The Young Turks - Bigoted Bipartisanship

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

Lindsey Graham calls voting rights ‘biggest power grab’ in US history. A new book offers fresh details about the chaos, conflicts inside Trump’s pandemic response. American Airlines is canceling hundreds of flights through mid-July in part due to labor shortages. Unmasking the far-right: an extremist paid a price when his identity was exposed online after a violent clash in Washington. Tucker Carlson calls journalists ‘animals’ – he’s also their best source. Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur 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. We're going to be able to be. All right, well, the young Turks, Jake, you're glad to conspared with you guys. Fascinating day ahead, lots of great stories, of course, as always. But the one that I'm most intrigued by is the outing of Tucker Carlson. Whoa, as my grandmother would say back in the day, whoa.

Okay, and then she pound her thighs like this, like, boom. Which is a juicy story. Very, very juicy. She had arthritis. Anyway, so. Okay. Rando. All right, so we're gonna have fun and,

and of course we'll bring a good, healthy dose of righteous justice. So now, before we get started with anything else, I need you guys to know, so I'm gonna say it throughout. We're going to Cleveland and we're gonna have an amazing event. Okay, so Killer Mike and I are hosting a town hall for Nina Turner. We can see you guys there. We want a live audience there. Go to tyt.com slash events and sign up for it.

We would love to see you there and I think it is going to be bananas and we haven't done an event in person in about two years so or feels that way or a year and a half or so. So it'd be great to see you guys out there and that's going to be as good as it gets on economic justice. All right, Casper, what do you got for us today? It looks like the left doesn't really need to do much to prove that Senator Joe Manchin's claims of the possibility of bipartisanship are empty and shallow, because it turns out that the right wing is doing a pretty great job uncovering just how dumb and feckless he is when

he makes those points. One of my prayers is that the Republicans will take back their party. Things keep dripping out, drip, drip, drip, drip, and the truth comes out. The latest GOP senator to essentially disprove Manson's claims that bipartisanship is possible is Senator Lindsey Graham. Now, this is on the topic of a voting rights bill. As some of you might already know, Mansion has come out against the For the People Act, which is a robust version of an election reform bill. It includes things like campaign finance reform, publicly funded elections.

And of course, a number of other things that would expand voting rights to all eligible voters. Now, he has come out with his own slim down version of that that does not include taking money out of politics. And the whole point is, well, maybe if I scale it back, right, as Mansion says, I can get Republican lawmakers to agree to vote in favor of it. Senator Lindsey Graham disagrees. Let's watch. Manchin took out a lot of the basic Senate plans, S-1, for the People Act, like public financing of congressional elections. Can you go along with the mansion stripped-down version? And if not, why not? Well, one, I like Joe Manchin a lot, but we had the largest turnout in the history of the United States. And states are in charge of voting in America.

So I don't like the idea of taking the power to redistrict away from states. legislators. You're having people move from blue states to red states. Under this proposal, you would have some kind of commission redraw the new districts, and I don't like that. I want states where people are moving to have control over how to allocate new congressional seats. So as much as I like Joe mentioned, the answer would be no. In my view, SR1 is the biggest power grab in the history of the country. It mandates ballot harvesting, no voter ID. It does away with the states being able to redistrict when you have population shifts. It's just a bad idea and it's a problem that most Republicans are not going to sign up.

They're trying to fix a problem most Republicans have a different view of. So Senator Lindsey Graham utters what we already suspected. Republicans are not going to vote in favor of Mansions bill, mostly because Republicans want to continue rigging the system to their advantage through gerrymandering, through a whole host of voter suppression provisions in state laws. They don't want to do away with that. They love that. And so it's just, we already know that Mansion is full of it.

It's just honestly comical to see him get punched in the face by Republican lawmakers that he keeps referring to as his friends over and over again on cable television. Yeah, what I'm super curious about is the end game here. Because for the People Act, at least half of it that has to do with voting rights is pretty much. a must pass for Democrats, because otherwise the Republicans are going to limit the number of people voting throughout all these states. They've already passed legislation in 14 different states to limit voting. And you're gonna be shocked to find out, it's mainly Democratic voters they've limited,

voting in. And they've gerrymandered districts so badly that they wind up winning more seats than Democrats do in states, even though Democrats got more votes, okay? In those same elections, we're not even talking about presidential elections or anything. Congressional elections, Democrats get more votes, but less seats, and a lot of the states because of the way that they have gerrymandered districts. So Democratic Party would be committing suicide, political suicide, if they don't pass at least half of Four the People Act. So now the question is, is the Democratic Party competent enough to pass the lowest bar,

which is do not commit political suicide. Now this is not about their voters, in my opinion, they barely care about them at all. This is about their own preservation. Yes. So like there's nothing that could be. a better case for, can Democratic leadership accomplish anything at all? Or are they the single most incompetent set of leaders this country has ever seen? Bingo.

Right? So I'm gonna give me the three options here. Of course, if you listen to the mainstream press, they're all master legislators and the greatest things on earth, even though they've almost never passed anything. Okay, so now, there's three different ways this can go. So Manger says, oh, I got this great compromise, and I told you, they're gonna vote on it, it's gonna get voted no. Are they gonna get 10 Republican senators to go along? I don't, let's not waste one more second discussing that. There's 0% chance of that.

Okay, I will eat shorts, my shoes, whatever you need me to eat. There are not 10 Republican senators, they're going to say, for the same exact reason, by the way. There are Democrats must pass it because right now the Republicans have an unfair, undemocratic advantage across the country. And for the same exact reason, the Republicans won't pass it under penalty of law, okay? So obvious, stop discussing it. All right, so what happens after they vote? No. Three possibilities.

One is Manchin goes, oh, well, we gave it a shot, but no, I'm not ending the filibuster. In which case, Democratic leadership and even Stacey Abrams, et cetera, were foolish to negotiate with Manchin because it turns out Manchin never meant it. And it was all one big giant joke on Democratic voters. Okay, now second possibility as Manchin goes, oh, well, this is awfully frustrating. All right, you know what? I'm going to bend on the filibuster. We're going to bring it down from 60 to 55 votes that you need. And then in order to get the last five votes, this is really important.

Then they're going to go to Republicans go, we'll take out the other anti-corruption measures. We already took out the small dollar matching funds, which would have helped people compete against you. We're going to keep. And then on top of that, we'll cover up for your big donors and make sure nobody ever sees them. They'll gut more of the bill, and especially all the anti-corruption parts, to try to get five Republican senators. Is that possible? Well, that's not impossible, but it's less likely, okay? And then the last option, Anna, is even that doesn't work.

And then Manchin goes, well, look, I tried everything I could. So I guess now, since there's no Republicans moving ever on any bills, January 6th or this, fine, I vote to get rid of the filibuster list passes with 50 votes. And then at that point, it's still a 50-50 proposition because Kristen Cinema, it's possible that one of the other corporate Democrats, but Chris Sinema is the biggest possibility, comes in and goes, no, I'm not going to end the filibuster, and you're not going to get any of this.

So it's not exactly hopeful right now. And I'm not sure that any D.C. reporter or even a lot of Democratic politicians understand that that's the dynamic at hand. They're not going to pass any bill. I think even if Mansion agrees to reform the filibuster, so you only need 55 votes rather than 60 in order to pass the legislation, it's still very, very likely or unlikely, I should say, that Democrats will find five Republicans that will vote yes.

Because remember, Republicans, of course, have an issue with the anti-corruption provisions in the bill, but they certainly have a bigger problem with the fact that this regulation, or the regulations included in the bill, would hinder their ability or the Republican Party's ability to skew elections to their advantage, right? They don't want to make it a free and fair electoral process, they hate that. So there's that. I don't know if Manchin will ever agree to doing away with the filibuster. Now, Lindsey Graham was asked about that. Let's play that video real quick, and then we'll

discuss the possibilities on that matter when we come back. Do you run the risk that Manchin and a couple of other moderate senators will eventually say, look, bipartisanship isn't working? And you know what, we're not going to kill We're not going to kill the filibuster, but we're going to reduce the number of votes you need to stop a debate from 60 to 55. Do you run that risk? I hope not, because I was in Joe Manchin's shoes. I like Joe Manchin. I'm willing to work with him on infrastructure.

We're very close on police reform. I'm not going to be extorted here. I'm asking no more of my Democratic colleagues than I ask of myself. It was very unpleasant to be beat on every day by the president. the United States, President Trump and his allies to try to change the rules in the Senate to have their way. I said no because it's bad for the Senate. I hope these Democrats understand it's bad for the Senate to change the rules. And I don't want to be extorted. I've got to give two or three things before they will not change the rules. I don't like that at all.

I didn't do that to them and I wish they would not do this to me. They didn't have to worry about the filibuster because they passed the Trump tax cuts through reconciliation. And that was all Republicans really wanted. They wanted more tax cuts for the wealthy, for corporations. Also, I mean, if any Democrat listens to that clip and thinks, oh yeah, I mean, look, the GOP, they're, you know, they're principled, they're principled. I mean, they're not hypocrites at all, you know? It's not like they would do away with the filibuster if it was in any way beneficial for

them if they were in our shoes. I mean, no one can buy what Lindsey Graham is selling there. We know they're hypocrites, we know that if the tables were turned and they had, some sort of policy agenda that they needed to get done, they'd get it done. Republicans would get it done. If they need to nuke the filibuster to do it, they would do it. But look, they're not going to pass any type of election reform bill, period. They're not going to get any Republicans to sign on to it.

I think what you bring up about Kirsten Cinema is absolutely correct. I think that she's going to serve as an obstacle to this. And she has no problem with how it affects her standing in polls. I mean, after she voted down a $15 an hour minimum wage, she remained defying about it, even though it hurt her among her own constituents. Well, actually, it hurt her so much, both among her constituents and the Democratic Party in Arizona, that it feels like she's acting like she has nothing left to lose in the Democratic Party, so she might flip to Republican or independent.

When I suggest that, I know people go, oh, no, cinema would never do that. Even good folks, smart folks who cover this, no, you're wrong. She would do that, and that's a very, very real possibility. And she's shown every indication she's headed in that direction based on our votes, non-votes, et cetera. So now, I got to tidy up a couple of things. First of all, when Lindsay Graham says, well, look, I'll vote with things for Mansion. We could vote on the infrastructure bill.

Yeah, that's the Republican version of the infrastructure bill. So yes, you'll vote yes on your own bill. That does nothing. And police reform. Oh, we're waiting on Lindsay Graham to do meaningful police reform in this country. You must be joking. The only thing that Lindsay Graham is going to propose is something that helps cops. And there's no way he would do real reform.

I'm moving on. Those are jokes. And understand that as they go through this 60, 55, 50, all of this Kabuki theater, they're running out the clock. Because it's the for the people act is a political issue. But the policy issues is where the rubber hits the road because that's where the Chamber of Commerce steps in and goes, no, I don't want you voting on 15 nominal wage, I don't want you voting on all these economic issues. So at the more time they spend trying to get the bare minimum with the Four of the People

Act, the less time they're going to have for economic issues, and hence the donors are thrilled with how this is going. And of course, to Anna's point, he says, oh, my gosh, golly, gee, we'd never change the filibuster, except the minute it was comming, you changed it for the Supreme Court. And you said, oh, we don't need the filibuster anymore. You Democrats are suckers, idiots, we took it away as soon as it was to our advantage. Now the Supreme Court's six to three, morons. And then they come out and they go, oh, we would, golly, gee, we would never touch a filibuster. It was to our advantage.

Okay, by the way, the only reason they didn't want to pass some of the laws that Trump talked about is because the Chamber of Commerce didn't want them. And so that's why they're like, yeah, keep the filibuster, right? Right. So, and then finally, look, in order to get the five Republican votes. So why on God's green earth is that even, why am I saying that that's not a zero percent chance they get five Republican votes? Because of what Chris Wallace asked.

So at some point the Democrats are going to say, well, we can't get a single Republican vote on a single policy issue. So we have left no choice but to get rid of the filibuster. If the Republicans were smart, what they would do is they would blunt that by voting for a quarter of four the people act. So they not only get rid of all the anti-corruption measures including discosal act, as I told you earlier, but they could also get rid of the gerrymandering provisions and only leave the provision that says, yes, you're allowed to vote, okay? And in which case, they might get five Republican senators

and then keep the filibuster, which allows them to block all progressive policy positions. So if the Republicans were smart, that's what they would do, right? But it's, but Republicans over the last 10 years at least have been driven by infinite greed. So they might not even do that. All right. Well, let's move on to our next story because we now have some more insight into what was happening behind the scenes in the Trump administration during the coronavirus pandemic. A new book gives us some insight into how the inner workings of the Trump administration and how they proposed to handle the coronavirus pandemic was actually far worse than what we experienced publicly.

So this book, Nightmare Scenario, talks about two occasions where Trump suggested quarantining U.S. tourists, people traveling to the United States as tourists as the pandemic was really starting to become more and more of a problem. In fact, the book notes that he had suggested, don't we have an island that we own. Trump reportedly asked those assembled in the situation room in February of 2020 before the US outbreak would explode. What about Guantanamo? We import goods, we are not going to import a virus.

He suggested that tourists in the United States should be sent to Guantanamo Bay. That's what he suggested, not once, but twice. That's what he suggested. Yeah, by the way, when we were discussing Guantanamo and we've been discussing ever since it's been open, we told you that one of the problems is, in fact, the principal problem is not how we're treating those detainees, which is awful enough, there's been torture, and remember the majority of them were innocent. They were gathered up for bounties. Some of them turned out to be like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is actually one of the top organizers on 9-11,

but the majority of them, we decided later, oops, they're innocent. Some of which we've let out, and some of which we still haven't let out. Exactly. Right. So when we said, look, that's, Even though that is atrocious, that's actually not the number one problem. The number one problem is we've set up a lawless area that we control through martial law, right? So the military controls a piece of land in Cuba where we say no law applies. And so when you do that, can you put American citizens there? Well, yeah, of course you could because the law doesn't apply. So, and now you had Donald Trump, Republican president, considering putting American citizens there.

And then if you complain, well, sad, That day for you. There's no law there. So all there is is martial law, meaning military law. We have the might, we have the guns, and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. And so look, as you see that piece and a thousand other pieces, Trump was such a maniac that huge parts of his government would often ignore his questions, advice, not advice, like commands, directives, they'd just be like, no, the guy's a maniac, and we're not going to do that.

We're not going to in prison American tourists in Guantanamo Bay, so we'll, let's move on, right? It's insane. But if, by the way, they're supposed to follow the president, right? I mean, you're talking about deep state, no, they're usually top advisors, people he handpicked, like, including his son-in-law. Oftentimes, it'd be like, oh, yeah, everybody knows the president's an idiot. Don't listen to him, right? But if they had listened to them, yeah, we would have put Americans in Guantanamo Bay, just like we told you. No, I mean, we saw a little of the lunacy, right?

And I say a little because the details in this book make it abundantly clear that his suggestions in combating the virus was even worse than we experienced publicly. I mean, the guy suggested injecting disinfectant in order to fight the symptoms of COVID. He did that in a press conference. And I thought, oh, it can't get any lower than this. But suggesting that U.S. citizens be held in Guantanamo Bay, rather than allowing them back in the United States if they've been traveling, is insane. It's absolutely insane. And also, look, the very people who had issues with, and rightfully had issues with the way that Obama handled foreign policy, how Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing about Guantanamo Bay, left it open, right? Are they upset about this?

Are they upset about this? That Trump would suggest not once, but on two different occasions that U.S. citizens be held in Guantanamo Bay because of the very chance that they might have COVID through their travels. Anyway, I just think that's fascinating. I just, look, I know people are tired of hearing how stupid Donald Trump is, but 40% of the country thinks he's a genius. So, look, if all of it didn't end up for you, you know the other suggestions that they ignored. So why don't we do 10 times the nuclear weapons we have? Well, it would bankrupt the country, literally, and what happened? I thought he was anti-war.

At one time, he suggested nuking a hurricane, launching a nuclear weapon inside a hurricane to slow it, they had to tell them no, that would actually spread the radiation further out. But if you're not convinced by any of that, we all saw on tape with our own eyes, he suggested injecting bleach into your body for coronavirus. If you're not done with them, I'm not, after that, I'm not having a conversation with rational people. Right. The only people who still support them are deeply, deeply, deeply irrational.

So you think, oh, yeah, maybe, maybe we should inject bleach. Maybe that was a smart thing for the president to ask, by the way, many, many, many months into coronavirus. It wasn't just at the beginning, even though, what, injecting chlorox into your lungs at the beginning would have made sense? No, the guy is a blithering idiot. The most interesting part of this is how deeply everyone in the White House knew it. No, you're right. And that his own advisors served as the role that Congress should have been serving, which is checking him, right?

I would have never guessed that that was going on in the White House because of all the public stupidity that was going on. But no, apparently, privately, he had advisors that were keeping him away from some of the most insane suggestions. Another one is this. Remember, he loves putting incompetent people in charge of incredibly important efforts. So he was upset about testing because the more people get tested, the more you find out about cases in the United States, and high case counts made him look bad. So he said, testing is killing me, Trump reportedly exclaimed in a phone call to then Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on March 18th, yelling so loudly that Azar's

overheard every word. I'm going to lose the election because of testing. What idiot had the federal government do testing? Do you mean Jared? Azar responded. Just five days earlier, Kushner had vowed to take charge of a national testing strategy with the help of the private sector. And he was furious about that. This was gross incompetence to let the CDC develop a test, Trump reportedly said, as he berated Azar, he just didn't want people to know the truth about how widespread COVID had already been at that point. Look, if it was contained to the CDC, I can actually see a fact pattern where you say, oh, no, he's referring to the test that the CDC created that turned out to be a flop

and actually delayed us, right? So there's a scenario where you give him all of the benefit of the doubt and he comes out okay on that one sentence, okay? But guys, he's not, he didn't just leave it at that sentence. He said, why are we doing testing at all? We shouldn't be doing testing because it's killing me. Because his point was, the more you test, yes, we'll find out more, we'll have better resources to treat people who have it.

Less people will die. But it is my perception that it is going to hurt my political career. So I would rather have them die than hurt my political career by one of the And then he thinks that's so obvious. He's like, what kind of an idiot listen to the scientists? How dare you listen to scientists and try to save people's lives? And by the way, look, we're always fair. We laughed, I laughed out loud upon rereading the Jared Kushner line of,

it was Jared, sir, right? But if you're being fair, actually give a little bit of credit to Jared Kushner, because he actually pushed for testing, which is the correct thing to do if you want to save lives. want to save lives. Right. And then Trump is furious at him. He's like, Jared got it right, finally, God damn it, I can't fire him. God, can you imagine that guy is your father-in-law?

I mean, I'm not making any excuses for Jared Kushner, he's awful in his own ways. But to your point, Jank, there was something else going on behind the scenes that we're now learning about because while the Trump administration would have American citizens believe that wearing masks is ridiculous, remember they turned it into a huge culture war issue, behind the scenes, Jared Kushner was trying to secure masks for Americans and was furious when there were delays in obtaining the masks. So these are the last two graphics, as Dan Diamond at the Washington Post writes, HHS emergency preparedness chief Robert Cadlick, who had overseen the purchase of 600 million

masks, took the plan in late March to Kushner, who exploded in anger throwing his pen against the wall in frustration when he learned the masks would not arrive until June. You effing moron, Kushner reportedly said, will all be dead by June. So apparently they knew how important the masks were. And apparently they knew how severe the outbreak was. Meanwhile, Trump's going on TV every single day lying to you guys, telling you it's no big deal, it'll magically disappear. He literally said it will magically disappear two different times.

Anybody having a conversation about Trump being intelligent, it's just sad, it's really, really sad. So now back to the last couple of points here. That honestly prove what we've been saying for the last four or five years. Number one, I said to you that there's Trump's not really the president. There's two people who were directing almost all of the policy. And the two people were Steve Mnuchin at Treasury and Jared Kushner. They're the ones that were actually doing almost all of the policy. That is why Trump every once in a while finds out what his own policy is. And they get furious about it. He's like, who wrote this? idiot, you're the president. You were supposed to do it, but you were watching Fox and friends

and drinking your Diet Coke. Please, executive time. Okay, executive time. And so you told your son-in-law, I don't know, you don't have any experience in this, and you actually sucked at the one thing you did real estate. Why don't you run the country? Then you don't, and then he turns out, he's like, oh, Jared did something wrong. I'm mad. Okay. And then And the thing that I warned you about even before the 2016 election, during the 2016 election, was, look, guys, he's a terrible guy, racist, all that stuff, right? But actually the number one problem is his incompetence. And we can't have someone in office this deeply incompetent.

And as you read that entire profile of the book that's coming out with much more details, it's all Trump appointees going total clown show, right? So nobody knows who's in charge because Trump's an idiot and didn't say, this guy is in charge of everything when it comes to coronavirus. He's like Mike Pence said of the task force, Dr. Burks is the one coordinating the task force. Jared Kushner's secretly president, Mike Pence's chief of staff, who turns out to be a horrible guy, Mark Short. We knew that in general, but in this case, he's like, we don't need no stink in mass. He's one of the people, this, they want to hang Mike Pence anyway. But to give you a sense of how awful Mike Pence and his team were, and they joked around

about you don't need us stupid, you're stinking masks, it's going to panic people if we send them free masks. They considered sending everybody masks, they could have saved thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands of lies. And Mark Short didn't want to do it because he thought it looked silly and he said, it looks like you're wearing underwear in your face. So these morons had no idea what they were doing and they bungled the entire reaction because Is they part of late because they didn't even know who was in charge?

So they'd keep going, wait, is it Pence? Is it Kushner? Is it Berks? Who the hell's in charge? And Trump's ordering Diet Coke watching cable news. And that's why over 600,000 Americans died because of their grotesque incompetence. When we come back from the break, we'll discuss why American Airlines has been canceling literally hundreds of flights a day, starting with the weekend. And that story should enrage you, especially when you consider just how much money they took in PPP money. Come right back. I'll give you those details and more.

All right, back on TYT, Jankana, with you guys, and of course you guys. So Matt, excuse me, Matt Cockrell wrote in on YouTube super chat and just said, if Biden wants to be FDR, he has to come out against the filibuster. This isn't difficult L.O.L. And it really is LOL. Like the press never bothers to ask about it anymore. We're always talking about, oh, what's the main you're going to do? What's man you're going to do? Joe Biden's current position is that he's in favor of the filibuster.

How absurd and insane is that? You know, and even if Biden succeeds in passing his infrastructure bill and the American family's plan, which it's just not going to happen. But let's say even in a perfect world that does happen, he's still not anywhere near FDR because FDR created and passed programs that like permanently redistributed wealth, right? Like the social security program and Medicare, like those are things that actually had lasting power and it wasn't just this one time infusion of spending, federal spending. So it's something else to keep in mind. Anyway, God, I can go on and on about

that because Politico just published this piece about the infrastructure negotiations that made me want to pull my hair out. We'll talk about that in more detail tomorrow. But can I just say Matt, that's why I love doing the show with you guys. You're the smartest audience. You noticed something that the entire mainstream media missed. Yeah, it's amazing. So thank you. All right, Casper. Let's talk about American Airlines. American Airlines has decided to cancel hundreds of flights. This all began over the weekend. They're planning on canceling hundreds more per day as a result of their labor shortage. I mean, it's one of the reasons that they cited, which is pretty infuriating when you consider

the fact that they decided to furlough or lay off as many as 30,000 of their employees after taking quite a bit of money in federal aid during the coronavirus pandemic. Now, according to CNBC, about 6% of the airline's mainline schedule or 190 flights were canceled on Sunday, and that's according to the flight tracking site. flight aware. An internal company list showed about half of those were because of unavailable flight crews on Saturday about 4% of its main line schedule or 123 flights were canceled and 106 were canceled on Monday. So the company is projecting to cancel more flights moving forward, about 50 to 80 flight cancellations per day going forward. And I want to read the reasoning

from their spokesperson Shannon Gibson because we need to debunk or at least analyze the reasoning that they're giving, right? So Gilson, the spokesperson, says this. The first few weeks of June have brought unprecedented weather to our largest hubs,

heavily impacting our operation and causing delays, canceled flights and disruption to crew members' schedules and our customer's plans. And that is true. There have been some weather conditions that have impacted some flights,

But the main reason that they give has to do with the labor shortage. They say that combined with the labor shortages, some of our vendors are contending with, and the incredibly quick ramp up of customer demand has led us to build an additional resilience, build in additional resilience, and certainly to our operation by adjusting a fraction of our scheduled flying through mid-July. So yes, flights and travel has ramped up, right? People are getting vaccinated, knock on wood, thankfully. And so people, they want to travel, they want to see their families, they want to go on vacation,

they want to get out of their houses. This is something that the airline industry should have expected, and I would argue that they did expect. But even though they took American Airlines specifically $5.8 billion in PPP money through the CARES Act. And then an additional $3.8 billion from Biden's COVID relief package, they still decided to lay off 30,000 of their employees. And so when you do that, what do you think you're communicating to your employees?

That includes flight attendants, pilots, all of that. You're communicating that even though you're going to take tens of billions of dollars from the federal government in aid, you still see your employees as disposable, you'll get rid of them, you'll furlough them, you'll lay them off. And when employees feel disposable, what do they do? They might look for other work. This is happening with the restaurant industry as well. So I think what we're experiencing with labor shortages right now is this rebellion against

some employers who have consistently communicated to their workers that they mean nothing, absolutely nothing to them. Yes, look, there could be some weather issues. Is that in any way the real reason for them canceling the flights, et cetera? No, come on. throwing that in there is a distraction, right? If they had all their employees and they're making money off those flights, the weather is in the past, they wouldn't cancel the future flights. So that's, it's a very weak, soft excuse. The real heart of the issues the employees,

but there's a second issue here. Look, you've got the usual stuff that Anna referred to. If a small business took like $10 more than it should have, and it laid off one employee, it'd be in a world of trouble, right? Giant companies can lay off tens of thousands of Nobody's gonna do accountability, okay? That isn't it? Like there's no way that's gonna happen. And so, but the second issue is wages suck. And so people are now reluctant to go back in, especially if they don't have another way to care for the kids, right?

And look, if you get a babysitter in most areas, like, or you have to do daycare or something along those lines. And almost everybody has to, even if your kids are going to school, They get out at 2 o'clock, you don't get out till 5, 6 o'clock, right? So you need to have some sort of daycare, right? That'll eat up one of your income. Then you're like, wait, why am I going back to work? Might as well stay home. Might as well stay home and at least I'm with my kids, right?

And at least I don't have to bust my ass and this and that and all this stuff, right? Because the wages are so ridiculously low that it provides a disincentive to go back in. And the answer that corporate Republicans and Democrats have is maybe we should cut their unemployment earlier and quicker and no, the correct answer is higher wages. And look, the good news is that now these companies are hurting so much for employees. When I was in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, there was signs everywhere on McDonald's, Taco Bell, $15 an hour. I saw one that said $18 an hour.

They're like, please, please work for us. Yeah, finally, finally. And even then it's not enough. Yeah, I mean, it also, I hope, makes workers understand the kind of power that they really have because these companies are not profitable without the hard work of the employees. They're the ones who generate the revenue and the profits for the employers, for the corporations. They get treated like crap, they get told that they're disposable, the minute that there's a crisis.

I mean, the whole point of that federal aid was to prevent these companies from laying people off in the first place, right? And so when you look at the airline companies and the giant infusion of cash that they got through the various bills that were passed during the coronavirus pandemic, it's frustrating to see them. By the way, American Airlines was one of the companies that was trying to get its employees to engage in voluntary work because of their labor shortage. No, no, not voluntary work. Stop treating your employees as if they're disposable and as if they're worthless. And maybe they'll enjoy working for you, maybe they'll come back. But I mean, employees were the first

to bear the brunt of, you know, these firings and the coronavirus pandemic, I'm not surprised that this is the reaction that they've gotten as flights start ramping up again. Yeah, and they wanted their employees to do voluntary work. Well, they voluntarily decided not to show up. And so now they're canceling all those flights. Exactly. Pay them more, and you'll be shocked. A lot of them will come back right away.

We're gonna take a break when we come back. Man, there is this big debate about whether or not it makes sense to docks right-wing extremists when they engage in violent behavior at various demonstrations and protests. We've got that story for you and more when we come back. All right, back on TYT, Jankana with you guys. Forward. All right. There's a big discussion, big debate about whether it makes sense for left activists to unmask right wing extremists when they engage in violent behavior in some of these rallies and protests. Now, the topic is really about doxing.

And so let's go through the details. And I'm really, really curious what you all think. In fact, we even have a poll on this. So the topic was explored by the Washington Post. profiled a specific incident involving an independent journalist by the name of Laura Jadid. And so she was at the Maga March in D.C. in November when she was approached by a Trump supporter who was pretty aggressive, stepped on her toes, and was incredibly confrontational. In fact, we have a video showing you what that looked like. Let's take a quick look.

Yeah, yo, this is Portland Antifa Press right here. This one right here, right here. What's up, how you doing? Please don't stop on my foot. What's up? How are you doing? All the way from Portland? You're a little maggot. Do not touch me.

Magid. I'm not touching me. Yes, you actually are. You definitely are and I need you to stop. Don't video me. I'm allowed to video. Okay, well, I'm allowed to be standing right. Absolutely are.

But if you touch me. What's up, you stupid. What's up? I can't wait to see you in the fucking lobby again. What's up? Is that a threat? Are we coming? What's going to happen to be in the lobby?

Can you elaborate? What's up? You want to keep recording. You ain't going to do nothing. Keep recording. You ain't doing nothing. You ain't going to do nothing. Keep recording.

What are you going to do? Now, what followed is what has led to a debate that I think is worth having. So the man in the flag mask was quickly identified as Washington. identified as Washington State resident Edward Jeremy Dawson by a local Antifa group. Twitter users mining public records later released his address and phone number. The video was amplified by Christian Exu, a prominent anti-fascist activist who tweeted it out to his 50,000 plus followers. Now Christian also included contact information for Dawson's employer.

And I looked for that tweet and found it. And yeah, there are very specific details about who the employer is. how activists should call and let the employer know about Dawson's behavior. So Dawson ends up getting fired. Dawson's wife, Michelle, also uploaded a tearful self-shot video to Twitter announcing his firing. And later that month, she was asked to hand in her vest and badge at a Walmart in Battleground, Washington, where she worked as an online order fulfiller. She thinks that she was fired over her politics, but acknowledges that she had missed a substantial amount of work because of her back problems.

So the question is, does this activism doxying bad actors, dangerous or right-wing extremists work? Does it make sense? Do we support it? And I think this is a perfect topic for TYT Supreme Court. Uyghur, you go first. Okay, we're missing a couple of justices today, but all right. This is a complicated one. So first, I want to just give a quick background on what happened with that person recording. She then went back to her hotel room, but they were staying in the same hotel. That's why he had that reference to seeing her in the lobby, right?

And she said she locked her door, deadbolted it, but couldn't sleep all night because she knows they're in the hotel and that according to him, they're looking for her. Imagine how frightening that is. So keep that in mind as this guy cries about, oh my God, I'm worried about my safety. Well, you weren't worried about her safety, right? Now, at the end, by the way, when they asked him, do you think you did something wrong? He said, the only thing I did wrong was not keeping the mask on, meaning so that he could be identified. Not because of coronavirus or anything along those lines.

So he's saying if I wasn't identified, I could have bullied and intimidated her and gotten away with it. So I have no sympathy, zero for the Dawson's. None, none, none. Okay, having said that, what is doxing? So is revealing someone's name doxing? No, that is not doxing. So now sometimes people in the mainstream media cry about it, people in the establishment cry about it,

sometimes right-wingers cry about it. Oh my God, oh, you know the guys who cry about it the most corrupt politicians. You let people know who I was taking a million bucks from in a legalized bribe. You dox them. No, that's not doxing. We said, yeah, that's Charles Koch, that guy as an example, right? Or Robert Mercer gave you the money. That's the guy you work for. That's not doxing. That's called information. And that's called basic reporting. So I don't mind their names being out at all. But giving out the address

and the phone number is different. And so is the employer thing. I think the employer thing is really hard. I'm not super clear about what the right thing there is, and I'm curious what you think. But to me, as despicable as that guy was, do I vote no, do not give out the address and phone number. I think it's a bad policy idea everywhere. Next to you know, everybody's going to one another's houses. By the way, the right wing is more violent than the left wing by a lot. So you start a pattern and precedent of giving out people's addresses and phone numbers, I can't see any way that doesn't turn into a disaster. So I vote that no, you should not do that type of doxing, and which I think is actual doxing. So I think that what we're seeing with the doxing is the type of vigilanteism that happens when our institutions are failing us and our institutions are failing us.

I mean, there's no doubt about it. First of all, I mean, from beginning to end, you see failure in our institutions. Number one, the Dawson's, while I certainly don't feel too much sympathy for them, given what they've engaged in, I mean, they both didn't finish high school, right? Like our public education system certainly failed them. They're both working pretty terrible, well, we're working pretty low-paying jobs. I know that he was a steel worker, but without even a high school degree, how much could he possibly be making as a steel worker?

She was working for Walmart, you know how Walmart pays its employees. So there's the lack of action in Congress when it comes to ensuring that people have like normal, stable lives and are able to provide for themselves. I know that his wife, Michelle, for instance, had no interest in politics, felt like politics was not a place for her. She didn't follow it. She felt like politicians had no interest in doing anything to better her life. She became radicalized in the right wing thanks to Donald Trump, because Trump, in a very hollow and obviously deceptive way, pretended to care about their issues, right? So that's what radicalized them to the extreme right. The fact that Congress, as an institution, has failed us when it comes to regulating

social networking platforms, which literally have algorithms that uplift content that radicalizes people in the worst possible way, spreads fake news in the worst possible way. done nothing about that. Congress has done nothing about the fact that data brokers literally profit off of selling our personal information publicly. Our personal information, everyone's personal information is out there. Every single person in this country can easily get doxed because our private data is constantly being sold by various platforms, by online merchants. I mean, it's just, again, failure from beginning to end. So do I feel bad for them? That's a different question.

Like it's hard to feel bad for them given that they willingly engaged in that kind of activity and that behavior and obviously he was interested in just intimidating this reporter, right? So look, he's unrepentant and she also said, oh our 18 year old daughter doesn't agree with that she was super annoyed by it. She's like, oh, she's into George Floyd, blah, blah, blah, right? Yeah. So you get a sense of who these folks are. But at the same time, I agree with you, they're real people.

I want to come back to that in this second, but I want to let you for you. the other thing, right? They became hardened, even more hardened in their extremism after they were docks. So they appear to be unchanged as a result of the doxing. Like, they feel no remorse. However, there was an interesting point made in the article about others who are kind of like straddling, right? They might want to go to these events, but then they see what happens to right-wing extremists in losing their jobs and all of that. And that discourages them, deters them. And I think that's an interesting deterrent. But at the end, At the end of the day, the failure is really about the institutions.

We have to think about how easy it is to docks anyone, and do you want to be docks for your political beliefs? And I say no, I think that it's bad practice, and really the ire needs to be directed toward members of Congress and their insane failure to really address issues. By the way, and police, right, vigilanteism is happening because police appear to be in bed with the right wing extremists. So I don't, look, I'm not trying to be overly judgmental about the activists, right? They're doing what they think is right. And the reason why they're doing it is because the institutions have failed them, they failed

all of us. So I don't know, it's a long way of saying, no, don't do the doxing. So look, we got a poll on this. I think it's really interesting and a lot of people coming in already in the members' comments, it's mixed, t.yt.com slash polls. We're curious about your answer, but Anna, I want to establish a couple of things before I go back to a really interesting point you made. One, giving somebody's name is not doxing. Right, correct. Okay. Giving out address on phone numbers definitely is doxing and is wrong.

Mm-hmm. We're agreed on that, right? So that only leaves to me, do you tell their employer or not, okay? So now, in terms of these folks, look, steel workers are good job. And look, a lot of folks have to work at Walmart, but he just asked them. them, they're not loving it. And so, but she loses the job, he has to get a lower paying job, he's still apparently some sort of steel worker, but he gets a lot less, they're pretty devastated in terms

of the financial fallout from this. And so, but the thing that about how she was not at all political and got into politics because of Trump resonated with me in this. These are not like highly paid political actors in DC that are politicians or lobbyists or consultants etc. They're real, real people. And one of the things that, that, like, the thing that is most unspoken in the American media is people didn't just like Trump because he acts in monstrous ways. They also liked them, or some exclusively liked them for this, because he said he was going to drain the swamp. And he looked, and he talked like a real person, because he

He didn't talk like a political robot. So even though he's a con man, it gave off the appearance of being real. And he gave off to, even though he's the most corrupt guy, both personally and systemically, he gave off the appearance of being anti-corruption. And a lot of real people got energized by that. And they were like, well, at least that guy's not fake, they thought wrongly, right? And at least he's not like all the other crooks, who we know for a fact of Robbins. this blind. And the media tells us they're all wonderful, honorable politicians. And so we know

the media has a bunch of liars. Right, that's another institution that failed us. The media failed us more than any of them. Because over 90% of the country says that politicians serve their donors and not their voters. 93%. Okay. It's the exact opposite in the media. Over 90% of the media says, no, they do not serve their donors. They are honorable people having a legitimate intellectual debate. That is so outrageously false that, of course, a lot of people were like, oh, I guess you're fake news. The minute anybody said fake news, they were like, oh, I instantly believe it.

Because those liars have been telling me that these corrupt politicians have my best interest in mind, can get out of here, right? So now you take those people and they go down a rabbit hole, and they go down this rabbit hole, right? And that rabbit hole leads into dark places where you get enough. A woman's face, by the way, she's a veteran, right, and went into the military, by the way, out of patriotism after 9-11, got jaded by the war in Afghanistan. She served two tours in and then became progressive.

So you get in her face, you physically, you step on her, you threaten her, and you're in this dark, dark place. So one, I've got to fight against you, but two, what's more important is what caused that cancer in the first place? Yes, exactly. So like the debate is about what band-aid we need to use when in reality the real conversation needs to be about the root of the problem. That's where I'm trying to, you know, that's where I'm trying to focus, really.

Now, again, I don't want people to think I'm like trying to protect the right-wing extremists. I'm not. But there is a very real problem in the country with right-wing extremists. They didn't just come out of nowhere. Why is it that, especially during the Trump years, I mean, as early as 2009 when we did that story about the Department of Homeland Security, realizing that there's a problem with right-wing extremism, and then Obama got bullied into getting rid of that portion of the DHS, right? It was already a problem in 2009, and it's exploded since then.

The real question is why, and why aren't we tackling the root causes of it? Yeah. And then finally on the employers, I still haven't made up my mind, but look, I always think what if the shoe was on the other foot? Because that's the principal way to do it, right? And so what if they got a left-wing protester who had committed an act of violence against a right-wing protester and threatened that right-wing protester's safety, okay? Would I be okay with the right-wing telling their employer that they had done that? And I think the answer is yes. And then that's up to the employer to decide what they want to do with that information. And so, look, I get it, I'm in a position of privilege here because you are the boss. Yeah, right, no, you say, oh, I'm complaining to Jenk about Jenk. Okay, you're not going to get very far. By the way, unless you're right, in which case I'll say, hey, sorry, et cetera, right? But if the, look, especially with cops, right?

because they're in charge of other people and they have tremendous power and they have guns, they have badges, they have authority that we, you know, gave them. If a cop is a white nationalist and he's out there going in and abusing African Americans, we got to know, we got to know. If there's a nurse or a doctor who does, you know, doesn't believe in vaccines and is lying about taking a vaccine, et cetera, or threatening people when they're supposed to be taking care of people, we got to know. So there's a lot of reasons why an employer knowing is important.

It doesn't mean that everyone has to be fired. And we should be, look, it's easy for me to say, I don't do this. It's not a tactic I use at all, right? But for the folks who do, use some care because these are real people, as abhorrent as these guys happen to be, and a lot of them happen to be. And I know what you're trying to prevent. But so many people are in the same class. Right?

We're all the overwhelming majority of us are poor and middle class, okay? And they want us to fight one another. And so I know that some of those fights are unavoidable and I engage in a lot of those fights, right? But at the same time we should be mindful towards a long term, which is not getting someone who works at Walmart fired by getting the politicians fired and getting the people in power fired, because the little guy isn't causing the problem, even if they're acting this badly. It's the big guys that are causing the problem.

When you got an issue and there's systemic injustice, don't look down, look up. All right, that does it for our first hour. For our second hour, we're going to do that juicy story regarding Tucker Carlson getting called out for who he really is behind the scenes. Don't miss it. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. 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.