The Young Turks - Celebrities Go Down For Bribery And Trump Takes On Student Loan Debt

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

The FBI is going after corrupt rich people! Trump has a new plan for student loan debt. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jane Cougar, Anna Kasparian, with you guys. Big day ahead.

Reveals his priorities and unsurprisingly later disastrous, but we want to talk about the specifics of that students are going to get screwed. Of course, maybe that's why their parents are cheating, which will be the first story that we get to. No, parents are cheating because their kids are idiots, but anyway. Yeah, well, I wouldn't put it quite that way, but I understand what you're saying. Well, they're not getting accepted into universities based on merit, so yeah, if you're not getting accepted based on merit, you're apparently not smart enough to, anyway, we're

We're gonna get to that story later. Yeah. Or in a second. So, and a little bit later in the program, Tucker Carlson and who he thinks are monkeys. So, oh boy. Now, lots of stories, including the one that's got a lot of us upset, so let's get started. All right. The FBI has uncovered a giant scam that's been ongoing with universities throughout the country.

Apparently, the rich and the famous have been using bribes and other unsavory methods in order to get their children accepted into top-level universities. According to the Washington Post, the alleged crimes included cheating on entrance exams, as well as bribing college officials to say certain students were coming to compete on athletic teams when those students were not, in fact, athletes. So one example is Lori Loughlin, who's an actress. She and her husband used about $500,000 in bribes in order to get their daughters accepted into USC through the crew team.

Now neither daughter is in crew or has ever done anything involving crew, but it doesn't matter. They were willing to, you know, shell out $500,000 to make this happen. Now I'm gonna give you more details to this story, but first, let's hear from Lori Loughlin's daughter and what she thinks about school and education. The whole college thing, yep, I'm going. I'm living in a dorm with a roommate who's so sweet. With work, it's going to be hard. Like my first week of school, I'm leaving to go to Fiji for work. And then I'll be in New York a bunch this year for work and traveling to a different country because I'm creating something with this country and that's for work. So I don't know how much of school I'm going to attend, but I'm going to go in and talk to my deans and everyone and hope that I can try and balance it all.

But I do want the experience of like game days, partying. I don't really care about school, as you guys will know. Okay, so I got mixed feelings about that. I wanted to get a little bit easier on her because she's so young. And when I was a kid, I wanted to party and I didn't care that much about school, probably a little bit more than she did. Fine, I was a dork, I cared a little bit. Okay, but yeah, it's grating on all of our nerves to see her talking about, oh my God,

I'm going to Fiji, I don't know if I'll have any time for school that my parents cheated me into, and then I'll be going to New York, I don't know what work is. So I get it, I get it, we're all frustrated, but I would say that we should save a great majority of our frustration for their parents. Because none of the students were charged and the FBI says it was mainly their parents doing, so we have no idea, for example, if she had any clue as to whether her parents got her in or not. I'm pretty sure she knows she's not in crew.

No, I hear you, but I don't know that she even knew she got a crew scholarship. And look, to be clear, I'm not trying to go after her. The reason why we showed you that video is because there are a lot of people who care about school, who work really, really hard and try to get in based on merit rather than bribes or donations to the university. There are a ton of, let's say, black students who work really, really hard throughout their entire grade school experience and then do get in based on their own merit. And then they get criticized as, no, they just got in because of affirmative action.

They got in just because they're black, right? I'm pretty sure those people care. Yeah, well, when we get to the parents, I'm going to ask for the full force of the law. And I do want to credit the FBI for getting these folks, because it is a rare day in America where rich people are arrested. And it's usually for crimes against other rich people. And in a sense, this is, because a lot of other rich people also have kids who want to get into these schools and they didn't bribe anybody.

But I hope that we complete this to justice. But the fact that they were arrested is a wonderful and somewhat unexpected turn of events. One thing that I do want to differentiate this story from is a longstanding practice with colleges and universities. Obviously, there are legacy situations where students are admitted into colleges simply because their parents went there, that's a longstanding practice. Another longstanding practice is when, let's say, a wealthy person gives a giant donation to the university, and then, oh, golly gee, all of a sudden their kids easily get in.

That happened with Jared Kushner and Harvard University. In fact, his parents spent a purported $2.5 million on Harvard in 1998. Of course, Kushner got in, and according to one of the administrators there, there was no way anybody in the administrative office in the school thought he on merits got into Harvard. This person also says his GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure there was no way this was going to happen, then lo and behold, Jared was accepted. So that's legal.

No one broke any laws there. Well, yeah, I hear you on that too, and that should be investigated. So let me break it down one by one, Anna makes a lot of great points there. First on the most legal part of it, the legacy, and what a horrible injustice that is. So I get it, I went to some decent schools and I want my kids to go there, so I understand the impulse, but it's totally not fair, fundamentally unfair. To give you a sense of it, Harvard admissions in 2009 to 2015, that six-year stretch, was 5.9%.

So the people that applied, about 6% got in, okay? So 94% rejected, super hard to get into. Among legacies, 34% accepted. So incredibly higher. Now, one thing that is left out of the legacy conversation is because if your legacy, you're more likely to contribute to the school. So, it's always about the money, it's always about the money. And look, that's already unjust enough, but what I cannot abide is when people then criticize

affirmative action. They don't point to the Jared Kushners and say, I wonder how he got in. They find a couple of black students or Latino students and go, I wonder how they got in. How come you never say that about the legacy kids? And the reality is you should, because they have a clear, provable, disproperpreparallelial Disproportionate advantage. It is affirmative action for the rich, the powerful, and the connected. Now you move on to the donations.

And I just think, look, that's borderline. I don't know if it breaks any of the laws, but there's some possibility and they should investigate and they should start with Jared Kushner. Because if there's a quid pro quo, like, hey, I will name the building, like I'll give you $2 million for a building, if you let my idiot son in, because he's a moron and couldn't get into any school and beg me to bribe you into this school. Well, if it's quid pro quinoff, it might be illegal, so they should look into that. But even if it isn't illegal, it's gross, don't ever, ever complain about minorities

getting into any schools if you're one of the scumbags that does that, okay? So let's just be clear. Then there's the Donald Trump's of the world, where daddy calls in a couple of favors, and this is well documented. The person who was part of allowing Donald Trump in the school said, yes, his father's well-connected friends called. So that's how that works, and that's how that idiot came in, got in a pen. And so now we have, the third layer, which I didn't know existed, and I guess we could

have guessed at it because people are so dying to get into these schools, even if their kids didn't merit it. And if they got to step over other people to do it, they'll do it. Is this flat-out illegal activity where they bribe coaches to pretend that their kids are athletes, or they just simply fix their SAT scores. Right, so another actress, Felicity Huffman was also implicated in this investigation, and it turns out that she had used bribes in order to help her child cheat on the SAT scores.

And as a result, her child scored 400 points higher on the SATs than she would have on her own. So that's another example of some of the cheating that happened. But there were a lot of people who have been indicted as a result of this investigation. Of the 50 people charged as part of the FBI's Operation Varsity Blues, 33 of them were parents. So of course, you also need some administrators or people in positions of power at these universities who are willing to play ball. Literally. Yeah.

And one of them has agreed to cooperate with authorities and has been an informant to the FBI over the past year. And I'll give you more details on that in just a second. All right, let's have more fun with words. So you have to give it to the FBI, both for these arrests and also for the name of the operation. Operation Varsity Blues is perfect, nicely done. Let's note that Felicity Huffman worked on Desperate Housewives. And Lori Loughlin was on Full House and might be headed to the Big House.

I'm here all week. He's not going to be house. Okay. One of the coaches that apparently took a $400,000 bribe at Yale is Rudolph Meredith, apparently Rudolph the red-handed reindeer. I can go on all day long. So Rudolph is the informant that I was talking about earlier, and he is the one who's been giving all of this.

I think she. No, Rudolph is not a woman's name. Rudolph. Yeah, no, could be wrong, you're right. Okay. Anyway. I mean, I got thrown up by the Meredith. I got so spun up in the puns.

Okay. Okay, now back to important stuff. Yeah. I'm just one last thing on Jared Kushner. He bought 666 Fifth Avenue at the height of the market and paid the most amount of money that anybody's ever paid for a property. It might be the single worst real estate purchase in American history. That kid got into Harvard and they complain about minorities.

No, no, it's even worse. That guy is working in the White House and has top level security clearance. Yeah, a book out coming out very soon that there's reports about today saying even Trump thought he was such a mess that he was thinking of kicking him out of Washington, D.C. All right, so anytime anybody complains about affirmative action, shove this down their throat. Okay, now as to the difference between the different folks, it shows you the different levels of desperation, apparently, because Loughlin paid $500,000. Felicity Huffman played it well, only paid $15,000.

So the Rudolph, the red-handed Meredith, accepted a $400,000 bribe. The guy who arranged the bribes, though, had the students' parents pay a $1.2 million bribe. And of course, he's pocketing a lot of the difference, so he's hopefully also headed to prison. And in terms of the different scams that they would run, so for the end of the end of the end of the SATs, sometimes they would have smart kids take the exams instead of their kids. So in that case, the kids must have known because they're like, hey, honey, stay home today,

okay? We're gonna have a smart kid take the test for you. So again, I don't leave the kids out of it. They're underage and who cares, right? It's their parents that are mainly- They're not underage, but I hear what you're saying, okay. Okay. Sometimes they would take the test and just go, no, they just fix it after the kids took the test.

Sometimes they just give them the answers ahead of time, okay? So I'm just stunned that there's any kind of justice in America. We're so used to a two-tier justice system, I can't believe rich people have been caught. There's people who worked at the top law firms in DC and other tennis coach in Georgetown went under. Apparently Georgetown was wise to him even before they knew about the criminal investigation and kicked him out last year, didn't realize that he was getting bride, but they They were like, why are these kids who say are on the tennis team are not on the tennis team?

So apparently this has been going on for quite some time. So just couple this with how outrageously expensive getting a higher education is in America. It's already been kind of roped off for the wealthy, just based on tuition alone. And reading this story made me think about all of the legal ways that your parents can help you prepare for college or get into a good college. You know, all the legal ways that people who aren't wealthy, people who are just middle class in America at this point, if there's much of a middle class left, can't even afford. So for instance, let's talk about the SATs for a second, this ridiculous standardized test

that isn't really about showing college administrators how much a student knows, it's just about making sure people have been trained properly in taking a test. How do I know that? Because there are literally pricey SAT courses, prep courses that aren't dedicated to teaching you anything. It just teaches you how to take a standardized test that's intentionally written in a way to trick you. That's all it is.

That's all it is. How many parents are able to afford that for their kids? I can say from my personal experience, my parents couldn't afford thousands of dollars for that class, right? So look, this entire system, can we just stop pretending like this is a country built on merit? It's not. It's not. I don't know if it ever has been, but it certainly isn't right now.

Yeah, I hear you. The thing is, it partly is, and it partly is not. That's what allows the mythology to go forward, but also I don't want to disparate people because there are still pathways. So look, I'm, I didn't take any interest prep courses for the SATs and wound up regretting it, like I went to college and it was like, you didn't take a prep class? What kind of monsters are your parents? I mean, how the hell did you get in here, right?

And so you're right, nobody ever talks about that, but that is obviously an advantage for people who have means. And if you can't afford to have your kids spend all this money on these prep stuff for the exams, you're in a much bigger hole. Nobody ever talks about that. The only thing that is ever discussed is affirmative action. Why? Because the right wing dominates, right?

They dominate the conversation, they dominate the media, they dominate the framing, et cetera, right? I think we should reconsider legacy completely. Now, I did take prep classes for law school exams, turns out I didn't need them, I was really good. Anyway, but so, Anna's not having any of this. But is that unfair? Yeah, yeah, because if you didn't have the means that my dad had at the time to allow me to take

those classes, yeah, you were in a much harder. situation. So that's just the reality. Even if you took part in that, it is at least you have to be decent enough to acknowledge that reality. And so look, and these are top level schools with one notable exception. So it's like Georgetown, Yale, Stanford, University of Texas, wonderful schools. I don't know why anybody's bribing anybody to get into USC, but that's a whole different thing.

Our senior producer, J.R. Jackson, went to USC, and that joke was just for him. So, all right, let's take a break. We're going to come back and talk a little bit more about Donald Trump's budget proposal and how it is going to, if he gets his way, further screw over students who are suffering with unbearable amounts of students. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful.

But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTRTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew. about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it,

You must 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. Loan debt.

All right, back on a young Turks. First of all, let me tell you about Bernie rallies. They're happening, and we're carrying them. Facebook.com slash Rebel HQ. Tune in starting at 7 p.m. Eastern on Thursday night. That one's in South Carolina. And if you guys have other rallies you want us to cover, please let us know about it. Okay, we want to be fair to everybody.

But check this out at Facebook.com slash Rebel HQ. And then Anna is going to the United Nations. And you could actually watch her there. She's doing a panel at the commission on the status of women. Women, and it is happening, wait a minute, Thursday, March 14th. This week. That's like in two days. Huh, interesting.

Okay, so go to t-y-t.com slash anna-un to reserve a spot. Anna-U-N or anna-un. Okay. And I believe if you're an activist-level member, you get first dibs. So thank you guys. All right, Sartorial, and by the way, t-y-t.com slash join to become a member of any sort, and then you can get reserve spots there. Okay.

Sartorial Narwal, speaking of members, writes in that all of An oligarchs, gonna oligarch, okay, simple comment, I like it. Kathanos says, the reality is this country views everything through a capitalist lens. If merit mattered, then the education landscape will look entirely different, much more in keeping with the actual racist and gender demographics of this country. I think you meant racial. Okay, so we talked about this in an old school episode, actually with Anna and Ida, I believe, about if they actually did not do affirmative action for men, the top school

in this country would be at least 70% women. So whenever somebody, especially if a guy is telling you about, oh, affirmative action for this is terrible, hey, not go ahead, probably the only reason you got into the school. So now let me go to Twitter. Michigan Deb 1 says, ironically, Felicity Huffman used to be on TV program called American Crime. I did not know that. And I want to be fair to Felicity Huffman.

She did it with her older daughter apparently, only did it for 15,000, which shows me that The guy kept going down and down on price and she was a little reluctant and did not do it with her second daughter. So maybe a little bit more leniency on her than the ones that are like, yeah, sure, my kids are idiots, millions of dollars go, right? She paid someone to take the test for her kid. Not so much leniency. I hear you, I hear it.

No leniency, period. Okay, Anna is not buying any of it. Zero percent. Okay. Gretel with an H, right, says, somebody called pun patrol on dad joke perpetrator, Jane Uger. We're just having some pun. Okay, all right.

Ready to do some news? Yes. Let's get to it. Okay. We're learning more about Donald Trump's proposed budget, and unfortunately he specifically targets cuts to programs that of course benefit those who are economically disadvantaged. Many of whom are students. So how does his budget impact students?

Well, the budget includes a $7.1 billion or 10% decrease for the U.S. Department of Education compared to 2019 funding. So of course, that's going to really hurt students who rely on grants or various programs to help them pay for school. Under Trump's proposed budget, the public service loan forgiveness program would also be eliminated. It wouldn't be cut, it would be eliminated. So how does that program work?

Well, if you are willing to graduate school and work as a public servant or for a non-profit organization or for the government, usually what happens under this program is after making payments for about 10 years straight, they will forgive your loans. If Trump has his way, he would just eliminate this program altogether. Remember that student loan debt is the only debt, only debt that students or Americans cannot get rid of even in the case of bankruptcy. And so this option seemed, you know, appealing to a lot of people. And keep in mind, a lot of people decide to work as police officers or firefighters knowing

that they can take advantage of this type of program. So let's have a conversation about whether it is more disrespectful to police officers to take a knee during the national anthem and say, hey, can you please stop shooting unarmed black man or whether it's more disrespectful to say, hey, you know what, if you're gonna be a cop, I don't care about your student loans. I'm not gonna help you pay them at all. Don't care, go do another job, go be a banker or something. So what are budgets?

They are your priorities. And that's true in your family and it's true in the government. So Donald Trump has just announced that students are not a priority for him. Of course. Building a wall is a priority to fearmonger about immigrants. The defense industry where we outspend the other top eight nations. combined, but hey, the defense contractors got to get paid, that's a priority. Medicare, Medicaid, not a priority.

Your kids, definitely not a priority. You want to do something good in the world? We're in the public sector. No way. You want to go into the armed forces? We don't support the troops. We pretend to support the troops so we can get Lockheed, Martin, and Raytheon on some more contracts. That's what they do, and that priority screams through this budget.

Exactly. And there's one other wrinkle to this that I wanted to share with you all. Right now, under a program that George W. Bush actually pushed for, if a student is taking out federal loans, those loans are subsidized, meaning that as they're in school, the loans do not accumulate interest. The interest starts to kick in once that student has graduated and is working. Well, the president's budget would eliminate subsidize student loans, which traditionally has meant that the federal government pays interest costs on federal student loans while borrowers

are enrolled in school. So I just, the way that that was phrased, in my opinion, is a little wrong because it makes it seem as though the federal government is paying interest on money that it's lending, like it's taxpayer money, it's taxpayer money. The federal government isn't paying interest on that taxpayer money. It's just not doing anything, right, while that student is in school. But that student graduates, and then they pay the interest and the repayment of that loan. So look, I think the best point here is this shows what Trump's priorities are.

He campaigned on a platform that specifically talked about the economic misery that many Americans are facing. It obviously resonated with a lot of Americans, and he has turned his back on them. He does not care about students, he does not care about the very real ramifications that student loan debt is going to have and is already having on our economy. And look, the wealthy can continue doing what they're doing, the government can continue redistributing the wealth from the bottom of the economic food chain to the very top. But at the end of the day, what are these corporations gonna do, right?

Like, who's gonna buy your products? How are you gonna make your money? I mean, these students, in a lot of cases, end up getting their wages garnished later. When you couple that with stagnant wages, when you couple that with stagnant wages and inflation, what money is left to buy your products? I mean, how do you think this economy is gonna work? And it's amazing because what you hear from the right wing over and over again is, yeah, man, free markets, it's like, it's supply and demand economics, it's so common sense, okay.

So what if there's a lot of supply, no demand, because no one can afford it? Yeah, well, they are thinking maybe their new clientele or customer. are going to be in China and their new workers are going to be in India. So these are brought to you by the people who said America first. So now we're fair on the show, so let me explain. There is one decent part of this, and again, during the Bush years, we gave him credit on the very few things that he did right. One was some of the programs, Anna just mentioned, which Trump is now cutting.

Another one was he increased funding for AIDS, greatly Bush did. But Trump is now also cutting some of that. We'll get to that a little bit later in the program. And I actually still believe that Bush was a significantly worse president than Donald Trump at this point. And we can talk about that in a post game, t.t.com slash join. We could talk more about how we can and we will today, talk about how corporations are squeezing us.

And this is part of that. They're squeezing every nickel and dime out of the average American worker, citizen, et cetera. And the government is enabling that. So look, the last half hour of the show is just for members. Like I said, that's t.yt.com slash join to become a member. But now back to this. To be fair to this proposal, there's one part that is good for undergraduate student loans. They would be capped at 12.5% of income, what you have to pay back monthly.

So that's not that different. But after 15 years of monthly payments, any remaining student loan debt would be forgiven. And that is five years earlier than what it used to be. For graduate students, it's the reverse, it's five years more that they added on. So it's very bad news for graduate students, but slightly decent news, at least just on that one sliver for undergraduate students. Now mind you though, another bad part of this bill, again to the point Anna was making about interest is if your interest starts piling up your freshman year as opposed to when

you graduate, well, especially if you're a graduate student, because that's a lot of years that pile up there, you'll walk out with much greater debt. That's a lot more money you're gonna have to pay back, because as you know, interest accumulates and could be a crushing burden. It was already a crushing burden, this is going to make it significantly worse. And then the last thing is, when they say here why they're doing it, one of the things they stated was ensure fiscal discipline in discretionary spending. So when it comes to students and you guys getting a shot at the American dream, all of a sudden

it's all about fiscal discipline. When we're throwing away trillions of dollars at the Defense Department, which remember does not go mainly to the Pentagon, it mainly goes to defense contractors, okay? When we're wasting billions upon billions of dollars, we don't need any fiscal discipline. Nope. Only when it helps the average American, do you need fiscal discipline. The second thing they noted is increase accountability for institutions of higher education.

Now, when it comes to again, Raytheon, no accountability. When it comes to the Fed, we can't order the Fed, no accountability, right? When it comes to people with the most amount of wealth and power, no accountability, no fiscal discipline. When it comes to the average American, all of a sudden, they care about accountability and fiscal discipline. They're giant hypocrites. So Jank gave Trump a little bit of credit on one portion of his proposal, and I'm going

to take that credit back. the devil's really in the details. So while I do applaud the idea of students being able to get their loans forgiven five years earlier, and of course these are undergrad students, again, the devils are in the details. Because right now the system on how much, what percentage the students have to pay back is based on a number of things, including income and family size. And so the formula really depends on your current situation. And Trump is arguing, nah, it's too complicated, so we're just going to have one program.

Like one program, we're not going to consider all the other factors and we're going to move forward with that. Well, there are some students that are actually going to get hurt by that. Because if their family size isn't being factored in anymore, well then they could end up paying a much higher percentage of their income in order to pay back that debt. So again, the devil's in the details, maybe it's unfair to take all the credit back away from Trump, but it doesn't seem like he's not a good actor when it comes to any other portion of this.

It would be shocking to me if there was one part that actually looked out for the best interests of the students. Yeah, I don't want anybody to get me wrong. First of all, if he thinks college loans are too complicated, he also thinks planes are too complicated, he also thinks umbrellas are too complicated, long history here. But overall, even if I'm right about that one sliver of it, 95% of those proposals disastrous and will cost you a ton more money. If you thought student loan debt was bad now, and it is, it's monstrous now, it's only

going to get worse under this proposal. So let's talk a little bit more about Trump's budget proposal broadly. As we learn more about Donald Trump's budget proposal, we're finding that he is cutting programs that help individuals who actually voted for him, including farmers. Now here's some details on what he plans to do when it comes to farmers. The White House wants to act 15%, 15%, or $3.6 billion from the Agriculture Department's budget. According to budget documents, officials plan to efficiently use taxpayer resources to find savings

by eliminating overly generous subsidy programs and eliminating other safety nets. Okay, so I actually love that, and I'll tell you two reasons why. One is the farmers have been getting subsidies for a long, long time, which I think, is if you're a conservative, you would actually care that it perverts the market. But, you know, and some conservatives do, to be fair. But most of the elected Republicans are like, yeah, whatever, dude, those are our people. There are our voters, so we'll give them all the goodies. And then if you ever give anything to a single minority, we'll yell and scream about

how, oh yeah, you try to give them these Santa Claus to them and do government giveaways. Well, all those farmers in the red states, you've been giving these billions of dollars to the whole time. Now, so is Trump being principled here? No, what he did was he did tariffs, which hurt the farmers even more. So he gave them extra subsidies. So what happened to no handouts? So he's apparently taking back some of those extra subsidies here.

And I guarantee you, Q it, not just Democrats, Republicans will howl. They won't mind you taking away Medicare, Medicaid, or any of those other things. Oh my God, students can crushing them with more debt, who cares? But if you touch their beloved farmers, and by the way, they're farm corporations, they will howl. They'll say, how could you? We need those giveaways. They're not for minorities, they're for us.

Okay, you'll see. So while I agree that there are some major corporations that these farmers fall into or fall under, farmers that don't necessarily need those subsidies, what I'm more worried about is that this is going to negatively impact the small farmers, right? Because what usually ends up happening when these budget proposals actually get implemented, it's usually not the corporations that get hurt. It's usually the little guy. So I would want to see which subsidies specifically are getting taken away.

If they are the subsidies that you just mentioned right now, the ones that Trump gave as, I don't know how you want to describe it, but they got hurt by the trade war and he didn't want to lose their vote. So he gave handouts to some farmers. If those are the subsidies he's taking away, well, then that's a good argument. But I don't know if that's really the case. But knucklehead, that's why you shouldn't have done the trade war in the first place. That's why you shouldn't have done the tariffs in the first place.

Like, if you think he has some grand strategy, you haven't been paying any attention at all. Apparently, he was surprised when China retaliated and retaliated specifically at U.S. farmers because he's not bright. And he didn't realize that that's the most obvious thing in the world. So let's talk a little bit about healthcare. Donald Trump talks a big talk when it comes to helping individuals who are suffering with AIDS, but what he says is very different from what he's proposing behind the scenes. Trump's budget would provide $291 million to the Department of Health and Human Services

to defeat AIDS, but funding would shrink for global programs trying to do the same thing. So he's cutting foreign aid in four organizations that are fighting AIDS in other countries. So let me give context to that. So during the State of the Union, he bragged about how he's going to give extra money to the fight against AIDS. And in fact, he said, we're going to eradicate the disease in 10 years. So I would love that. And like I said earlier in the program, Bush actually did do great work in getting more funding

for AIDS programs, one of the rare good things that he did. But Trump is full of it. So wow, 291 million, well, that sounds pretty good, right? It is 148th of what he is requesting for the wall. On top of what he already is going to spend illegally this year by circumventing Congress. So he's asking 48 times more money for the wall, which is generally useless than for fighting AIDS. So okay, now if that was all though, I'd say, hey, I guess it increased a little bit, so I'll

take it, just like we did with Bush, right? No. While he gives with one hand, he takes away with the other. So in November, he had a decision to cut costs at Medicare by reducing the number of drugs that are available to people with HIV. And then for the international programs that Anna mentioned, there's a 22% reduction in their budget. So overall, he is devastating a lot of these programs. And if anything gets cured with HIV and AIDS, It will be despite President Trump, not because of him. Yesterday, we talked a little bit about what he wants to do when it comes to Medicare, a program that he claimed he wanted to protect when he was campaigning.

Well, it turns out that his budget proposal would definitely cut the Medicare program. The proposal would cut $818 billion for Medicare over 10 years, in part by squeezing payments to hospitals, nursing homes, and home health providers, and in divisions cutting nearly $1.5 trillion from Medicaid. Early reports yesterday was that the number from Medicaid was much lower. It turns out, nope, $1.5 trillion. So he said that, well, how much cuts to Medicare and Medicaid during the campaign, he said? Quote, no cuts.

He said no cuts to Medicare or Medicaid at all. But he gave away $2 trillion dollars to the rich. So now he needs the money. So where is he going to go? One and a half trillion for Medicare, Medicaid, 818 for Medicare. One, obvious liar, a cheap politician with his cheap fake promises, right? Number two, he never cared about you. And most importantly, we told you when they gave it away to the rich in corporations and tax

cuts, they'd have to get it from somewhere and they were going to get it from you. And so the guys in the red hats didn't believe it. They're like, no, no, no, Trump's looking out for me, I'm about to retire and I got this great Get your government hands off my Medicare. Everything's gonna be great. Nope, no, they needed the money, so they took it from you. Well, the incredible thing is they still believe that Trump is looking out for them. I mean, there is nothing that he can do.

I mean, Trump can show up to their house and set it on fire, and they would still think, no, no, Trump's making housing affordable for us, he's looking out for us. It's kind of incredible. Yeah, and look, so for Medicaid, the overwhelming recipients are poor. white Americans who disproportionately voted for Trump. But if you tell him he's cutting Medicaid, they would probably celebrate. And then when they found out their check was getting cut, they'd be like, what? What the hell's going on?

I thought Medicaid just went to blacks. But wait, you've received Medicaid every day. I know, but I mean, I deserve it. So that'll happen, and that'll be fun to watch, okay? But Medicare is an arguable. Every one of us pays through the payroll tax. If you've ever worked a day in your life, you paid into Medicare. And Trump's proposal, luckily it's, you know, he can't do it unilaterally and the Democrats

not control the House and they're not going to let this stand, I hope, okay? And they say they're 100% against it, we'll see how the negotiations go, et cetera. But Trump's proposal is to rob you of the money you paid into Medicare your whole life. Why? He already gave it away to the top tax earners. So, again, let me remind you, then the tax cuts, the top 1% got a $61,000 tax break on average every single year. The Medicare you paid into, Trump wants to rob because he wanted to give the top 1%, an extra

$61,000 a year. All right, something to think about while we go to break, and when we come back, we're going to discuss how Facebook is going after Elizabeth Warren's ads. Yes, and we got rare bipartisan agreement on that one. But I'll tell you, on this tax cuts, some people are like Democrats, if you elect a normal corporate Democrat, they'll be like, oh, well, you know, like Beto did it right before the election with Ted Cruz. Well, the corporate tax rate was, yeah, yeah, I mean, it was too high, and it used to be

35, now it's down to 21, maybe we'll move it up to 25, and then we'll start negotiating from there. No, no, if a progressive president wins, we're gonna take back all of the tax cuts. So sorry, rich people, you can start crying and looking for a safe space now. You didn't have those tax cuts before, you didn't need them, and now if you're gonna rob the American people to try to maintain them, well, we're gonna let, I hope to God, we're gonna elect the progressive president, and he's not gonna let you get away with it, or she's not gonna let you get away with it.

So let's see, but I guarantee you of all the people in the world, they will cry the most. Where's my extra $61,000 a year? How could you do this to me? I'm the victim. Watch. I mean, they're already doing it. Look at Howard Shultz and Mike Bloomberg and all those guys.

I'm a big, great liberal, but the real enemy is liberals looking to raise my taxes when I'm a poor, poor billionaire. Man, all right. I can go on. I will in the post game. Okay, we'll be right. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't

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In the meantime, enjoy this free second. All right, back on a young turks. Let me tell you about NordVPN. If you're looking for a product on Amazon, they point out, then you'll start to get ads all over. But I actually have a personal story about that. I was looking for a hotel because we got spring break. coming out for the kids, and it was on my desktop that I was looking, and then add for that same hotel popped up on my cell phone.

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And if you use NordvPN.com slash t-y-t, you're going to get 75% off. So, all right, check that up. Okay, Meg writes in the member section. I love that Anna is such a fierce advocate for students. That is a great thing. Craig says, don't you think it's disingenuous to attribute the budget to Trump? He's the worst manager is likely one of his underlings budget. Oh, are you kidding me?

The idea that Trump actually did this budget, he's like, all right, should we 817 or 818 for Medicare? What's the cuts? No, of course he didn't do it himself. But if you're, the buck stops for the president, he owns that. And so he is either aware of the general outline of it or should be, you know, any time you run a place, I run this place, I mean, it can't be like, I don't know, somebody else at the budget, what do I know, right? Okay, no, it's not how it works.

Viscuous Cree says, recouping dollars by squeezing educational institutions and students is one of the stupidest modern fiscal policy platforms in existence. That's exactly right. One of the reasons why we had a huge boom after World War II was because we had the GI Bill. So it allowed all those soldiers to come back, go to school for free, which greatly stimulated the economy. So this is very counterproductive when you cut from education. Did you know that Nancy Pelosi has five kids?

No, I did not know that. So the only reason why I'm bringing that up is because can you imagine having five kids that you're gonna try to put through school today? Oh, good night, I read. You're done, you're bankrupt, like give up on life, it's over. Like, if you have five kids right now who haven't been in college yet, like, it's over for you, okay? It's over for your kids.

Like, if we keep on going with this system, it's over for them. It's over for you, it's over for everyone. Like the time is now, we need to change the system right now. We need to stop playing paddy kicks. This is insane. Well, Anna, I mean, you don't, in a sense, I'm amused by- I don't have kids, right? Like, I got my education, I don't have student loan debt, okay?

I was really, really, really lucky and I went to a state school before things got really bad. But I am panicking about this situation right now. Now imagine if those five kids also then needed help in buying a house. Oh, I mean, no, no, no. Who could do that? But here's the thing. Like if you're a responsible parent, you need to sit down with your kids right now and explain

to them that they will never own a house. They just need to know, right? So they don't get disappointed and turn into a bitter, a bitter queen. Like me. No, I wasn't going to say anything. I wasn't going to say anything. Okay. Look, earlier in the education story, I said, look, there's still avenues for it.

And I went through one of those avenues. My dad was dirt poor. He brought us into the middle class and did an amazing job and I owe everything to him. And he gave me a lot of opportunities. But we worked our way up, right? So it's possible. On the other hand, that was now a long time ago, right? And so it is now harder, even I had a lot of student debt, but now it would be, what,

twice, three, four taxes, I don't know how much, but it'd be way more, and I'd still be paying it. And so, and then the housing, of course, as we talked about is crazy. I looked into, just recently actually, like two weekends ago, I was looking into some finance classes, just, you know, from my own information, like I'm interested in it, and I want to learn. No, definitely not. That's a terrible idea.

I want to learn. I don't know if you know this. I went to Wharton, school business. Yeah, okay. So did Trump. But anyway. I know, he ruined it. Went bankrupt since then.

It's like totally my diploma is useless then. It's so, like you can't even go to school just like to learn for yourself, you know? Just to, it's insane, it's insane. You know what? Maybe in the post game I'll talk about this too or in one of our post games for the members. But like you don't know, what I say you don't know the half is that as pessimistic as you are, You're being today, and usually, about change and how we need it right now. Every day, because of Wolfpack, I got to battle groups pretending to be progressive based

out of Washington who are all screaming, no change, no change, do not do a convention to get money out of politics. No, a convention unsettles all of our billionaire donors, no change, right? So it's disgusting how hard they fight against change. Anyway, the last two here, because they're good. Gabby Marita, again from the member section, says, this budget is class warfare being waged from the right. Yes.

That's exactly right, Gabby. And then Anna Kappa, John, and Twitter says, Trump, I'm going to eliminate the student loan forgiveness program, leaving students no way to get rid of high student loan debt, despite declaring bankruptcy myself, numerous times, hypocrite in chief much, exactly. You can't get rid of those loans no matter what you do, you cannot declare bankruptcy. Trump declared bankruptcy six times. It's, I mean, it's just, it hurts the head, the heart, et cetera, to think about the hypocrisy in this country.

And then the people on TV go, why do you need change? All your plans seem so radical. The status quo is so practical. By the way, it's not practical for us. Highly recommend Nick Hanauer's podcast, period, on any day. But he recently did an episode on overtime pay that like, it made me angry. Yeah, I'm going to ask you to stop listening to Nick Hanna's podcast. And I listen to it today.

Oh, no wonder you're raging. So it's called pitchfork economics. It's on our podcasting network. Go to t-y-t.com, get our app. You can get it anywhere you see TYT. It's brilliant. You should definitely check it out. All right, Anna, what's next?

Several countries have decided to no longer fly the Boeing 737. This is known as the Max 8 plane and they have a good reason for grounding these planes for the moment being. It's because over the last six months there have been two plane crashes that have claimed the lives of hundreds of people. And that is something that the FAA here in the United States doesn't really seem to care too much about. The Trump administration is going to continue allowing airlines here in the United States

that continue using these planes. And it might have something to do with the fact that Trump had met with the CEO for Boeing and they seem to be very tight with one another. And maybe that's the reason why the FAA is moving forward with flying these planes. So they're doubling down, by the way. Let me read you their most recent statement. Thus far, our review shows no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft, nor have other civil aviation authorities provided data to us that would warrant action.

Well, I mean, no data? Because two planes crashing and killing everyone on board in the last six months seems to be some data and they're both the same exact kind of plane. And in the Ethiopia case, they were talking about the systems are not working. We're trying to pull the plane up and we can't. Something along those lines, they're going to get the black box later. What we know is what they told air traffic controllers before the crash. So I'm not like prejudging Boeing and et cetera, let them look at the black box, see if those

two crashes are connected or not connected, et cetera. We'll give you some of the details on both in a second. But to say that there's no data that the planes have issues, it's preposterous. It's a lie, it's a lie. So Boeing has admitted that there might be some sort of issue with the sensors on the nose of the plane. Yeah, they do. How do you go from saying that to, no, no, there's no issues, there's no issues here?

Like, no problems. They're doing a software update. Look, you can do regular software updates that aren't issues at all. But after two planes crash and then you put out a panic statement, understandably so, saying but you're doing the software updates, don't worry. The FAA to come out and cover your ass and turn around and go, I don't see any problem. Well, where's the problem? I mean, combined nearly 400 people died, but I don't see any data saying that there's a problem

here. Then panic reaction in updating software, no data. I don't see any data. So look, this is why in some parts of the world, they give warnings on American products. If you haven't traveled much, that includes every conservative in the country. You might not know that, foreigners, I don't want to go over there. But they'll be, like, we've talked about this in the past. In Taiwan, there's, like, we don't serve American beef, don't worry, okay?

Why? Because nobody trusts our regulators, because our regulators are so bought off by the corporations that America has now become somewhat a symbol of untrustworthiness and corruption. So now everyone else has grounded these planes, except America. Why? Because a lot of times FAA, they've got a revolving door, one of those guys want to work for Boeing, Trump likes Boeing, et cetera, and next to you know, we're all flying on those planes. I'm gonna fly on probably on one of those planes really soon.

So are you. And so in America, that's, there's, they run us, they run our government. The corporations run our government. So if they got problems, they're usually not going to get fixed. So among the countries that have decided to ground the Boeing 737 include the European Union. Of course, that's a group of countries. Also India, French, Germany, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Oman joined China and Indonesia in suspending all use of the plane.

And so they're suspending this until there's further review and until they can ensure that this is a safe plane to fly on. And again, there have been two big crashes over the last six months. One of them was the Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed recently. And there was also a flight earlier this year, I'm sorry, late last year that also crashed. It also crashed. In Southeast Asia. In Southeast Asia, yes.

So, and that's why I get it why a lot of the Southeast Asian airlines are suspending these planes and they're grounding them. But it's all over the world. MIT Mongolian Airlines have grounded the Boeing. So the Mongolians are like, we're not going on the Boeing. That's for Americans, man. Let them risk their lives. Royal Air Morocco of Morocco has suspended the flights.

I didn't know that there was an airline called Goal in Brazil, which makes some degree of sense. But they have this ground on the flights, but we're like, hey, it's okay, okay, they just met with Trump. What do you mean? They just met with Trump. Everything's fine. So let's also hear a little bit from Trump, who seems to have a great deal of expertise

when it comes to aviation. He tweeted this morning, let's go to Graphic 24. Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products, always seeking to go one necessary, unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Is he talking about himself? I don't know what he's talking about, period.

Okay, split second decisions are needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost, yet very little gain. I don't know about you, but I don't want Albert Einstein. to be my pilot, I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane. Jesus, 25th Amendment, do it already, do it already. This guy's an international embarrassment. I don't want Albert Einstein flying the plane.

Oh yeah, God, Jesus, okay. So now let's give you context. Number one, despite our concerns, very legitimate concerns, the whole world's concerns about this particular brand of Boeing's overall aviation has gotten significantly safer over the years and guess why because of technology. I like the older and simpler when the Wright brothers were like, whoa, let's keep this thing up. Yeah, you like that, huh?

No, technology generally has made it better. Now if you were going to make an argument, which I think in his simpleton preposterous way he was trying to get to, which is, hey listen, we gotta be a little bit careful about The sensors, because in the case of what happened in Southeast Asia, apparently because they recover that black box, they're worried it's not conclusive yet, but they're the number one thing that they suspect is that the sensors picked up that the plane was going too high. Too high.

It was on an upward trajectory, but that's because they hadn't cleaned the sensors. Now that's an issue, because if you got an issue of, hey, if the guy doesn't clean the sensors enough, the plane might crash. That's also a problem for how you design the plane, right? And so what it did was, since it thought the plane was going up when it wasn't, it pointed the plane down. So now, if you want to have an intelligent discussion about how to correct that, while in the context of technology making the planes way, way safer than they have been, that's a legitimate

conversation. You know, one of the least intelligent people in the country going on Twitter and going, I don't want to help Bernstein find the planes. I liked it better when they were simple and safe. Jesus Christ, ask an expert. You have all of the world's experts at your beck and call. All you have to do is instead of calling one of your idiot friends or Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs, call an aviation expert.

You're the president of the United States before tweeting. He doesn't know anything. This is basically his way of saying, no one knew that planes were this complicated. Yeah, everyone, but you knew that. And let's, of course, remember that Trump does have some expertise here. He ran Trump Airlines for a little while. I say for a little while, because as usual, bankrupt. Let's take a break.

I just want to take a break. We'll be back. Okay. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen ad free. Access members only bonus content. more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at Apple.co slash

t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.