The Young Turks - Big Bird v. Big Turd

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

Hosts: Francesca Fiorentini & David Shuster Big Bird got his Pfizer shot, and conservatives, including Ted Cruz, are calling it vaccine "propaganda." Former President Trump doubled down on his criticism of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans who voted in favor of passing a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. White House adviser hijacks Fox News interview to blast "absurd" and "disrespectful" Peter Doocy. Residents of heavily Trump counties were more than three times more likely to die from COVID in October than those in heavily Biden counties — 25 per 100,000 versus 7.8 per 100,000. Terry Bradshaw slams Aaron Rodgers over vaccine comments. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome everybody to the Young Turks. My name is Francesca Fiorentini here with David Schuster. Because Anna and Jenk are both sick today. Sure. They left it all on the table last week, David.

I don't know if you were tuning in, I'm sure you were, but also busy with your own. own work. And I think after that Rokana debate, an interview, Jenk was like, peace. My work here is done. Or it could be that they simply had an axe to grind Francesca with you and me and said, okay, you guys take over this Lamborghini kind of machine and see how you drive it. Oh, we're going to drive it, baby. We're like, yeah, we're definitely babysitting the car. We're like the valet. Sure, we'll take care of it slash, you know, take it for a spin. But thank you guys all for being here, make sure you are liking and sharing that stream right now. We get so much good news. And by good, I mean bad and funny and interesting news.

It's never really good, is it? But David's with me for the first hour and the second hour, Adrian Lawrence, of course also from Rebel HQ is going to be in the hot seat taking us through all these different stories. So buckle up. It's going to be good. David, what's up first? Well, let's start with something that's kind of family friendly. So Big Bird, Big Bird has ruffled some conservative feathers this week after announcing that he had been vaccinated for COVID-19. As a lot of you know, Big Bird has been a fixture on television, children's television since the 1960s. He's officially though six years old. And the announcement this week from Big Bird, and there's Ted Cruz who wasn't happy about it,

the announcement this week from Big Bird was intended to try to help people understand that kids are now approved to get the vaccine. Here's what the tweet said from Big Bird. I got the COVID-19 vaccine today. My wing is feeling a little sore, but I'll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy. Well, President Biden liked it, and he tweeted in reply, good on you, big bird. Getting vaccinated is the best way to keep your whole neighborhood safe. So far so good, right?

Well, let's talk about Republican Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. He then tweeted government propaganda for your five-year-old. Even though Texas seems to be quite sort of popular for a lot of families in terms of the immunization for kids. Here's what Rachel Parenthood wrote in the Washington Post, following the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention sign off last week on smaller doses of the Pfizer-Biotech coronavirus vaccine for children's ages 5 to 11. One Texas Children's Hospital averaged a thousand appointments an hour when it opened signups after the FDA green light. In the midst of all of this, CNN decided to do something of a video with all this, Big Bird and his friends from Sesame Street were on CNN to push for vaccinations. Watch. I'm a little scared to get the shot because I don't like needles. Will it hurt? Oh, it's okay to be scared and to have some of those big feelings. Big Bird, can I tell you something? I'm a grownup and I don't really like needles either.

You know what I like to do? I like to bring something from home that might make me feel safe like a favorite. Or a toy maybe? Oh, does Rosita have a boo-boo? Oh, oh no, because this is from my COVID vaccine. My mommy and my poppy took me to get it this morning. I was a little scared, big bird, but my mommy and my poppy helped me. And little Gadita helped me too. And you know what?

Before I knew it, the shot was over and I had this cool vaccine, you know, band-aid on my arm. Mm-hmm. Well, so look, it's all fun in games is to help kids understand that there's a vaccine that they're going to get like the flu vaccine, like other vaccines. And your friends from Sesame Street are there to help you and make you sure, make you understand, hey, it's all good. But then of course, there's Fox News, the news organization, self-proclaimed news organization, which declared war on Christmas for so many years, has now opened fire on Sesame Street. Watch.

That was weird. Sanja Gupta should be talking to mommy and puppy. and not to little kids on this, what looks like a big pharma commercial on Sesame Street. It's so creepy. By the way, if they can be booked on CNN, they have an open invitation to come on Fox & Friends, a whole Sesame Street cast. Oh yeah? Come on in? Yeah, I think you should book them and ask them about it. The science behind the risk to kids on COVID is just so stark and clear. They're not at risk to either transmit or get seriously sick from COVID.

And yet, as you point out, so few, none really, long-term studies. on the effect to children. And yet this type of propaganda is like, oh, yeah, that's definitely what we need to do. Leave it, of course, to Fox News to lie to families as they're talking about Sesame Street about the science. But in any case, Francesca, what's your making of this? Oh my gosh. There's just so much to unpack in all of that. First of all, I think we all want to see Fox and friends discuss the vaccine with Sesame Street characters. Because it's like for the first time you'd have like an actual meeting of minds, you know, like they're at the same level, they read at the same level, they count up to the same number, you know, 11 is like scary for them, you know, that kind of thing. So I say go for it. I think that would be really, really funny. I would love to see them just debating Big Bird on it and little Rosita and berating them because, you know, that's what they're out for. It's interesting because this is actually not the first time that the right has targeted. Sesame Street. So there's context like Newt Gingrich wanted to defund the Corporation of Republic

Broadcasting. Remember the Jerry Falwell Telitubby stuff. That was all on PBS. Oh yeah, tinky winky is, you know, encouraging people to be, you know, gay. Like what? You know, so again, they've been trying to cancel things from well before when they accuse the left of supposedly canceling, but but it's just so amazing to me that something harmless, adorable, come on, Rosita, please, they would be so triggered by. And that's only because they have nothing else to go on. And David, let me ask you, like you're the parent of two small children, right? Do you feel like this is rushed? Do you feel like it happened, oh, real quick? You know, I'm assuming if you've been at home with them quarantining, it couldn't happen soon enough.

We're talking almost two years now. I know, by the way, the science on all of this has been going on for 10 years, and we're taking essentially a third of the dose that is given to parents to give to kids. There's been all sorts of kids who've gotten this already. The studies are clear that there's nothing wrong with getting the vaccine. But here's my issue with Fox News and also the Republicans. Maybe there's an argument. I guess in some universe, there's an argument about whether the government should be, I don't know, funding community television to try to spread positive health news to families. Okay, that's an argument. But that's not the argument. that they're making now, they're accusing this of somehow being propaganda because the characters in public television are trying to tell children, hey, it's safe, it's okay to get a vaccine. And oh, by the way, PBS, Public Television, Big Bird, they have been promoting vaccines for almost like 50 years back to 1972. In fact, here is a clip of Big Bird from 1972, encouraging people to say, hey, vaccines are okay. Watch. What's going on down at this door. I wonder what's kind of funny. I mean, it's strange. I mean, there's, well, there's all kinds of people and they're all in a line and they don't look

like they're buying candy. And there's a sign that says, don't wait, vaccinate. And there goes a boy with a balloon coming out of the store. Hey, what's going on here? Wow. Hey, I know what I'm going to do right away. What are you going to do? I want to get in the line. Okay, so look, if Francesca, in my view is like, if Republicans don't like Big Bird,

if they don't like the vaccines, if they don't want their kids to get the vaccines, And it's fine, homeschool your kids, never leave your house, make sure the parents never leave because you don't want to risk that your neighbors or people in community might somehow pick up the disease because somebody your family gets it and spreads it. So create your own little bubble. And then you can say whatever you want about the vaccines, about people who support the vaccines and about Big Bird. But I mean, it just seems like such hypocrisy from Republicans on this. No, obviously. And in fact, actually, I think there's a broader discussion to be had about the ways that us having to shelter in place, to not go out, to not talk to people, to sort of be very atomized from one another. In a way, that's kind of what Republicans overall, they like. That's the way they think a community should work, right? Where we should live in fear from one another. We should be armed to the teeth. We shouldn't trust people. We call the cops on everybody. You know, we kick out home. homeless folks, all kinds of ways that actually they were perfectly fine with a pre-vaccination America, which was like, yeah, let's be all scared in our homes. One bone I have to pick, obviously, with Fox and Friends, and I forgot who said it, but it doesn't matter, they're all the same interchangeable candall, is that kids can spread and can contract COVID-19. My uncle was in fact infected by his grandchild. And his grandchild thankfully survived. And my uncle sadly did not

survive. And his kids were lucky enough to be going to a private school. Now what happens in private schools? In private schools, you were not required to stop classes. You didn't have to stay at home and take classes online like many children in public schooling. So what do that mean? It's a small, small class size, everyday testing, there's more resources. But guess what it couldn't do? It couldn't help my uncle. It didn't save him. It didn't prevent his grandchild from sadly getting, getting, and I tell this because

I think people need to understand that this has happened a lot. And it's not just happened, you know, with people who weren't careful. It's happened with people who thought they were being careful because they were in small classrooms or homeschools or, you know, yes, private tutoring. It can happen anywhere to anyone in any socioeconomic status. So the idea that you can also buy your way out of this is BS. But yeah, you know, please take it out on Big Bird. Right. And the other part about it is, I mean, like I just find it remarkable

when Republicans and Fox and Friends, they constantly show that they are more snowflakes. They are weaker than their own children. Because if you ask kids, hey, what's it like wearing a mask? Well, you know, sometimes Johnny doesn't talk very much when he puts the mask on, but the kids are fine with it. It isn't causing some huge damage to them. They put the mask on and they just sort of do it. It's the parents who are projecting their anxieties onto the kids. And you know, kids, maybe they're a little upset when they see the little needle when they get their flu vaccine and they cry and mommy and daddy have to hold them or whatever it is. And then they get it and they're fine and they're happy

because they get a sticker. It's the same thing with this vaccine. But it's Fox News. It's Ted Cruz, who by the way, escaped to Mexico because he didn't want to have to deal world's going in Texas during the floods, and now he's trying to, of course, create yet another diversion where he can somehow appeal to the Trump Republicans because Cruz thinks he's got a chance of running in 2024. And so he's going after Big Bird, that's your agenda to try to somehow win favor with Republicans. It's just, it's just, it's bizarre. Big Bird versus Big Turd. That's what I call that feud. That's my Ted Cruz in Big Bird. Yeah, no, 100%. And last thing I'll say on this is I'm super jealous.

Like if Rosita had told me a year ago, you know, I would have really, I really could have used like, if Rosita held my hand as I got my shot, I think that would have been great. She's so adorable. Look at how cute. Yeah, I mean, these things are, yeah, it's like the Muppets. I mean, it's cute. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with them trying to reassure people. And they're not reassuring Democrats or reassuring Republicans. They're reassuring everybody. They're reassuring kids. Kids are the ones who watch this show. And good good for Sanjay Gupta and the others at CNN to sort of play along and say, oh, yeah, we could all get the vaccine and it's going to be fine and everybody's going to be okay. And don't worry. This is just this is what life is. Yeah. But of course, the boogeyman has to come down and ruin it for everybody. And now, of course, I guess it's no longer PC if you're on if you're a Republican now, if you're a viewer of Fox and Friends, now you can't allow your kids to watch Big Bird. You can't, you know, they have to watch, I don't know, Ben Shapiro. Does he have a channel for for little five year olds to sort of help them understand. What, I mean, what capital is like this?

Give him time, give him time he's building it. He's working on his clown voice. Actually, he's already got the clown voice down. You know, he's been sucking the helium to give him sort of the permanent wedgey voice. But yeah, yeah, Sesame Street's been canceled, guys, it's been canceled. Yeah, it's being replaced. Instead of Big Bird on the, on the far right channel, it's going to be some sort of big chicken, I think, or some sort of smelly fish that has rotten to the core. But anyway, let's move on.

Let's talk about our dear president. Impeached twice, lost an election he still cannot keep crying about. But President Trump still has some blistering words for Republicans who voted in support of the bipartisan infrastructure plan. Remember that plan? You know, the one with so much money that's going to help the bridges and tunnels and all over the United States and employ, you know, tens of millions of people. Well, President Trump wrote, very sad that the rhinos in the House and Senate gave Biden and Democrats a victory on the non-infestructure bill, where they were only 11% of the money being wasted goes to real infrastructure. How about all those Republican senators that voted that

thinking that helping the Democrats is such a wonderful thing to do? So politically correct, they just don't get it. Then Donald Trump took a shot at his favorite scapegoat, the now Senate Minority Mitch McConnell. All Republicans who voted for Democrat longevity should be ashamed of themselves. In particular, Mitch McConnell for granting a two-month stay, which allowed the Democrats' time to work things out at our countries and the Republican Party's expense. This came, by the way, after House Democrats finally managed to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill by a 228 to 206 tally to send a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill to President Biden's desk. The chamber passed the infrastructure bill in a 69 to 30 vote that included 19 Republican senators,

including McConnell. The House vote also included the support of 13 Republicans, but not six progressive Democrats. So who are these Republicans that are now the rhinos in Donald Trump's world? Well, into the Republican defectors, Don Bacon of Nebraska, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, John Catco of New York, Tom Reed of New York, Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey, and Fred Upton of Michigan are part of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of bipartisan lawmakers who helped to negotiate the bill. Another five House Republicans, Adam Kinsinger of Illinois, Don Young of Alaska, Nicole Melatakis in New York, David McKinley of West Virginia, and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey,

bucked their party to follow the party's traditionalist route of backing infrastructure funding. Wow. So Francesca, I want to predict what's going to happen to these Republicans. I can only imagine that they will follow in, that their other colleagues will follow in Trump's footsteps and berate them. But I just want to briefly say, like, Trump, you know, occasionally, he will tell you exactly the game, right? You know, he mostly says the game, but he sort of, he dresses it up and makes it cute. He tells you the game immediately. He basically says, we should withhold votes for sorely needed bridges to prevent them from crumbling, roads so people can get to work. Any kind of removing of lead pipe piping around the country,

which by the way, there's not even enough money in this current bill to fully do that and to replace lead piping around the country. So no, we're going to vote against that. We're going to ensure that you live a less safe life, that your drinking water is contaminated. Why? So we can stick it to the libs. So we can drink the lib tears. Yes, exactly, out of our cups. that are full of, you know, lead poisoning. But doopie do, like he just tells you right there. And so for any Republican actually paying attention, understand that maybe that those 13 Republicans that voted for it, it's because they haven't politicized potholes yet. But give them time. But for now, they're actually sticking on principle to something that is good for all people,

no matter what party you vote for. I have principle, a word with three syllables. That would be one syllable too many for somebody like Marjorie Taylor Green or somebody else in the clown caucus in the far right of the GOP. Here's what Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted. 13 Republicans voted with Pelosi to spend $7.5 billion to build EV charging stations all over America to force America to drive CCP battery driven cars. China dominates the EV battery market by over 80%. And the United States can't even compete with less than 10% market share. And she wrote those 13 Republican traders are voted to pass Biden's socialist infrastructure bill. Agree with globalist Joe.

And America must depend on China to drive EVs, electric vehicles. The unlucky 13 are China first, and America last, 13 American job and energy killers, downwards arrow. Downwards arrow, because it wouldn't be Marjorie Taylor Green if she didn't know how to put an emoji on the screen. Like, how? What kind of mental gymnastics, what kind of Rube Goldberg machine of thought is going on in your brain that you take investment in infrastructure in the United States to mean China wins. Like, I don't get that at all. Oh, another bridge stayed up in America. Good for you, Xi Jinping. Like, what is that? Oh, you got a high speed rail. Good on you, you know, CCP. Like, I've just, this is your party.

They make no sense, guys. Francesca, there was once a time, and I remember this is this way goes way back, and this will tell everybody may age, but I just remember like 20 years ago covering Congress. And there was an infrastructure bill or transportation bill, and the Democrats wanted, I don't know, $500 billion. And the Republicans wanted, you know, $400 billion. And so the agreed upon number was like $800 billion. That's the way they compromised. It wasn't to spend less. It was to give everybody what they wanted. Nowadays, You don't give anybody on the other side anything of what you wanted, God forbid, there should be a single dollar that goes to repair a bridge or a tunnel or some sort of waterway in the United States that actually, you know, might help with sort of, I don't know, make businesses more profitable because if you can increase, if you can decrease the amount of time, it takes to ship a product from point A to point B. You can pad your profits because you're spending less money on the transportation of that bill, transportation of that item.

In other words, you increase efficiency with better transportation. But for some reason, oh, we forget about that. Two last things I want to say, absolutely on like previous infrastructure bills. And like Trump himself, he wants to whine all he wants. He wasn't able to pass two trillion dollars he wanted to pass of infrastructure in 2019. But he couldn't because Democrats were investigating him for, I don't know, which crime of the many, many crimes that he's committed. I think it might have been around the Ukraine stuff, maybe it was the Russia stuff. Who knows?

The point is he got his fee-fis hurt and he was like, no, I'm not going to do infrastructure unless you stop investigating me. And then they were like, no, we're not going to stop. And then nothing happened. So he didn't pass a damn thing. The second thing I'll say is Trump knows and fascists or neo-fascists know that if they prevent any progress, any legislation from getting through the halls of of Congress, then that is a perfect breeding ground for demagoguery. Why? Because people lose faith

in their politicians to actually work and to achieve anything. And therefore they're like, you know what? We need an authoritarian to just come in and just sort of, you know, to hell with the laws that are written in the books, executive order it all over the place. Now to be honestly, I'd like a few executive orders out of Joe Biden. Let's be real. And I don't think this bill is all that amazing. But I think we have to understand like what the alternative is and how much that sets up a Trump 2.0. I'm right there with you, Francesca. I mean, look, there's so much more that could have been in this bill, but the branding of it by Republicans is just sort of reached beyond absurd. I mean, to call it socialism as Madison Cothorn and Gates are saying

in Florida, I mean, it's just, you know, it's just bizarre. But the fact of the matters, Americans will soon realize when they see so much construction and they see the roads and highways getting better and the tunnels being more efficient, that actually this is this is a good thing for everybody, whether you drive a car in your Republican, whether you drive a car in your Democrat, whether you take the bus, whatever it is. It's going to be easier for you to get from point A to point B, and that's a good thing for all of us. Absolutely. All right, we got to take our first break. David Schuster and Francesca Fiorentini in for Jank and Anna. Stay right there. We'll be back. members, Kara Curley says, how does anyone take Fox seriously?

Face Palm, yeah, it's just, how did they look, are there mirrors in the dressing room? I don't know. Pitchforks Dragon, thank you for the super chat, mansion cinema, Cruz, Gates, Big Bird. It seems we're always talking about puppets, indeed. And two new members, Kristen Eckert and Mama Ritchie became members. Thank you so much. You guys get exclusive access to a bunch of extra content. And for the super chats, Peter Hamby has a high coup for David and I on the crews to rant,

on Sesame Street to show who the bird brain is. I love that. Oh, Don Peter. Yeah. And before we launch back into news, guys, just FYI, the conversation happened between Jank and Larry Lessig. It was so good. So make sure to catch up on that. You can also listen to it as a podcast on any podcast.

podcast platform. Also old school, there will be no new old school tonight, but there's a lot of other old schools. There's not new old school, there's old schools and that is what I wanted to tell you. That being said, David Schuster, we got more news, don't we? We do have more news and full disclosure here. Once upon a time when I was much younger, I worked at Fox News Channel. This was before they went absolutely bat crazy. I was one of the originals, but I like to say it before I do segments because I still about Fox News because I still have some people over there who God knows why they're still there. But for all of us who don't like to watch Fox News, the only time that sometimes

seems interesting is when somebody actually goes on Fox News and trolls them to your face. And that actually happened over the weekend. This involves President Biden's plan to give money to immigrants who have their families torn apart at the border. Here is the president from the weekend. Watch. If in fact, because of the outrageous behavior of the last administration, you coming across the border whether it was legal or illegal, and you lost your child, you lost your child, it's gone, you deserve some kind of compensation, no matter what's the circumstance.

Right, sounds reasonable. They tear apart your children. You might sue, but whether you have standing or not, the government is going to give you some money. Well, that prompted that sort of point of view then came up at a news conference in which the senior Fox News White House correspondent, I'm not quite sure how he's a senior Fox News White House correspondent, but Peter Ducey had this exchange with Joe Biden. Watch. Do you think that that might incentivize more people to come over illegally? If you guys keep sending that garbage out, yeah, but it's not true. So this is a garbage report.

Yeah. Now, most people seem to understand that Biden was talking about, not that there would be money going to these families, but that it was a garbage report to suggest that somehow there's a financial incentive for people to cross the border and then have their children torn apart, that therefore, oh, my children might be torn apart. Therefore, I'm going to try to cross the border because I might get some money. Well, that distinction, though, was lost on Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer over the weekend. So leave it to Biden White House advisor, Cedric Richmond to hammer, hammer and Fox News to his face. Watch. If you go back to the question, the question was from a Fox reporter asking about whether compensation for being separated and losing a child would be an incentive to come to America. And what he was saying was that was an absurd question from the beginning. No one's coming somewhere to lose their child, to be separated from their loved one.

And the question is so insensitive, disrespectful, that that's what he was commenting to. And I would ask the question of you whether you support that. I mean, at some point, we cannot, would a straight face say that parents are willing to separate from a child for a dollar amount? Except on Fox News, they do say that with a straight face. And when Peter Ducey thinks that he hears President Biden talking about Ducey's reporting as opposed to Ducey's idea and the Fox News idea, which is patently absurd that any parent would be incentivized to come to the United States to get money because, hey, my children might be taken away from him. I mean, everybody knew, I think, Francesca, that that's what Biden was referring to when he said, that's garbage. It wasn't the idea that Biden was saying, oh, no, it's garbage, this idea that we're going to pay people. No, it's your explanation of this that is garbage. Why is that distinction so different? for them. No, and we have to understand just how far right the conversation nationally is on immigration. We're so far to the right that we can't even say the word center without

being like, no, no, we're all the way on the right, you know, or I'm on the right of your screen. Like, because imagine Biden, the Biden administration arguably has not done enough when it comes to actually changing Trump immigration policies, right? Arguably by every grassroots organization, everyone who works around human rights, they're saying there's not been enough. There is some, I believe, in the Build Back Better Act, if that gets passed, but there's not been enough. Not enough has been dismantled, not enough accountability. This is a small way to give compensation, which is, I mean, it is nothing in comparison to being reunited with your child, which I know the administration says they're working on. This is compensation,

And even that is too much for the far right. And I love, I got to say, sometimes Biden's sort of like fuddy-duddiness really works in his favor where he's like, yeah, yeah, if you keep putting that crap out, people are going to believe that. And you kind of like that. You like that he can just be his fuddy-duddy self. And be like, yeah, yeah, you guys are filling people's minds with poison. And you also see the way stories like this get laundered. Right. So at Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, you might have a relative who's like, yeah, well, I heard that they're giving people money if they let if they relinquish their child at the border. And then you get $450,000 or whatever it is, right? It's a lot of money because it's a huge, you know, it's a huge loss. But that gets laundered and twisted by the right wing news cycle into the point where yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh no, it's an incentive. It's a prize. It's just prize money now. It's not we're trying to write the right. wrongs from your guy, from the dude who, you know, the human rights violation guy. I also wonder Francesca, if it gets even sort of a scary than that. I mean, we sort of joke about, you know, Fox News and the way they sort of mess around with this stuff and ha ha. But I mean, you mentioned earlier, you made a great point about fascism. And there's this sort of effort on the right with the help with Fox News to engage in fascism. And part of fascism is to take a minority group, to take immigrants, and to dehumanize them. And the only way anybody could ever

think that any human being would willingly give up their child for some pot of money is if you think that that person is not human. If you think that they are not worthy of the same humanity at the rest of us have. And so when Fox News comes out and spews in front of President Biden, and then also on all the various platforms, oh yeah, some of these immigrants, they really want to get the money, therefore they're going to come up with their children and the hopes that their children will be separated and they get some money, then you start to have people thinking, oh, well, if that person has dark skin and they come from Central America, they don't love their children. They're happy to sell their children or sell their children into trafficking or collect

from the US government. And that's the only reason they're coming to the United States. And I think if you ask any parent of any culture, maybe not any culture, but nearly every culture on the planet, would you ever dream of selling off your children willingly? Nobody would say yes. That's insanity. And the idea that there's some people on the right in the United States and clearly Fox knows, Fox News knows that there are people who like this stuff. The idea that they would say this with a straight face and they would say, oh yeah, but there's a legitimate point here. Doesn't it incentivize? I mean, that is, that is really, really frightening. Absolutely. It is 100% demonizing and also having no empathy. And this is

sort of where I get to my main, you know, this is the dark moments where you're like, I don't know if we can come together as a country, but it is if you don't have basic empathy for someone trying to seek a better life in another in another country, save their own lives, fleeing gang violence from their countries destabilized by your country and their foreign policy. I don't know what to say to you anymore, man. Like I don't even know if we can have this conversation if you're if you lack so much basic empathy. But yeah, fascism needs a scapegoat and immigrants have been that for so long. And that's why we have to make sure we combat that and sadly I'm not seeing enough from the Biden administration yet to really do it.

And I wonder if incentivizes another one of these, I don't know, incentivize three syllable words, which maybe Peter Ducey never quite learned in college when he was studying it because look, there are incentives for people who have these the sort of miserable life that and seek a better life are coming from places in Latin America where there are gangs and murder runs rampant and there's no opportunity. Sure, there's an incentive if they can get to the United States, they can build a better life, they can have freedom, they can have liberty, they can have an education of the American dream. That's the incentive. The incentive is not to come and collect $450,000 in the hopes that, well, maybe I'll be able to get rid of my child and I'll collect

a bunch of money anyway. That's just, that's just absurd. And for people who do not understand what incentivize really means and what incentives are actual real incentives versus these sort of made up incentives that they talk about and bandy about on Fox News makes me think, well, they're just dumbing down their audience even more and tossing around a word like incentivized when they have absolutely no idea what it means. Yeah, yes, absolutely. The Trump's strategy, let's be real on immigration was to be worse than MS-13. For as much talk as how much they hated MS-13, this and that. Their answer was, oh, no, no, no, we should create more fear, as much fear as gangs do so people don't come here. Well, I think we might be better than that.

All right, we got to take our second break. David Chuster, Francesca Fiorendini, we are here. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to the Young Turks with David Schuster and Francesca Fiorentini. Some comments. I always say my name like that. Francesca Fiorentini, comments, thank you for the super chats y'all. Danny, love the fantastic Dave Tastic month. Monday, need more of this great duo, agreed. I always enjoy doing these shows with David.

I think we did the damage report together. That was excellent. I have a lot of fun with you, Francesca. Hell yeah. Nobody does impersonations like you do. Nobody. You know, I haven't had enough. We need more Mitch, more McConnell. I'm sorry, it's a very gross face. Maybe some of you are eating. Chaplain Fred or Chaplain Fred, I know how to read. Awesome to see you, David and Jessica, both of you are the bomb, so you mean to tell me Big Bird is a thug, puff, puff, pastime, need my meds. First of all, we all know Snuffy definitely gets down with edibles. Look at his eyes.

And YouTube renewed, thank you for your super chat. Part of the problem is if you don't have kids or don't know anyone who has kids, it's easy to underestimate how strongly parents feel about them. I'd agree with that, but I also feel that if you have never faced adversity in your life, You never will understand what it is like to try and have a family and make ends meet and the things and the sacrifices you might make for them. And part of that is going to an entirely new country for their well-being and safety. Anyway, we got more show. We've got more stories. David, what is next? A University of Austin or something like that.

Get your SAT scores and transcripts ready because that woman, Barry Weiss, I used to write for The New York Times, she has this idea that there should be a new university, a new college on the scene. Weiss announced that she had a motley crew of professors, researchers and other journalists, are going to create a new university in Austin, Texas. And by the way, Austin is already the home to the University of Texas. But Weiss tweeted a link to a substack article titled, we can't wait for universities to fix themselves or starting a new one.

And this was written by the former president of St. John's College, Peno Canellos. Weiss was been on a warpath against so-called cancel culture since she resigned from the New York Times, wrote in her tweet, this university will welcome witches who refused to burn. Well, in the substack post, Canellos writes, I left my post as president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland to build a university in Austin dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth. He also wrote, in these top schools and in so many others, can we actually claim that the pursuit of truth once the central purpose of university remains the highest virtue? Do we honestly believe that the crucial means to that end, freedom of inquiry and civil discourse prevail when liberalism has become a pervasive feature of campus life? Hmm, family, he writes, on our quads, faculty are being treated like thought criminals.

Oh, thought criminals. Actually, that's not what I've seen in a lot of universities across the United States. But Francesca, is there a point here? Has, have progressives, has the left gone too far in terms of somehow trying to, I don't know, demonstrate against the Ben Shapiro's of the world who show up on campus and want to spew their nonsense? sense? Short answer is no. Sometimes guys, the world changes. I know that's weird. But it's not static. And that's scary, right? But you might have to embrace that. And no one should be taking advice from Barry Weiss. I'm sorry. Let's get that out of the way initially, especially when it comes to things like cancel culture or, you know, thought police or thought criminals. Barry Weiss is a person who went after professors for covering and for discussing the occupation of Palestine by Israel.

So any Palestinian human rights discussion, especially the Middle East Studies Department in Columbia University and many other universities remind, remember, there are databases that right wingers collect for any professors who are speaking about. the occupation, who are casting doubt on it, who are talking about human rights again for Palestinians, that is a no go for them. And they have lists. And what happens with that? They will do writing campaigns, they try to come for people's jobs. And Barry Weiss has been spearheading that in universities around this country. So let me guess that you won't have a Middle Eastern Studies department maybe at all at the University of

Austin, right? Just you and Joe Rogan and a bunch of other podcasters trying to make it in your little bubble that is Austin, the poor people of Austin who've had this thrust onto them. And like the last thing I'll say is if you're so against cancel culture, what are you trying to do then? Are you going to cancel gender studies because it hurts men's feelings? Are you going to cancel ethnic studies because it's not fair to white people because it makes them look bad. You're going to cancel anyone reading marks? Because, you know, who knows? You might stir up the proletariat to overthrow the billionaire class. Like, what are you actually talking about? And we all know they're being disingenuous. They know that university and higher education

is associated with more liberal thought. Why? Because it's literally a space to learn. Not always, but usually you're exposed to new ideas that you weren't exposed to. You understand In history, you understand systems, you understand structures for the first time. You understand democracy and how it came about, right? You understand people struggle and you situate yourself in that and you have the privilege and to do that and you're lucky enough to do that, not without a lot of debt. And they know that and they hate that. Yeah, you're absolutely right when it is. I mean, look, it is very rich of Barry Weiss,

of all people to be leading this crusade against cancel culture. I mean, you mentioned her condemnation, her campaign against Muslim professors. Here's how Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Intercept in 2018 about De Weiss's campaign. He said the campaign was designed to ruin the careers of Arab professors by equating their criticism of Israel with racism, anti-Semitism, and bullying. And its central demand was that these professors, some of whom lack tenure, be disciplined for their transgressions. And there has long been Francesca, this somehow argument in a lot of intellectual circles that, oh, if you're a supporter of Israel, if somebody criticizes Israel's policies, that somehow is anti-Semitism. No, it's not. I'm a big supporter of Israel. I'm Jewish, and I'm happy to say Israel's policies are

racist, that they're anti-Zionists, that the disputed territories are an absolute mess. That doesn't make me somehow anti-Semitic. But in Barry Weiss's world, I guess I would be some sort of self-hating Jew as a result. And as a result, I suppose I wouldn't be accepted at her University of Austin, Not that I would ever want to go there because, oh, by the way, the website makes it clear that the University of Austin does not offer degrees at this time and is not yet accredited. So, okay, Barry Weiss, you don't like the universities that are out there. You're going to get your kids, I suppose, to the University of Austin where they're not going to get a degree and they're all going to have group think and brand a whole bunch of somehow anti-Semites and say, well, we're not going to allow any other points of view than conservative points of view. Gee, that sounds like a wonderful university, a place of higher learning. Yeah, absolutely. And look, like I have no doubt that, you know, especially with the amount of discussion of cancel culture, the like the perpetual filming of one another, you know, and the online trolling, the bullying, I don't think it's easy to be a student right now for many different reasons, right? And I think, yeah, in a lot of ways, we do close down our minds and we become.

sort of tribalistic and sort of what you know we we we hunker down the right is as guilty of this as some people on the left can be but university should be a place to kind of openly talk about that right to question things to ask and yeah to not be chanted down for it but if professors are getting pushback on their syllabus it's because maybe they need to update the syllabus damn you know what I mean like if you're approaching the same subject uh you know over and over again and you're you're getting critiques from it from student body, well, then that's good. That should be good. That should be a good thing, right? If you're like, hey, you don't have in your gender studies class, you got a bunch of dudes writing. Like, that's probably bad. So all to say, nobody,

nobody should be wanting to shut down freedom of thought. In fact, that's the point of university. And but I think all they're doing is simply projecting and getting us to imagine that universities and colleges now are somehow just Twitter. And they're not. There's like legit professors who are working very hard, who've written, who've done a lot of, you know, amazing, who do a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of great lecturing. It's not just, it's not just a Twitter food fight. I agree. And I think the fight that they have started though is going to be one that they're not going to look back and think was very wise. Because to choose Austin, Texas, I mean, there are more than 50,000 students that attend the University of Texas. It is the pride of that state in terms of

of academic integrity and what they try to do with their research programs. And so for a group of conservatives to say, well, no, we want Austin to be known for this alternative university or this alternative college where it's conservative ideas. There are a lot of conservative ideas at the University of Texas already. There are a lot of conservative students there, a lot of progressive students. You can find these kinds of debates right now in Austin. You don't need to start a university. So why did they choose Austin? What didn't they choose say Waco, Texas or some other place? Well, apparently because Elon Musk and Joe Rogan like Austin, Texas, therefore, if it's good enough for Elon Musk,

well, let's put our Liberty, Freedom, Austin University, wherever they're going to call it, in Austin as opposed to, I don't know, in California. Huh? You know, and look, it tells you something for all the reply guys out there for Elon Musk and all the Rogan stands who still don't understand that he's just running cover for the far right, they're millionaire. guys, they're millionaires and billionaires. They're going to Austin because they don't have to pay as much taxes. Like, that's why they like Austin. It's, that's why they like Texas. All right, they got their own power grid. They don't even need the Texas power grid. And the last thing I'll say about Austin, hey, guys, Austin just voted. They had a proposition in front of them last week, whether they wanted

to expand the police force. Oh yeah, Austin's for freedom and Blue Lives Matter and, yeah, we're right wingers and we, you know, we got to get out of California. And guess what? They rejected that proposition. That's right. Austin voters, they don't want to expand the police force. They don't want more police officers. Maybe that's because of critiques of police that we've all seen. So I wouldn't throw in the towel for Austin yet, but tuck in and hang in there. We should be throwing in the towel for an NFL quarterback by the name of Aaron Rogers. He was once considered one of the top props, the greatest commercial appeal in terms of commercials and his standing in the league, say to one of the Manning brothers,

But now, Aaron Rogers has become something of a pariah, and this is because of the world of COVID and the world of professional football and how they have collided. Rogers was recently asked if he got the COVID-19 vaccine before this season began. Watch. Are you vaccinated and what's your stance on vaccinations? Yeah, I've been immunized. You know, there's a lot of conversation around it, around the league and a lot of guys who, have made statements and I made statements, owners who have made statements. You know, there's guys in the team that haven't been vaccinated.

I think it's a personal decision. I'm not going to judge those guys. Again, the question was, have you been vaccinated? His response, yeah, I've been immunized. Well, ESPN says the national football league, regardless of whether how Rodgers wants to describe his situation, the NFL has been treating him as unvaccinated since the beginning of the season. And this past weekend, the league announced that Aaron Rogers now has COVID-19 and therefore will not be playing for a while. Rogers told a sports talk show that he is allergic to one ingredient in the COVID-19 vaccine and that he is taking Ivermectin after consulting with conservative podcaster Joe Rogan. Well, the criticism of Aaron Rogers has been far and wide and was most intense over the weekend from former quarterback and NFL Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw on Fox Sports. Watch this. I give Aaron Rogers some advice. It would have been nice if you had just come to the Naval Academy and learn how to be honest.

Yeah. Learn not to lie because that's what you did, Aaron. You like everyone. I understand immunized. What you were doing was taking stuff that would keep you from getting COVID-19. You got COVID-19. Ivermectum is a cattle dewormer. Sorry, folks. That's what it is. We are a divided nation, Politically, we're divided nation on the COVID-19, whether or not to take the vaccine. And unfortunately, we've got players that pretty much think only about themselves. And I'm extremely disappointed in the actions of Aaron Rogers. Yeah, Aaron Rogers, perhaps one of the most selfish football players there are, there is right now. Francesca, if you had a colleague that you worked closely with, very closely with, in a very tight quarters, tight spaces. And you had to, you know, change clothes and all that kind of stuff around, you know, your colleague, would you feel very happy if that colleague had been lying to you and the rest of your teammates about their vaccination

status? No, I'd feel awful if my cat lied to me like that. I mean, honestly, she's got such an honest face and I'd feel betrayed. Absolutely, I mean, and this is the big thing, you guys. Let's remember that the NFL actually accommodates for players who do not choose to be vaccinated quite well. There are some restrictions. They can only gather with something like 15 people at a time, which is actually pretty damn good considering before the vaccine we weren't gathering with anybody. There are some precautions that they have to take. Daily testing is one of them, but there is space. The NFL has made space for unvaccinated players. And I'm not going to stick up for the NFL honestly because I do not respect Roger Goodell and Kaepernick always and forever.

But at least they are trying to keep people safe. And Aaron Rogers just lied. It wasn't, I've been, I'm immunized. It's yeah, I'm immunized. So that right there is a lie. And I'm glad he's getting called on it by a lot of different folks. Because it isn't the fact that you choose not to get the vaccine, is the fact that you choose to lie about it when we could have just been keeping

everyone safe. I with you 100%. And to me, I mean, there are there are two levels to this. There is the public lie. I mean, so he's never going to, and by the way, he's been dropped by, there's a health organization in Green Bay that had him as a spokesperson. And so he's, you know, he's been dropped by them. So he's not going to have any commercial opportunities again. He's not going to be able to sell car insurance for all the other stuff he was doing. But put aside that lie in terms of the public. One of the cardinal rules of professional sports, particularly in football,

is that you do not lie, you do not endanger your teammates on the field or off the field. And I guarantee that even if Aaron Rogers is correct, that there are some people who've got different points of view, even on the Green Bay Packers about whether they should be vaccinated. There are members of the Green Bay Packers who were vaccinated, who have kids, who have people who have comorbidities who are counting on their teammates being honest with them. And when the quarterback of your team, you find out has been lying to you or is putting you in some sort of danger, putting your kids in danger, well, then you think twice about, gee, am I really going to work as hard for that guy? Maybe I'm going to let somebody bumrush through

the line and give him a hard one. And I'm not going to help Aaron Rogers up the next time he's knocked on his keister. I mean, that is the worst possible thing you could have in a locker room is that kind of dissent. And that is what Aaron Rogers has done. And for all those people say, oh, but he's a wonderful quarterback and he should be entitled to have his opinions because he is so successful. He has just done the absolutely worst thing. Never mind, The debate over, you know, over Ivermectin, over COVID-19, just in terms of sports and how you treat teammates, he has committed a cardinal sin that I think a lot of players will never forgive him for. Tough words from Davis Schuster. Yeah, I think that, look, it's not, it's that I think quarterbacks are supposed to lead. Isn't that the point they're like leaders? They do, you know, and he didn't. And also if he felt so strongly by the vaccine, why not say it openly, right? I mean, Kyrie Irving said it openly, other athletes have said it openly.

So I think it does show a lack of leadership, but I don't know, maybe Shailene's cooking up some clay goodness. That is such a great point because he could have said, look, I don't believe in the vaccine. And he could have said to his teammates, I don't believe in the vaccine. I'm taking Ivermectin here, the protocols that I'm taking. And you can argue with me, but I'm going to be honest with you, this is what I'm doing. Okay, we might disagree. His teammates might have a problem with him. But at least he's being honest, when he's lying to the media, when he's then lying to his teammates about whether he's been immunized, that crosses a line that you don't get that back. And I feel terrible for friends of mine who are in Wisconsin, who believe in Green Bay and love the organization.

And now they're looking up and saying, what a jackass for him to like, you know, to embroil the team in this kind of controversy, this kind of distraction to sort of ignite a war over COVID-19 on a football field. in a football locker room in the community of Green Bay? What a jerk. Yeah, last thing I'll say on this, I'm sorry, we have to wrap, but I just want to say that a lot of the folks who are consulting Rogan, Joe Rogan, Medicine Woman, are also millionaires and billionaire, people who are incredibly wealthy. And they can get access to a, you know, cocktail of treatment that most people can't get access to. And yet they've got listenership in the millions and they've got followers like Aaron Rogers and fans who if and when they get sick because they choose not to get vaccinated because they're following their heroes, they won't be

able to get access to that same cocktail of regeneron or ivermectin light or I don't know what, right? There's all those things are expensive. So it's it is also important to know that this is a story of leadership and of money and how some people think that money can buy you out of the vaccine because you don't trust it. You know, but it's horse paste. Mm-hmm, get it in me. All right, you guys, David Schuster, that's been the first hour. We got, we got more. Are we good here? Francesca, have a great hour too. Always a pleasure being on with you. So good to see you. Everybody watch David Schuster on Rebel HQ. He's crushing it and stay tuned.

soon because Adrian Lawrence is here after the break. 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 slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.