The Young Turks - Congressional Cowards

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

Episode summary: Nashville shooter was ex-student with detailed plan to kill. Maxwell Frost slams Republican "cowards" who won’t back gun control in fiery floor speech: "Not giving a damn." Conservatives blame transgender hormone drugs for Nashville shooting. "We’re going away": A state’s choice to forgo medicaid funds is killing hospitals. BUSD hears wrenching allegations of abuse. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com 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. Woo! Thank you. All right, welcome to the young Turks, Jane Cougar, Anna Casparian. I'm going to need you guys to all buckle up and brace for impact. These Nashville shooter stories and the right-wing reaction,

I'm going to try to contain myself and I will probably fail. There, that's my warning. Now let's go. Well, why don't we begin with some of the developments that have occurred in regard to that story since we last covered it? The start of a school day, shattered by gunshots at the Covenant School in Nashville. We're under a mass casualty alert. The school shooting multiple victims down. Police rushed to the small private Christian elementary school,

where authorities say a former student entered the building through a side door, and fatally shot three nine-year-old students and three adults. Authorities say the suspect, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who identifies as transgender, was killed by police. We're learning more about the shooter who killed three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. Now, the shooter drives up to the school in what the police described as a Honda fit. Now, in the clip, two sets of glass doors, as you can see in that video, shatter from bullets before the assailant ducks into the building through the

broken glass. Now, the shooter, who the police identified as Audrey Hale, entered the building by firing through the side door, okay, armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun, and then they proceeded to go through a second door firing shots before getting killed by police. The shooter was killed by police after making their way upstairs to the second floor, and then opening fire on the police as they were getting closer to them, and essentially the cops shot and killed the shooter here. Now, the police arrived, or the police received, I should say, a report of the shooting at 10.13 a.m. and heard gunshots on the second floor when they arrived at the school. A police spokesperson, Don Aaron said, officers went there, saw the

assailant shooting, and two of the officers opened fire, killing the shooter at 1027 a.m. in a lobby type area on the second floor. So as you can see, it didn't take long for police to act and actually do something about this. In terms of the police response, it is very different from what we saw at Uvaldi, Texas. So we do have some more details in regard to the motive, the possible motive behind this shooting. I want to go to that video and then we'll open it up for discussion. Let's watch. there's some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school

don't have all the details of that just yet and and that's why this incident occurred you recovered what you described as a manifesto you've also said that hail identified as trans do you believe there is a connection to that we feel that she identifies as trans but we're still in the initial investigation into all of that and if it actually played a role into this incident. As we know more we'll definitely make that known but right now we'll ensure if that

actually played a role. But does the manifest point you in a particular direction that you can reveal? It does. It has an initial investigation. We've turned it over to the FBI. We've looked over it as well. It indicates that there was going to be

shootings at multiple locations and the school was one of them. There was actually a map of the school, detail and surveillance, entry points, and how this was going to be carried out on this day. So we're waiting to learn more details about the manifesto that they say the shooter had written. Just a few more details about the shooter's identity.

So there was confusion about the gender identity of the assailant, according to the New York Times. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Chief Drake, meaning the police chief for the Nashville Police Department, said the shooter identified as transgender. Officials used she and her to refer to the shooter, but according to a social media post and a LinkedIn profile, the shooter appeared to identify as male in recent months. So just to prevent any confusion, I'm just going to say they. But, Jank, go ahead.

Yeah. So lots of thoughts here. First, F the media. I've never seen them ask on a random mass shooter. Is it true that it was a straight male? Can you tell us more about it? What is kind of a straight male that it was? And can you tell us whether the problem is the straight males in this country?

Oh, it's a transgender person. Oh, that's another. That's someone who is categorized in a different category than the majority. We will focus on that exclusively. Now, don't get me wrong. If the manifesto is about being trans, et cetera, et cetera, that's definitely relevant. The manifesto is definitely relevant. And the media, when it's a very specific shooter, they have to clearly lay it out.

I came to kill black people. I hate all black people. I'd like to start a civil war. On those occasions, the media says, okay, that might have been a white replacement, white supremacist, et cetera, right? But on any given random shooting, you only talk about the identity of somebody who's transgender, someone who's Muslim, someone who's different, right? But immediately we go to that issue, as if that's what causes shooting.

Look, I got more to say on that later, but really, is anybody this irrational? They think that mass shooting started with trans people in America? No, no, no one can possibly think that. Yet every right wing or online is saying that right now. Anyway. Can I jump in real quick? Yeah. Okay, so I think you're conflating the way the media is covering this with some of the disgusting

comments coming from right wing politicians and media figures. The media is trying to figure out what the motive is. And since this was a private religious school, they're concerned, or not concerned, but one of the theories is that the motive could be because this is a previous student who maybe wasn't accepted, the identity of this person was not accepted at this school. And that could have led to a possible motive, right? That's the reason why they're mentioning it. Just like when it comes to the tops grocery store shooting, it was a white male who was

clearly inspired by hateful rhetoric regarding the white replacement theory, which is why he shot up a grocery store in a predominantly black neighborhood. Anna, you're not wrong about any of that, and I'm glad that you're clarifying it. Yeah. And so, but if you only see this shooting, you'd be thinking, well, Cenk, I mean, isn't it relevant? Well, why they did the shooting and what their identity is, and maybe those two things are related. Maybe they're not, maybe they are, right? But I didn't see only this shooting.

I've seen every shooting now, and there's one thing that connects all of them. It's the guns that's super obvious. There's not mass ropings. There's not mass nivings. Okay, so this is absurdity to talk about the identity instead of the actual issue, which is the automatic weapons, the assault weapons, et cetera, right? But secondly, in the great majority of cases where there is no manifesto, and there is no obvious political angle, they don't come in and go,

oh, it's another Christian straight male, another Christian straight. Is it because they're Christian? Is it because they're straight? Is it because they're male? By the way, is it because their male would probably be by far the best question to ask out of that lot because it's almost always males? But wait, isn't that funny? We never talk about that.

We never talk about the fact that it's almost all guys who do it. Because that's verboten because guys are awesome and males are to be protected and they are the standard, right? But whenever it's someone who is not the standard, manifest or no manifesto, it doesn't matter immediately. Their identity, their identity. Okay, anyways, I want to give credit to the cops. They got there in 14 minutes and this is a justified shooting. Anyone who you've got kids in there, you got to get in there quick. And this person had planned to kill a lot more people and a lot more places.

So great job by the cops in Tennessee. And seeing those kids going to the bus like that, it's just absolutely heartbreaking. So a few more details about the school itself and some of their comments in regard to the transgender community in the past. So the fee paying, meaning this is a private school, you have to pay to go there. Covenant School is affiliated with the evangelical Presbyterian Church in America, an evangelical religion, which broke away from the larger Presbyterian organization. In 2020, the church or the Presbyterian Church in America spoke of the sinfulness of transgender and homosexual desire and conduct, according to the New York Times.

And before traveling to the school, the assailant sent a series of messages to a friend on social media warning that quote something bad was about to happen. This is my last goodbye. I love you. See you again in another life. Hale told her friend Patton, a former basketball teammate. I'm planning to die today. And then Patton who called a suicide prevention helpline. And then the police replied, Audrey, you have so much to live. So much life to live. I pray God keeps and covers you. Oh, well. Yeah. And in regard to mass shootings in America, you're right.

The one similarity in every single case is the guns, and every year it gets worse. The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are killed or injured. As of late March, the archive has counted 130 mass shootings in the United States in 2023 alone. And I'm sure that almost all of them were done by transgender people, right? Oh, right. Oh, that tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny percentage was, look, the reason I get frustrated at the lesser holds of the world who we just showed you is because the right wing immediately screams from the rooftops that is the identity whenever it's not a Christian white male, right? And the press falls for it. Hook line and sinker every time. It's the guns. It's the guns. It's obviously the guns. And the right wing will do anything to distract you. Transgender. Doors, the problem is doors, and some idiot, and we're going to get to it later in the show, today proposed less doors again. She shot the door out.

How would less doors help? But no, you have to distract because the most precious thing in the world to a right winger is their beloved, beloved weapons. Kids, less so. All right, let's move on to Congress. Angry that hundreds of parents had to cry their eyes out today, not knowing if the child would come home from school, and angry that we have to live day after day when we turn on the news to see rampant gun violence claiming life after life. And all of this is because politicians in this chamber that have been bought and paid for by the NRA that put profits over people, over human lives. Freshman Congressman Maxwell Frost is calling out the congressional lawmakers who have consistently failed to pass common sense gun legislation to minimize the amount of carnage we experience in this country.

Of course, this follows yet another school shooting this time in Nashville, Tennessee. Here's more from his speech on the house floor. I rise today because I am furious, angry that three kids died today in Nashville, Tennessee, angry that hundreds of parents had to cry their eyes out today, not knowing if their child would come home from school, and angry that we have to live day after day when we turn on the news to see rampant gun violence claiming life after life. And all of this is because politicians in this chamber that have been bought and paid for, by the NRA that put profits over people, over human lives. Cowards who wasted our time last week, passing a parental bill of rights, not giving a damn about the rights of children to be able to go to their classroom without the fear of being gunned down due to senseless gun violence.

It is likely that at this moment, the next mass shooter is planning their shooting. What will this chamber do about it? It's always nice to see how these speeches turn out for freshman congresspeople who identify as progressives. Enjoy it. I don't know how long it's going to last. I love seeing it. It's incredibly fiery and powerful and accurate. Everything he's saying is accurate.

And we're going to get into all the details in regard to how Republican lawmakers have reacted and responded to this. Again, how many school shootings have we had already? So yet another school shooting. Yeah. So man, so far I love Maxwell Frost. Give me more of that. Okay, so very clear, my colleagues are bought and paid for. Thank you. Thank you for finally saying it. I'm not sure that a single other legislator has actually said that on the floor of Congress. Because that's the red line for Washington, D.C. That's the third rail. You can't say, criticize your beloved colleagues and call them corrupt, but they are corrupt. So it took a young person to go in there and go, I don't give a damn about your stupid old rules. No, these guys are obviously bought and paid for. Thank you.

And he calls them cowards, that's exactly right. They are cowards and you should have the courage to say it. Finally, someone fighting back. To Anna's point, man, Maxwell, whatever you do, do not stop doing that. Because what's going to happen next, and I guarantee you it's happened in the last 24 hours since he gave that speech. Absolutely. Republicans, fellow Democrats, I guarantee you pulled them aside and said, hey Maxwell, you got to know

the rules around here. You got to know the etiquette. You can't do that. Those are our cherished Republican colleagues. Oh, we love them so much. What if they talk about how we're bought and paid for? Maxwell do not stop. You're like the only hope left. Everyone else has totally stopped and not saying a goddamn thing. So go get them. So let's talk about Republican lawmakers both on a state level in Tennessee and also a federal level. We'll begin with the level since that's what Maxwell Frost was talking about in that video that you just watched. So I want to start with Republican representative Andy Ogles, who is also a freshman member of Congress and a massive gun proponent. Okay, so he represents the district where the school

is actually located. Here's what the statement was after the shooting from this congressman. My family and are devastated by the tragedy that took place at the Covenant School in Nashville this morning, we are sending our thoughts and prayers to the families of those lost. As a father of three, I am utterly heartbroken by this senseless act of violence. Are you? So that seems like a perfectly fine statement if he actually could prove that he genuinely wants to do something to help these families and prevent these types of shootings from happening in the future.

But I bring you his 2021 Christmas card, which was tweeted out by Fred Gutenberg, Fred Gutenberg, of course, lost a child of his own in the Parkland shooting. And in this photo, of course, you see the freshman congressman with his family, and they're all holding massive weapons because that is the message they want to send to the American people. This is who we are. And so this is just tweeted out right after the shooting and after the statement from the freshman congressman. Yeah, so look, I know we have these giant cultural divide in the country, but to me and to hundreds of millions of Americans, that picture looks like it's a picture of two psychotic parents who are greatly endangering their kids, their neighborhood,

and the general community. I mean, that is like if you, okay, and I can prove it to you super easy. All you got to do is switch to identities. You have that same exact picture in front of not a Christmas tree, but some sort of Muslim, like a mosque, let's say, and make the family, give the dad a turban and make the family Muslim. I guarantee you every right winger say, look at these lunatics. Look at these killers, nut jobs, right? You get a nice Christian family in front of a Christmas tree and they're like, oh yes, that's our psychos. So what happened? You encouraged, encouraged, encouraged, encouraged, and next thing you know, someone decided, hey, you know what, that's your congressman. Hey, my congressman's got a pretty good idea. Why don't

I get an assault weapon and start killing people? Proposing with an assault. With your kids, he should honestly, child protective services should have been called instantly. What kind of a lunatic gives small little kids assault weapons and encourages them in that direction? This is what politics has been, you know, turned into, basically, right? I mean, he's not going to do anything for you, right? He's not actually going to fight for any of his constituents. He's not going to make their lives better. He's not going to fight for better wages.

He's not going to fight for better working conditions. He's not going to fight for health care. He's not going to fight for anything that will materially improve anyone's lives. In lieu of that, though, he'll engage in the theater, the posture of I'm a big gun proponent. Look at me. Oh, my God, we're owning the lives by putting these weapons in the hands of our own children at a time when there are endless mass shootings on school campuses. This is what he represents. And by the way, during his campaigning, he made that abundantly clear.

Let's go to what his campaign website said. So in his campaign website, he said he would fight tirelessly to protect Second Amendment rights. It states, disarming the people is the most effective way to enslave them. Congratulations, they're entirely unslaved. And we must remain vigilant when anyone seeks to erode our civil liberties. I mean, there are all sorts of civil liberties in America that have been eroded, and I haven't heard a single Republican complain about it at all, whether it's the surveillance state, whether it's, you know, all sorts of government agencies,

spying on American people indiscriminately. I mean, that's been going on for quite some time now. But when it comes to guns, God forbid, there's any common sense gun legislation or any common sense gun reform. And that's coming from someone who has a gun, who believes in the right to carry a gun if you're a law-abiding citizen. Lauren Bobert, another lunatic. We've shown you this image a million times before, but it's another Christmas card with her children holding weapons. Now let's go.

Psycho, total and utter psychotic lunatic. So, unfortunately, local Republican lawmakers are no better. State Representative Tim Burchett was asked, what should be done to protect kids. And here's how he responded. What should be done to protect people like your little girlfriend, being safe at school? Well, we homeschool are. But, you know, that's our decision. Some people don't have that option. Frankly, some people don't need to do it. They don't have to. It just suited our needs much better. There's any role for Congress to play in reaction to this tragedy? Obviously, this is your state now.

but it's happening in every other state. Oh, it's happening. It doesn't matter what state it's happened in. It's all Americans. It doesn't matter the color of their skin. They all bleed red. They're bleaking a lot. I don't see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly, because of the situation.

Like I said, I don't think a criminal is going to stop from guns. You know, you can print them out on the computer now, 3D printing. And there's really, I don't think you're going to stop the gun violence. I think you've got to change people's hands. hearts. You know, as a Christian, as we talk about in the church, and I've said this many times, I think we really need revival. We're not going to fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals. Why are you in elected office? Like, why even pursue that if you think you're worthless and have no interest in actually doing your job? Like, that's what I took away from that

conversation. He seemed annoyed as soon as the reporter asked him, what can Congress do to make this situation better? I mean, it's just like, oh, God, this question again. Yeah, no, no, he literally said, we're not going to fix it. No, but you know what? I respect the honesty because that's the truth. That is the truth. It's the truth when it comes to Congress on a federal level. It's the truth when it comes to those state lawmakers.

They don't care. They just don't care. They don't care. We're going to keep covering these stories of children getting slaughtered as they're in schools, and they're going to keep telling us they don't care. So the real question is, to the electorate, what do we do about it? What do we do about it? Do we keep electing these pathetic lawmakers, both on the left and the right, to be quite honest with you?

Or do we demand better for ourselves, for our children, for our communities? Or do we just accept this? Is this the new normal, where we just accept that every time you drop your kids off at school, there's some chance that they might get slaughtered by a mass shooter? I just, this country's embarrassing. I mean, he said we mess things up. What, worse than now? We have one, we have more than one mass shooting per day.

We have nonstop massacres at our schools. How much worse can it get? And he says, blithely criminals are going to be criminals, really? But they're criminals in Japan and there's no mass shootings. There's criminals in Australia and there's no mass shootings. There's tons of criminals in the UK. There's no mass shootings. Why?

Because they don't hand an assault weapon to every person who comes in the door. They don't hand it to their young kids and say, oh yeah, the answer to everything is an assault weapon, you maybe you should, that's my civil liberties. Come on guys, like really for a Republican, let's have an honest conversation. Look, I get it. People, sometimes people don't feel safe. You live in a remote area. I know a woman who suffered sexual assault. You live in L.A. And she lives and she carries a gun. I get it, right? But you're heading kids assault weapons and taking Christmas pictures with them. I mean, you might as well advertise that you're a lunatic. And then you come in and say, oh, there's nothing we could do, man.

And my guns is the most important thing in the world. So let's be honest, right wingers are saying now, my weapons are more important than your kids. By the way, Representative Andy Ogles was asked whether he regretted that Christmas photo where he's posing with assault weapons with his children. No, no regrets. Why would I regret a photograph with my family exercising rights to bear arms, he answered? Maybe because somebody just took a picture just like, hey, saw your kids with an assault weapon, took their assault weapon and murdered people in your district. But you don't give a damn.

No, you don't give a damn at all. You're sick, you're deranged, you're depraved. And those kids who are dead, you care less about them than you do about your automatic weapon. That's a fact. That's a fact. You say, nope, nope, nope, no, I want the assault weapons. I want to be able to murder a lot of people at once. So I don't care that your kids are dead.

No other country has mass shootings like this because they don't allow assault weapons. They don't allow you to buy a gun without a background check. They don't allow infinite bullets in a magazine. They don't allow any of these things. That's why they don't have nonstop massacres. It's not at all complicated. If you hear anyone in the media debating it as if that's, oh, I can't tell which one is it. It's absolutely the guns.

And Republicans value them a thousand more times more than they value their children. That's a fact. One final thing I want to bring up is how Fox News covered it because they decided to recycle a talking point that honestly made zero sense, especially in this context. So first, let's watch the video and I'll explain. The side door, I'm not trying to point fingers. I don't know the exact facts at this moment. But from what I understand, a side door was unlocked.

That seems to be a common pattern in many of these shootings, a side door. If we can lock the side doors and make sure that the schools are secure, hopefully we can avoid these tragedies going forward. Yeah, that's interesting. It appears the side door was locked and the shooter literally shot through the side door. Here's the evidence. There you go. There you have it.

You could also see it on camera. The video's been released. any, any excuse, any distraction, any deflection to avoid talking about what the reality is here, that these weapons are easily accessible by people who want to carry out harm. And if you are a right winger who's more concerned with mental health, or at least you allege you're more concerned with mental health, great, why don't you prove you're concerned with mental health and actually fund mental health services in the country? But they never do.

They get together, they always vote down any legislation that would allocate resources for mental health care in this country because they just want the easy deflection, the easy excuse to avoid having to talk about firearms. That's it. That's all it is. Let's just keep it real. All right. We got to take a break. When we come back, more cheery news. Can't wait. We're going to talk about the right wing response, the con game having to do with the hyper focus on, the shooter's identity, mental illness, and what have you, come right back. We appreciate it. We do the show with the members and you guys make it possible. And Donald Bussie just gave five young tourist memberships on YouTube.

So Donald, thank you. That's incredibly generous of you. All right, Anna. More on the shooting. We also don't know the extent to which drug therapy of any sort, transgender related or non-transgender related also might have come into play here, John, because there are a lot of doctors will just, you know, throw out prescription medication at young people. We found that with some of the other killers, and then we find there could be psychotic

effects of that as well. But again, we don't know this yet. This is the most predictable right wing response to the school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. This was so predictable because rather than talking about the issue of endless gun violence in this country, which of course, what's the through line there? The guns, right wingers have latched on to the fact that the shooter in this case was transgender. And even though there has been absolutely no reporting or absolutely any evidence indicating that the shooter was on, you know, hormone drugs or had a mental illness, they're just running with that narrative with no evidence. Because who cares?

As long as they get to deflect from what the real issue is here, gun violence. Okay, can I just say about Laura Ingraham? First of all, she's made up 200 things on air. So if she says we have no evidence of this yet, boy, are they making, she, even she's embarrassed about how much they're making it up. So of course you have no evidence of it because you just pulled it out of your ass. None of that is true. You just want to blame trans people, so you just set it.

Now Marjorie Green is following along with this tactic here tweeting, how much hormones like testosterone and medications for mental illness was the transgender Nashville school shooter taking everyone can stop blaming guns now. Idiot, total idiot, has maybe two brain cells in her head. So there was no mass shootings before trans people, before they started taking, because I remember covering a couple of mass shootings. You don't remember any Marjorie Taylor Green? So now we can stop talking about the guns.

Now what is the common through line for all the mass shooting? transgender people, not remotely. This is like the reason that it's being talked about is because, oh, wow, this is such a unique, different case of a trans shooter, right? Most of the shooters have been perfectly straight, right? That is definitely not the uniting factor. There is a uniting factor to all, literally all, 100% of the mass shootings, weapons, guns. But no, all of a sudden, not the guns, not the guns, not the guns, trans people.

Yeah, I know, I know you sick right-wingers. With your constant hatred and fear, go ahead. By the way, the shooter started identifying as male just a few months ago. I mean, I'm sure that their gender identity, they knew what their gender identity was much earlier than that, right? But just recently, it appears, came out publicly by posting on social media that they want to be referred to as he. So anyway, so like the idea that there was hormone therapy involved or gender affirming care involved is just so it's ridiculous. And to blame it on that is even more ridiculous because there's no evidence indicating that that kind of care, that gender affirming care, leads to violence. But anyway, J.D. Vance, same story.

We're still learning about the horrific shooting in Nashville. But if early reports are accurate that a trans shooter targeted a Christian school, there needs to be a lot of soul search. on the extreme left, giving into these ideas isn't compassion, it's dangerous. How about all the straight white males? How about all of them? Giving into them is very dangerous, like that lunatic J.T. J.D. Vance. 98% of the shootings are straight males. That's not a problem. We have one shooting from a transgender person. Oh my God, we got to look into hating this group more. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. That's who J.D. Vance is.

Look, I'm trying to be understanding people. The problem with the right wing is there's so good at sucking us into cultural wars. There's like, I know the game, we talk about the game all the time, they want to distract us from economic issues so they can keep you poor and have no health care and enslaved to corporations, including gun manufacturers. But how are we supposed to not respond when they say insane, idiotic things like, ah, must be trans people that's doing all the mass shootings? I mean, how could you be that stupid?

No, you do respond to it because it's a lie and it's easily, it's super easy to debunk it. Okay, look, just give me a minute. Let me just go through some of the other idiots here. And then I'll give you the stats because we keep referencing them. I want to give you the exact stats in regard to these mass shootings. So then you have Charlie Kirk, instead of banning assault rifles, we should ban gender affirming care for kids. Okay, but we're talking about a 28 year old in this case, 28 year old who carried out this shooting. Anyway, Donald Trump Jr., probably one of the worst tweets on this, given the incredible rise of trans-slash-nobinary mass shooters, what in the last few years, by far the largest group committing as a percentage of population, maybe rather than talking about guns, we should be talking about lunatics pushing their gender affirming, I don't know, on their kids.

Okay. You literally push assault weapons on your kids. You put them in the tiny little hands in front of a Christmas tree. That's what you lunatics do on the right. And then go, I don't know how they got the mass shooting. I don't know how they got the idea of an assault weapon. It must be the trans people. Yeah, I missed the 2,000 mass shootings done by straight males just like Don Jr.

We have to have Don Jr. People that look like Don Jr. Checked out for being potentially psychotic. Okay, we should probably imprison them all. I'm just using right wing logic. Hey man, oh, no, no, you could just do it to other people when it makes no goddamn sense at all, but when it comes to your precious, precious own identity. Now, even though we do, the overwhelming majority of the mass shootings, we're totally

innocent and free. Get out of here. So let's get to the numbers. So this is reporting from 2021. The numbers are obviously, like the number of shootings has gone up considerably. But according to the nonprofit research center, the violence project, men are responsible for 98% of mass shootings. Why are we ever talking about the scourge of males in this country? Well, because we actually want to talk about the root of the problem, which is the easy access to any weapon, any assault weapon you could possibly want.

Because that's the real issue here. Because it's not about identity. Mental health issues might play a role, but blaming it on a particular identity is ridiculous. And does it make any sense? Especially when you're trying to put the blame on transgender people when, as Jenkins said repeatedly, and the details bear it out, the data bears it out. The majority of mass shootings are not done by transgender people. I wanna be clear, look, if you're talking about any part of an identity, it doesn't, it has no effect.

If you're going to look at any identity at all, it would be males, because they're doing 98% of the shooting, okay? But even that doesn't make sense because 99.999% of males don't do this, right? But we use logic and we're fair. But that's a mistake because the other side are monsters and they're the most unfair people in the world. You just need one shooter. They're like, ah, it's all trans people. How am I supposed to deal with that? How am I supposed to have a logical debate with these monsters?

All right, go ahead, Anna, go back to the numbers. Men were behind 94% of 240 mass shootings, four or more killed regardless of location from 2009 to 2020 in which the shooter's gender could be confirmed. And then what about the transgender mass shootings? I mean, if you would believe what Don Jr. is saying there, they're committing the majority of mass shootings now, right? Except they're not. Experts put the American transgender population somewhere around 1.6% or as high as 5% for young adults. When it comes to mass shootings since 2018, trans people make up only 0.018.8.

percent of shooters. And that's from 2022. Okay, I mean, look, I know, I know. It's easy to trick people. And I know the good people that don't know anything are going to hear these right wingers and they're going to say, well, I don't know, maybe it's trans people that are doing it. I can't believe they're going to think that. I can't believe that they can't see 98% of the shootings.

But they're going to, and they're going to fall for it. Let's put up the graph because I think this graph is. Pretty interesting, number of mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and March of 2023, meaning this month, by shooters race or ethnicity. As you can see, on the left-hand side of the screen, the vast majority of them are committed by white shooters. But again, like, I hate getting sucked into this weird identity angle in regards to mass shootings in America. The problem is the guns. Easy access to the guns, but nothing's going to be done about that.

We'll still keep having these weird peripheral debates without addressing the root causes here. I don't think race has anything to do with it. Other than the specific shooters who said, I am doing this because I'm a white supremacist and I want to kill Latinos or black people, etc. Those numbers look relatively proportional. So we're not the one saying, oh, it's race, it's gender, it's this, it's that. We're saying the common through line is the most obvious thing in the world. We're the only country that allows this amount of weapons with almost no gun control at all. We're the only country with non-stop massacres.

If you don't know that, it's because you're listening to the wrong media. These are absolute stone cold facts. Other countries have just as many criminals. They have just as many psychos as a percentage of the population who want to do violence. But they don't have access to the overwhelming weaponry that's available in America with almost no checks at all. But now we have to do some weirdo defense here because right wing says it. Media repeats it over and over and over and over and over. And it gets into good people's heads, let alone bad people's heads.

And they go, I don't know, maybe it was trans people. God, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? How can you not see straight? And it's, but when it comes to identity, people lose their minds. They, when they, oh, I see the Muslim, it's a Muslim's fault. I see transgender. It's transgender's fault.

Hey, how about the old 98% that are straight. males. I don't see it. I don't see it. Why? Because it's about me. So I don't want to see it. So I'm going to blame you guys instead. Right wing 101. When we come back, we'll talk about the impact of refusing to take federal subsidies for Medicaid and how that's leading to hospital closures in rural parts of America. That story and more coming right up. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys. But Tara Boyle gifted a membership and Brian Levery gifted five on YouTube. You guys are amazing, and Drew in Georgia, gifted two on Twitch.

Thank you for looking out for others. Anna. Well, let's take a trip to Mississippi, one of the red states that doesn't want to expand its Medicaid. Americans living in rural Mississippi are increasingly finding that it's difficult to find a hospital that can meet their needs as more hospitals are shutting down due to Republican lawmakers in that state refusing to expand Medicaid through federal subsidies. Now under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government provides pretty significant subsidies to expand statewide Medicaid to individuals who live below,

138% of the poverty line. Okay, so this started in 2014, a bunch of red states are like, no, we're not going to take the federal money. We're not going to expand our Medicaid services to ensure that everyone has health care coverage. Well, that comes at a significant cost. And by the way, what the Affordable Care Act would do was provide 90% of the funding necessary to do the Medicaid expansion. the state would just have to chip in 10%.

Now Mississippi and nine other states have refused to take advantage of that expansion to help their residents, and it is having a disastrous effect, because keep in mind, if you become ill, if you become injured and you need to go to the hospital, the hospital can't reject you simply because you don't have insurance. So the hospital will provide the care, and since the individual is uninsured and does not have the money to pay for the services, the hospital ends up eating the costs. And that has destroyed the ability for hospitals to stay open in places like rural Mississippi. States that opted against Medicaid expansion or had just recently adopted it accounted for nearly three-fourths

of rural hospital closures between 2010 and 2021, according to the American Hospital Association. And it gets even worse. I'll give you some more insane statistics on this in just a moment. Jank, why don't you jump in? I haven't seen a Republican politician try to help the average American in any way, shape, or form in 20 years, at a minimum. I haven't seen one proposal where they go, this would help the average American, okay? This would help them with health care or child care or food or jobs or wages. Nothing, nothing.

All it is is, well, how can we punish the average guy to help our corporate donors? Okay, here, the federal government's giving you 90% of the money. Just take it. Nope, nope. Our philosophy is if it's someone who is working poor or middle class, we should crush them. So are you proud of this? You're a Republican. You're proud of this.

Like, why? Like the idea is, oh, yeah, they're bums. Why are they bums? A lot of them are working poor. A lot of them are middle class. They're the people who voted for you. And tons of them are Republicans who voted for you. It's Mississippi.

Yeah, Mississippi is one of the poorest states. It's often in the bottom two poor states. Yet they're monster Republican governors. It's like, I don't care. I'm going to score political points by hitting the poor in their face. Congratulations, corporate goon. Okay, so I'm going to interject, it's a little bit of a tangent, but do you get what I mean when if we could just put the insults aside for a second and just have a conversation with voters where they don't feel like they're being judged or talked down to? Do you think the majority of them know that the state has refused, like Republican lawmakers of the state have refused to expand Medicaid and that they're losing their hospitals as a result of that?

No, of course, tons of them don't know. And who do I blame for that? The media. The mainstream media. Because right wing media lies to them as a matter of course, we know that, right? But mainstream media doesn't tell you, oh no, the reason you're not getting these benefits is because the Republican governor, because that would be offensive to Republicans. That would be offensive to powerful people. Oh, how can we get access to him so he'll come on face the nation?

Who gives it damn? Why don't you be honest with your, my, and look guys, this is personal to me. Anna makes a great point here. Look, we get sucked in the culture wars because the right wing does crazy stuff that we have to respond to and defend, right? But in my book that I wrote a while back, right, I talk about how I'm a victim as I was a Republican growing up because mainstream media lied to me. They told me the Republicans were great, lovely people.

Then I found out way later they did the Southern strategy, which said, hey, you know what? We're gonna go try to get those voters who were left over from the civil rights era, who didn't want black people to have civil rights, didn't want any minorities have civil rights. Well, I wouldn't have been a Republican if I knew they were gonna take away my rights. But mainstream media will not tell you how terrible Republican politicians are under penalty of law, asterisk, unless it's Donald Trump. So let's get to some specifics in regard to Mississippi and the impact it's had on the hospitals and local communities there. So they've actually lost four hospitals since 2008 and they expect to lose more. So the New York Times, one of the examples of them doing really great reporting here, statewide experts say that no more.

than a few of Mississippi's 100 plus hospitals are operating at a profit. Free care is costing them about $600 million a year, the hospitals, right? Because again, if you're not insured and you can't pay for the service, the hospital can't turn you away, they just have to eat the cost. So that's the equivalent, by the way, of 8% to 10% of their operating costs. A higher share than almost anywhere else in the nation, according to the state hospital association. At Greenwood LaFleur, I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, a hospital, for example, the ICU and maternity ward have had to shut down as a result of this issue, right?

So at this point, there's only a single ward that remains open and operational at the hospital. So the hospital lost $17 million last year alone and is down to a few million in cash reserves, said Gary Marchand, the hospital's interim chief executive, were going away, he said, it's happening. And expanding Medicaid would allow about 1.35 billion a year in federal funds to flow to the hospitals and health care providers in Mississippi. But people like Tate Reeves, no, can't have it, not interested in it. In fact, I want to jump ahead and go to what Tate Reeves has to say about all of this,

including the refusal to accept the federal aid to expand Medicaid. We are all frustrated and worried by the threats that some hospitals may close. I urge the legislature to think outside the box when it comes to improve in Mississippi's health care system. Don't simply cave under the pressure of Democrats and their allies in the media who are pushing for the expansion of Obamacare, welfare, and socialized medicine. Instead, seek innovative free market solutions that disrupt traditional health care delivery models, increase competition, and lead to better health outcomes for our fellow Mississippians. You have my word that if you stand up to the left's push for endless government-run health care, I will stand with you. Your constituents are literally dying as hospitals shut down in your state over this BS argument about the free market. Let the free market work its magic.

Okay, let's talk about the free market working its magic in health care in the state of Mississippi right now, right now. The hospitals are shutting down. That's the free market. Tate Reeves, you're proud of that? Let me give you more. Here is Dr. John Lucas, who works at the hospital that we refer. referenced earlier, I can tell you, I have a number of patients who are on dialysis with renal failure for the rest of their lives because they couldn't afford the medication for

their blood pressure and that caused their kidneys to go bad. Dialysis, my mom went through it, it is torture, it is torture, and that could have been prevented. If they had the health coverage, the Medicaid expansion to provide the care that they need, the medications that they need, to treat whatever illness they have, whatever hypertension or high blood pressure they're dealing with in this particular case. I just, the fact that that, it's so hard on some days to not curse on this show, it really is. But the fact that that guy stood there and bragged about free market solutions as his constituents are dying without health care coverage is so incredibly disgusting. And that is what, look, you want to win against Republicans, you focus on this garbage, okay? you focus on this garbage because I guarantee you left, right, doesn't matter what your

political affiliation is, when it's abundantly clear to voters, and yes, including voters in the Republican Party, that their representatives don't give a damn about them and delight in their deaths like this? Maybe they'll reconsider who they're voting for. Maybe, maybe. We'll see. So I'm going to blame one other set of folks, and that's Democrats. And I'm going to explain why in a second. But first, to Anna's point about free market solutions. But wait a minute, A hospital shutting down because it's not profitable is a free market event. That's the, what do you want them to do? Like keep losing money because of what?

Patriotism? I mean, what do you, that's not even a free market? What are you talking about? What he's saying makes no logical sense. And he says it'll lead to better solutions. But you're doing it now in Mississippi, and it hasn't let the better solutions. It's let them miserable solutions that is causing death and destruction in your own state. And he's like, let's think outside the box.

No, how about we think inside the box, you accept Medicaid and you save all those lives. That pig, okay, sat there in an interview after Roe v. Wade was overturned to talk about, oh no, maybe there shouldn't even be exceptions when it comes to rape. Because I care about human lives so much. He said that with a straight face as hospitals are shutting down in his state because of what he did, because of his unwillingness to accept Medicaid expansion. You're garbage, you don't care about human lives. It's just so obvious.

That's why every time I hear a right-winger talk about, oh, we just care about the lives of zygote's and embryos so much. They don't care about any of it. They just care about punishing and controlling women. That is it. That is it. That's all they care about. In the meantime, their constituents are dying because of their actions

and their unwillingness to provide health coverage for their constituents. I can't. I just can't. Go ahead. So, okay, that's why I blame media. and Democrats. So let me explain. So in this case, the New York Times, great job, great stories. Wait, why am I blaming media? Because they're always won and done. They never remember the stories they themselves wrote. They'll go back today to writing about how Tate Reeves,

a wonderful guy, just honorable politician having legitimate debates. Come on, you guys don't know that the free market solutions that he's talking about is what led to this mess in the first place. You can't tell simple things. But to be fair, the media, look, in the, in the, this case in New York Times is their job. They tell you what the reality is. So now why do I blame Democrats? Because Democrats, you're supposed to take these facts and you were supposed to oppose the Republicans. Have you ever seen any Democrat as pissed about it as Anna just was? Ever, ever. Because Democrats don't want to do a damn thing to make health care better in the country. So they stay the hell away from these types of topics. That's why every attack coming

from the Democratic Party, for the most part, is them just engaging in the culture war stuff. Because the culture war stuff doesn't upset their corporate donors at all, right? And that's not to minimize the culture war stuff, but it does accomplish two things. It prevents any disdain from corporate donors, and it also pits all of us against each other. So we're constantly fighting each other as our healthcare continues to basically destroy the lives of Americans all across the country, as wages continue to not even remain stagnant. I mean, wages haven't kept up with inflation forever. But it's even worse now with inflation being what it is.

And they don't care about any of that stuff, right? And we don't have those conversations, we don't hear it from Democratic leadership. We might hear it from a freshman progressive for maybe a year or two. And then they get sucked in by the establishment blob. And they start talking about their beloved colleagues, as Jenk mentions all of the time. Because it's true, it's true. That is how the system works. And in my opinion, the only way to fight back is to build

a broad coalition, an organized coalition of Americans who demand better. But we're too busy fighting each other, right? We got to fight each other. We're on Twitter all day. We're sniping people who agree with us on 99% of issues. Okay, great. It's working out so well for us. Let's keep going in that direction, I guess.

Last thing, why don't Democrats fight back? So for example, they could say any of the things Anna just said that would get a lot of press attention in Mississippi, and it might get people to go, hey, wait a minute, why is the governor against the Republican voters who could who are also dying from this lack of funding, etc. The reason the Democrats don't do that is because they don't want universal health care either because they're also paid off by the insurance companies, the drug companies, etc. So they take the things that are winning issues and they choose not to fight on winning

ground. They choose to fight on the cultural war issues, which they know they're going to battle to a tie where we all hate each other, and we never focus on the fact that the insurance companies are killing us. They're literally killing us every single year, and they are aided and abetted by Republicans, and yes, Democrats like Joe Biden, who is definitely against universal health care, also a monster. You'll never see that in media. A Biden calling him a monster, how dare you? He's against universal health care. He does not mind tens of thousands of people dying every single year, They couldn't pay the ransom to health insurance companies.

Don't believe the establishment. They're full of crap. When we come back from the break, we'll talk a little bit about where the hearts and minds are of the American people when it comes to the economic well-being of the country. That and more. Don't miss it. We'll be right 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.co slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.