani put it on the cloud. You know, your cyber securities are.

Yeah, but Matha had the best point. I hadn't thought of it that way, Mesa. What a metaphor. You get it wrong 10 times in a row, and you still learn nothing. One more quick topic. Okay. Reporters with MoveOn.org are in the congressional buildings, trying to get people on the record as to whether they think what Donald Trump and Giuliani were doing was appropriate.

One person they tried to talk to about this is Representative Don Young of Alaska, and here is how he responded. Is it okay for the president to pressure our government to interview in our elections? Totally up for talking to you guys. Is that an acceptable thing to have happened? It's a simple yes or no question. Is it okay? As we talk to our press secretary.

There you go. Just asking the same question over and over again is not going to get you guys anywhere. But if you talk to Zach in our office, he's our press secretary, he's the best person to talk to you about this and I'll be able to get you something back. Is a U.S. congressman who's headbutted a reporter. But when I tell you the history of Don Young, you'll think, oh yeah, okay, now that makes sense. So here's a guy who is eccentric, to say the least.

He's also deeply corrupt. We'll get to that in a second. When in 2010, the BP had the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he said it's not an environmental disaster. Really? He said, it's a natural phenomenon. I'm pretty sure an oil rig exploding in the middle of the Gulf is not a natural phenomenon. You'll be shocked to find out he takes a lot of money from oil and gas industry.

During congressional hearing, I'm quoting the Washington Post here in the 1990s, while arguing with then U.S. Fish and Wildlife Surface Director Molly Beattie, Young brandished an 18-inch-long walrus penis and pounded it into his. is hand for emphasis. So the head bet by comparison seems relatively tame. If you think that's bad, in 2013, he said, my father had a ranch. We used to hire 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes. Jesus Christ.

He said that in the year 2013, not 1993 or 83 or 73 or 63, 2013. So the headbutt looks downright, like bonoise. compared to the things that he has said and done in the past, and I haven't gotten to the corruption. Right, and then he, I mean, he tried to use that line about people that worked on his father's ranch to suggest that they've become so much efficient. You know it takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now, but in that same year, he said that domestic violence, actually that same day, domestic violence could be avoided if people drink alone. Oh. That's the main reason that domestic violence exists is that people are drinking together. This is this dude.

Domestic violence is a very tragic natural phenomenon. Yeah. So Don Young also backed the famous bridge to nowhere. So it was a very sparsely populated area of Alaska and they want to build an incredibly expensive bridge to it when in fact you could go there by ship and it was no problem. So that was known as the bridge to nowhere. So why do they do that? Because the people who backed young, young politically were going to get paid to build that bridge.

It was a classic case of pork barrel politics when they got caught red-handed, even the Republicans back then had the back pedal and go, yeah, no, no, we were for bridges to somewhere, to somewhere, right? And so he's been taking corporate money and big dollar donor money forever in doing whatever they want. And he just, just sprinkles in absurdity just to, I guess because he's bored. He likes to have fun, and there's never any accountability. So he uses that money to easily deceive the people in Alaska to vote for him, and the people

in Alaska think, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, this guy's looking out for our interests. And meanwhile, he's, you know, helping his corporate donors rob them blind. So that's who Don Young is, and so I'm not at all surprised to see that. And you were thinking, hey, this spokesperson seems so reasonable, well, just ask our press secretary for an interview, we'll answer the question. They never answer the question, they never get back to you, and they never let him answer it. Because then he'd have to answer, yes, Donald Trump asking a foreign government for assistance

in his political campaign is obviously illegal. That's why he doesn't answer it. If it wasn't obviously illegal, it'd be a super easy answer. To be fair, if the question is, did he commit a crime, yes, he didn't answer it. If the question is, do you take your constitutional responsibility seriously, I think he answered it. I will say he's not good either at doing the headbutts. Soccer fans will know that Zinazine Zadan really did a full-on headbutt, and this guy can't

even make the camera jiggle a little bit back, but- Yeah, yeah, he later said he couldn't wait to headbut the Constitution. Oh God, he didn't say that. All right, we got a whole other hour coming up, Anna Kusperin' Ida Rodriguez, it is going to be fantastic. Matha, John, thank you so much. We'll be right back, guys. 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.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.