The Young Turks - BEWARE: Centrist Democrats Are Coming

Episode Date: June 11, 2019

Joe Biden is not helping his electability. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, 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

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. If you like the Young Turks podcast, I think you'll love a lot of the podcasts on the TYT Network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five-star rating. Thank you.

All right, well, Jake Uger, Anna Kasparin, with you guys. Another book of fun today. I interviewed Andrew Yang earlier today here at Rebel Headquarters. It was a terrific interview. This guy, I don't know, you're in one of your moods. I am, I am. So you got to check it out. TYT.com.

It's going up exclusively on our website soon. I asked him about 28 different policies. That guy does policy. He might even out policy. Elizabeth Warren. So furthermore, tonight, LGBTQ special for you guys, so don't miss that. It's Pride Month. I know I had my Pride shirt on from TYT, so please check that out tonight at 8 o'clock Eastern,

a continuation of this show obviously. And by the way, I just found out today that the pride shirt that I was wearing over the weekend were giving some of the proceeds to human rights campaign. That's awesome. I love that. All right. Okay. So that's for this month.

Okay. And a little bit later, I have updates on who has signed the pledge, Jeroms. And I want to make fun of Steve Bannon. That's a great story, lots of great stories. Oh, it's my favorite story. No, my favorite story has to do with raises for members of Congress. I am going to rage. Okay, raging raisins later.

All right, and chemical castration as well. All right, lots to get to. Okay. Great tease. No, but that's in the story, that's in the show. Chemical castration is in the show. Yeah, it is in the show. All right, but let's start with Joe Biden.

Yes. Joe Biden cannot stop himself from talking about how reasonable he thinks the Republican Party is, and how he thinks simply electing Trump out of office will somehow lead to a fantasy world of bipartisanship. The latest example was during a speech in front of lobbyists and donors in Washington. He said the following, with Trump gone, you're going to begin to see things change because these people in Congress know better, they know this isn't what they're supposed to be doing, meaning tucking tail and doing everything that Donald Trump wants to do, right?

He also says the thing that will fundamentally change things is with Donald Trump out of the House, not a joke, it's already beginning. In the House now, you've seen people that, in fact, we're not willing to vote for any Democratic initiative, even if they agreed with it because they didn't want to be the odd person out if it wasn't going to happen. I got the news for you, Joe Biden. You were in the Obama presidency, you were in that administration. They were never willing to play ball with you.

They're never willing to play ball. It's not the 1990s, what are we doing? So he keeps saying it over and over again. The second quarter was from May. The first quote is from right now. And so he learns nothing. And he got criticized the first time around, didn't matter. And people keep, in mainstream media, keep calling it a stumble.

These are not stumbles, whether it's the High Amendment position that he had or this. It's who Joe Biden is. He, in fact, if anything has defined his career, put aside being conservative or progressive or moderate or any of those labels, is that Joe Biden is so. super proud of reaching out across the aisle and doing bipartisanship. And he would brag about it back in the days. And look, there's a whole spectrum throughout all these years. So for a while in the 1980s and 90s, there was some degree of bipartisanship that did get

you some okay results. Those are hard to find, but there are some examples of it. And so it's not all bad at all times. But Biden would also talk about how proud he was to work even earlier. with people like Strom Thurman, who was a segregation, who ran for president under the segregationist ticket, wanted to separate out white people and black people. Now, and Strom Thurman was not very reformed, let's put it that way, he was an extreme right winger. Just recently, Emma Viglin, our own Emma Viglin at TYT Politics and now Rebel headquarters unveiled a video. She found a video

and then this spread like wildfire throughout the rest of the media. Oh, Joe Biden talking about how great Dick Cheney was, and how he built up the powers of the vice presidency, which then Biden used. And so, and so you had terrible times of working with the Republicans, okay times of working with the Republicans. And now we're back to absolutely horrible times where the Republicans are never, ever going to work with you unless you do it all on their terms. And so it just fundamentally misunderstands politics to think that Joe Biden can just whisper

in their ear and hold them really tight. And then Mitch McConnell would be like, oh, right, why don't we help the American people? If that's what you think, you don't understand politics at all, and it's a core meltdown. And you shouldn't, look, I'm not going to vote for anybody who thinks, oh, my God, Mitch McConnell and I are going to work wonders together, and he's going to come towards me. He's not. That means you're going to go towards him. So I can just quickly mention one bipartisan effort that happened in the 1990. Wasn't it welfare reform where essentially Bill Clinton conceded to Republicans quite a bit

when it came to the issue or topic of welfare reform? No, that's true. And so look, I think that that one was a little bit more of a mixed bag, but to be fair to them, and a lot of progressives think it's not a mixed bag at all, that it was terrible. I have a slightly different take on that. Sam Cedar and I once debated that. It's an interesting topic, but they did, for example, get rid of the deficit. So, and some of the ways they did that was not great either, but Bill Clinton, um,

worked with Republicans and they got a surplus, which no Republican president has ever done, certainly in modern times. So that's why I say, look, to be fair, there was some mixed record in the 90s of doing some positive things together, but they also did terrible things, deregulating media, deregulating Wall Street, the 1994 crime bill, which Joe Biden brags about being the author of. Yeah, look, the reason why I bring that up is because whenever you hear about bipartisanship, or when there were bipartisan efforts, it was usually Democrats giving Republicans what they want.

So if that's the kind of bipartisanship we're talking about, I'm not interested. But one other thing I wanted to mention is the narrative that we keep hearing is that Biden is going to do well because of his electability. But remember, he is now in this position, he is putting himself in this position where he's playing patty cakes, as Jake would say, with Republicans. And in the meantime, Republicans are essentially punching him in the face. Now, look, I know that these aren't members of Congress, but Fox News represents the right wing. It just does.

And they're already starting with conspiracy theories about Biden's health. I'll give you one example. Here is a clip from the five on Fox, again, speculating about his health. Doesn't it raise questions and spark curiosity about what's wrong with him? Could there something be secret? Oh, are you going to do that? Yes. Could there secretly be something wrong with him?

I'm going to pass. I'll take that one. Okay, so he didn't show up to the California Democratic Convention. And so they're speculating about why he didn't show up. And if you think that was the end of the conversation, you know, trying to imply that he has some sort of illness, no, it was brought up again by Kennedy. If you talk to Democrats who are working for different campaigns, all of the aggressive gossip whispers, and this is where the action is happening right now in terms of opposition research. It's people having a few drinks at a bar and whispering, well, you know, there's something wrong with the former vice president. And that's what they're actively doing right now.

And I've talked to a couple of these people. And it is a little bit surprising because they're more concerned with taking Biden down now and getting their candidate out there. But what are they whispering about Biden? What is wrong with him? Come on. Do you want me to say? Do you want me to say what I have heard? No, no, don't do I.

Okay. So there's another example. Hannity did the same. He said Joe Biden's tired. He does not have the energy for this. They're already hiding him like they hid Hillary. They don't want him out there. So look, this is a very classic Republican trick and right wing trick.

They take a kernel of truth and then they twist it and then attach a gigantic lie to it. So is it true that Joe Biden is hiding? Yes. Is it true? It's because he has some sort of physical ailment? No, there is no evidence of that at all totally made up. Okay, so why is he hiding? Well, because they, he has the lead and they think, well, our candidate is kind of a knucklehead.

Every time he goes out there, he says something that gets him in trouble, like the topic we're talking about today, where he goes and wants to hug Dick Cheney and Strom Thurman and Mitch McConnell and tell you how much they're gonna work together to do Republican priorities, and that doesn't help him win in a Democratic primary. So there is a reason why his staff is hiding him. He didn't go not only to the California Democratic State Commission, which was a ten, by most of the presidential candidates. But now over the weekend in Cedar Rapids, the Hall of Fame today, 19 out of the 24 candidates

were there, and all the top candidates except Biden weren't there because they don't want Biden out there because he's going to accidentally reveal that he's not right for this primary and this electorate on the Democratic side, because he's old school, not based on his age, but based on his ideas. Right. So for example, sorry, Anna, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are also a little bit older. But their ideas are new and fresh and interesting, and they're having a battle with Andrew Yang on who can propose the most interesting different policy ideas, whereas Biden wants

to go back to the future. That's why they're hiding him, not because of a made-up conspiracy that Fox News has about his health. They do this every single time, and it's always made up. They said that Hillary Clinton was going to have an aneurysm, et cetera. Where's aneurysm all these years later? It was a lie. When are you ever going to learn that Fox News lies over and over again for propaganda

reasons. And again, I bring this all up because while you're trying to have a tea party with the right wing, here's what the right wing is doing, right? And I just want to respond to the conversation that the five had with this clip. I hope they now go and take a look at the oranges of the investigation, the beginnings of that investigation. You look at the origin of the investigation. The Mueller report, I wish covered the oranges, how it started.

Look, I have a lot of issues with Biden when it comes to policy, with the way that he's approaching this election, with the way he approaches Republicans. But if you're gonna argue that Biden has some sort of health issue, you need to take a good, hard look at our president. I'll give Fox News only this tiny bit of credit, which I'm reluctant to do. But the graphic Hayden Biden was kind of fun. Outside of that, look at Donald Trump, are you kidding me? And by the way, it's not a coincidence.

The reason that they attacked Hillary Clinton's mental health and Joe Biden's mental health is because they know that their own candidate has significant mental health problems. And in fact, the oranges of that mental health issue, I don't know if it's related to his age or not, they're like, how Biden is in his 70s, guess who else is in his 70s, Donald Trump? So the projection that they do is stunning, and they do it on purpose to deflect attention from the real significant problems that Donald Trump has. I mean, as we've gone over a million times, no mentally stable person goes out in public and screams, I am a very stable genius.

So no amount of work can cover that up. And Joe Biden, for God's sake, understand the current dynamic in politics today. The Republicans must be defeated. They cannot be negotiated with. And if you don't understand that, you can't be our candidate because not only will you get nothing done for four years. I mean, that is a guarantee that you will get absolutely blocked by the Republicans on every policy you might want to propose, although I don't know what those are because you haven't

stated any of them. But also, you're not even going to win the race because you're going to try to hug Donald Trump and he's going to elbow you in the face and take you apart. You gotta know what you're dealing with, and obviously he doesn't. We got to move on, but just a quick correction. He has proposed what he would do for climate change, which was plagiarized from other plans. I just wanted to put that out there. We covered that story last week.

To be fair, today he said that if he gets elected, we're going to cure cancer. Okay, all right, I hope so. It's a weird thing to promise, and it's not exactly under your control. I know what he's saying. But- Yeah, pizza parties every Friday. I know, right? All right, we got to move on.

What's going on with Kamala? Yes, I'm going to tell you all about that. So before, while I take a note, all right. No, before we go to Kamala, let me give you a couple other updates, okay? So we have the progressive economic pledge, five pillars that we're asking folks to sign on to, and we not only are asking presidential candidates, but we're also asking people in Congress. Guess what?

Who signed today? Representative Jamie Raskin for Maryland. So Congressman Raskin is one of the top progressives in Congress. He's now the third person in Congress to sign. Rokana is signed and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is signed. And we also have three presidential candidates, obviously Bernie Sanders, Marianne Williamson, and Mike Revelde that we've talked about before a lot of the young Turks hosts have signed. That's not at all surprising, of course, but some great progressive groups as well, just Democrats

and Progressive Change Campaign Committee. But it's great that Congressman Raskin, also top constitutional law scholar, has also signed on to it. This has a ton of momentum. Speaking of which, yesterday, I think we were around 5,000 people who'd signed the pledge. Today, 13,761 people have signed the pledge. Damn. Okay.

Almost tripled it. That's right. That is a giant number of people. On top of that, 6,027 people have volunteered to be part of the TYT Army to enforce the pledge. Damn, that's a lot of people. Yes. So after you sign the pledge, a second page pops up, totally optional, guys. The most important thing is to sign the pledge because more people who sign the stronger

it gets, the more congressmen like Jamie Raskin who signed, the stronger it gets. And it's picking up strength as we go along. I'm gonna talk about it tonight on CNN, on Cuomo Prime Time. Back down at 9 o'clock Eastern, okay? And I'm going to debate Anna Navarro on this issue. She's going to represent the establishment Democrats, although she's a Republican, which actually makes sense. And I'm going to represent the progressives.

And so this is to delineate the difference between the two, because they keep saying Biden's a progressive. He has a sign the pledge. My guess is he's not going to sign the pledge. So now, I want to, speaking of volunteers, it gives you a bunch of options as, as hard as organizing, which is not that hard because we show you how to do it, but as easy as participating. Oh, there's an event near me. I'll go participate, sure, right? But I want to give you an excellent example of an American hero who did this before we even started the pledge

and to give you a sense of how much of a difference this can make and how it can work. So his name is John Beale, and he was campaign field director for a just Democrat named Rosa Calderon. You might have seen her on the program. Now, Rosa didn't win, but John, her field director, wound up having a huge impact. Why? He went to go question Kamala Harris about taking corporate PAC money. I want to show you that clip and then hold on to see what happened a couple of weeks later. First, here's John asking your question at a town hall. I'll ask you something extremely specific, okay, because I'm hoping for a very specific answer. Okay. Okay, it has to do with the first question about money in politics, but it's directed

at you personally, and my question is this. If a corporation or a corporate lobby is, wants to give you money for a campaign. Will you tell them thanks but no thanks? Well, it depends. It depends. Wrong answer. Well, that's not the answer you want to hear. It doesn't make it wrong.

So. Yeah, that was cute, except it was the wrong answer. And the person who admitted it was the wrong answer was Kamala Harris. A couple of weeks later, she went on the breakfast. Club with Charlamagne the God. And all of a sudden, a different tune. Let's watch. Yeah, I saw you talking about corporate donations. Yeah. And you said, you would, it depended, depends whether you would take them or not. You know, I was asked, I did a town hall a couple weeks ago in California, and I was asked that question. And I wasn't expecting the question.

And I, and I thought about it afterwards. And I'm going to tell you, Charlemagne, I actually, I think that money has had such an outside influence on politics and especially with the Supreme Court determining citizens united which basically means that big corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money influencing a campaign, right?

We're all supposed to have an equal vote but money has now really tipped the balance between an individual of having equal power in an election to a corporation. So I've actually made a decision since I had that conversation that I'm not going to accept corporate pack checks. Wow. I just, I'm not.

So how are you going to raise money for campaigns and stuff? Well, you know, I've raised so far this year $3 million for my colleagues for the 2018 election cycle. And most of that money has been like an $18, $20 increments. People are turning out. All of a sudden. See, that's why I love what John did. Quiet, Hero of the Revolution, nobody noticed, okay? But he put Kamala Harris to a question.

Now, we're asking you guys to show up in force, 50 people, 100 people. We can, like we did in Cedar Rapids, 250 people to these events and ask them questions like this. Hey, are you in favor of the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, not Medicare for America or public option, Medicare for All, ask those questions, we're gonna show you how to ask those questions. John did it on his own, okay, he went, and look, she said on the breakfast club, it was because he asked me the question that I, now was that the only reason, of course not, the other candidates had already jumped in, but why did the other candidates jump into

Norcorporate PAC money? Because the just Democrats made that a litmus test. And so these things build on top of one another. Imagine if we had, like I said, 50 John Beals, 100, 200, and all across the country, and holding these politicians, these presidential candidates accountable, you can do that. So go volunteer. We're going to show you how to do it. Alison Hartson is in charge of that TYT Army doing this.

And plus, in terms of signing the pledge, look, if a hundred. 100,000 people sign, we're already at over 13,000. 100,000 voters sign that pledge. That's gonna get their attention. You're not gonna get those 100,000 votes unless you agree with these policies. Hey, it's your call, you don't have to, right? But this is how we move politicians to actually become progressive. You know, Jank, I have to say, like, I really appreciate your aspirations.

In fact, I also appreciate aspiration as a financial institution. So I'm just putting that out there. It is not one of these big banks. It's a good place to go if you're looking for a ethical place, an ethical place to put your money. And they will pay you a 2% interest rate for the savings account. So open up an account, go to aspiration.com slash t-y-t. Just putting that in there. You did.

You created an aspiration.com slash t-y-t with a win-win. I'm just trying to get a little more creative, you know. You are. I like how you snuck that in there. All right, guys, let's go win on all those fronts. As you can tell, you're already making a giant difference. Could you imagine if it worked, right? It's going to work.

It's going to work. People are fired up, and it's honestly so inspirational to see it. Because Jake and I have these conversations privately all the time, where we're in this, I feel like I'm in a bunker all day, and we feel alone sometimes. You feel like you're yelling from the rooftops, trying to get some real change in the country, and to finally see it play out in the real world, to see people fired up. and demanding democracy and demanding our representatives actually represent us, it's wonderful. I love it.

Yeah, the most common thing that folks said, and we'll talk more about this in the post game in the last half hour today's show, is we now have hope. And there was a bunch of older viewers, I'm just keeping it real, who said, one guy said, I hadn't been involved in activism in 50 years. Yeah. And he said, I used to do it before, I stopped because there was no hope. Now I have hope again. So by the way, to get the postgame if you don't know, t.yt.com slash trial.

So we'll have that post game tomorrow though, because today we're doing an LGBT special. Oh, great point. Yeah. So we will have that convo though. And here is some more information about the LGBT special tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern time, 5 p.m. Pacific immediately after the second hour of this show. All right, fantastic. Let's take a quick break.

We've got a lot more madness when we return. including the one that Anna's raging about how the House wanted to give itself a raise for politicians. Okay, we'll do that when we're. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The Republic, or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be.

Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must not learn 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. Return. All right, back on a young Turks, Jane and Anna, with you guys, lots of stories. Let's get to them. All right. House Democrats have decided to do a way with legislation that would give themselves a raise. And part of the reason why they've made this decision is because there are voters.

vulnerable Democrats in swing districts who are concerned that giving themselves a raise would not play well with the constituents. Close to a dozen vulnerable swing district Democratic freshmen had submitted or co-sponsored amendments to block the pay raise underscoring the sensitivity of the issue. So I wanna give you some numbers because if members of Congress, who by the way still haven't increased the minimum wage to a living wage, were making $50,000 a year and then they were expected to live in their hometown or wherever they were elected and then constantly travel back and forth to Washington, D.C. and they need to have a place in Washington, D.C. I get it, I get

it. But they're making damn near $200,000, okay? So let me give you the numbers. First off, members of Congress have had their pay frozen since 2009. So this is the reason why some members of the House want to increase or give themselves a raise. But some lawmakers in recent years, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, have advocated for returning to the annual cost of living adjustments, meaning, hey, let's adjust our pay based on inflation. Yeah. So by the way, I have a plan to fix this, so we'll get to that in a second. Okay, so I want to skip ahead and give you a sense of how much they're actually making.

Let's go to Graphic 13, rank and file members of Congress currently earn $174,000 per year. Members of leadership though can earn more with the speaker making 223,500 annually and the House majority and minority leaders earning $193,400. Now I also want to draw your attention to a headline that I thought was relevant to this conversation. The typical U.S. Congress member is 12 times richer than the typical American household. Of course. Yep, the median member of the U.S. Congress was worth at least $1.1 million. I'm surprised it's that low.

Yeah. For them, I mean, for a regular person, that's an astounding amount of money. Well, look, I was actually gonna, Steady Hoyer wants this race. And I was gonna get a little salty with him. But then I looked into his net value or net worth. Yeah. And I was pretty shocked to find that his net worth is $76,000. Now, no.

Yes. That's according to open secrets. That can't be true. There is a little caveat though. They do not have to report the value of their home, right? So he might have a home that's worth a lot of money, I don't know. You're not forced to disclose that and it's not included in your net value. But in this case, it is for everyone else.

Like if you're being analyzed by a bank for a loan, of course they're going to include that. But in the case of members of Congress, they don't include that. It's inconceivable that he has that little money. Yeah, it seems weird. No way. I don't know where he's keeping it, okay? But now let's talk about the essence of the issue though. Look, there actually is a reason to give them raises if things were working normal, which

they're not anywhere near normal. So for example, if we banned private financing of elections and we have public financing, and we've got representatives that are actually working for us, but you can't ban lobbying, Not really, right? So then they're gonna have an incentive to actually become lobbyists and make 10 times as much or five times as much, et cetera. And AOC has made this point. Well, okay, if we're gonna ban them from becoming lobbyists as her and Ted Cruz amazingly

are working on together, then okay, you could raise their wages so that they don't have to like be dying to go work as lobbyists and angling for that, et cetera. But right now the corruption is rampant. So they're, I mean, so this is not a situation where I would say like, oh my God, poor congressmen, they really need a race. There needs to be a law passed that prevents them from working as lobbyists, period, right? Yes. Let me tell you something.

There's no amount of money that we can give them in the form of a raise to dissuade them from working as lobbyists. They end up making millions in some cases as lobbyists. So we're gonna pay them millions of dollars a year to do nothing in Congress? No. I agree with that, but again, it's because the corruption is near 100% at this point. So if we could begin to fix the system, then I actually think that paying not only Congress but their staffers, a lot of money is not such a bad thing about like, oh my God, I can't

believe we're giving money to politicians. It's a lot better that we give it to them than they're incentivized to go join the bad guys and rip us off because that'll cost us way more money. But now, back to Earth and the reality of today, look, here's my simple proposal. How about we track congressional wages with the wages of the American workers? Oh, yeah. So, because wages have stagnated and flatlined for the last 40 years. So we'll give you as much of a raise as you've given us.

Oh, I love it. Okay. Now, and you can say, hey, no one congressman at any one time is responsible for the wages over the last 40 years, but is Congress largely responsible? for that overall? Yes, because they're the ones who pass the law saying you gotta pay more in payroll tax. Corporations have to pay less in taxes overall. I'm gonna deregulate the corporations.

I'm gonna take away more and more collective bargaining rights from workers so you can't raise your wages. I'm gonna take corporate donor money and serve them and make sure that they can keep your wages incredibly low. No, so you did this. You created a situation where our wages haven't gone up in 40 years. So you'll excuse us if we don't share. get a tear for your wages.

I need to give you a few more numbers because it just kind of blew my mind. So my assumption was, yeah, they're rich members of Congress, people who became wealthy before they were elected into office. And the majority of those people are Republicans, but that's not necessarily true. In fact, the numbers have been changing considerably in recent years. So first, the median net worth of a senator was $3.2 million versus $900,000 for members of the House of Representatives. So this is based on the same study that I had mentioned earlier, right?

Now if you look at Democrats versus Republicans on their wealth, look at this graph. It blew me away, all right? So if you look through the years, of course, Republicans were worth way more and Democrats were worth less. But as the years went on between 2004 to 2015, at some point, Democrats actually became more wealthy than Republicans did. So let me explain why that phenomenon is happening. Does that mean that the Democratic Party is becoming more corrupt?

Partly. And so, but let's dive into the details. So the way that it works is, it's not that they make more money when they're in office. So for example, Joe Biden actually did not make very much money for a long, long time as he was a senator, because at that point, he couldn't cash in in a lot of the ways that you can after you leave office. That's not what's happening. Largely what's happening is they're originally picking richer people to run for office.

So throughout the years, they kept picking richer and richer and richer people. Why? Because that's their main criteria for selection. I have a friend who thought about running for Congress in Virginia, and he went and talked all the way up to the governor and the head of the party in Virginia, and they never once asked them a policy question. They just asked, how much money do you have, do you run a business, and how many rich people Do you know? I'm not kidding and I'm not exaggerating because oh, we got to raise money,

we got to raise money, we got to raise money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. That's right. So if a candidate has a lot of money or has run their own business, they're like, yes, if you're just a regular person, you run a cash register, you're a teacher, you're a plumber, they're like, we're like, never getting to support you. In fact, we'll get us and our allies to spend a lot of money against you in the primaries, and And that is how they weed out the average American, and that is how the Democratic Party got the label of being elitist, even though the Republican Party supports positions and policies that are way more elitist, much more in favor of the rich.

But Democrats have gone along with that quietly a lot of times, either by voting with them or quietly surrendering without a fight. That's because they're picking rich people to begin with because of the corrupt system that we have. Exactly. Let's move on to climate change because Mike Pompeo can't stop himself from saying incredibly stupid things. During a recent interview with the Washington Times, which is a right wing outlet, Mike Pompeo,

Secretary of State, said, look, if the ramifications of climate change become too unbearable, people will just get up and move, they'll just adjust. Let me give you some of his exact quotes. He says, we will do things necessary as the climate changes. As for the risks associated with climate change, the climate's been changing a long time. He also said societies reorganize, we move to different places, we develop technology and innovation. No, but so there's a couple things that we gotta talk about that.

Number one, he keeps saying like, oh, but we'll adjust. Yeah, that's your job. Here the Secretary of State, you control the government along with your colleagues in the the Trump administration, and we're the richest country in the world, and we are one of the greatest contributors to climate change. So your job is to adjust, and the way that you would do that is you would do climate trade agreements like we did in Paris, and you would rebuild the energy infrastructure of the country, create millions of jobs, et cetera, and empower scientists to come up with different ideas.

Instead, you're doing the exact opposite. Well, it's just at a later time, and I'll just sit here on my ass and make sure we do nothing while the planet burns. And then the second part of it is, he says like, well, you know, the planet's been going through climate change for a long time. What's the big deal? First of all, inaccurate. Has there been different climates throughout the history of Earth?

Of course. But lately, it has greatly intensified the 16 out of the 17 hottest years ever recorded by man were in the last 16 out of 17 years, right? So those are the hottest years ever that we've ever recorded. And the scientists all say it is linked to what we are doing as men. And we need to adjust right now, not at a later date while the planet burns. But if we said, for example, hey, you know what, the planet always adjusts. So remember when the meteor came and hit the Earth and eventually the planet was fine.

Well, that's true. But in the meanwhile, almost everything on Earth died. So yeah, Earth will survive, but we might not. So if you're gonna adjust, now's the time to do it. And of course, he's doing the exact opposite. Well, okay, so a few things. First, just note how disconnected the wealthy and the powerful are from the rest of us. Because while he might be able to up and leave, up and move if the environment he's living

in and the town he's living in is underwater, the vast majority of people can't do that. In fact, this is a real national security issue. The Pentagon acknowledges it as a national security issue. people are going to be displaced, and we're already having enough trouble trying to figure out how to handle an influx of refugees. How are things gonna pan out when the climate is so unbearable that mass groups of people will have to leave their homes and find a place for refuge? One other thing is, climate change, I mean, it doesn't pick and choose which areas are going

to be affected, the entire world is gonna be affected, but some parts are gonna see the ramifications of climate change earlier than other parts. And I noticed, because I like to do research on the housing market and all of that stuff, I noticed that there's a lot of wealthy people who are purchasing homes in Vancouver because some of the science, and I'm not even sure if this is completely accurate, some of the science indicates that Vancouver is one of the places that will remain safe as the climate heats up. My point is, yeah, the wealthy will find ways to protect themselves.

But the vast majority of us are gonna continue dealing with the losses. We're gonna continue dealing with getting displaced, our homes being destroyed by hurricanes, and a government that turns its back on us time and time again when these situations arise. There is one kernel of truth in what he's saying, and it's not a good one, it's a disastrous one. People will have to move. So some island nations are already being swallowed up by the rising sea, and so that's a reality. But of course, Republicans here go, they're not Americans, what do I care?

So their entire nation got wiped out, who cares, right? I understand, but how about us? First of all, I don't agree, that's horrible. But look, I don't think South Beach and New Orleans are going to make it. And when they go under, because the scientists aren't wrong, they said this all the way back in the 1980s when I was skeptical, and even earlier than that, back when I was a knucklehead Republican, and I was like, well, the jury's out, man, I don't see it. Well, the jury came in.

out the scientists were right. And everything they've said has been, if anything, too conservative. It's going faster than they imagined and then they predicted, right? So when we lose those cities, if we do, I hope we don't, I hope we figure it out in time. But if we have people like Pompeo and Trump in charge, we're definitely not going to figure it out in time. Well, it's going to cost us arguably trillions of dollars. Absolutely.

So now when you go to fix it with Green New Deal, they say, oh, it's going to cost too much. Well, how much is it going to cost when we lose several American cities? Exactly. But they think, you know what? You're gonna pay that bill, but not ExxonMobil, not Chevron. So they socialize the costs and privatize the gains. That's exactly right. And Pompeo appears to be taking his talking points from an internet whizkit.

Here's who I'm talking about. If it does happen, the rate they say it's going to, it's supposed to happen over the course of the next hundred years. So let's say, let's say for the sake of argument, that all of the water levels around the world rise by, let's say, five feet over the next hundred years, say 10 feet by the next hundred years. And it puts all the low-lying areas on the coast underwater, right? Which, let's say all of that happens. You think that people aren't going to just sell their homes and move?

Sell their homes to whom? Like, who's going to buy a home that's about to be underwater, smarty pants? Whiskid. I mean, come on. Hey, my house is three feet underwater. How much would you like to buy it for? This is the intellectual dark web? Real intellectual.

Yeah, good luck with that business strategy. Hey, if you, and last part of this irony here is they're like, I don't worry about it. The scientists will figure it out eventually. In fact, Pompeo also said, we will figure out responses to this that addresses these issues in important and fundamental ways. When, brother, when? But the irony is they say, well, I believe in the scientists, they're gonna figure it out later. I got news through you, the scientist figured it out now.

They're the ones saying, 99% of them are saying, it's happening, and it's not later, it's right now, it's right now, the temperatures are rising, the storms are getting more extreme. By the way, 78% of Americans believe that climate change is happening, including a great majority of Republicans. It isn't an issue of having to persuade more people. It's that the Republican Party is corrupt, lock, stock, and barrel. And so are their propagandists like Ben Shapiro and all their talk show hosts who get paid by those corporate interests to lie to you.

We don't have to persuade more Republicans or more Americans, we just have to end the corruption. If Mike Pompeo and his colleagues continue to take checks in the form of campaign donations and independent expenditures from ExxonMobil, it doesn't matter if it's 88 or 98% of Americans who believe climate change is happening. There still won't do anything because it's the corruption, stupid. You know, I can't believe I'm doing this, I never thought I would ever do this. But the Washington Times, make no mistake, is a right wing outlet, right? And I've seen them smear people on the left over and over again.

But to their credit, they did call out Pompeo and his ties to the fossil fuel industry. And they mentioned that the fossil fuel industry was his top donor when he was serving in the house. So I didn't know that, I'm glad you gave that information. But now that I've learned it, I will say, of course, of course it is. They brought in Scott Pruitt who took, his top donors are again, the oil companies, the energy companies, and they put him as the head of the EPA so that he wouldn't protect the environment, even though it's called the Environmental Protection Agency, or as Trump would call it, the DEP.

They're doing something wrong at the DEP. God, all right. We got to take a break, as Brett calls it, a breakie-breaky. So we're going to do that. When we come back, we have some foreign policy for you. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech.

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All right. House Democrats have decided to do away with legislation that would give themselves a raise. And part of the reason why they've made this decision is because there are vulnerable Democrats in swing districts who are concerned that giving themselves a raise would not play well with the constituents. Close to a dozen vulnerable swing district Democratic freshmen had submitted or co-sponsored amendments to block the pay raise underscoring the sensitivity of the issue. So I want to give you some numbers. Because if members of Congress, who by the still haven't increased the minimum wage to a living wage. We're making $50,000 a year and then they were expected to live in their hometown or wherever

they were elected and then constantly travel back and forth to Washington, D.C., and they need to have a place in Washington, D.C. I get it, I get it. But they're making damn near $200,000, okay? So let me give you the numbers. First off, members of Congress have had their pay frozen since 2009. So this is the reason why some members of the House want to increase or give themselves a raise. But some lawmakers in recent years, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, have advocated

for returning to the annual cost of living adjustments, meaning, hey, let's adjust our pay based on inflation, right? So by the way, I have a plan to fix this, so we'll get to that in a second. Okay, so I want to skip ahead and give you a sense of how much they're actually making. Let's go to Graphic 13, rank and file members of Congress currently earn $174,000 per year. Members of leadership though can earn more with the speaker making 223,500 annually and the House Majority and Minority Leaders earning $193,400. Now I also want to draw your attention to a headline that I thought was relevant to this conversation.

The typical U.S. Congress member is 12 times richer than the typical American House. household. Also, yep, the median member of the U.S. Congress was worth at least $1.1 million. I'm surprised it's that low. Yeah. For them, I mean, for a regular person, that's an astounding amount of money. Well, look, I was actually gonna, Steady Hoyer wants this race, and I was gonna get a little salty with him.

But then I looked into his net value or net worth. Yeah. And I was pretty shocked to find that his net worth is $76,000. Now, yes, they have, that's according to open secrets. That can't be true. There is a little caveat, though. They do not have to report the value of their home, right? So he might have a home that's worth a lot of money.

I don't know. You're not forced to disclose that, and it's not included in your net value. But in this case, it is for everyone else. Like if you're being, you know, analyzed by a bank for a loan, of course they're going to include that. But in the case of members of Congress, they don't include that. It's inconceivable that he has that little money. Yeah, it seems weird. No way.

I don't know where he's keeping it, okay? But now let's talk about the essence of the issue though. Look, there actually is a reason to give them raises if things were working normal, which they're not anywhere near normal. So for example, if we banned private financing of elections and we have public financing and we've got representatives that are actually working for us, but you can't ban lobbying, Not really, right? So then they're going to have an incentive to actually become lobbyists and make 10 times as much

or five times as much, et cetera. And AOC has made this point. Well, okay, if we're going to ban them from becoming lobbyists as her and Ted Cruz amazingly are working on together, then, okay, you could raise their wages so that they don't have to like be dying to go work as lobbyists and angling for that, et cetera. But right now, the corruption is rampant. So they're, I mean, so this is not a situation where I would say like, oh my God, poor congressmen, they really need a race. There needs to be a law passed that prevents them from working as lobbyists, period, right?

Yes. Let me tell you something. There's no amount of money that we can give them in the form of a raise to dissuade them from working as lobbyists. They end up making millions in some cases as lobby. So we're going to pay them millions of dollars a year to do nothing in Congress? No, I agree with that. But again, it's because the corruption is near 100% at this point. So if we could begin to fix the system, then I actually think that paying not only Congress

but their staffers, a lot of money is not such a bad thing about like, oh my God, I can't believe we're giving money to politicians. It's a lot better that we give it to them than they're incentivized to go join the bad guys and rip us off because that'll cost us way more money. But now, back to Earth and the reality of today, look, here's my simple proposal. How about we track congressional wages with the wages of the American workers? Oh, yeah. So, because wages have stagnated and flatlined for the last 40 years.

So we'll give you as much of a raise as you've given us. Oh, I love it. Okay. Now, and you can say, hey, no one congressman at any one time is responsible for the wages over the last 40 years, but is Congress largely responsible? for that overall? Yes, because they're the ones who passed the law saying you've got to pay more in payroll tax.

Corporations have to pay less in taxes overall. I'm gonna deregulate the corporations, I'm gonna take away more and more collective bargaining rights from workers so you can't raise your wages. I'm gonna take corporate donor money and serve them and make sure that they can keep your wages incredibly low. No, so you did this. You created a situation where our wages haven't gone up in 40 years. So you'll excuse us if we don't share.

I need to give you a few more numbers because it just kind of blew my mind. So my assumption was, yeah, there are rich members of Congress, people who became wealthy before they were elected into office. And the majority of those people are Republicans, but that's not necessarily true. In fact, the numbers have been changing considerably in recent years. So first, the median net worth of a senator was $3.2 million versus $900,000 for members of the House of Representatives. So this is based on the same study that I had mentioned earlier, right?

Now if you look at Democrats versus Republicans on their wealth, look at this graph. It blew me away, all right? So if you look through the years, of course, Republicans were worth way more and Democrats were worth less. But as the years went on between 2004 to 2015, at some point Democrats actually became more wealthy than Republicans did. So let me explain why that phenomenon has happened. Does that mean that the Democratic Party is becoming more corrupt?

Partly. And so, but let's dive into the details. So the way that it works is, it's not that they make more money when they're in office. So for example, Joe Biden actually did not make very much money for a long, long time as he was a senator, because at that point, he couldn't cash in in a lot of the ways that you can after you leave office. That's not what's happening. what's happening is they're originally picking richer people to run for office. So throughout the years, they kept picking richer and richer and richer people.

Why? Because that's their main criteria for selection. I have a friend who thought about running for Congress in Virginia, and he went and talked all the way up to the governor and the head of the party in Virginia, and they never once asked them a policy question. They just asked, how much money do you have, do you run a business, and how many rich people do you know? I'm not kidding and I'm not exaggerating. Because, oh, we gotta raise money, we gotta raise money, we gotta raise money, we gotta raise money. Money, money, money, money.

That's right. So if a candidate has a lot of money or has run their own business, they're like, yes, if you're just a regular person, you run a cash register, you're a teacher, you're a plumber, they're like, we're not, never getting to support you. In fact, we'll get us and our allies to spend a lot of money against you in the primaries, and that is how they weed out the average American, and that is how the Democratic Party got the label of being elitist. Even though the Republican Party supports positions and policies that are way more elitist, much more in favor of the rich. But Democrats have gone along with that quietly a lot of times, either by voting with them

or quietly surrendering without a fight. That's because they're picking rich people to begin with because of the corrupt system that we have. Exactly. Let's move on to climate change because Mike Pompeo can't stop himself from saying incredibly stupid things. During a recent interview with the Washington Times, which is a right wing outlet, Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, said, look, if the ramifications of climate change

become too unbearable, people will just get up and move. They'll just adjust. Let me give you some of his exact quotes. He says, we will do things necessary as the climate changes. As for the risks associated with climate change, the climate's been changing a long time. He also said societies reorganize, we move to different places, we develop technology and innovation. No, but so there's a couple of things that we've got to talk about that. Number one, he keeps saying like, oh, but we'll adjust.

Yeah, that's your job. Here, the Secretary of State, you control the government along with your colleagues in the Trump administration, and we're the richest country in the world, and we are one of the greatest contributors to climate change. So your job is to adjust. And the way that you would do that is you would do climate trade agreements like we did in Paris, and you would rebuild the energy infrastructure of the country, create millions of jobs, et cetera, and empower scientists to come up with different ideas.

Instead, you're doing the exact opposite. Well, it's just at a later time, and I'll just sit here on my ass and make sure we do nothing while the planet burns. And then the second part of it is he says like, well, you know, the planet's been going through climate change for a long time. What's the big deal? First of all, inaccurate. Has there been different climates throughout the history of Earth? Of course.

But lately, it has greatly intensified the 16 out of the 17 hottest years ever recorded by man were the last, in the last 16 out of 17 years, right? So those are the hottest years ever that we've ever recorded. And the scientists all say it is linked to what we are doing as men. And we need to adjust right now, not at a later date, while the planet burns. But if we said, for example, hey, you know what, the planet always adjust. So remember when the meteor came and hit the Earth and eventually the planet was fine. Well, that's true. But in the meanwhile, almost everything on Earth died.

So yeah, Earth will survive, but we might not. So if you're gonna adjust, now's the time to do it. And of course, he's doing the exact opposite. Well, okay, so a few things. First, just note how disconnected the wealthy and the powerful are from the rest of us. Because while he might be able to up and leave, up and move if the environment he's living in and the town he's living in is underwater, the vast majority of people can't do that. In fact, this is a real national security issue.

The Pentagon acknowledges it as a national security issue. People are going to be displaced, and we're already having enough trouble trying to figure out how to handle an influx of refugees? How are things gonna, you know, pan out when the climate is so unbearable that mass groups of people will have to leave their homes and find a place for refuge? One other thing is, climate change, I mean, it doesn't pick and choose which areas are going to be affected. The entire world is going to be affected, but some parts are going to see the ramifications

of climate change earlier than other parts. And I noticed, because I like to do research on the housing market and all of that stuff, I noticed that there's a lot of wealthy people who are purchasing homes in Vancouver. Because some of the science, and I'm not even sure if this is completely accurate, some of the science indicates that Vancouver is one of the places that will remain safe as the climate heats up. My point is, yeah, the wealthy will find ways to protect themselves. But the vast majority of us are going to continue dealing with the losses.

We're gonna continue dealing with getting displaced, our homes being destroyed by hurricanes, and a government that turns its back on us time and time again when these situations arise. There is one kernel of truth in what he's saying, and it's not a good one. It's a disastrous one. People will have to move. So some island nations are already being swallowed up by the rising sea, and so that's a reality. But of course, Republicans here go, they're not Americans, what do I care?

So their entire nation got wiped out, who cares, right? I understand, but how about us? First of all, I don't agree, that's horrible. But look, I don't think South Beach and New Orleans are gonna make it. And when they go under, because the scientists aren't wrong, they said this all the way back in the 1980s when I was skeptical, and even earlier than that, back when I was a knucklehead Republican, and I was like, well, the jury's out, man, I don't say it. Well, the jury came in.

Turns out the scientists were right. And everything they've said has been, if anything, too conservative. It's going faster than they imagined and then they predict it, right? So when we lose those cities, if we do, I hope we don't, I hope we figure it out in time. But if we have people like Pompeo and Trump in charge, we're definitely not going to figure it out in time. Well, it's going to cost us arguably trillions of dollars. Absolutely. So now when you go to fix it with Green New Deal, they say, oh, it's going to cost too much.

Well, how much is it going to cost when we lose several American cities? Exactly. But they think, you know what? You're gonna pay that bill, but not ExxonMobil, not Chevron. So they socialize the costs and privatize the gains. That's exactly right. And Pompeo appears to be taking his talking points from an internet whizkit. Here's who I'm talking about.

If it does happen, the rate they say it's going to, it's supposed to happen over the course of the next 100 years. So let's say, let's say, for the sake of argument, that all of the water levels around the world rise by, let's say 5 feet over the next 100 years, say 10 feet by the next 100 years. And it puts all the low-lying areas on the coast underwater, right? Which, let's say all of that happens. You think that people aren't going to just sell their homes and move? Sell their homes to whom? Like, who's going to buy a home that's about to be underwater, smarty pants? Whiskid.

I mean, come on. Hey, my house is three feet underwater. How much would you like to buy it for? This is the intellectual, dark web? Real intellectual. Yeah, good luck with that business strategy. If you, and last part of this irony here is they're like, I don't worry about it. The scientists will figure it out eventually.

In fact, Pompeo also said, we will figure out responses to this that addresses these issues in important and fundamental ways. When, brother, when? But the irony is they say, well, I believe in the scientists, they're going to figure it out later. I got news through the scientists figured it out now. They're the ones saying, 99% of them are saying, it's happening, and it's not later. It's right now.

It's right now. The temperatures are rising. The storms are getting more extreme. By the way, 78% of Americans believe that climate change is happening, including a great majority of Republicans. It isn't an issue of having to persuade more people. It's that the Republican Party is corrupt, lock, stock, and barrel. And so are their propagandists like Ben Shapiro and all their talk show hosts who get paid

by those corporate interests to lie to you. We don't have to persuade more Republicans or more Americans. We just have to end the corruption. If Mike Pompeo and his colleagues continue to take checks in the form of campaign donations and independent expenditures from ExxonMobil, it doesn't matter if it's 88 or 98% of Americans who believe climate change is happening. This still won't do anything because it's the corruption, stupid. You know, I can't believe I'm doing this, I never thought I would ever do this.

But the Washington Times, make no mistake, is a right wing outlet, right? And I've seen them smear people on the left over and over again. But to their credit, they did call out Pompeo and his ties to the fossil fuel industry. And they mentioned that the fossil fuel industry was his top donor when he was serving in the house. So I didn't know that, I'm glad you gave that information. But now that I've learned it, I will say, of course, of course it is. They brought in Scott Pruitt who took his top donors were again, the oil companies, the energy

companies, and they put him as the head of the EPA so that he wouldn't protect the environment, even though it's called the Environmental Protection Agency, or as Trump would call it, the DEP. They're doing something wrong at the DEP. Okay, so- God, all right, we gotta take a break, as Brett calls it, a breakie-breaky. So we're gonna do that, and when we come back, we have some foreign policy for you. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.