The Young Turks - Can't GameStop, Won't GameStop

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

An explanation into GameStop’s Reddit and options-fueled stock rally, and why some are buying during the meme-fueled run. Both sides of the aisle are sharpening their carving knives for Biden’s COVID relief plan, but would that be a smart idea? 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, friends. You're watching The Young Turks with Anna Casparian and John Iderola, Host of the damage report on TYT network, you should check that out every day at 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1 p.m. Eastern. John, how are you doing? I'm glad to be here, Anna. Thank you for having me on the show once again. I apologize that I am bringing down the visual appeal of the show. You always look so fancy. I'm wearing a

hoodie because it is so cold in the studio. I don't know why it's this gold. Maybe because there are any other bodies warming it up. But anyway, happy to be doing the news with you. I'm happy to be doing the news with you as well. And I just want to thank our audience for remaining patient yesterday. I've been feeling under the weather. Not feeling much better today. But I have medicated myself and I'm hoping that I am able to do a clear and consistent show for you guys. But again, thank you for being patient with me. I'm really looking forward to today's show. We're actually going to start by talking about a little bit about stocks, something that we don't talk about. about often on the show, but there's a good reason to discuss the stock market today. Also, we're gonna discuss the fact that Edwin Umani, who is our stage manager, is celebrating his birthday today. Happy birthday, Edwin. He's one of my favorite people. What's the hell? Oh, da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na. I love it's covering his face.

There he is. There he is. He's such a great guy. Is he really? Or is it just no idea? I don't know. Who doesn't love owls? Owls are super cool. They're like really cool birds that make really cool noises. Anyway, Oh no, she is medicated. I'm getting worried. But we do have a great show ahead. So as always, if you're a member or if you're watching us on YouTube, you can leave a YouTube super chat or as members you can leave comments and we'll do our best to get to some of those comments when we go to our breaks for the live online audience. And let's get started. I've been dying to talk about this story all day. It's super exciting. Let's talk a little bit about GameStop.

Participants in the subreddit known as Wall Street Betts helped rally GameStop, a brick and mortar video game store, and more recently AMC and other stores and companies, after prominent hedge funds decided to bet against them and short the companies. Now, that is something that, of course, is available in the stock market. Hedge funds do that when they are expecting certain companies to fail by, of course, doing their version of analysis on these companies. And based on the analysis, a hedge fund known as Melvin decided to short GameStop. And then these Reddit users, in this specific subreddit Wall Street bets decided to rally and Melvin lost big, which means that rich men are crying, which means we get to do one of my favorite segments on

this show when rich men cry. I care. I love that bumper more than anything that we've ever done. That's one of my favorite bumpers. It's so good. But let me give you the details on what happened and why hosts over at CNBC are absolutely panicking about some movement in the markets. So shares of GameStop, and this is probably outdated by the time you read it, but shares of GameStop are up more than sevenfold in 2021 compared with a 2.5 rise in the SMP 500. The Grapevine, Texas video games retailer has become a favorite of online traders who invest in companies championed on the

Reddit forum Wall Street Betts. Now, what did these investors do? Well, they target short sellers who are betting that shares will fall due to what they see as the firm's business challenges. Goldman Sachs Group's ink basket of the 50 stocks with the highest short interest, Wall Street wages and the shares will fall was up 25% for the year through Friday. Now, surging prices in heavily shorted shares such as GameStop have led to large losses at hedge funds that bet against stocks, prompting an emergency $2.75 billion deal to rescue one such firm. And the firm that we're talking about here is Melvin, right? So they're one of the hedge funds that decided to short game stop. The subreddit Wall Street Betts decided, why don't we rally? Why don't we buy up

these shares? They did that. And of course, that increases the value of the shares. The financial press has been panicking about this because we can't have average people make money off the stock market. We can't have them beat these hedge funds at their own game. That's unacceptable. Now, we're talking about Wall Street firms, Wall Street companies that have been bailed out over and over again. Even in this particular case, you have wealthy individuals coming to the rescue of this hedge fund. But wouldn't you know it, they weren't able to survive this and have filed for bankruptcy as a result. Now, I want to give you a little taste, just a little taste of how CNBC covered this, a little taste of that panic that I was talking

about, let's watch. This is really causing some issues for these hedge funds, specifically ones like Melvin Capital, who doubled down on their bet against GameStop and had a new cash injection from Steve Cohen and Ken Griffin. And that's because this narrative has emerged on Reddit that's basically says we're taking on these hedge funds, that we're sort of the white nights coming in for these hedge funds that long have come on to, you know, the financial news channels and done essentially what they say they're doing. So when you look at hedge fund positioning, Melvin ones, I've been digging through what puts they have. They have been taking off. So no doubt Melvin Capital is in a lot of pain. Everything from GameStop to stocks here

in Europe, such as Evo Tech, which they're short. At the same time, hedge fund shorts in general rallied 15% over the past two days. That's their best session since 2012. And we see evidence that they're starting to have to unwind their longs in order to pay for the pain that they are seeing in these other short positions that are getting absolutely crushed. So now it's almost become this risk that if you're publicly coming out as a hedge fund and disclosing the stocks that you're against, as one Twitter user put it, you're at risk of getting Melvin. In other words, this Reddit army could really come after you. So this is truly a new and unique risk for hedge fund managers?

No, I love, I love Reddit. I love Reddit, public freak out, one of my favorite subredits. But now I got to check out Wall Street Betts because bringing these hedge funds to their knees is probably one of the most fascinating and exciting stories that we've covered in a long time. Because what it really did reveal to me is how much of a double standard there is when it comes to market manipulation. When it comes to the average Joe, you know, engaging in what we're seeing with this subreddit, oh, it's unacceptable. But market manipulation has been taking place quite a bit, especially after the 2008 economic collapse. You know, you have these massive bailouts, you have the Federal Reserve pumping money into failing bank.

and corporations. And then I don't know, how many segments did CNBC do to talk about how the market is manipulated by these very companies and banks who then take that money, right, zero interest money in many cases, and then buy shares of their own stock, artificially inflating their stock value. They pay dividends to their investors, right? When, hey, why did you need that, you know, why did you need liquidity? Why did you need the Federal Reserve to jump in and help you with liquidity when you're not actually doing anything to reinvest in your business or ensure that your business

doesn't go under? All they do is turn around and they buy shares of their own stocks. They pay dividends to their investors. And that's also what happened after Trump's tax cuts for the rich, by the way. There was a giant influx in corporate stock buybacks following that. That kind of market manipulation, John, totally acceptable. But when you have average people rallying to, you know, helping to rally GameStop and other companies that have been shorted, oh, that's, we got to do something about that.

Oh, and they did, which I'm sure we'll get to. You know, some of the individual traders, the apps, even the Biden White House is looking at the situation. We'll see which side they come down on in the end. But yeah, as you listed, there's a number of different ways that the stock market is manipulated or artificially moved in one direction or another, I generally think that almost all of it is absolute BS based on almost nothing. As I talked about in the damage report, Elon Musk made how much money over the last year? Tesla is doing a little bit better. What

fundamentally about Tesla is so different than it was seven months ago? Like, it's not based on anything. But in terms of the manipulations, it's also bear in mind that the particular mechanism that the Redditors are manipulating here or that they're targeting these hedge funds for, that itself is in effect often a manipulation of the market. When they do these bets against these stocks, that is hypothetically in a shallow sense, just the sort of gambling that rich people do with other people's money. But when massive hedge funds do that to a company, it puts out a very strong signal that this is a company that's going down.

You would be stupid to put your money into it at this point, in theory, because we're Why would these hedge funds be doing that if they believe that there was any chance that these stocks would rise in value? And so that can put a negative pressure on the stock price, making it even more difficult for some of these companies to come back. And we can, you know, we could go into any of the individual stocks, what we think about, you know, GameStop as a company or its practices or anything like that. But this is sending a strong signal to Wall Street that their habitual manipulation on the market via what Melvin and others were doing in this case is something that could be exploited unless maybe Wall Street or the traders come up with some way to lock

regular, you know, sort of low money investors out of the process, which seems like something they are working on. Yeah, it certainly does appear to be something that they've already implemented to some extent, which I'll get to in just a second. But first, I want to make sure that I disclose a few things because it's important. Clearly, we are not financial advisors. Clearly, we are not experts in this field. So I don't want anyone to watch this. and take any of it as any type of financial advice or investing advice, it is not. Also, I am not interested in having a conversation about, you know, any particulars regarding GameStop or Nokia or any of the companies that are kind of being shorted by these hedge funds.

And then, you know, you're seeing the Redditors kind of helping to rally for these companies. I'm sure they have business practices that I disagree with. But that's not what this discussion is about. This is a discussion about the entire financial system and how for me it's become abundantly clear that it's okay for this system to be rigged in favor of people who are in, you know, privileged positions. But once you have average individuals coming together to essentially put their minds together and beat these hedge funds and these Wall Street firms at their own game, that's when the panic sets in. For the financial press, for people who have been, you know, completely silent on the type of Wall Street manipulation that's been going on for a long time now. I mean, the stock market is a house of cards, which is why it's been so frustrating to hear politicians like Donald Trump consistently put out this message about how our economy is booming. And then he notes that the stock market is doing well.

The day that the capital was breached and those rioters caused all that vandalism and chaos, stock market was doing swimmingly. It was doing so well. Throughout this pandemic, it's been doing so well. Remember, nearly 50% of Americans are not invested in the stock market at all. So when you hear the financial press panic about what's going on to, today, just understand that they're panicking on behalf of people, a very small group of people, 10% of Americans, only 10% own the vast majority of stocks, right?

So when we look at who's invested in the stock market, and when you hear the financial press talk about how dangerous this is and how people can get hurt, understand that they're talking about people who are already tremendously wealthy. I'm not trying to minimize the possibility of pensions somewhere. down the line getting hurt by this kind of activity. I can't predict. I don't know for sure. But what I do know is the majority of the analysis and commentary I've seen about this, demonizing this subreddit seems to be, seems to employ this double standard that's incredibly frustrating. With all of that said, there was a fantastic interview on CNBC this morning

that I want to share. And so let's go to the first video and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. I think that what you're seeing is that essentially a pushback against the establishment in a really important way. You have a lot of people, and I would encourage anybody who is dismissive of this thing to go into Wall Street bets and actually just read the forums. And I think that you're going to see three kinds of posts. The first kind of content are a lot of people doing some incredible fundamental diligence on companies trying to think about long-term value. And in my opinion, many of them are doing as good and frankly a better job than a lot of hedge fund analysts that I work with.

That's number one. The second are a lot of people who believe that, you know, coming out of 2008, what happened was Wall Street took an enormous amount of risk and they left retail as the bag holder. And a lot of these kids were in grade school and high school when that happened. They lost their homes. Their parents lost their jobs. And they've always wondered, like, why did those folks get bailed out for taking enormous amounts of risk and nobody helped and showed up to help my family.

So that was Chimath, who's the CEO of Social Capital. I'm not even going to attempt to say his last name because I don't want to insult him by butchering it. But he's absolutely right, John. Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, it was just such an expected thing. I mean, even in this case, it wasn't the federal government stepping in, although, I mean, we don't know that at some point that might not become a thing, depending on what happens in the next few years. weeks, next few days or the next few weeks. But they were instantly bailed out by another company. It's just, it's a system that is designed to protect the interests of the people that are already at the top. I mean, just the ability to to invest is a natural, it's a multiplier on the wealth

that you already have, buttressed by the political power that these organizations have, and then the sort of networks between the different hedge funds and, you know, all that. My fear is that in the same way that we don't know exactly what's going to happen to the companies that have lost so much money, we also don't in the end know what's going to happen to some of the individual people who are going to lose a lot of money. Because this is fun. And some people, like if you go to Wall Street Betts, you're going to see some testimonials of people that have made a lot of money. Like supposedly some people have made millions. But you can find regular people have made $50,000 off of this, which is awesome. But a lot of A lot more people are going to come into this after a day or two. They weren't involved in this initial planning, they're not in the discord or whatever. And by the time they get in, probably driven by economic desperation from the pandemic, they've already lost so much, they desperately need something that can help them catch up. They might be getting in when the price has already peaked.

And then maybe it starts to go down or maybe it completely tumbles back down to what it was a week ago. And so you could have regular people that could lose a significant amount of money, potentially all of their money. And so that's my fear is that this is really interesting. It is fascinating. But some people are going to lose their money. And it's not just going to be hedge funds. It's going to be people who put the last $5,000, the last $20,000 that they had into this. Yeah, I mean, I share your concerns about that. There's no question. But it goes to something that's always made me uneasy about investing and getting involved with the stock market. And And to be sure, if you're in America and you've decided to be cautious because you know exactly

what's happening in the stock market, you don't believe in investing in a house of cards, you're going to lose money, right? There is, this country does not in any way incentivize you to just simply save your money. Like it incentivizes you to gamble with it in the stock market that's artificially inflated and that's terrifying, right? So my overall point is this system has been set up in a way. that artificially inflates the value of these shares that's built on this House of Cards. It's manipulated to the point where it's completely disconnected from the real economy.

And so hedge funds have been able to manipulate it. The Federal Reserve has been able to manipulate it. And no one seemed to really raise any alarm about that previously. I mean, there would be a few progressives. Nomi Prins is one of my favorite people who actually left Wall Street to be a whistleblower and a journalist regarding Wall Street practices. And she's been talking about, you know, what's been going on with the Federal Reserve pumping money into these failing companies and banks for, for years. And no one else has really been raising any alarm about that. So why is it

that it had to be a subreddit doing what they did with GameStop for the financial press to realize, oh, wait a minute, it's super easy to manipulate the market. Maybe this is a bad idea. Sure, but how about instead of immediately focusing on randos on the internet, let's focus on people who actually have power who have set up the system this way. Let's really ask ourselves whether or not what the Federal Reserve is doing is beneficial to this country, to the financial markets overall in the long term. So I want to go to the second video featuring Chimati. He just makes one great point after the next.

And I think what he says about this being a political statement against the establishment is just right on, hits the nail on the head. Let's take a look at the next video. Instead of having idea dinners or, you know, quiet, whispered conversations amongst hedge funds in the Hamptons, these kids have the courage to do it transparently in a forum. And I'm not saying all of it is perfect by any means. but I think it takes an enormous amount of faith in the system to be that transparent to talk about things and then for each individual to make their own mind up and to do things, whether it's to buy and to sell. In a world of zero interest rates and quantitative easing, I don't know how you can run a typical hedge fund strategy and make money anymore because, for example, when you looked at GameStop, you know, a normal person would say, How can you have 136% short interest?

How can you be short 40% more shares that actually exist in the world? To a normal person, that doesn't make any sense. But to a Wall Street mathematician, that's the game that has been played for years. And that game came undone. And that's exactly what I'm talking about when it comes to the Federal Reserve, pumping money into failing banks and companies. It's known as quantitative easing. definitely read Nomi Prince's book about this collusion. It's fantastic. It is not a

On July 18th, get exciting. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs. Only the date is July 18th. About Russia. It's about the Federal Reserve and how it manipulates the financial markets. John, did you want to say something? Yeah, I think, well, the point that he made about how little sense it makes to regular people can be applied to a lot of aspects of this. I mean, back, you know, one of the big things that contributed to the financial collapse more than a decade ago was the derivatives market. And when when people find out that like the total amount of outstanding derivatives is like 10 world economies or something like that, that look, again, I'm not just not a financial advisor. I'm barely qualified to manage the investments I have right now. But that doesn't make sense to anyone because it shouldn't because it doesn't actually make any sense. A lot of this doesn't. I mean, it's been set up in a way that some people have consistently made a lot of money off of it. So I guess it makes sense financially for them. But there are there are multiple reasons why the vast majority of people have no, aren't involved in this system at all.

Financial barriers are the most significant one. But one of them is a knowledge thing. It's designed to be opaque. It's designed to be a thing that it's like expecting regular people to be. be like world champion level Pokemon card players. Like it is fairly opaque from the outside. Yeah, I don't think I should go any farther with that metaphor, but you know what I mean. I do know what you mean. And in the members only post game today, I actually do want to talk a little bit about why it is that none of this makes sense to a lot of people, right? I think it's important to discuss the type of education people get and don't get because, And by the way, the resources you need just to be able to make sound financial investments,

right? Like, it's a scary place if you don't understand how the markets work. And if you invest in the wrong things, as my dad learned the hard way, you know, and if you don't know whether you're working with a fiduciary or someone who is not a fiduciary, I mean, it could make all the difference in whether you get screwed in where you decide to invest your money. But I think that financial education is something worth exploring a little bit in our members only post game show today. But I did want to end this segment by also, I have to mention the fact that since it's a subreddit, of course, there's a lot of fun to be had with all sorts of memes. This is a meme that I saw earlier that I really wanted to share with you. And, you know, it's that, you know, the kind of cheating boyfriend meme where you see the the hot girl walking by and she represents GameStop, his girlfriend.

is Bitcoin and he's checking out GameStop. It's just, it cracks me up. And this does have, at least for now, a negative wrinkle to it because while, you know, some of these brokerage firms did absolutely nothing and never raised any alarm regarding the type of market manipulation that's been taking place, they immediately stepped in to essentially restrict any trading on these particular companies like GameStop. So let me show you what a marriage is. trade, let its clients know today. Security impacts related to market conditions. In the interest of mitigating risk for our company and clients, we have put in place several restrictions on some transactions in GameStop and AMC. They were doing this with AMC as well, and other

securities. We made these decisions out of an abundance of caution amid unprecedented market conditions and other factors. So if the government hasn't stepped in, you can surely bet that TD Ameritrade and other brokerage firms are going to do it. Yeah, I look, I did not consider myself educated enough to engage in most of this, but I did decide a couple hours into today that I was going to try to help out Nokia a little bit. That was one of them. And so no big deal. I put $112, no, just $112 into it. And it went up, it got up like 70% and then they halted trading on that particular stock. Why? John. Why? Because people are buying it for a reason you don't like. And then that was it.

They did successfully cut that down and then it went back down again. It had been going up. And they, I guess, saved some hedge fund that had shorted Nokia. It's amazing. What happened to your free market? What happened to your invisible hands? We got to save the hedge funds. The hedge funds are too strong. The hedge funds are too big. All right. Well, I mean, that's, that's the situation we're living in that double standard exists. It's just so clear. It's in our face every single day. And today it just became even clearer. Anyway, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll switch gears and talk a little bit about where Congress stands on coronavirus relief. Stay tuned. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fitting the Republic or UNFEs,

As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, Research, razor sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must unlearn what you have learned.

And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Thank you. I'm going to be able to be. Hey, everyone, welcome to our first social break of the day.

I just want to warn you guys that not a big deal, TYT is giving away a lifelong membership to the winner of the latest aspiration sweepstakes that we're doing. So aspiration is a financial institution where you can be assured that they will not invest your money in. fossil fuel companies. And so for anyone who's signing up for Aspiration for the first time, you will automatically be entered to win. Well, you got to go to Aspiration.com slash TYT to get all the details, but you will be entered to win a lifelong TYT membership. Lifetime TYT membership, pretty fantastic. And you get access to all sorts of exclusive members-only programming. You get access to the archives of all of our programming, which is one of my favorite perks. You get all of old school, no commercials, which is honestly one of my favorite

shows on the network. Like, I love old school. I even watch reruns. You say it all the time. I do. I just think it's fun. It's fun. It's fun. Anyway, so check that out. TYT.com slash, No, I'm sorry, Aspiration.com slash TYT. Also, TDR is on TikTok. So make sure you check that out. Go to TikTok and follow them at The Damage Report. That's John's show. And apparently John's cooler than we are. Are we on TikTok, Brett? No? Okay, fine. Maybe we'll work on that. Anyway, all right, let me read some member comments. Mark has some comments regarding the GameStop story. So glad you are covering this. It's seems the rich want socialism for them, but raw naked capitalism for the common person. Don't tell me the rich don't want socialism. They want it for themselves only. I mean, that's certainly true of every moment they need a bailout. Travis writes in and says, TD Ameritrade suspended trading for a few hours to protect the hedge funds. The establishment can literally

pause the market when they lose. Lieutenant Mack McGee says, so glad this is happening because short selling simply should not be a thing. I agree, yes, I should have said that clearly, like in one sentence. But yes, I totally agree with you on that. So bad for the economy creates incentive for failure. See the 2008 crisis that made one company tons of money because it saw it coming and shorted tons, then made decisions, which made it more likely for the economy to fail. And that's what John was talking about in detail.

And it's just such a great point. I am SOC, says Stephanie Ruhl might have a Reddit worthy public freak out on air tomorrow, Anna. I can't wait, and we will check that out. So let's get back to the show. Hey everyone, welcome back to TYT, Anna Casparian and John Ida Rolla with you. Now let's talk a little about the coronavirus relief package and where it currently stands. Unfortunately, we're getting some bad news, but I'll give you the details you could decide for yourselves. A group of men in suits think that families earning more than $75,000, entire family, household

income, $75,000, shouldn't be eligible for the coronavirus relief package or the relief checks. And this, again, I just want to reiterate, this is analysis that was done by these guys who think if the household income is more than $75,000, then direct coronavirus relief checks. might not be best for them. So this is an effort to essentially do the means testing to ensure that certain people don't qualify for relief. And in this particular case, with this particular research that I am 100% against, they are alleging that even fewer people should qualify for these relief

checks. Let me tell you what the research says. John Friedman, an economics professor at Brown University and co-director of Opportunity Insights, the firm that actually did this research, Harvard Economics Professor Raj Chetty and economist Michael Stepner, analyzed credit and debit card spending data and found a clear uptick in spending for families and individuals who earn less than about $50,000 after the stimulus payments started to widely hit bank accounts on January 4th. In contrast, spending barely moved at all for families. families and individuals earning over $78,000. So the argument that they're trying to make here is that, well, these checks should be targeted

toward a certain group of people who desperately need it. Now, as we also know, the coronavirus relief checks have been means tested, meaning if you filed your taxes and there was any indication that you made more than $75,000, then the amount of money you get in the relief check starts to taper off. And then by the time you get to over $99,000 a year, you don't even qualify for it. So it's already means tested. But this study decreases the number of people who would qualify if it's actually believed and used as evidence by lawmakers. They follow the advice here. Even fewer people would qualify for the relief check, which is infuriating. The price tag to send another round of checks to couples earning more than $75,000 and singles

earning more than $50,000 would be $200 billion. Yet the researchers estimate this group is only likely to spend $15 billion of that money, about 7%. So it's all about, are they going to stimulate the economy? Are they going to stimulate the economy? Are they going to stimulate the economy? What about people who just need to be able to pay their rent or their bills? It's not all about about stimulating the economy. It's about people being able to afford just regular bills that maybe they're not able to afford anymore because they got laid off, furloughed, whatever, as a result of this pandemic, as a result of the shutdowns tied to the pandemic. And if you want a means test people, why don't you do it after the fact when people file taxes?

People need money in their hands right now. So these kinds of studies get taken seriously, and it's incredibly frustrating. Congressman Rokana responded to this by saying, Where were these studies when the Fed lent companies money to pay dividends or executives? Did we look at the impact on consumer spending? But suddenly economists are opposed to middle class families paying off credit card, mortgage, and student loans. And that's what this really is. There's this fear that the money is going to be used to pay off debt or pay bills as opposed to helping to stimulate the economy. Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.

That's all it's about for these people doing these types of studies. and it's infuriating. John, go ahead. Yeah, they're worried that people are going to do like an individual level version of stock buyback. And that can't be allowed this time. But anyway, yeah, there are a couple of issues with this. One is that every time we've been through a cycle of, in theory, checks being sent out, the argument against doing this is that it is complex and slows down the process of actually sending them out. And I would argue that since it's been like more than 20 days, since those $600 checks are sent out, maybe speed is something that we should emphasize here.

I think that that's probably not a bad idea. And also, as you pointed out, the way that they figure what your income is for the purposes of means testing is based on a previous amount of taxes that you paid, what your income was in the previous cycle. But the entire issue, exactly, That's necessitating the aid is that the economy has fallen apart. And it's not necessarily the case that everyone has lost their job, of course, but many have. And many others are doing much worse than they were even if they're lucky enough to have kept their job. I'm not an expert, like whoever it is that did that study, but I kind of feel like I want to sit down with them and maybe shake him a little bit and say, do you understand that we're talking about bad times? We're in the bad times now. You seem to be pretending we're still into the pre-time.

times, but we're not. That's the whole thing. I don't, and it really just does come down to the people who are making these decisions, for the most part, aside from a few who seem to understand things, are entirely disconnected from the reality of what families are dealing with. They don't understand it. They haven't been working class, if at all, for decades. They haven't really struggled for decades. And it's been so long since significant aid was sent out. No, you're absolutely right. And again, if there's this fear that people who are still employed, white collar workers who are making six figures and they don't need this aid would end up getting this relief money, okay, fine, I understand the concern. You want to make

sure that the right people get the relief that they need. But why don't you wait until they file their taxes? And if it shows that they had a considerable amount of income and they didn't necessarily need that government aid, then you tax them and get that money back. But that's not what they're doing. I mean, they're playing these games that's incredibly frustrating because it not only delays money in people's hands when they desperately need it, but it shows you that there's like all this deep thinking and analysis when it comes to providing aid for the needy, for individuals, for workers versus all these companies that got the money they needed right away, influx, infusion of cash, infusion of liquidity for banks and corporations, no questions

asked, trillions of dollars, no questions asked. Stop nickel and diming the American people. Want to know who loves to nickel and dime the American people? Someone who should have lost her re-election bid, Senator Susan Collins, embarrassment, not just to the Republican Party, but to this country. She said that it's premature to be considering a plan on the scale Biden had requested. Remember, Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill that allocates money for vaccine production and distribution. It does have, you know, a provision in there for direct checks to Americans. $1,400. Of course, I would like it to be $2,000. But at TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online

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available, ExpressVPN.com slash T-Y-T, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Also includes unemployment benefits to the tune of $400 per week up until September, I believe. But anyway, the argument coming from Senator Collins is, well, we just passed a $900 billion coronavirus relief package that gave you $600 whole dollars. I mean, isn't it premature? Do you guys really need more than that?

What's wrong with you? Absolute trash. And Rokana is on a tear because he responded to that by saying Susan Collins doesn't get to decide what national policy is, Joe Biden does. But also Democrats who have, yes, slim majorities in the Senate and the House also get to decide. Think the way that Mitch McConnell does. Think like a Republican and get it done. I mean, Joe Manchin's been doing that for a very long time and he could be very important in what aid ends up getting said. Yeah, the thing is like, I like, I know, exactly. I liked Congressman Kana's tweet, but as much as like there's been a lot of things to give Joe Biden credit for over his first week of being president, the fact that they came out with the $1,400 rather than the 2000. And I don't want to get back in a big debate about that. I think it's pretty clear cut. But regardless, and then just a couple days ago said, well, and we can negotiate on the 1400, what are you talking about?

Again, he apparently, according to Congressman Kana, gets to set national policy, and he seems to be, he's already negotiated with himself twice before the actual debate even starts. And that's not a good sign. Like the president's saying 1400 is negotiable, well, gee, I wonder if they're going to try to negotiate that down a little bit. I wonder if someone will pick up on that. And I think that, yes, they probably will. And it's been 20 days since the last one. People have been suffering a whole other, almost an entire extra rent check and utilities checks and you had to eat a lot of food in the meantime. Money back then would have been much nicer than much less money later on. That's sort of how finance works. I mean, I don't know what people are complaining about, John. They got $600. I mean, theoretically, if you didn't file your taxes through direct deposit, then you haven't gotten that $600 yet, but don't worry. You'll get it eventually, maybe. It's just, it's so incredibly sad. And I agree

with you on Biden's messaging. Why is he bending to these people right now? Why are Democrats so afraid to do what's popular? No, but this is, I, no one is interested in seeing Congress unite. Like, look, in an ideal world, they would be, if we had rational people in Congress that we're actually looking out for the best interests of the American people and their constituents, then yes, unity among members of Congress, fantastic, great. But what we want is people to see one another as people again, right? Like we want unity in the country overall. It's really hard to do when people are and have been told for four years straight that the scapegoat,

the reason for all of your problems, the reason why you're experiencing all this economic anxiety is because of immigrants. It's because of people of color. It's because of Black Lives Matter. It's because that's the kind of messaging that was, by the way, fueled by economic anxiety that is torn the country apart. Right. So that's the kind of unity that maybe Joe Biden should focus on. But like the heart of that is ensuring that people are economically stable. I don't care if Susan Collins and Roe Conner are cool with one another and want to have a beer after work. I don't care about that at all. I don't want that kind of unity. I want the fight to be strong among democratic lawmakers. I want them to fight for their constituents

as hard as they fight for their corporate donors. That's what I want to see. That sounds pretty good. Yeah. We got to take a break. I am ranting today. I apologize. But let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about the Capitol Police and some of what we're hearing from the acting chief regarding how ill prepared they were on the day that the riots took place. We'll be right back. Hey everyone. Welcome to our social break. Just a quick announcement regarding programming. So happy half hour is now on Twitch. And you can actually watch it tonight exclusively on Twitch at 8.30 p.m. Eastern time, 5.30 p.m. Pacific. Just go to Twitch.tv slash TYT. Also, I'm going to thank our new YouTube members, Gregory

Contrell and also Brian Ingram. Thank you so much. And Laura Moss upgraded to Essentials. Thank you. Sir, Smoke It Right, 74, upgraded to Premium. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Let's read some super chats, Rob Shively writes in and says, Anna, every day we get to see more and more of your, thank you, journalistic integrity and we love you more each time. Don't stop, never stop. Game Stop. No, he didn't say Game Stop. You got this on lock. Now every time I hear it, don't stop, won't stop. I think of GameStop. It's crazy. Adam DeMont writes in and says, can we all send KY Jelly to those hedge funds because that has got to hurt? That was a masturbation joke. Joshua Newton writes in and says, I love Anna's tweet, was literally on the front page of, oh, Wall Street bets like a few hours ago, that's kind of exciting. Hey guys. Rachel Irwick writes in and says, watching the centrist dropping the ball on relief checks is infuriating.

Are they trying to lose big in 2020? I'm sorry, 2022. I mean, it sure looks like it. Well, they're about to find out. Songs of Sovereignty writes in and says, it's like Charlie Brown and Lucy. They keep going on yanking relief from people who need it the most. Yeah. It's really hard not to feel despair and complete embarrassment by some members of the Democratic Party.

But they just, they don't have a reason to cower in this moment. Biden has no reason to try to appeal to these Republican lawmakers who have made it clear that they have no interest in working with him on his relief bill. Just do whatever it takes to get it done. And of course, the other side of it, guys, and this is a little bit of good news, is that we're hearing more and more from Democrats who are not progressive, people like Chris Coons, who are advocating for using reconciliation to get the relief bill passed. So it's a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel.

Once you have those corporatist Democrats saying, all right, fine, it looks like we're going to have to use reconciliation. That's a good sign. The question is, what are we going to do to hold Joe Mansion accountable if he tries to serve as an obstacle to passing a relief package through reconciliation? Because remember, you still need 51 votes. But anyway, of course, we're going to stay on that story and give you as many details as we can as we learn them. Let me, we don't have a lot of time. So I'm just going to thank a few of our new Twitch subs, portions, redact. Two Months Prime. Thank you. Juko, Maine. Five months tier one with the message, keep up the great work. We absolutely love you guys. I'll read some more Twitch subs and comments when we come back for the next social break. For now, let's get back to the show. So, I'm going to be able to be. Welcome back to TYT. John, I'm not sure if you saw this today, but the Department of Homeland Security issued some sort of warning about the risk or threat of domestic terrorism. They claim that they don't have any type of evidence that there is any type of imminent domestic terrorist attack on the way. but they are concerned that following Biden's inauguration, that there are people plotting for more domestic terrorist attacks. That kind of stuff drives me crazy because it's, if you don't have evidence that there's something being plotted in this moment, why are you scaring people?

I don't get it. But go ahead. Is it, is it that they just don't have anything specific? Because that, like if you just say there might be violence somewhere at some time, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I feel like I'm kind of just going to go about my day. I too share the concern that domestic terrorism could happen somewhere at some time. I've felt that way consistently for some time. I don't know, a lot of Americans think that on March 4th, Donald Trump is going to be inaugurated as the president of America because Biden wasn't. Biden was inaugurated of the corporation that replaced America back in the 1880s. I don't know if you know that, Anna, but that is a thing that millions of Americans believe is true. Maybe there will be violence

after that not happening. Well, that's that's definitely concerning. I hadn't heard that one yet. But one person that we are hearing from now is the acting chief for the capital police. And I want to share some of what she had to tell congressional lawmakers regarding the day of the Capitol riots. So the current acting chief for Capitol police has admitted that the department was definitely ill-prepared. And I mean, it was clearly ill-prepared. We could see it from video and, you know, all the news reports that came out after the Capitol Hill riots. Now, the department apparently knew. They knew that militias and white supremacists would pose a threat on that day. And yet, they were still ill-prepared. So let me give you a little detail into what Yogananda Pittman,

who's the acting chief of the Capitol Police, told the House Appropriations Committee. She called the insurrection a terrorist attack and offered her sincerest apologies on behalf of the department. Pittman also said the department was aware of a strong potential for violence targeting Congress and did not take the appropriate steps to prevent it. Now remember, the previous chief, the person who was in charge of Capitol Police, when the riots were happening, was forced to resign. But Pittman has been in a leadership position within the department as well, and some are calling on her and other components of the leadership to essentially step down because of how much they failed that day in keeping the capitals safe. She also told Congress, quote, let me be clear, the department should have been more prepared for this attack. By January 4th, the department knew that the January 6th event would not be like any of the previous protests held in 2020. We knew that militia groups and white supremacist organizations would be attending.

We also knew that some of these participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons to the event. And so she continues to inform Congress that the capital security infrastructure must change. And that the department needs to access additional resources, both manpower and physical assets. So additional resources, that's an interesting statement. Now, she brought up the fact that their radio system wasn't working properly, and maybe that's what she's referring to regarding additional resources. But it appears that there was, a ball was dropped when it came to requesting cops for that day.

Like, someone dropped the ball. And I'll give you the details on what she's alleging in just a moment. But John, what do you think about her testimony so far? Yeah, I mean, it seems consistent with, you know, what we've heard in like on to the sixth than in the immediate aftermath of it. It seems consistent with that. It seems consistent with we had been talking about the likelihood that there was going to be chaos, not necessarily to the extent that there was, but that a lot of people were going to be going there. And a lot of them believe that the future of America was on the line. If you had been warned that and

you dispatched eight cops, that seems like a big issue. And yet at the same time, we do have to bear in mind that at least one person has lost their job, which means that while there hasn't been much accountability, there's been more accountability for the people who didn't prep properly for it than there have been for the people who caused it to happen in the first place, which that seems a bit bizarre too. Yeah, yeah. And so let me talk a little bit about the leadership and what a legend

happened behind the scenes regarding requests for additional officers. So Pittman confirmed that members of the Capitol Police Board initially declined a request from Sund, okay, so that was the previous chief, Stephen Sund, on January 4th to declare a state of emergency and authorize a national request for National Guard support. Now, former Capitol Police Chief Stephen Sund said that he informally contacted the DC National Guard to see how many people could be sent to the Capitol on short notice. Sun said the now former House Sergeant at Arms, Paul Irving, wasn't comfortable with the optics of formally declaring an emergency ahead of the expected protests over the presidential election certification. Fascinating, that's really interesting. Yeah, I mean,

There were some optics in response to Black Lives Matter protests that didn't really seem to be a problem for authorities. I mean, we didn't hear many of them speak out about the optics there. They seemed very well prepared, overly prepared to respond to peaceful protesters. And with Donald Trump's demand, they decided to rain terror. Authorities, federal agents decided to rain terror on both journalists and demonstrators last summer. But when it came to this, when it came to these militia groups, these right wing gangs who had been openly planning to do these riots on social media, it is kind of curious that, A, they knew about it. They knew that it posed a threat. And B, they were much more concerned about optics than ensuring that they were prepared to

respond appropriately to what we experienced a few weeks ago at the Capitol. Yeah. Well, at least it ended up not being optically an issue that whole day. And in terms of the optics, are there people who would have preferred that for some of these protests, they, like for instance, you know, back in the summer BLM protests or even some of the capital protests in the early fall, that there hadn't been, you know, enough cops to take an Iraqi city? Sure, that optically doesn't look amazing. But is that like in our top 10 complaints about the way those things went? down, like the issue isn't seeing that a cop has pepper spray. It's them spraying literally everyone they can see in the face with it. It's not them having a bike. It's them hemming people into walls with the bikes. It's what they do, that's the problem. Cracking skulls is the problem, not just having a billy club. It's just such an evasion. That's not an explanation for why there weren't twice as many or five times as many cops that they were that they were worried about optics. That just does not actually make any sense. I'm trying to be reasonable

because we want to get to the bottom of this, but I don't buy that as something that actually motivated their choices. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I don't think you're being harsh at all. I think you're being absolutely reasonable. And the two suggestions that Pittman shared with congressional lawmakers was, we need more resources. I'm skeptical of that because I think they probably have all the resources they need. I want her to elaborate on what she means when she says that they need more resources. But secondly, she brought up the fact that it was difficult to secure the capital building because the capital building is open to the public. And so what is that going to lead to? Are ordinary people going to be heavily restricted

from the capital building as they are, of course, with the White House? Again, if the outcome of this is to place more restrictions on average people who did nothing wrong, or if the outcome is that we need to spend more taxpayer money on pumping more resources into Capitol Police, like, I don't think that's, that's not the solution. No one's talking about doing a robust investigation into who's employed in these police departments, who's employed in the National Guard. there are white supremacists within their ranks. So is anyone going to have a discussion about doing something there? There are real systemic issues there that need to be addressed, immediately jumping to

we need more money or, oh, it looks like we just give too much access to these buildings to ordinary people, not the solutions I'm looking for personally. Yeah. Right? On that particular day, definitely, since they had the intel indicating that there were threats, restricting that area makes sense. I'm not saying leave it open and free to everyone at all times. But what I'm also saying is on some random day when students might want to go check out

the Capitol building, they shouldn't be restricted from doing it because the Capitol police were too incompetent or complicit in what happened on the day of the riots. Yeah. And also, and this is basically an honest question. Was the Capitol building totally open on the day they were certifying the electoral college votes? I doubt it. I doubt it's even true, but I'm not entirely sure. Yeah. And a follow of question, just in case Capitol Police is watching or like the Capitol Guard's, are you ever going to actually check the security camphage to see which representative it was that was apparently leading tour groups through? I still don't understand how we don't have confirmation.

It's been three weeks. That building has got to be filled with cameras. And we still have no idea who that actually was, if anybody. We got to take a break. When we come back, turns out that presidents appointing judges really matters, especially if you want to do something about immigration and deportation. A Trump judge has just blocked Biden from doing something important. I'll give you the details on that and more when we come back. 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.